Causa Sui

Sure;

Hold on, you’re the one that has to back up your case. You have yet to do that. So it’s not up to me, since you were the one making all these claims. Do you plan on backing it up, or are you just going to rely on definitions, i.e. conventions of language? :-k

In fact, I’ve asked you at least two other times on another thread to show it, but you’ve just kept ignoring my request.

Oh, and for of those who haven’t thought about Causa Sui, it is actually kind of simple. For example, there are some that say “something can’t come from nothing”, and this is just based on a Causal principle that says, as Descartes uses himself, A cause must precontain the reality of its effect.

You can deny this idea of causality, but only at the price of denying that “something can’t come from nothing”, which means that you accept that something can come from nothing.

Rene Descartes

So for those of you don’t know, James S. Saint holds to “something can’t come from nothing”. And this idea follows from what is actually the basis of Causa Sui. Talk about inconsistent. At one point they say that “something can’t come from nothing”, but at another point denies what is the very foundation of that idea, i.e. Causa Sui. :unamused:

A is the cause and B is the effect. A, the cause, contains B, the effect. So the Cause contains the Effect. That’s how, they think, that something can’t come from nothing. Because if you have nothing and something comes from it, then the cause, being nothing, doesn’t contain something in itself, which is impossible under that Causal principle.

I just did.
You seem to have missed it.
{Big Surprise}

Wait, you just did? Let’s see you backing it up.

Oh, nice slight of hand. Now back it up and instead of this hand waving. That’s not backing anything up. That’s just reversing your burden. :sunglasses:

Haha… you might want to think about that effort at reasoning.

A) Precondition must exist.
B) Denial of (A) demands that “something can’t come from nothing”. (Oh really? To me it says just the opposite)
C) Thus denial of (A) demands that you accept that something CAN come from nothing.
Emm… If I accept that something CAN come from nothing then I have accepted that a precondition of existence must exist - something must exist in order to cause existence?

Descartes merely said that the cause must exist BEFORE the effect, “precontain”.

No “slight of hand”.
…merely taking advantage of the blind.
{and still blind it seems.}

Uh oh, looks like James S Saint still hasn’t learned how to use reason, or learn to read.

Descarte said that the effect is contained within the cause. This means that the effect exists in the cause, and that the effect doesn’t hold anything else that isn’t in the cause. The classic example is that you are the effect of your parents having sex, and you were already contained in your parents before you came about. In fact, this is what your world looks like if you hold to “something can’t come from nothing”.

Notice that little guy in the sperm, because that’s James. He was already in their tucked like that before he was ever born from his mom’s womb.

The point was that cause and effect both exist at the same time. You existed in the sperm before your mother gave birth to you, under the principle of causality that leads to the immediate inference of “something can’t come from nothing”. Descarte said that the Effect exists IN the Cause. The Cause doesn’t exist BEFORE the effect, because the Effect exists at the same time as the Cause, just that it’s IN the cause. Like something isn’t in nothing, because something can’t come nothing. That’s why the immediate inference is that Something can’t come from nothing.

Come, shape up and start to use some logic, guy.

Thank back up your assertion. You still haven’t supported anything, and keep dodging. I mean, if what you say is true, then one would think you could show it. But you still haven’t shown anything to back up what you’ve said. Come on, it shouldn’t be hard for you to do it.

Let me guess…
You don’t know what the prefix “pre” means?

Sure, based on your stance, it means you existed before you were born. That’s your stance, after all.

A) that is NOT MY stance.
B) that IS what “pre” means - “before”

So now I have to assume it was “contain” that you didn’t understand.

You should perhaps consider that something can’t be contained if it doesn’t exist.
…right?

If B is to be “contained” in A, then B must exist.

So if an effect is to be contained within a cause, then said effect must exist within the cause.
…right?

Thus your statement of “the cause must precontain the effect” means that the effect must exist within the cause before (pre) the effect exists. So the effect exists before the effect exists.

And you say that I am the one who needs to use logic? :-s

Or perhaps its the word “before” that you’re having trouble with? :confused:

No, it’s your stance. You said, in another thread, that “Something can’t come from nothing”. And that stance is the immediate inference from the effect is contained in the cause.

The only problem is that you aren’t using logic, or at least understand it. The effect exists, because the cause exists. The effect doesn’t exist if the cause doesn’t exist. In other words, if the cause exists then the effect exists. Or, if the effect doesn’t exist, then the cause doesn’t exist. This is the problem with your stance that “something can’t come from nothing”, since it relies on the effect already existing in the cause. In fact, you haven’t even show anything about cause and effect existing at all, and we’re still waiting for your to defend your position, instead of playing the doding game. :wink:

Oh really… :unamused:

That depends.

That depends.

Again, that depends.

Again, that depends.

Huh? It DOESN’T depend on the effect already existing in the cause. That is Your thought and assertion, not mine.
Seriously, you really need to stop imagining thoughts as coming from me when they are entirely yours.
And it would help if you would take a little time to see the surety you have when you inject certainty into your assertions.

As to what those above are dependent upon;
How are cause and effect distinguished? What is the difference in their concepts?

A causa sui, as I understand it, is a ‘cause’ that has no cause. Most people accept the BB as a causa sui because it gives them a starting point for so many effects. But, again as I understand, a causa sui isn’t concerned with effects–only with cause. A ‘cause that has no cause’ is a phrase that uses two different meanings for ‘cause’–one implies that there are effects of a cause in order to make it a cause; the other implies that there was nothingness prior to the causa sui, but there was a singularity which, in a micro-second (for want of a better word,) became a cause that led to the creation of the Universe.

In my OP, I said that our science and our language demand cause and affect, or how causes result in effects. A cause, in order to be a cause, needs to have an affect on something and, therefore, effect that something. If you accept the cosmological, astronomical theory of the BB, which most people do, then it’s a causa sui.

My question was meant to be, now that we know there’s a great deal of unpredictability (at least on a quantum level) within the universe, can effects exist without an apparent cause?

This has absolutely nothing to do with who’s responsible for ‘proof’ of point, since there haven’t been any points so far made that have to do with the OP.

No.
Predictability has nothing at all to do with existence or effects.

Firstly, sorry for the late reply. I’m in college and the last few months have given me little free time. This discussion has been in the back of my mind, however.

@ZenKitty:

All I can say here is to point you back at my original statement in the hope that you can understand it. You make the exact error that I describe above and your consequent inability to grasp my point is the result.

When I say that existence has prerequisites, I mean that an observer attempting to determine whether a phenomenon exists must ascertain whether the phenomenon meets a criterion of perceptibility… as perceptibility implies interaction in that (we’ll say) photons are impacting an apple and bouncing off to meet the retina of the observer allowing that observer to claim that he perceives and that the object of his perception “exists”. My point is that existence is something agreed upon through shared perception and that this perception is founded upon interactibility; that since knowledge of reality is only available through perception of it, and that any individuals perception is limited if not flawed, and that a common frame of reference is required before abstract conceptualization can begin. In other words, if two observers are attempting to describe reality they must be able to agree on their perception of it, to whatever degree. Again… I am not saying that “existence” “interacts” with something else. That is your simplification and the straw man that you are arguing against.

You will note also that I did not describe time as movement along a line from A to B. That is another one of your simplifications. I described movement in time as “the ongoing manifestation of this interaction, constantly mutable, constantly changing”. It betrays you, to an extent, that you reduce chaos to: A-----B. I use terms like “ongoing process”, “ongoing manifestation” in order to distance myself from such linearity. Heraclitus’ Flux is also useful here in that it suggests movement without implying an origin or destination.

Your nonsense about time having nothing to move into is just that and I have nothing to say to it. Time is not a physical object that occupies space, such that it needs to displace something else in order to move.

My position is that, no, past and future do not exist. The effect, however, of the past can be clearly seen in the present. It can be inferred. Otherwise the present is ex nihilo. Similarly, the condition of the future can be speculated about given enough knowledge of the causative factors of the present.
Your simplicity continues in your view of time as the journey along a line from one point to another.

Time is not a line. Time is more like a spiderweb, but most like the sea.

Other than that, I would like to digress slightly and explore your process of conceptualization.
Lets take this loaf of bread. It is a loaf of bread and, according to you, is whole and complete in itself; a Thing, a Thing-In-Itself.
Next, one takes a knife and slices the loaf of bread.
Now there is no longer a loaf of bread but 2 halves of a loaf.

What has occurred here? I will explain.
The human mind orders phenomena such that each phenomenon has distinct borders around it denoting Thingness and Otherness or No-Thingness. This supposes, in the manner of Platonic Idealism, that during the process of causality any such Thing remains static and unchanged until it is forcibly removed from reality and replaced by another, different Thing: cause->effect. The loaf is a Thing. The 2 halves of a loaf are also Things.
This, I am afraid, is your understanding of causality.

The past is not point A. The future is not point B. The present is not reality switching between A and B. There aren’t even any points to begin with.
The past was once the present in the sense that it was once the consequence of past interaction. The present is the consequence of past interaction which is constantly moving towards the future. The future is the as-yet to be reached condition of the present. So to say that the past is point A is not allowing for the past itself to also be the consequence of it’s own past. It is treating the past as a fixed point from which the present is moving to a final conclusion in the future. A beginning->end duality which is nowhere in evidence. My conceptions however allow for a causation which is open-ended in either direction and does not have this problem.

Back to the loaf. The loaf is a phenomenon which is the result of interaction between dough and heat in an oven. It is the product of many causative factors which brought it about. But it is not an end to those factors, it is an ongoing manifestation of them moving towards the future in the present.
Again, we take the knife to the loaf (another phenomenon with it’s own history which in this case coincides with the loaf’s) and slice the loaf.
This is an interaction which moves the loaf’s condition in time to that of 2 halves of a loaf. The loaf is not destroyed and replaced, it is simply changed. It will be changed again if it is toasted and yet again if it is eaten… not to mention the constant alterations it undergoes with respect to its environment; movement in space as it is a body held by gravitation on the surface of the earth which is itself moving, atmospheric alterations due to heat and moisture, chemical alterations due to bacteria which will lead it to rot, etc.
Yet the material, the matter, the energy, the reality of the loaf persists, no matter that this flow of reality is dispersed and no matter that when the loaf was first baked that it was assembled from various ingredients with their own diverse histories.The point is that it cannot reach a condition of stasis as it is a phenomenon that by the very nature of it’s capacity to interact is constantly in a state of change.

The point I make here then is the nature of a Thing, the nature of a moment, the nature of such a point in spacetime that you are suggesting. That fixed references are useful when it comes to conceptualizing but that to base your conceptions off them leads to error.

As above, the past is inferred by perception of the present. Otherwise, again, you have ex nihilo. From this it follows that since the present is not a fixed stasis, that it is constantly moving, then the future can be speculated about. Given enough information, these speculations can be to a lesser or greater degree - accurate.

Yes… the past and future cannot be perceived … by their very nature as the past and future. The effect of the past can be, however. It’s called the present.

Examples.

He also said :“I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause.”

In modern astrophysics the closest I have seen to a description of the “edge” of the universe is a variation of the multiverse model, which posited an infinite variety of universes adjacent to eachother, each with slightly different physical laws.

But to respond to your point, my assumption that the universe is infinite stems from observation of the local universe and the application of logic. I infer it, but I do not pull it out of my ass.

If reality is finite, spatially (even if expanding), then at some point there must be a border between reality and non-reality. What is the nature of this border, if it exists, and on what basis can you hope to describe it? Nowhere do I see non-reality, nowhere do I see nothingness, nowhere do I see a region where any phenomenon entering it becomes nothing. Not even black holes.

So how can you posit a spatially finite universe if you cannot first describe the nature of it’s edge?

I have. Repeatedly.

“In the beginning there was nothing. Which exploded.”

How?


@lizbethrose:

My position is that this would be ex nihilo - out of nothing. Every event is the consequence of past events, hence no beginning or end, hence Infinite Regress of Causality.

I don’t think anyone understands quantum mechanics to any degree and if they say they do they’re lying.

The “original cause” or the “cause from the void” or the “prime cause” or the “First Cause” come from simply the Lack of Alternatives.

In the case of starting with truly an absolute nothingness (zero alternatives), there is nothing with which to prevent anything. It takes merely the most infinitesimal anything, for existence to begin and never end.

Causa Sui is the consequence of having no consequence, nothing to prevent a cause.

You can’t say there’s a nothingness with zero potential for any event (zero alternatives) and then say that this nothingness does not prevent an ex nihilo from occurring. There’s still zero potential. It’s contradictory.

Can you even point to an example of nothingness on which to base your theory? If you can’t, then you are indulging in superstition.

You are exaggerating the case.

The simple truth is that there can never be a nothingness state.
The reason that there cannot be is that in such a hypothetical scenario, there would be nothing with which to prevent something.

Interesting.