Lessons on Causality

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
241

So you might consider it to be like an ever-expanding circle? :wink:

Your explanation is kind of unsatisfactory for someone like myself.
If it had no beginning and has no end, what is it really then?

What is your explanation then? God did it? Which would bring us right back to the beginning, yes?
Where did this God come from?

As I cannot see anything as coming from nothing, your explanation is meaningless.

I do realize of course that there are hidden causes to things which we cannot figure out without having more and more and more information. Perhaps some day it will come before we have blown ourselves up on this Earth…perhaps not.

242

Does an ant comprehend existence? Does a bird? Does a fish? Does a cow?

Few have the capacity and intellect to seek out grand answers to grand questions.

NO BEGINNINGS.

NO ENDS.

INFINITE.

NO (abrahamic-christian-jewish-muslim) GOD. YOUR GOD IS FALSE.

243

Sure, in their very own way, without using words, they might comprehend THEIR existence, experience it in their own way.
Comprehend also means to take in, embrace, include, comprise (as per Dict.Com)

There is a big difference between seeking out and discovering though we have discovered many astonishing facts and realities.

True, that which cannot be is false. But then again, that is only by my perception.
I have no God.

244

Mhm, you have no god yet you use scripture from indoctrination.

Maybe your dictionary can help you explain how an octopus comprehends the nature of existence, whether the universe is with or without end.

Keep searching in your pages.

245

I very seldom quote scripture and when I do, it is as a tool and/or to give more clarity.
The fact that I am agnostic does not interfere with me realizing that there is wisdom and truth - at least subjective truth- in the bible and also philosophy.

An octopus? Well, perhaps through the feel of the water, the feel of his tentacles as he grabs hold of things, the tastes which enter into his mouth through the little fishies, etc., the ebb and flow of the ocean (does he indeed feel that way down deep?)

Depending on how deep and wide he travels, the octopus may indeed experience his watery world as infinite.

Does an experience of something have to be a mental experience of something?

246

I have a theory that time merges into scale as one approaches the moment of the Big Bang. Scale can be considered a 5th dimensions (like time is a 4th dimension), so long as you define “scale” in terms of resolution, not size. Then if you can imagine time and scale merging into each other as you approach the moment of the big bang, you can say that the universe has no beginning per se but is nonetheless the consequence of what the whole is (as a singularity or otherwise).

^ Make sense? Awesome!

D’uh!

247

A"straight circle". :wink:

Along with the Big Bang theory is the theory that if one continues on a straight path infinitely, he will return back to the same spot he first left. I actually heard a lecture tape for 6 yr olds professing that (they get’m young).

248

No beginning. No end.

That you two believe there are beginnings and ends to the universe is a product of the limitations of your own brain. In existence, there is no such thing.

Also you two are severely indoctrinated with Abrahamic ideology. Catholicism is the source of Big Bang Theory (“Creationism” newspeak). You both presume the same axiom, that (Abrahamic) god created the universe.

False.

249

Urwrong,

In order to assert this, you must deny the supposed evidence they say exists for the BB (either that, or have an alternate explanation). You must also have reason to believe a universe with no beginning and no end is necessary.

There are two pieces of evidence as far as I’m aware: 1) observations of an expanding universe. 2) Cosmic microwave background radiation.

On the side of logical necessity: there is no logical axiom, as far as I’m aware, that mandates a lack of beginning or end to time. True, one cannot imagine such as state as “before time” or “after time” but there are plenty of thought experiments that violate their own terms just by being conducted (ex. imagine you don’t exist–kinda hard to do since the very act of imagining it requires positing yourself in the thought experiment). Don’t mistake the inability to imagine it for a logical impossibility.

250

The universe is not “expanding”. Rather it is human consciousness and awareness that is expanding. Humans are anthropomorphically centered, still believing existence revolves around you, instead of you revolve around existence. Humans are still geocentric, humancentric. This mode of infantilism and solipsism is constant and consistent, pervasive throughout human history, because 99.99% of humanity lack the intelligence, maturity, and sophistication (wisdom) to understand the inverse. Intelligence, maturity, old age are rarer in animals. Comfort, luxury, technology is still rarer. Thus it is only recently that humans begin traveling to and exploring space outside the atmosphere.

You, like the many, still operate from false premises. You cannot differentiate between human consciousness/awareness expanding, with “the universe” expanding. For example you will claim that planets, stars, and galaxies are “moving away” from earth, from your tiny brain, but, relative to what else? Are all galaxies moving away from all other galaxies?? Nonsense! Galaxies move relative to what??? Planets move relative to what?

You, nor any other of humanity’s top scientists, have answers to this basic and simple question, movement relative to what? If you believe that the universe moves relative to earth, and relative to your perception, then you’re wrong.

“Cosmic background radiation” doesn’t really mean much of anything, similar to “carbon dating”. Scientists don’t really know shit, after a certain point. Humanity still has very limited knowledge in terms of spatial depth or measuring time. For example, basing everything in “years” like “one million light years”, is still relative to Earth. What a human, you mean, is to say that live travels based on 365 days of a year? How about the time light takes to travel on a Jupiter or Saturn year? What is a year, on Mars?

Because you lack relativity and scope, you lose credibility in all other areas that demand answers to distance, depth, and time.

Those that posit assertions (“the universe has a beginning” or “the universe has an end”) are obligated to provide evidence and reasons. But, I already know your evidence and reasons, and they are amateur, not good enough, insufficient. You, and others, must grapple with a harder truth. The world’s “best scientists” don’t know everything. And what they don’t know, is a lot. Instead science is constrained to limits of “what is knowable now”, not what will be knowable in 100 or 1000 years. Thus science, and you, lack vision and foresight.

Do you think a “lightyear” will make sense from another planet, where a year is 1000 days long, or 10 days long? Or that light in a vacuum is much faster than light on the surface of earth, traveling through oxygen and other gasses?

These are rhetorical questions. I don’t want your answers, as if you think about any of these ideas or topics a fraction of what I already have.

251

Urwrong about that. :sunglasses:

252

Urwrong,

I appreciate the interesting reply. Though you did address my questions (at least about the evidence), it was far from convincing, particularly given that half your response consisted of ad homs and personal attacks (i.e. I lack vision, my reasons are amateur, etc.) ← These moves typically aren’t that persuasive, and they do more to betray your defensiveness than your ability to reason or to see the truth.

You’re essentially saying that I ought to dismiss the notions that the universe is expanding and that it is strewn with the CMBR, and replace these with the notion that our consciousness is expanding. First of all, what does that even mean? Is my consciousness pushing galaxies farther apart? And why should I believe you over all the scientific reports I’ve been hearing? Not to mention the fact that the only reason you gave for why one should doubt the reality of the CMBR is that “scientists don’t know shit.” ← I take this more as you bitching over the fact that you can’t convince the mainstream to listen to your theories instead of the scientific authorities. Not very convincing.

Relative to what? To the observer. To other objects.

Light years? If we chose a different planet as the standard for a “year” that would not change distance. Alpha Centauri would still be 4.36 light “Earth” years, and that would simply translate into roughly .36 light “Jupiter” years or .15 light “Saturn” years (you know, kind of like how we convert meters to yards).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a dogmatist or a blind sheep. I don’t follow scientific reports unquestioningly. But what reason do I have to give you, some Joe Shmoe on the internet I don’t even know, more credit than the scientific community? Especially given your obvious emotionality and inability to deliver convincing reasons and evidence to support your point. If you want to challenge well established scientific reports, you’d better be prepared to prove why you are the more reliable source. Bitching and complaining, throw ad homs and attacks, is not the way to do this. As far as I’m concerned, nobody knows what they’re talking about, even you.

Now, you didn’t address my question about the logical necessity of no beginning, no end, but lucky for you, James filled in the holes you left open:

I’m chalking this up to imaginative difficulty. We can’t imagine “before time” (principly because to imagine it requires placing ourselves in the thought experiment which in turn requires imagining time going by), but logical impossibilities only comprise a subset of imagivative impossibilities. For example, I can’t imagine a color outside the usual roygbiv spectrum, but that doesn’t mean it’s a logical impossibility. Other animals might exist who can see colors outside this spectrum. I think the notions of before time and after time are of this sort.

However, I’d also say that if time had a beginning, there was no “before”. But we are limited to placing ourselves “before” the beginning of time in our thought experiments just in order to imagine what the state of the universe might have been like back then.

253

The onus is upon you to backup your assertion that the universe does have a beginning.

I already told you why you believe that it does. You even admitted this when you claimed that universal relativity is relative to “the observer” (yourself).

You’re wrong, the universe is not relative to you. It is not relative to humanity. It is not relative to earth. You need to graduate beyond Geocentricism.

254

Whenever a person claims that “the universe”, existence, is based upon him/herself, then this immediately demonstrates solipsistic and infantile thinking. As infants and young children, or any simpler organism with consciousness, yes it does seem that “the universe revolves around me”. This is a natural quality of consciousness and coming into conscious awareness. It seems to simple creatures, simple intelligence, to be “at the center of everything”. Later however, with maturity, hopefully, organisms grow out of this phase and mature. Increased intelligence and wisdom leads to new conclusions and reevaluating the premises.

The universe, existence, does not in fact “revolve around me”. Existence is not Geocentric. It is not Heliocentric. Everything does not revolve around merely humans.

The later stages of development lead to intersubjectivity and objectivity. For example, there are other intelligences in existence. Consciousness is not necessarily unique, and can be common, among some environments (which are abundant with life). Furthermore, planets and their movements are not relative to (only) earth, and human perspective. Planets revolve around gravitational forces, many of which even the ‘best’ scientists humanity has to offer, cannot predict or navigate.

Are you comparable to the top scientists in human history? If they can be wrong, and badly wrong, then why are your claims or beliefs any better?

Also there is another key point lost. If humanity were stuck in deep space, then what about time, distance, and “light-years”? Isn’t a light-year obviously relative to light on earth and a year on earth.

Outside earth, outside humanity, obviously these premises are flawed.

I don’t expect to convince anybody, really, or even any significant number of people. Because historically, masses are not on the side of Philosophy. If 1000 years ago average humans believe in Geocentricism, the sun revolves around earth, and today people are still geocentric, believing humanity and earth are the center of the universe, then what hope is there really to convince masses and majorities of people of their errors? As-if they would benefit from accuracy or truth, regarding scopes and perspectives far beyond them? They won’t benefit, and, they won’t understand. Nor will they care to understand.

It’s clear to me now that despite all the progressions of the greatest scientists and philosophers of the ages, that still, the average human is as geocentric and human-centric as ever before. Still believing that s/he/you are the center of existence. That the universe begins and ends with (your) consciousness. And that when you go to sleep at night, existence collapses with your consciousness. Nothing outside “me”.

In understanding all this, I realize there is no battle to be won. The philosophers and intellectuals that did revolutionize before (what does ‘revolution’ mean by the way?) what did they achieve, when, none of their successes are known today, because the old errors are too easy and compulsive to let go of. Again…that average people and humanity as a whole, will take ‘itself’ as the center of existence?

No, I don’t need to convince anybody of anything. But if you’re wrong then I’ll tell you anyway. And I’ll show you how, too. So show me how you’re right if you can.

Show me the beginning of the universe, if that’s what you believe. If that’s your Faith. If that’s your God. Show me. Describe to me.

Tell me how the Big Bang Theory is other than “everything bursted into existence ex nihilo, out of nothing, there was something”.

255

I agree that it is an issue of imaginative difficulties. You are having difficulties limiting yours to logic.

The logical issue is the idea of a start to time.

Time is the measure of relative change. As long as there is changing, there is time. And when there is no time, there is no change … none whatsoever.

So if the universe was ever in a state of non-time, no-changing, how could it ever become different than that? How could changing begin without already being there?

But that is not an issue of “I can’t imagine how, therefore…”. No, it is an issue of something coming from nothing, in this case, a change from no change, no occurrence bringing about an occurrence.

By definition, if there is total nothingness, there is nothing to cause anything, including any change.

So LOGICALLY, there could never have been nothingness else it would still be, despite whatever your imagination might muster up. And that is only one logical conclusion (I know you are skeptical about logic). But there is also a more mathematical proof of the impossibility of nothingness.

256

I don’t think that I do. What I am doing is I am demolishing abstractions that have no reference to something concrete.

When I am looking at a hectogon from a distance I see no point that is out. In other words, I see a circle. But when I am looking closely then I do. In other words, I do not see a circle. Which one of these two views should I trust? The less detailed one or the more detailed one? And why? There is no such a thing as “the most detailed view”. Objectively speaking. Rather, there are many different view each one of which has a certain degree of detail. In other words, there are more detailed and less detailed views. Someone has to explain to me why is it necessary for me to favor the most detailed view I am aware of? It appears to me to be a horribly counter-intuitive approach. It’s simply NOT how brains normally work.

We say that a given shape is a circle if it has an appearance of a circle when we look at in a certain way. The idea that the appearance of a shape must remain the same (in our case, that of a circle) even when we look at the shape in a different way (e.g. if we take a very close look) is excessive.

Point is simply a location in space. Even this explanation is too abstract. It’s necessary to put things in context. One has to recall how and why abstractions such as “points” were created in the first place. If you have a shape, and if you know its center, and if you have a ruler and if you put one end of the ruler at the center of the shape you will have a number of choices as to where the other end of the ruler will be. Basically, you can rotate the ruler around the center of the shape. If your ruler is sufficiently long it will cross the boundary of the shape. The location at which it crosses it is, well, a point. That’s what the word “point” refers to. Hardly abstract. So yes, you can run my test.

257

^ That seems rather arbitrary. It’s your thread, your claims. I’m just a gadfly letting you know you’ve failed to convince. I simply added the competing alternative you’re up against.

That’s not exactly what I said.

That’s not even a grammatically correct sentence. You don’t just take a noun and say it’s relative to something. You need a predicate, either a verb or an adjective: the universe is big relative to X. The universe is expanding relative to X. ← But nice try building a strawman! :smiley:

First of all, I don’t believe anything, not absolutely. I bring up the Big Bang theory only to see how you counter it… and you’ve performed quite poorly. But having said that, the picture of a “beginning to time” that you ask for and which I would deliver is just that: the theory of the Big Bang.

No, it’s not just an “explosion”. It’s a theory about space and time themselves. It says that space and time began as a “singularity” (whatever that means–a really, really small nugget) with all mass and energy compacted within it. The expansion of time and space, and with it the separation of all matter and energy from itself, is more the creation of time and space, or the insertion thereof between objects, and not a force that propels things outward like an explosion. There is no reason to suppose there was time before the singularity unless you want to say there was a “before” (which you don’t have to). The singularity didn’t “pop” into existence ex nihilo since that presupposes a “before”, a time during which there was nothing and then spontaneously there was something. The fact that there was nothing before the Big Bang just means there was no “before”.

^ That’s just the picture though. I’m not one for trying to “prove” anything, just presenting to you the alternatives and saying: that’s what you’re up against. Try to tear it down. It’s a challenge. I like to challenge. ILP’s no fun otherwise.

And for what it’s worth, I even have my own view of what really happened at the moment of the Big Bang. Like I said in an earlier post, I believe time merges with scale as one approaches the moment of the Big Bang. By “scale” I mean a dimension defined by “resolution,” and by “resolution” I mean the size of the details a thing is composed of. So you could say a human being is one singular object at lower resolutions but a composite of billions of cells at a higher resolutions. Either way, it’s the same human being; he (or she) hasn’t changed in size. Likewise, you could consider the universe at many levels of resolution: trillions of elementary particles, as collections of atoms and molecules, as systems of ordinary human sized objects, as billions of planets and solar systems, as billions of galaxies, or as a singular whole we call “the universe”. If you take the latter dimension and consider it a “5th dimension” (like Einstein considered time a “4th dimension”) then you can give it the same treatment as Einsteinian relativity gives time and space (i.e. it can bend, warp, fuse, fission, etc.). Next step: picture a 2D graph where time is the horizontal axis and scale is the vertical axis. The “linear” assumption is that as you go back in time, scale does not change–it remains orthogonal to the temporal dimension–and likewise as you go up in scale, time does not change–it remains orthogonal to the dimension of scale. But my theory is that as you go further back in time, the graph should be drawn with the temporal axis merging up. And as you go up in scale, the graph should be drawn with the scale axis merging to the right. The axes meet at the point of the Big Bang. Time effectively becomes scale and scale effectively becomes time. What this means, essentially, is that there is something “special” about the singularity from which the Big Bang sprung, special in such a way that it wasn’t just the “first” event to occur in time. Ultimately, the singularity from which the Big Bang sprung is a principle–the principle of existence itself–represented to us physically in its simplest form. The ensuing expansion of the universe is not so much a physical event, but a logical consequence of what this universal principle entails. It would be similar to saying that 1 entail .5 + .5 and that entails .25 + .25 + .25 + .25–an expansion that doesn’t happen in time but “all at once”–like the whole being comprised of the parts all at once–something that can be graphed along the dimension of scale rather than time. ← So given all that, my take on the Big Bang and the “beginning” of time is such that there is no “first” event per se but that time slowly merges into scale as one approaches the Big Bang and therefore the very nature of time changes as one approaches the Big Bang. The “beginning” becomes more the “whole”–which is far less problematic as far as I’m concerned.

^ Again, just another picture, an alternative. Not gonna fight tooth and nail to “prove” it, but you asked and there it is.

258

But that’s just it–there is no such “state” of nothingness for the universe to be in. Again, you’re imagining being there in that state of nothingness (unwittingly making it into “something”). The universe doesn’t change from nothingness to somethingness. It doesn’t “pop” into existence from a state of nothingness; you just have to wrap your head around the fact that any attempt to imagine a state “before” the Big Bang is invalid, even if you want to say that state is “nothingness”.

259

Um, no. Before you can even ask whether the universe has a beginning and an end you must:

  1. define what the word “universe” means (it means nothing, by the way)
  2. define what it means for the “universe” to have a beginning and an end (which, given the above, means nothing)

The word “universe” commonly refers to what the person using that word thinks is the set of rules that determine everything that happens. Theories can have a beginning and an end in the sense that their structure can be such that they predict only events within certain time interval (while not predicting anything, you can also say while predicting “nothing”, outside of that time interval.) If you think that everything we experience is a consequence of some underlying, invisible, mechanism that generates everything that happens according to a set of rules, then yes, the universe can have a beginning and it can have an end. The only question is what is the nature of the mechanism that determines everything that happens. Does it have a time limit? Yes or no. It does not matter whether we can experience non-existence (a.k.a. nothingness.) We obviously can’t. It certainly does not matter whether we can imagine non-existence or not. The point is that the mechanism that is in charge of everything that happens – God – can behave in such a way so as to not make anything happen. And when nothing happens there is still time. Even though there is no change. This means that time is NOT the measure of relative change. That is subjective time and not objective time. James is confusing them. It is subjective in the sense it is how fallible organisms such as humans attempt to measure time. But God knows what time it is at every moment . . . in time. He requires no change in order to know this. So you’re onto something, Gib. Don’t let the detractors get you off the road.

260

This is fun.
God is timeless.
This means he exists outside of time.
You cannot say that God exists, existed or will exist at this or that point in time. You cannot say he exists through time.
You can only say he exists. He’s outside of the time dimension.
Objective time refers to God’s time.
God has his own time.
At each point in time, God chooses what will happen – if anything at all.
If he’s a God that does not mean that there must be something happening all of the time.
Sometimes, God wants to sleep.
Now, the question is whether what God is doing is finite or infinite.
Does it have a beginning and an end?
Or is it going indefinitely?
Or maybe it only has one of the two.
Maybe there is an end but no beginning . . .
. . . or a beginning but no end.
That’s the question.
Also, you must not confuse objective (i.e. God’s) time with subjective (i.e. man’s) time.
These are two different times.
God’s time is real.
Man’s time is just an approximation based on how things appear to his senses.
Man says “time is the measure of relative change”.
God laughs at this and says “time is the measure of God’s decisions”.
One moment in time means one God’s decision.
Note that God makes his decisions outside of time.
He can chill out as long as he wants . . . no pressure to make his decisions instantly.
But once he makes his decision he pushes time one step forward.