Causa Sui

I mention some of this here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174296

But what I struggle to understand here is how you can leap from unpredictability (the inability for an observer to predict the outcome of an event) to causa sui (an event which causes itself and which is not part of a chain of causation). This does not follow. Whether an observer can or cannot predict an outcome does not necessarily reflect in any way on whether that event is the ongoing manifestation of past interaction, on whether it is caused or not.

I would ask you to provide an example of one beginning or end, or alternatively an absolutely inert object which does not change in any way, hence does not interact with anything, hence does not participate in causation. That would seem to me to be a singularity. Or perhaps the definition of non-existence. Take your pick.

Is the universe acceptable? It, presumably, “does not interact with anything, hence does not participate in causation” and it “does not change in any way”. That would seem to be what you’re looking for.

I think the answer is simple, and what James S Saint would say, with slight modification. We would create a “cause”, or invent a “cause” for what had no cause. I mean, why go without a cause when you can “easily” create a cause?

Then anything and everything imaginable can be said to exist.

I live on an extremely busy road here where pedestrians almost as reckless as the drivers, so you can imagine the number of people who have been hit by vehicles on this road. It’s poorly lit too, so that only adds to the confusion at night or in bad weather. Sometimes I’ll be driving home at night and catch a pedestrian coming at me out of the corner of my eye, which startles me and might cause me to double-take or break suddenly. A small percentage of those occurrences result in the realization that there was never a person there. Maybe it was debris blowing in the wind, maybe it was never anything at all. To the extent that I assumed what I saw was a person, or tangible object, I can say that object is what startled me. So, does the person necessarily exist?

The universe is existence, therefore it is interaction, is causation and is under a state of constant change.

The universe is not a thing or whole such that it can be said to have borders with which it can interact with something else. The universe, reality, existence is a condition and therefore infinite. Otherwise one is obliged to attempt to describe the extent of reality and the nature of it’s border with nothingness. Which is absurd.

My intent with asking the question was to receive an example of that which is nowhere in evidence; the non-existant, the without-condition.

Hmm, “[universe] is interaction”, but what does it interact with? After all, interaction does imply two, but you seem to be saying there’s nothing else but that, which would mean that universe isn’t interaction. And nope, universe isn’t under a state of constant change. Einsteins theory of space-time states that nothing changes. It’s static, which is the opposite of change. Think I’m lying? Evidence for my assertion…

"The idea of reality being four-dimensional is strange and counter-intuitive. Even Einstein himself at first had difficulty accepting Minkowski’s suggestion-though later he was won over and declared ‘henceforth we must deal with a four-dimensional existence instead of, hitherto, the evolution of a three-dimensional existence’…One of the disconcerting features about four-dimensional spacetime is that nothing changes. Changes occur in time. But spacetime is not in time; time is in spacetime (as one of its axes). It appears to be saying that all of time-past, present, and future-exists on an equal footing. In other words, events that we customarily think of as no longer existing because they lie in the past, do exist in spacetime. In the same way, future events which we normally think of as not yet existing do exist in spacetime. There is nothing in this picture to select out the present instant, labeled ‘now’, as being anything special-separating past from future…We are dealing with a strangely static existence, one that is sometimes called ‘the block universe’.” Russell Stannard

“There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes…In particular, one does not think of particles as “moving through” space-time, or as “following along” their world-lines. Rather, particles are just “in” space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.” Robert Geroch

“In space-time, nothing happens or changes because it contains all time at once.” Max Tegmark

And I’m not sure what you mean about non-existent and having no evidence for it. Don’t you have evidence that there’s no other universe? That would seem to be evidence for the non-existent or something like that. But hey, we can also throw out the future, in one sense, because it’s non-existent or we have no evidence for it. That would show a non-existent. And if you want to go the way of non-existent is absurd. I’d have to ask you, “Does existent have a contradiction or contradictory?”. If you say no, then it makes no sense. There’s no contradiction of it and makes it logically worthless. If it does have a contradiction, then when we have evidence for “existent”, it also means we have evidence for the non-existent. And if we also take your point of constant change, then all of a sudden what is existent would become non-existent, which means that we have evidence for that. So, you might want to try again.

And you saying that the universe is infinite would be just as absurd as you think the non-existent is absurd.

What would existence, the universe, reality be interacting with? My point is that interaction is one of the prerequisites of existence… not that existence interacts with, what? Non-existence?

This ties in with what I’ve been saying in the Free Will thread; the actor/act dichotomy. In this case you look at my post and you think that existence = interaction means that I am saying that existence is interacting with something. This is not the case, I assure you.

What I am saying is that existence is the condition of interaction between phenomena such that they affect and are affected by eachother and so change. And that the ongoing manifestation of this interaction, constantly mutable, constantly changing is referred to as time. Movement in time is a prerequisite for existence.

I wonder whether I am to take Minkowski’s 4-dimensional spacetime and these guy’s understanding of it separately, because this is nothing more than a dismissal of time as a measure of change by combining the sum of this change and referring to it as spacetime. It’s still change, there is still interaction, there is still a distinct difference between conditions “then” as opposed to “now” or the future.

Wordplay, and from the quotes logically inconsistent. If a particle’s “world line” represents the sum of its history in past, present and future then there is the tacit admission that change is in fact occurring. However, conflation of the particles entire history into one, as “spacetime”, somehow allows this change to be considered non-change… as “spacetime” allows one to view change itself as an absolute which is itself unchanging, which is a juvenile argument at best.

Am I coming close to your point here? Let’s continue on.

All I can do in an attempt to understand the universe is to use what I perceive and from that perception to extrapolate into probabilities. I see interaction and consequently change. Nowhere do I see stasis or phenomena manifesting into or out of existence from/into nothing. The present is an ongoing manifestation of the past. I say ongoing because it is constantly moving and never becomes static in time. The present is forever fading into the future. The future is merely the as-yet unmanifested condition of the present.
I am not saying that change is absolute but I am saying that it is more probable than stasis or an uncaused phenomenon. It is not a matter of either/or, it is a matter of likelihood based upon perception.

Nowhere am I dealing in absolutes.

My meaning is that if a phenomenon does not participate in interactivity it cannot affect nor be affected by other phenomenon. It is, in effect, not there. I defined this non-interaction as non-existence as a consequence of defining existence as interactivity.
I would be interested in evidence which details the nature of a non-interactive phenomenon, as it would seem to me that this is logically impossible.

According to your quoted reference of '“spacetime” it does exist, in one amalgated whole containing past present, future and all that existed, exists or will exist.

Don’t contradict yourself.

My point here was in relation to a supposed “border” of reality, which one is obliged to posit if one does not accept reality as being infinite in extent. Therefore, if we take existence as being the condition of… existence… than a finite extent of existence would have non-existence as it’s border. That is what is absurd, that one must invent a condition which is nowhere in evidence to satisfy the requirements of a spacially finite universe.

Yes, as I have defined it above.

Again, my point was that a non-interacting phenomenon is nowhere in evidence as the condition of its non-interaction forbids its detection. That to be considered evident it would have to be possible to be perceived, ie capable of interaction which by definition it is not.

What you are in fact asserting is that evidence of absence is itself evidence, while I am using the term to refer to perceptibility.
So, you are not addressing my point.

Then kindly do me the favour of describing the beginning of the universe, either ex nihilo or causa sui, the end of the universe (something into nothing) and also the edge or border of the universe.

It would be nice if you could provide some evidence as well.

apaosha, I haven’t seen anyone so “spot on” as you have been in the last few posts. If you wanted you could add a little more conceptual precision so as to even remove the few areas of doubt that you have expressed, but you are definitely within the bulls eye.
Existence Meaningfully Defined

Rephrased:
What would happen if unpredictability, or indeterminism, caused a causa sui ?

Language has the deceptive quality of allowing grammatically correct phrasings of perfect nonsense.

But perhaps there is a deeper question behind this glaring anti-logic. Perhaps what is meant is: what if non-discernible causes caused a discernible cause? And what might be meant with that is this: what if such a thing as life came into existence? And what is masked by this question might be: what if I am actually free to myself, despite what I’ve been taught about causation? And behind this: what the hell have I been doing all this nonsense for along? Behind this question may be the realization of the spirit: I am that I am.

But then it may just have been the comical error that appears at first sight.

Reading, reading, blah blah blah skipped the second half of the increasingly boring posts.

Causality is a cognitive assuption stemming from a subjective perceiving mindset looking for a metric to intrpete threats and aims. Beauty develops out of this root, as does our sense of space and time, but in our species save under certain neurological conditions they are not unified, and when in the rare case it is, its under widely ranging circumstances that do not share a common symtomatic root across the spectrum where we can claim the syndromes are akin to one another.

A juxtaposition in and of itself when judged by subjective and within that subjective mindset logical asdumptions as to what IS, OUGHT, CAN, and POSSIBLE, can seriously derail any depositional conclusion as to if Causa Sui exists or not. When we say yes, the engineer will say yes, the scientific theorist no.

We are left with a paradox of the cognitive sorts underlining the will to pursue this dichotomy; sui sponte is the origins of the causa sui debate. It is the inherent cause that willed itself into being as to determine others, and declare itself. There was no causality before this sui sponte, and we do not know if the capacity to causality is inherent in intelligence or not. The universe may appear quite differently to a alien mind.

There are two forms of the question “Why?”
A) “Why, for what purpose?”
B) “Why, by what cause?”

So far it seems that this thread concerns itself with the second of those.

But the word “cause” also has two forms;
A) “What brought about this effect?”
B) “What reasoning is behind this fact?”

The mere declaration that something is an effect directly infers (conceptually requires) that it has a cause separate from itself. Without any separation in either time or concept between cause and effect, there can be no distinction between them and thus they are one and the same. If they are actually the same thing in concept and also in time, then what has been referred to as two things, was really only one, a tricky form of equivocation has occurred within the mind. Thus the entire issue of “Causa Sui” can only rationally be referring to (B), “What reasoning is behind this fact?”

So to understand the “Why, by what reasoning/cause?” issue involved in the concept of Causa Sui, simply ask yourself the following question and in your attempt to answer it, do not depend on the truth of the implied premise in any way whatsoever;

"Why (by what reasoning/cause) is anything whatever it is?

Remember it isn’t asking of what timely process brought about an end result, but rather “what is the logic behind the fact”. Examine your answer very carefully so as to remove any presumption you might have inadvertently made that whatever you mentioned in your answer is actually whatever it actually is. In other words, consider that whatever you have mentioned within your answer, ISN’T whatever it actually is.

There is no reasoning before the fact that whatever the state is, is whatever the state is.
It has been called the “First Cause”.
“Whatever is, is whatever is”
“I am that which is”
“I am that I am”

In ancient Hebrew, they are all written the exact same way and all mean the same thing.

Of course, Liz seems to have been pondering how it is that a physical thing can pop out of nothingness without a reason/cause. It can’t. It doesn’t. It hasn’t. It won’t. There is a reason behind everything except for the very First Reason which is that Reality is what we are talking about and Reality is Reality. There is no reasoning behind why reality is reality rather than non-reality any more than why two is two and not five.

“It is true, beCAUSE it is what true is.” ≡ Causa Sui.
“It is the reason, beCAUSE it is what reason is.” ≡ Causa Sui.
“It is whatever it is, beCAUSE it is whatever it is, is.” ≡ Causa Sui.
“I am that I am.”Causa Sui.

{also known as “True by Definition”}

Outstanding, James. You’ve arrived at the logical core that underlies all scientific comprehension.

You know my answer to your questioning: the logic of valuing. That is: the fact that for there to be interaction (causation, reality), there must be valuing, and for there to be (the terms required for) valuing, there must be a holding-oneself-as-value, which I call self-valuing.

Incidentally, the meaning “value” is the root of all logic, so it speaks to reason that anything representing a primordial logic must come in the form of a logic of value. That value must be the product of valuing has been overlooked by logicians, and discovered by philosophers. That valuing must be based on a standard has been overlooked by philosophers. This self-setting standard is the first and only properly metaphysical “law”, the logical cause you speak of, the why. Causation is the reality, nature, following from this logical ground – the physical law is (logically to be taken as) secondary to the logical one.

What we have brought to light here is the ground of the mind, which is ground to any phenomenon we may comprehend as fundamental to our world.

Sounds like a clip from a conversation between Jesus and Gautama. :astonished: :mrgreen:

…and yes, “Causa Sui” is the ground floor, nowhere to go from there but up or to Hell. :sunglasses:

Congradulations James, you said HALF of what I said in my post, and dropped the ball on the rest.

Sua Sponte is the motto of the US Army Rangers, meaning ‘Of Their Own Accord’. It subsumes a conscious element breaking down subjective standings, and self determination to carry through against friction and the fog of war to arrive in a possition to overcome and asymetrically advance forward, resulting in a positively accepted scenerio.

Your varients upon the meaning of ‘why’ doesn’t begin to cover the why of a dumb grunt in the woodline, who doesnt much care about the purpose of what he’s observing… As hes calling in a napalm strike on it and such quizzical meanderings isn’t his strong suit, nor does he much care about the cause of this formation hes about to kill off, as the cause is about to go up into flames along with the purpose. These are philosophical issues for someone else to ponder. The why that brought him here, to this woodline, predicated with how and intent, and neither fully met in the middle… unless you consider the napalm strike the junction.

Now, the boy is quite intelligent, he can follow causality like anyone else, but its all in schemas handed down to him via SOPs and commands, with a million and one feedback loops via the chain of command. He folliws causality, being a excellent tracker and scout, and his views are more authoritive on the ground than the chain of commands.

There is a seregation of responsibilities, a splitting of the ego. Your two why’s exist in all probility within that range, likely on the backside of a feedback loop on the otherside of the radio where he can’t hear it, but can react to it.

In the end, he has the best and yet very limited understanding of the events going on around him. Others have better in particulars, but all focus of being is on that grunt out in the fields. There is a wide diaspora of why’s in effect, but only on reality to all the observers.

Its asumed we have that original cause, or not a original cause… Which either way confuses the fuck out of everyone. The solution is obvious, we’re projecting a element of our own mentality as part of our objective search. Its wrong to assume the problem is grammatical… As James blundered and Nietzsche would have us believe, or all visual and probibility. This isn’t a left brain vs right brain issue, but rather how our mucrotubing is set up by default to process information. Our neurological syntax pushes us, the economy of our body maintains us, the acceptance of the mind accepts this. We’ve built AIs that operate differently than us, some processing the last information seen first, and vice versa. We are a knotty bowl of noodles in processing some things one way, other things another, synchronizing hand eye movements with forsight, tactile sensation with the feeling of euphoria or music. Somethings come quicker than others. Physics the slowest. We idealize far too much, we assume because the culture underlining science or the forms of a sound, educated hypothosis will progressively lead us to the truth. It must be remembered the conditions this methodology to the methodology was enacted, and that the scope may not necessarily maintain itself as the psycholigical functions and puzzling paradoxes we apply increasingly tie us down to more productive and yet increasingly malfunctioning and incoherent assumptions. We’ve hit a point where we can’t reason most of what we assume what we know without advanced complicated and time assuming degrees and years of competent research in a field and then rrlated fields… We makes great and bold assumptiions… our scientific method… good at encouraging the development of technics and lingo, produces both… the first sells irself through stumping via the other, the other legitimizes itself through the sales of the first… but in the end we find ourselves having to explain the ego in the lingo, and we all too often fall well short, explaining our own ego and assumptions and our miracle ignorance that defied all odds and survived our PHD Thesis, and years of reasearch, in making monkey like explanations of the universe.

Science, and the philosophers dependent upon it, are not too different from that ranger acting of his own accord. Were quite ignorant, quick to acceptance with token symbolic skepticism. If we can coherently explain our blunders, and teach others to acceot it with Occam ease, then we feel to be wise, great theorists and searchers of the truth.

I am afraid its much, much, much more difficult than that. The fact we must refer to this tooic via a dead language shows its seated antiquity and how weak its original logic was. Why should this still be with us after all this time, after this manychanges to society, civilization, and concepts of physics? Why is it immune to this, but so much else is perishable? What is going on here situationally? Sua Sponte… We are of our own accords on this one. Because we are, it exists. We can measure the steps and sequence of the universe quite logically back to a hilarious, illogical beginnings. Its all a farce, they change their minds on it every other year. The most complex thing our physicists teach us now adays is the negation of things! Why learn about something tangible and testible when we can focus on dark matter, anti matter, and black holes? And as I noted before… The metrics are quite logical, were recording something replicable, and technics result, but this addiction science took into mysticism in trying to break out of its own rut is laughable. It underlines the inherent backwardness of our science, our mathematics conceptually and in generative formulations, and causes us to assert our own projections and psychological cunning as well as limiratiins to fill the cracks. Sua Sponte, we are the cause of the cause unto itself, unto others! It was always a reflection of ourselves.

Emm… CN, I guess I have only one question…

Did you mistake this to be the Social Philosophy forum?

We were discussing the rudiments of existence itself as t pertains to Science and thought. You seem to be making a lot of noise concerning a social philosophy about emm… the noise of beliefs and self determination (Sua Sponte), I guess.

This is interesting of itself, because none of this follows. All that is required for existence is that it is. It requires no interaction, because as you seem to imply, there’s nothing for it to interact with. All you would seem to be saying is that existence affects existence, which is nothing short of a tautology of existence affects itself, which would be causa sui! And your idea of movement in time is extremely questionable. For movement requires going from A to B, but B can’t be occupied for A to move to it. And this would mean that there’s something else which isn’t existence, and existence would have to interact with non-existence. And, if we accept current ideas of time within Einstein’s theory, there is no movement, which is just a “persistent illusion”. There’s no change, because it’s all static, and where something is static there is no movement. There’s nothing to move to.

The problem with you bringing up “now” is that there’s no “now”, which is just an illusion. There would only be “before” and “after”. But they never interact with one another, because they’re both logically distinct, one is A and the other is ~A. There’s no interaction between them. So you bringing up there being a distinction between “then” and “now” actually indicates that there’s no “interaction”, which destroys your position to begin with movement in time. That’s because A can’t move to ~A. A can only occupy A, and A can never occupy ~A. But if it did occupy ~A then it would be ~A to begin with.

Second, there’s no change in the world line. Would you say that this line is changes: ______________ ? Where’s the change in that line? None, because it’s static. You can think of bread. You have the loaf of bread, which never changes from being a loaf of bread. But this loaf can be sliced up into slices of bread. One slice is logically distinct from another and can’t be that other.

Third, you say that you have to deal with perception, which is a good start. But this doesn’t give you interaction. Show me the interaction between one billiard ball and another billiard ball? I’m sure you can see this is David Hume’s argument on causality, which pretty much undermines your whole idea of interaction. But hey, you say you see “ongoing manifestation of past”, but show me the past. Can you do that with perception? Nope, you can’t. Heck, you can’t even show the future with perception. So you haven’t really supported your position with much. You can’t point to the past, and you can’t point to the future. You can’t have a perception of the future and you can’t have a perception of the past. So you see no “ongoing manifestation of the past”.

And this statement of “likelihood based upon perception” is totally unfounded by perception. Perception shows no likelihood, and perception definitely doesn’t show the “past” or the “future”. And perception shows plenty of time “uncaused” things. That’s what is so great about “uncaused” things. They allow you to create “caused” things. Like David Hume once said, “The efficacy of causes lie in the determination of the mind!” And this was a guy that was completely loyal to perception.

This is all nice, but you haven’t shown that interactivity is existence, besides you just, as you basically admitting, that’s how you define it. But how you define it is just a convention based on the definition that you choose. But your definitions are not only contradicted by experience, they lead to contradictions of their own. In other words, your definitions lead to the logically impossible, and what you argue against you say is logically impossible. Thus, you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Right, according to what I quoted I would have contradicted myself if I held to that. But I never said that I held to it. I just pointed out Einstein’s theory says that nothing changes.

Interesting, because it seems like you’re implying that there is a spatially infinite universe, but there is no evidence for this at all, at least not found in experience. So you would seem to have to at one point want to affirm perception for your position, but then at another moment want to affirm something that’s beyond perception (i.e. spacially infinite universe). Now you definitely seem to be stuck in a contradiction.

Excellent, because you can’t say that non-interaction is absurd without implying that interaction is just as absurd. But you haven’t really even shown that interaction is actually existent.

Right, but as was previously pointed out above in this very post, you haven’t even perceived any interaction and you can’t even do that. So you’re very own position is by definition undetectable. You can’t detect the past to even say it exists, and this would carry with it that you can’t even detect or experience interaction, which means that you can’t hold to cause either. The problem is that you basically admitted that “non-interaction” phenomena aren’t possibly observable. But if the contradiction isn’t possibly observably, then it’s contradiction isn’t possibly observable, which is interaction. In fact, your very point seems to bare a loose resemblance to testability. Testability requires that A and ~A are possible to observe, but if ~A isn’t possible to observe, then we can’t even say that we’ve observed A. We can’t tell the difference between A and ~A by perception.

Oh I can easily describe the beginning of the universe. You have nothing but blackness, and all of a sudden an object shows up. In fact, this is perfectly imaginable, which shows it’s possible for there to be no causation or interaction at all. But hey, you’re the one that is saying that the universe is infinite, and so far you haven’t presented any evidence besides the hand waving of saying “a finite universe is absurd”. That’s not really evidence, because you’re position is just as absurd.

In other words, cause isn’t based on anything but a definition and isn’t found in experience. If you really want to go with you saying it’s “True by definition”, then cause isn’t based on experience. But someone can always come up with a different definition which contradicts your’s, which means that a physical thing can pop out of nothingness without a cause or reason.

Wrong

Wrong

Wrong

Sure

Wrong

Than show causation without relying on definitions.

Wrong
[/quote]
Than show it with experience.

Wrong
[/quote]
Than show the experience.

Sure
[/quote]
Which means you don’t know what causation is.

Wrong
[/quote]
Than show the experience where it is forbidden.

Sure;
refute my point without using words or pictures.