I meant before he gave his actual issues.
Typically, my statement that “if there is any uncaused event, the entire universe cannot exist” stirs some immediate rebuttal. The logic isn’t obvious or well known.
Explain.
Assuming lightning strikes were detected in the same area as a forest fire, you’d be left assuming the former caused the latter if you thought lightning strikes necessitated forest fires.
You are so far ahead of the conversation that is possible right now that you might as well be speaking in tongues.
Exactly.
If lightening caused a forest fire, it could be that the lightening was a necessary cause of the forest fire, but not a sufficient one. Only sufficient causes necessitate their effect.
Do you care to make it known? I’d be interested to see it.
Here’s what was said:
What Von means presumably is that something which might cause something else does not always have to cause it.
But in such a case that it doesn’t, it isn’t actually a cause.
Hence, my:
The issue here is how we define something as a cause.
Von seems to hold that a cause doesn’t have to actually cause something to be defined as a cause of it; e.g. Lightning may case a fire, thus in our lexicon, “lightning” goes under “cause of fire”.
In ordinary english, we often recognize that lightning is a cause of forest fires. --That general claim. If the way you are speaking can’t handle that abstraction, then there’s something wrong with the way you’re speaking.
But more importantly: What does anything that you are saying have to do with my OP? And if it has nothing to do with my OP, then please, be dismissed.
Smoking is a cause of cancer, dumbasssupreme genius, EVEN IF IT DOESN’T GIVE YOU CANCER.
Stop derailing my thread.
Well it is a little involved (thus not commonly known).
It goes something like this;
Any event that is uncaused is not constrained by anything.
That means that it can occur at literally any time or place.
Within one second there are an infinite number of opportunities for an uncaused event.
That means that the probability for the event is 100%.
Also the central location of the event has more than an infinite number of possible locations within merely one cubic inch (infinity cubed). That means that the event, having 100% probability of occurring at any given location has 100% probability of occurring within every location within that cube. And that applies to every cube through the infinite universe.
But more than that, for anything to be physical, it must have affect, which means that it is a cause for an event even though itself uncaused. But no affect can occur without a “direction of affect”. And that direction is also unconstrained thus each uncaused affector would be randomly directional with no discernable time between the influence. That means that whatever was being affected would have the reverse affect occurring to it just as often. That leave a total of zero affect.
Since the uncaused events, in effect, cancel each other’s affect, they cannot be said to be physically real or actually cause anything at all. If the events cannot cause anything, they don’t actually exist and are not actually “events”.
So we are left with the notion that “nothing comes uncaused”.
Again, that’s only the case if I assume lightning strikes necessitate forest fires. Think about it. If I’m saying lightning strikes don’t have to cause forest fires, why would I be more prone to the sort of error you’re talking about?
I think you’re confused.
I boiled it down for you, ingrate.
Even thought your view is indeed “common” rather than logically tenable, I offered you the decency of explaining what you meant in terms the common man can understand.
So now we got to the bottom of your mind - aesthetic skills are used to mystify the profoundly common (base, opinionated) so that it can be understood as rational by the irrational.
A river to your people.
Von conflates the commoner “possible cause” with “actual cause”.
An actual cause must always bring the effect that it is the cause of, else it wasn’t really the cause.
Most things said in the common masses to be causes are really only causal components. Smoking for example does NOT cause cancer. It merely aids in the cause of it, one of very many far more directly related causal agencies.
How is that? Von agrees with me about what it is that he said, he just thinks that what he says is logical. He holds that a cause does not have to have an effect. This is a categorical mistake.
If the cause is theoretical, then the effect is also theoretical, and the theoretical cause must produce the theoretical effect.
If the cause is real, then the effect is also real, and the real cause produces the real effect.
Exactly.
Oh, that should have read ‘come into being’. That’s what we’re talking about, things beginning to exist for no cause.
You seem like you're refuting your own point here. When I read the bit when you said nothing is like the universe so our inductions don't apply, I was in the middle of typing "That's because the universe isn't a thing, it's the set of all things, so that's irrelevant", but then I saw you said it yourself. So I'm not talking about 'the universe' because I don't know what that includes and neither does anybody else. I'm simply saying that as far as we have ever observed, everything that begins to exist does so with a cause. So if you're choosing between the belief that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the belief that there's some stuff out there that begins to exist with no cause, it's the second position that requires an argument or some evidence- the first position already has the latter in spades.
I could be wrong, but I think he’s just saying a cause doesn’t have to necessitate a particular effect in order to be a cause. Lightning strikes don’t have to necessitate forest fires in order to cause forest fires. Look at what he said—
A cause doesn’t have to necessarily have to necessitate any particular effect, but if has to necessitate some effect, or it’s not a cause. If it has no effect, then it could be a possible cause, but it’s not necessarily one unless there’s some effect that it necessitates.
Right. Now look at the difference.
This is what I think Von is saying.
This is what FC and James are arguing.
They are talking about different things.
Well as long as von doesn’t mean that something can be a cause without having an effect, I don’t see what the disagreement is. I mean we can even qualify “cause” by saying, “possible cause”. What does that do to this whole mess?
That’s exactly what I’m trying to explain. Maybe Von can clarify whether he meant that or not. I just don’t see anything he’s said thus far that suggests it.
Yes, that’s the point. The cosmological argument makes some kind of basic fallacy of irrelevance; one of them. (Not me. The cosmological argument and its supporters). I.e., It only works if you think of the universe as a ‘thing’, rather than the set of all things. This fallacy is especially apparent in people who defend the cosmological argument by saying something like, “yo, everything I’ve seeeen, dawg, has been caused. Like yo, rabbits, and a hat, and a bat and a six four impala”. —Thinking that that is ANY kind of support makes the logical error I was trying to get at.
Ohh no you dddid’ent.
…Indeed. But because that’s irrelevant to the conclusion of the argument; it’s irrelevant. What is the fallacy of irrelevance called, when the premises may be true, and even the conclusion true, but the argument invalid… anyways, whatever…
In other news, thank god at least statiktech has his head screwed on straight and understands the basic english language. Smears wants me to define clearly non-technical words, like fucking prepositions. No, no, how about you get a fucking dictionary? JSS and FC remind me of Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew from Sesame Street. One has no eyes, and the other makes no sense. Goodday to both of them.
von Rivers out.