systems/places

We need to distinguish systemic causal connections from grammatical normative linkages.

Is this a distinction or a continuum? Aren't the two so intertwined that your division isn't of much use?

Their intertwining is very real but that doesn't mean we can't make the distinction in order to understand how effects go beyond intentions and recoil to affect intentions, or how systems operating on their own can restrict or enable our situation.

The underlying philosophical distinction between normative and causal discourse is related to the distinction between intentional and non-intentional discourse. While there are technical (and disputed) ways of trying to reduce one to the other, they remain distinct in ordinary use.

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