Re: Causality vs. Entailment

[John M <***>]

Dear Steve,
I always had my linguistic problems with 'entaliment', so I looked up my
li'l dictionary which said: "entail": 'involve, as a necessary result',
while "cause" is the other end: 'something that brings about a result'. I
was inclined to read entailment as the 'effect' (consequence?) end of a
causality-based process (pair?) where 'cause' is the originating end.

I still hope that somebody (JK? DF? AA?) has an idea what circumstances
prompted (not caused - as in a narrow model-view) the 'change' from the
genderless procaryotic mitosis world to evolve into an (eucaryotic) bisexual
proliferation.
The idea of "genders" had to appear (plurale tantum<G>)
The eucaryotic appearance proper is not enough - I think.

John M


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Johnson" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 9:50 AM
Subject: Causality vs. Entailment


> When I read Rosen I always have the feeling that when
> he uses the words entail/entailment he does not quite
> mean cause/causality in the normal sense of the word.
> For example, I feel that  in Judith's quote below it
> would not make sense to say that "each gender causes
> the other" but it does make sense to say that "each
> gender entails the other".
>
> Am I correct that there is a distinction between
> entailment and causality/causes in the way Rosen uses
> these terms? If so, can someone share their
> understanding of the difference?
>