Wasn’t sure whether to comment here or on the “Are Atheists Missing Something” thread. But this thread is prior in time, so here goes.
In the Universe, we find things. We see they have causes. So at least in the Universe there are causes. (Unless you are a Humean nihilist and think there are no causes in nature – but that’s another problem.)
Stories are caused by the actions of things put in an order by a form from beginning through crisis to denumont. So I’m not sure whether you mean the universe has no meaning or is a story. If it has no meaning it seems to only be a lot of movement. Or it might have the meaning of evolution and of man’s progress (with the idea that the universe thinks about itself through man <Hegel?>), since we see men have ends and stories.
So, what is it again you are saying?
Nihilism, story/meaning, or just no causes (which might mean no story)?
As I understand it, the first cause argument says that since things in the universe have causes, it is plausible to suppose that the universe too has a cause, the ‘first cause’. This argument and the intuitive picture it paints is presumptive and therefore suspect. The argument presumes that the universe is itself a ‘thing’ to which the generalization ‘everything has cause(s)’ applies. I’m trying to find another way of describing the universe that does not succumb to this pitfall.
One way in which the universe is not a thing is its relationship to time. We observe that ordinary things in the universe are generated and destroyed at certain times, but time goes on before and after those events. It is tempting, then, to think that the universe also behaves in this way, that it is a thing whose generation and destruction form dots on some metaphysical timeline. If we accept this, we, like Parmenides, become puzzled that the universe would pop into being at some particular metaphysical ‘time’ and not another. It then seems that we need a creator, a first cause, to bring the universe into being at that particular metaphysical time and not some other.
I think this reasoning is presumptive because it assumes that the universe is a thing, like a big ball (again the influence of Parmenides), floating in some metaphysical space and changing over some metaphysical time, when such a presumption is unnecessary. We do not need metaphysical space or time to understand what the universe is.
Instead, we should maintain that the only time in existence is physical time, time arising from the movement of things in the universe. Under this conception the universe is like a series of movie frames beginning with the big bang (or whatever universe-event it is that begins the universe’s story, the account of its change). There is no such thing as ‘before the first frame’ because ‘before’ implies you’re talking about time, and time is in the universe, so you’re asking about what in the universe was before the universe. That’s like asking what positive integer is before one. The answer is of course ‘no such thing’, just as in the case of the universe. The need for a first cause (a reason that things were set in motion, an unmoved mover) dissolves because things were not ‘set in motion’ to begin with. The motion was simply and tautologically “in the beginning” because the beginning is defined by motion and change.
I did not mean to speculate about nihilism or meaning or the causes of things in this thread. I simply wanted to suggest a more coherent way to think about the universe-as-a-whole, a way with less metaphysical baggage than the conception of the universe as a ‘thing’. The universe as a ‘story’ still doesn’t quite get across what I’d like, but hopefully this explains a little more about what I was trying to do.
“red” is the term used for the quality of redness that we perceive.
this actually creates a false statement:
“that is a red stapler”
let’s pretend we are in a room together, and see the above image, a real stapler.
fact: the stapler is all colors except the color red. thus, red light is not absorbed, but relected. thus, we see, in fact, what color something actually IS NOT. this is true of all naturally “light reflected” visual objects.
the “red light,” which means light energy of the spectrum we have named as “red,” is in fact reflected off of the surface, then received and deciphered by our rods’n’cones in our eyes and then by our minds, and we get the image and color proprties that we have named as “red.”
so, the correct statement is the stapler looks red, or appears to be red. it has the properties of appearing red, etc. it reflects lightwave energy that we translate with the property of red.
someone with extreme colorblindness cannot differentiate these colors, which means they are not as capable of differentiating the lightwave energy - aka the “color” spectrum. thus, no red is seen as that spectrum is not meaningfully islolated / translated by the mind as having a unique property. red is then not seen, nor perceived - but the unique properties of “red energy” still exist in the light wave spectrum.
the red stapler is not red/
but, if someone asks for the “red stapler” - we still know what is meant - even though it is factually erroneous.
The most important premise of General Semantics [GS] has been succinctly expressed as:
“The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing defined.”
There are a couple senses in which we can take this argument:
Aquinas is talking about the order of efficient causes of a thing or a set of things IN the universe. If this is his argument, I completely agree with him, but I note that what he calls “God” I call “the universe’s initial state – matter together with the efficient causes or dynamical laws by which the matter will evolve to future states”. This interpretation of God is consistent with his argument. First, I’m not implying that anything in the universe caused itself; rather, the dynamical laws of the universe’s initial state are the efficient causes of everything in it, while the initial state itself (including dynamical laws) is uncaused. Second, I am not suggesting an infinite regression of causes. Therefore my conclusion is just as warranted as his, given his argument.
Aquinas is talking about the order of efficient causes of the universe itself, rather than things in it. Here I would say that the universe’s initial state has no efficient cause, for it did not come into being, but simply was in the beginning. However, its future states were efficiently caused by its initial state. If it is objected that the universe’s initial state is a ‘thing’ which cannot be uncaused, that is where my metaphor about the universe as story would come into play.
Perhaps another way to think of it is the universe is an automaton that was in a wound-up state in the beginning (not actively wound up by anything, but just in a wound-up state) and is now moving about according to its laws. The trick is to think of the beginning as the first frame of the automaton’s story rather than the coming-into-being of the automaton. Coming-into-being only happens within the confines of time, and time is only in the universe, so no efficient causes of coming-into-being can apply to the universe itself.
I like to think of that Red stapler as having a Red pigment, which means exactly what you said, that it reflects a certain spectrum of light energy that we interpret and decide to call Red. Only talking of pigments sort of eliminates our interpretation. Wheather or not one is colorblind makes no diffirence as long as you believe in the objective reality that science attempts to establish for us. Wheather or not one can interpret the spectrum of light we know of as causing Redness, that stapler still has the property of containing certain cellular matter known as red pigment. And it is that pigmentation that can be said to be the source of Redness in that stapler.
I do not understand his argument against infinite causes… I dont understand this:
“Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause.”
Now I would agree that there wold be no ultimate cause, nor an ultimate effect, but what about the intermediate cause… What is he talking about when he talks of intermediate cause, and how is it eliminated with infinite causality?
And also:
“There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.”
I would like to ask aporia to philosophically specify a definition, for his/her use in the present contention. (I used two internet dictionaries, yes I am aware of the obvious failures.)
being:
Present participle of be1
noun (plural be•ings)
Definitions:
person: a human individual
existence: the state of existing
the turbulent years during which the new nation came into being
essential nature: somebody’s essential nature or character
loved the child with all her being
living thing: a living thing, especially one conceived of as supernatural or not living on Earth
being:
Pronunciation: 'bE(-i)[ng]
Function: noun
1 a : the quality or state of having existence b (1) : something conceivable as existing (2) : something that actually exists (3) : the totality of existing things c : conscious existence : LIFE
2 : the qualities that constitute an existent thing : ESSENCE; especially : PERSONALITY
3 : a living thing; especially : PERSON
entity:
(plural en•ti•ties)
noun
Definitions:
object: something that exists as or is perceived as a single separate object
PHILOSOPHY existence: the state of having existence
PHILOSOPHY essential nature: the essence or character of something
entity:
Pronunciation: 'en-t&-tE, 'e-n&-
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
Etymology: Medieval Latin entitas, from Latin ent-, ens existing thing, from coined present participle of esse to be – more at IS
1 a : BEING, EXISTENCE; especially : independent, separate, or self-contained existence b : the existence of a thing as contrasted with its attributes
2 : something that has separate and distinct existence and objective or conceptual reality
I noticed your use of non-being, and wondered if that was direct intent and use of that phrase, or were you meaning entity instead?
I think it is common to think of the universe as a thing, a ball of physical space with objects inside, that is embedded in some kind of metaphysical space. The problem with this is that if you think of the physical universe as ‘everything that is’, that metaphysical space becomes ‘nonbeing’, and nonbeing has no properties whatsoever. It should not be construed as a space, nor thought of or imagined in any way. It can only be referred to, as that which is in opposition to being and all of the properties of being, like space, time, permanence, etc.
In light of this discussion, then, I think the definition from the dictionary closest to my usage of nonbeing is the negation or opposite of this:
That is, nonbeing is the lack of the quality of having existence, and nonbeing is the lack of any and all qualities whatsoever including spacio-temporal extension, color, etc.
Is this all you’re wondering? I can’t help but feel this is a narrower question than you would have liked to ask. I don’t intend any of what I’ve said in this thread as beyond reproach. It’s just an experiment to see if other people find any sense in some of my more subtle and murky thoughts about life and existence. So far it appears that most don’t understand and/or don’t care, which is fine; the beginning of the universe is kind of a silly thing to talk about anyway
My opinion bares zero relevance, I was simply trying to understand the context of your initial premise. Sorry for the word game, just making certain I didn’t subjectively create an understanding due to difference of definitions.
this is incorect, red is relative to the mind, a differentiation of perspective that we have translated as red. it is a PROPERTY, not a “objective” fact. there is a lightwave energy spectrum that has a unique visual appeareance to HUMAN perception - that is all that it means. that “red pigment,” is in fact, actually all other colors except that shade of red that your eyes perceive.
the red pigment is not the color you see, the color you see is the color the “red pigment” is not.
for example, many animals do not see/translate a color gamut the same as we do.
case in point, what color are x-rays? cosmic rays? UV spectrum?
is there really such a thing as “invisible light”? merely called invisible because WE cannot see it?
That staple is composed of atoms is it not? Those atoms form molecules. Those molecules form cells. There is a certain piece of cellular matter we have come to call a pigment. Diffirent pigments have diffirent properties, but it is their light reflection, or lack there of, that gives them their… essence so to say. We call matter that reflects or absorbs certain wavelengths of light pigments. A “Red” pigment would be matter that absorbs all wavelengths of light except those falling between approximately 630 to 750 nanometers. This range of wavelength is the range that we have come to know as causing the color we call “Red.”
What im trying to say is that it is the pigment in the stapler that causes the reflection of that specific wavelength range that we know of as causing “Redness” in our visual field. Due to the fact that it is that specific pigment causing the color Red to be observed, we have come to call it the “Red” pigment. It causes us to experience this thing we call Red, so lets call it the Red pigment. Get it?
Now, regardless of an observer, that stapler will always have this pigment that happens to reflect only that range of wavelengths of light. The stapler will ALWAYS have a “Red” pigment. It may not always be percieved as red, for if you are wearing green tinted glasses, it will look diffirent, or if you are color blind it may look diffirent. BUT, it will ALWAYS have what we have come to call a “Red” pigment, unless ofcourse you take that pigment off, which can easily be done by scraping the “Red” paint off the stapler, because it is that layer of paint that contains the pigment.
Here are the facts: The pigments in the stapler cause the reflection of light energy only within the wavelengths of approximately 630 to 750 nanometers. This range of wavelengths causes a certain effect to occur in our visual field, that effect has been called Redness.
You wrote:
“fact: the stapler is all colors except the color red. thus, red light is not absorbed, but relected. thus, we see, in fact, what color something actually IS NOT. this is true of all naturally “light reflected” visual objects.”
No, we call that stapler “Red” because it causes an effect in our visual field known as “Redness.” That stapler IS the color Red. When you say “Red light is not absorbed, but reflected” you are equivocating. Red light remains only the type of light that causes the effect in our visual field known as “Redness.” What is a being reflected is a certain wavelength of light between approximately 630 to 750 nanometers. Since this is the range of wavelengths known to cause the color Red in our visual field, we can call this range of wavelengths the Red wavelengths.
When one says: “that stapler is red” he means only that it causes the effect in our visual field known as “Redness.”
if the stapler was actually red, it would relect all light but the light frequency which we call red. i don’t know what white light minus the “red” energy spectrum is, but it aint still what we would call “red.” [i’d also like to point out the stapler does not have “cells,” unless it’s an organic stapler. ]
yet, we say it is a red stapler. it is not red. the point is language binds and distorts meaning, especially “factual,” “true,” or “objective” meaning.
further, the name “red” is an arbitrary attribute, and relative to our unique perception. we observe a property that is not possessed by the object itself, yet we assign that property to it via language.
yet we still would say “the red stapler” or “the stapler is red.”
virtually no one will ever say “give me the stapler that is not red, and so appears red.” for ages, we thought it was red until we learned how light, and our eyes actually work. we did not know light was energy waves, and made of particles until just a few centuries, perhaps is hould even say just several decades, ago.
we used the term “atom,” long before it had the scientific meaning it has today.
the point is, what is meant when one says “the universe,” or “the universe is”. when one say “God” or “God is”. do we reallyt deal with the knowledge of those times when those words/concepts were first coined…?
further, i am pretty sure all “stories” are still “things,” but not all things are stories.
the universe is both a story and a thing. the universe may also not be a story, and may not be a thing. both the story and stuff may only be aspects of something larger we are incapable of perceiving, aka a multiverse.
anyways, the new name for god, or the sotry of the universe if you will, imho, is found in “string theory.”
yep. an explanation. such is the shape given to mental effort by the equipment provided…
yep, or rather, ‘time’ wouldn’t exist without humans. despite it’s nonexistence, i think time, were it to be introduced, wld consistently point in the same direction.
heh. or after “ever after”. perhaps that’s the meaning of ‘universe’, a compact manifold, experience w/out boundaries, but in some real sense finite. …?
i think that may be so for a fairy tale, but a short story described as a ‘slice of life’ implies the life from which it is sliced. you are right to emphasize the subjective nature of explanations of cosmic embeddedness tho, imho. that is what i think the term ‘universe’ represents – our individual ability to apprehend the limits of ‘what is’. this is obviously different for a one year old child than an astrophysicist, but is either any closer to the ‘truth’?
i always liked the ethological term ‘umvelt’ – being the sum of sensory input from the world multiplied by its interpretation.
well i suppose we can evade aquinas by replacing ‘cause’ with ‘correlation’ & deduction with induction.
Time is a man made term, but that fact shouldn’t disregard that change isn’t. I find it impossible to consider the universe beyond time because of this. Science has proven that the universe is expanding, that suggests a starting point.
Welcome to the boards, anticyclone. It sounds like you are going to be an interesting one.
If you are serious about this comment, would you explain further?
By “correlation”, are you following Humean thinking? (I avoid Hume.)
By “induction”, are you confusing that with his effect-to-cause (“quia”) argument?
…i wrote a reply & deleted it by mistake. & right now i am way trashed after spending the weekend w/ some kids of mine. anyway, yeh thats pretty much it… cum hoc ergo propter hoc.
‘effect to cause’ is over reaching a little. i am not trying to establish the existence of god. i’m not even sure of the existence of intelligence…
anyway, i’m a probabilist. by ‘induction’ i meant inductive inference. what i know about learning & science inclines me to think of explanations as artifacts. i view ‘cause & effect’ much as i view ‘purpose’, as an infantile cognitive paradigm that persists into adulthood at the expense of epistemological transparency.
drawing metaphysical conclusions from ‘cause’ reveals a failure to apprehend its dual representation, exactly like a baby trying to eat a picture of an apple. explanations & predictions are symbolic, like the picture. they exist, but hold no universal truths about the ultimate nature of the reality they represent, however closely they may model it.
wrt aquinas, i was raised by marist brothers & kinda went of him in that time.
First, I think explanations and predictions might be symbolic in empirical science, but it may be different in philosophy (I don’t know what it means to say “dual representation” in metaphysics.) In addition, it seems that one neesd some knowledge to even make a model.
As for “cum hoc ergo propter hoc”, it seems to me that if you, say, pour water on a plant and that is coincident with its growing, it makes more sense to say the pouring water is causing the plant’s growth (even though a material cause) than to say the plant’s growth is causing the watering (even though it may be a final cause). I think we see plants react to water. If there is a drought, the plants dry up, if there is sufficient rain, the plants survive. From this we understand that plants are such a kind of thing that needs water to live. So causality is really based in understanding the natures of things. (“nature” = " a principle of movement and rest…" – Aristotle)
Now if we think generally about things in the world of coming to be (to use Plato’s phrase), we see that they come to be from something prior. I think it is this understanding of things which supports Aquinas’ argument.
i don’t think either make sense. of any causal formulation, maybe ‘plants exist becos rain exists’ but even that is assuming something about the fundamental nature of nature (causality) based on an artifact of our explanation of it.
this implication of ‘cause’ in ‘movement & rest’ is unsustainable, imho. Aristotle made huge leaps in the sophistication of stories told about the world, but he lived in an age before relativity & quantum mechanics. these are just examples of explanations that can work against Aristotle’s intuitive reification of causes.
Aristotle’s grasp of logic as the structuring component of explanations & interrogations of the natural world is still what gives substance to our rational enquiry, but ‘cause’ is an artifact of application of logic & deduction to the material world & it’s ‘nature’. Francis Bacon’s introduction of inductive reasoning strengthened the scientific method, but perhaps in a way that Aristotle wld not have approved.
what if we keep moving in that direction? what if inductive inference turns out to be all there is to science, simply a process of discovering correlations & hypotheses to predict them, what will we have lost? understanding? well, so what? after all, what is ‘understanding’? its an artifact.
…ok, its a nice thing to have, lol! but i just don’t think we shld read too much into it.
there does seem to be a preferred direction for systems to move thru time. the problem is that i don’t know of any way to ascertain ‘cause’ as an integral component of this preference. as i understand it, the preference has more to do w/ the 2nd law of thermodynamics. thats not to say that explanations that employ cause & effect are pointless, but they are a cognitive tool.
as i said earlier, ‘purpose’ & ‘cause’ are similar illusions. they both retain the flavour of ‘deus ex machina’, which is why i avoid them. purposive, final cause or teleological explanations are very seductive. ‘the cow eats grass to energise it’s metabolism’ … the problem is, they are not correct. the cow happens to eat grass & it happens to survive. you can see how i begin to question ‘cause’ in this setup.
one reason i avoid causal arguments is becos their seductive properties are so often used to mislead & betray people in a political context. ‘early sexual experience causes trauma’, ‘real estate speculation causes inflation’, carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming’.
while there may be demonstrable & significant correlations & convincing explanations that support these statements, all that is gained by adding the causal term is a form of absolutism that disallows counterexamples & other subtleties.
i believe there are many unanswered questions arising from the use of ‘cause’ as a concept. what exactly is the ‘null hypothesis’ of a cause? does negative causality exist? (‘the car crashed becos the driver didn’t attend a defensive driving course’)? does one imply the other?
i guess what i am saying is that cause is a property of explanations & not an intrinsic property of the material world. i hear the word ‘cause’ tossed around a lot. it annoys me.
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