The Cosmological Argument

[James S Saint]

JSS, there is no such thing as "logical causation"---it's just a confusion and misuse of language on your part. Your entire last post was confused.

Only to the illogical mind.

The fact that some premise/line comes later in your thinking/deduction, doesn't mean the earlier ones caused the truth of it---they don't. They only validate your thinking it true.

So they cause the belief in the conclusion, "it is true because..."


As the doctor mockingly stated, "You must be one of those silly people who believe that illnesses have causes... Take this prescription and come back in a week for your next treatment?"


But you just stay in the tiny world of your little mind because if you don't..
.. that little river just might overflow its banks.

[von Rivers]

So they cause the belief in the conclusion, "it is true because..."

Again, I think you are confused. Arguments are not true or false, they are valid or invalid. Logical rules don't cause anything, lines don't cause anything, premises don't cause anything... they're simply true or false depending on facts in the world---physical facts about the world, or else analytically true. I think it would be good if you go back through your own last couple of posts, very slowly. Read them carefully. Try to flesh out what you were thinking. And then see if you can explain what you were saying to a layman. You might have something, but right now, it's incoherent.

[MechanicalMonster]

von, just because you have chosen to forsake your capacity to think doesn't mean others will do the same at your request.

[von Rivers]

von, just because you have chosen to forsake your capacity to think doesn't mean others will do the same at your request.

Right, of course. Thank you, quack.

[James S Saint]

So they cause the belief in the conclusion, "it is true because..."

Again, I think you are confused. Arguments are not true or false, they are valid or invalid. Logical rules don't cause anything, lines don't cause anything, premises don't cause anything... they're simply true or false depending on facts in the world---physical facts about the world, or else analytically true. I think it would be good if you go back through your own last couple of posts, very slowly. Read them carefully. Try to flesh out what you were thinking. And then see if you can explain what you were saying to a layman. You might have something, but right now, it's incoherent.

What I am saying is simply that what THEY were saying (as well as many people of today) is their word "cause" and your word "cause" don't mean the same thing.

You are thinking in terms of the materialist, "Cause-Effect" = physical causation - "event A led to event B"
They are thinking in terms of reasoning/logic, "Cause-Effect" = analytical causation - "premise A led to conclusion B"

Ontology is the juncture between the mind and physical reality. An ontology is a map of what is perceived as reality, an under-standing, bases for belief and decisions. And your beliefs are an issue of your ontology, your inner mental map. Your map is used to verify what is or isn't true. It is built partly by what you witness yourself and largely upon what others have explained. Discreet objects, terms, words, and causal relationships are all determined by either your first hand deductions or what others have convincingly told you about. When something fits into your map of reality well, you believe whatever it was whether from seeing it or from hearing about it.

Because you believed A, B becomes true for you. Your belief in A caused your belief in B.

The Cosmological argument is all about WHY a person would believe in something called "God". And due to the premises that a person already believes, the conclusion of believing in God becomes apparent. Thus the premises are the cause of the belief. And the belief becomes the ontological reality, the map of what is = "map of reality".

And when you say that X is true, you are saying that "in accord to my map of reality, X is what is out there as physical reality." You do not say, "in my ontology, I believe in this made up entity and pretend it is true". No, you say, "Because of my understanding, I know that it is true."

Thus arguments cause belief which cause your understanding from which you proclaim what is real. And if your map is coherent with experience and comprehensive, what is real is what you believe.. because of the premises in your map. To those with accurate maps, what the map holds as entities is what is real. The universe itself has no discreet entities. The universe is just a bunch of noise gathered a little more here than there and constantly flowing and intermixing.

Atoms are only atoms because of your ontological construct for such tiny noises. There is nothing in the real physical universe that exactly fits your map, so your map is used to determine true vs false, not physical reality itself because you can never know enough physical reality.

Truth = "Fits in my map."

Thus the cause of "Truth" is the set of premises and logic applied to deductive observation and reports from others, not physical reality itself. Physical reality merely makes it easier or harder for you to adjust your map (aka "Truth") to match it. But the Truth is determined by your premises, the "First Cause" of your belief which is then appended by further deductive observations or rumors.

And your First Cause (initial premise) is "What is, is what is" which later got translated as "I ma that I am" (exact same lettering in ancient Hebrew) and that is what they are calling "God", the first cause of everyone's "reality".

[von Rivers]

What I am saying is simply that what THEY were saying (as well as many people of today) is their word "cause" and your word "cause" don't mean the same thing.

It means exactly the same thing.

They are thinking in terms of reasoning/logic, "Cause-Effect" = analytical causation - "premise A led to conclusion B"

This is the last time I will say this: premises don't "cause" their conclusions.

P1. Socrates is a man.
P2. All men are mortal.
C. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The conclusion is true because of facts about the world, those facts are captured in the premises, but facts about the world cause the truth of the conclusion---not the logic of the argument. The only thing the argument does is allow you to validly infer the truth of the conclusion---NOT create its truth. Again, there is no such thing as "logical causation". It is, literally, incoherent.

The Cosmological argument is all about WHY a person would believe in something called "God". And due to the premises that a person already believes, the conclusion of believing in God becomes apparent. Thus the premises are the cause of the belief. And the belief becomes the ontological reality, the map of what is = "map of reality".

Sure. As long as when you say "premises are the cause of the belief" what you really mean is "the facts/claims about the world (that the premises merely capture in language) cause the belief.

In other news, I appreciate much of you description of metaphysics in the rest of your post. It's something we probably agree on.

[James S Saint]

What I am saying is simply that what THEY were saying (as well as many people of today) is their word "cause" and your word "cause" don't mean the same thing.

It means exactly the same thing.

Prove that to me.

How do you know that what they meant by a word is exactly the same as what you have surmised the word to mean?

[von Rivers]

Prove that to me.

How do you know that what they meant by a word is exactly the same as what you have surmised the word to mean?

I have it on the authority of my two good friends, Merriam and Webster. I use ordinary English. And if I'm not, then I define my terms.

[James S Saint]

Dictionaries typically only tell you the current common or professional usage, not what someone thousands of years ago meant. And my dictionary shows both meanings without distinguishing who uses which version (as they almost never do).

caused, caus·ing, caus·es
1. To be the cause of or reason for; result in.
2. To bring about or compel by authority or force

We are talking about a subtle distinction between what is believed to be real and what is actually real. A person can never know an actual fact because all facts are merely crude approximations, cartoon representations, of the physical reality. Your mind cannot perceive nor conceive of any actual truth. Your brain simply can never be that big, nor does it really need to be. When you look at a tree your mind yields a "good enough" image and you call that "a tree". But you will never know the reality of that tree, merely a cartoon estimate of it.

Because of that inability to know exact reality, what is said to be real is always merely a cartoon construction, an ontological picture. But when anyone says, "X is real", they don't fill in all of the details of exactly how close to exactly real X is. They couldn't do it even if they tried. To you, X is a tree by what your mind conceives a tree to be. To you it is a "fact". But that fact is never the total truth.

Thus what you believe to be true, regardless of any verification, is formed merely by the premises your mind used to construct the conclusion of truth. Your mind's premises cause the conclusion of truth. Your premise of "what is, is what is" causes your fact to be a fact.

But even more, in the one case of that one premise, "what is, is what is", reality itself, regardless of any belief, really is caused by that one fact and it causes everything to occur in the way that it does. So it isn't merely a case of some presumed premise in reasoning, but also an undeniable fact of reality.

Because, by the cause of, "what is being what it is", all things come into the world and behave as they do. That one premise is not merely the first cause of belief, but also the first cause of reality itself. Everything really does happen merely because of "what it is".

What it is, is what is causing reality to be what it is (both as a subjective reality as well as objective reality), "God creates Himself".

[von Rivers]

We are talking about a subtle distinction between what is believed to be real and what is actually real.

No, we're really not. Unless you can tie that to anything to do with what this thread is about...

A person can never know an actual fact because all facts are merely crude approximations, cartoon representations, of the physical reality. Your mind cannot perceive nor conceive of any actual truth. Your brain simply can never be that big, nor does it really need to be. When you look at a tree your mind yields a "good enough" image and you call that "a tree". But you will never know the reality of that tree, merely a cartoon estimate of it.

What does this have to do with this thread, or my OP?

Thus what you believe to be true, regardless of any verification, is formed merely by the premises your mind used to construct the conclusion of truth. Your mind's premises cause the conclusion of truth. Your premise of "what is, is what is" causes your fact to be a fact.

Unfortunately, this is either incoherent, or trivial. In either case, I'm not sure how it's relevant, or why you are bringing it up.

Because, by the cause of, "what is being what it is", all things come into the world and behave as they do. That one premise is not merely the first cause of belief, but also the first cause of reality itself. Everything really does happen merely because of "what it is".

This is incoherent.

It's really a very simple argument.

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore, the universe was caused.

Earlier, you said P2 was not supportable. News: P2 is supported both by science, and by philosophy. I haven't told you what those supports are, but they're readily available to anyone who looks. The reason I haven't made them part of the OP, is because they have no business being part of the OP, because P2 is not what the OP is about. P1 is.

If interested about P2, I would suggest googling "Kalam Cosmological Argument" (or "William Lane Craig", who wrote the most recent and most popular version). Hope that helps you.

[Uccisore]

I do not think that changes the argument. There is still a shift from saying something about the members of a set, to the set itself, and then the conclusion. Ultimately, it is treating the set as if it could be a member of itself. Have a look at the following argument:

P1. All men are mortal.
P2. The human race is made up of men.
C. Therefore, the human race is mortal.

I think it makes the same error.

Yeah, that's true. I think what it comes down to is that Craig is taking "The Universe began to exist" as premise without support, not because it's composed of things that began to exist, but because that's the most popular current scientific position- Big Bang, evidence against a collapse, and all that. I've seen him challenged on that premise before, and he defends it in the usual 'infinite regress' kind of way, so I think his argument ultimately collapses into the aquinas' cosmological argument when you prod at it.

Here's a question: Is God the only X that does not begin to exist? Many people would say 'yes'. If so, then the set of things that don't begin to exist includes only God. That makes P1 equivalent to, "Everything except God has a cause". And that inserts into the premise what the argument is trying to prove. Perhaps that's a separate potential problem with the argument. I think it applies as well to the argument below.

I might be wrong, but I don't think circularity works that way. There's a difference between basing an argument on an object X, and basing an argument on the existence of some quality, that as it turns out only X has. Lemme see...

P1 The Best ever President of the United States would have to be a man who accomplished X.
P2 As it turns out, only Taft accomplished X.
C: Ergo, Taft is the Best ever President of the United States.

I really don't think this argument is guilty of inserting as a premise what it is trying to prove, and I don't think the cosmological argument is either. I do NOT think P1 is equivalent to "The Best President of the United States would have to be Taft", even if it entails it.

What's wrong with a thing not having a cause?

Nothing. In that argument, the idea that some things don't have causes is endorsed in the first premise.

In the above argument, there is an absence of "material cause", assuming God creates the world ex nihilo. For the atheists, they'll have an absence of an "efficient cause", since they lack god. Really, why prefer one rather than the other? Is there some reason to think it's anything but a preference?

Again, the cosmological argument doesn't put forward the idea that uncaused things is problematic. Not at all. It is frequently accused of doing such, but i think Dawkins got that ball rolling by not actually reading the thing. The idea isn't "Everything needs a cause, so let's find one for the universe." the idea is "Clearly lots of things have causes, something that wasn't caused must have been the origin of it."

[James S Saint]

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore, the universe was caused.

Earlier, you said P2 was not supportable. News: P2 is supported both by science, and by philosophy. I haven't told you what those supports are, but they're readily available to anyone who looks. The reason I haven't made them part of the OP, is because they have no business being part of the OP, because P2 is not what the OP is about. P1 is.

If interested about P2, I would suggest googling "Kalam Cosmological Argument" (or "William Lane Craig", who wrote the most recent and most popular version). Hope that helps you.

A) Unless it is about what they witnessed directly, I really don't care what scientists, other philosophers, or theologians say and I very seriously don't believe that they directly witnessed the universe beginning.
B) I know beyond all question that it didn't begin to exist
C) If the only support for P2 that you have is "they said so", then we have nothing to discuss.
D) This;

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore, the universe was caused.

..is incoherent.

[von Rivers]

A) Unless it is about what they witnessed directly, I really don't care what scientists, other philosophers, or theologians say and I very seriously don't believe that they directly witnessed the universe beginning.

Do you believe dinosaurs once roamed the earth?

B) I know beyond all question that it didn't begin to exist.

I don't care about what you have to say, unless you are talking about what you directly witnessed. (Note the sarcasm).

C) If the only support for P2 that you have is "they said so", then we have nothing to discuss.

That's generally not how the scientific method works. Nor is it out reasoning in philosophy works.


Perhaps you should read Craig's article about the kalam cosmological argument. I recommend it to you, because I don't think we're getting anywhere here on our own. I think you will learn something, and in general, I think you need to "get out of the house" so to speak, when it comes to opening yourself to how people are conducting their thinking and communicating.

[Helandhighwater]

...[]The 1935 EPR paper [1] condensed the philosophical discussion into a physical argument. The authors claim that given a specific experiment, in which the outcome of a measurement is known before the measurement takes place, there must exist something in the real world, an "element of reality", that determines the measurement outcome. They postulate that these elements of reality are local, in the sense that each belongs to a certain point in spacetime. Each element may only be influenced by events which are located in the backward light cone of its point in spacetime (i.e. the past). These claims are founded on assumptions about nature that constitute what is now known as local realism.

...[]"Acceptable theories" and the experiment

According to the present view of the situation, quantum mechanics flatly contradicts Einstein's philosophical postulate that any acceptable physical theory must fulfill "local realism".

In the EPR paper (1935) the authors realised that quantum mechanics was inconsistent with their assumptions, but Einstein nevertheless thought that quantum mechanics might simply be augmented by hidden variables (i.e. variables which were, at that point, still obscure to him), without any other change, to achieve an acceptable theory. He pursued these ideas for over twenty years until the end of his life, in 1955.

In contrast, John Bell, in his 1964 paper, showed that quantum mechanics and the class of hidden variable theories Einstein favored[17] would lead to different experimental results: different by a factor of 3⁄2 for certain correlations. So the issue of "acceptability", up to that time mainly concerning theory, finally became experimentally decidable.

There are many Bell test experiments, e.g. those of Alain Aspect and others. They support the predictions of quantum mechanics rather than the class of hidden variable theories supported by Einstein.[2] According to Karl Popper these experiments showed that the class of "hidden variables" Einstein believed in is erroneous.[citation needed]
Implications for quantum mechanics

Most physicists today believe that quantum mechanics is correct, and that the EPR paradox is a "paradox" only because classical intuitions do not correspond to physical reality. How EPR is interpreted regarding locality depends on the interpretation of quantum mechanics one uses. In the Copenhagen interpretation, it is usually understood that instantaneous wave function collapse does occur. However, the view that there is no causal instantaneous effect has also been proposed within the Copenhagen interpretation: in this alternate view, measurement affects our ability to define (and measure) quantities in the physical system, not the system itself. In the many-worlds interpretation locality is strictly preserved, since the effects of operations such as measurement affect only the state of the particle that is measured.[15] However, the results of the measurement are not unique—every possible result is obtained.

The EPR paradox has deepened our understanding of quantum mechanics by exposing the fundamentally non-classical characteristics of the measurement process. Prior to the publication of the EPR paper, a measurement was often visualized as a physical disturbance inflicted directly upon the measured system. For instance, when measuring the position of an electron, one imagines shining a light on it, thus disturbing the electron and producing the quantum mechanical uncertainties in its position. Such explanations, which are still encountered in popular expositions of quantum mechanics, are debunked by the EPR paradox, which shows that a "measurement" can be performed on a particle without disturbing it directly, by performing a measurement on a distant entangled particle. In fact, Yakir Aharonov and his collaborators have developed a whole theory of so-called Weak measurement.[citation needed]

Technologies relying on quantum entanglement are now being developed. In quantum cryptography, entangled particles are used to transmit signals that cannot be eavesdropped upon without leaving a trace. In quantum computation, entangled quantum states are used to perform computations in parallel, which may allow certain calculations to be performed much more quickly than they ever could be with classical computers.

This link is useful:

The Eistein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) Paradox or how it isn't one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox

Incidentally Many worlds (MWI) is a deterministic interpretation which is identical to the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI), the only difference is wave function collapse, in the latter this lack of classical non classical complementarity is explained as a measurement issue which resolves the uncertainty principles measurement effect. In many worlds the wave function is considered real and non local ie the mathematical formalism is the exact image of the evolution of the wave in the real world, in CI it is non local and non real, Bohr decides to formalise this as a complementarity issue aka a correspondance issue between the world of probability, causality and classical non quantum mechanics, ie put simply you cannot describe quantum systems with the mathematics of classical locally real systems such as the cosmic ballet of Newtons gravitational theories, there is a fundamental limitation on describing reality which appears to operate at the smallest scales. Which is probably why Einstein was so fundamentally against it, it appeared to contradict both special and general relativities laws in terms of the relation of causal effect to simultaneously inertial observers. It appears one or the other is wrong, or both, they don't appear to be able to be both correct and provide a reality that is consistent with experiment and theory, the equations are annoyingly non linear and down right contradictory in our current physics, only field theory seems to have no trouble incorporating both physical theories mathematically or philosophically, to provide a complete ontology in terms of entropy, order and disorder and hence the direction of time.

Or to put it on Bohrs own words

Because quantum mechanics only reproduces classical mechanics in a statistical interpretation, and because the statistical interpretation only gives the probabilities of different classical outcomes, Bohr has argued that classical physics does not emerge from quantum physics in the same way that classical mechanics emerges as an approximation of special relativity at small velocities. He argued that classical physics exists independently of quantum theory and cannot be derived from it. His position is that it is inappropriate to understand the experiences of observers using purely quantum mechanical notions such as wavefunctions because the different states of experience of an observer are defined classically, and do not have a quantum mechanical analog. The relative state interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt to understand the experience of observers using only quantum mechanical notions. Niels Bohr was an early opponent of such interpretations.

Einstein: God does not play dice with the universe
Niels Bohr: stop telling God what to do with his dice Einstein.

[von Rivers]

I think what it comes down to is that Craig is taking "The Universe began to exist" as premise without support, not because it's composed of things that began to exist, but because that's the most popular current scientific position- Big Bang, evidence against a collapse, and all that.

I think the most shameful thing about his article was that he spent 100% of it supporting P2 ("The universe began to exist"), by pretending that he was a scientist, (because half his support for it was scientific). He's not a scientist, and he's not qualified to report on the state of the art in scientific research. The shameful part was that he had almost nothing to say about P1. Unfortunately, P1 is the problem. The other half of his support for P2 was about infinite regress stuff. I don't remember finding it at all convincing.

Again, the cosmological argument doesn't put forward the idea that uncaused things is problematic. Not at all. It is frequently accused of doing such, but i think Dawkins got that ball rolling by not actually reading the thing. The idea isn't "Everything needs a cause, so let's find one for the universe." the idea is "Clearly lots of things have causes, something that wasn't caused must have been the origin of it."

If an eternal God is not objectionable, would an eternal universe be?

[Fixed Cross]

If we take the Universe to be the set of all that exists, it can not be caused except by itself, because causation exists.

[Fixed Cross]

It can either be uncaused or self-caused.

[James S Saint]

Except that which causes causation cannot be caused. "Self-caused" is an oxymoron.

What is impossible is what causes what is possible.
Imbalanced potential causes change and imbalanced potential is eternal because balanced potential is impossible.

[von Rivers]

Except that which causes causation cannot be caused. "Self-caused" is an oxymoron.

Yea... apart from the fact that it happens everyday...
Guess who caused my decision to order Thai food? You'll never guess.... it was me!

What is impossible is what causes what is possible.

Well, apart from when it's clearly and easily possible, sure.

Imbalanced potential causes change and imbalanced potential is eternal because balanced potential is impossible.

Incoherent.

[James S Saint]

Except that which causes causation cannot be caused. "Self-caused" is an oxymoron.

Yea... apart from the fact that it happens everyday...
Guess who caused my decision to order Thai food? You'll never guess.... it was me!

What is impossible is what causes what is possible.

Well, apart from when it's clearly and easily possible, sure.

Imbalanced potential causes change and imbalanced potential is eternal because balanced potential is impossible.

Incoherent.

[Fixed Cross]

Except that which causes causation cannot be caused. "Self-caused" is an oxymoron.

In this case "self caused" would mean "caused by a part of itself".
The cause must be the part before which no other part exists.

The first instance of this universe is its cause, and if the universe is all that exists this cause is part of it.

What is impossible is what causes what is possible.

Imbalanced potential causes change and imbalanced potential is eternal because balanced potential is impossible.

Von, I finally realize that when you say "incoherent" you mean "not common english". I will find it much easier to interpret you from now on.

[Helandhighwater]

Except that which causes causation cannot be caused. "Self-caused" is an oxymoron.

What is impossible is what causes what is possible.
Imbalanced potential causes change and imbalanced potential is eternal because balanced potential is impossible.

James that is a horrible position to take, you are reaching against logic there.

[Helandhighwater]

It can either be uncaused or self-caused.

Or it can be eternal, in which case a cause is irrelevant.

[wendy52]

The idea of God being someone who kick-started the universe is a strawman. Not only was it not what any more ancient scripture had really said, but was an idea that Aristotle was arguing against.

Here's the medieval cosmological argument, and the one that William Lane Craig adopts:

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2. The universe began to exist.
C. Therefore, the universe was caused.

I took issue with the first premise. Needn't be anything about god. That is all. Have fun.

Caused therefore requires "reason".
Reason implies to think/ponder.
Reasoning, think, ponder and give the reason its purpose.
You look at creation, you see the moon and it is round or a circle. You question if the Earth is flat or a circle and therefore you develop the reason by applying a method. That method was to observe, document the passing of light into darkness. Therefore the human gave purpose to a system of time. They implied this purpose to the total of creation, yet the purpose is only observed from Earth.

Atmosphere = mass, mass is a theory of strings = sound, sound mass produces an evolved state = the self perpetuating instant = the immaculate.
Sound therefore via mass causes the immaculate to produce.
The immaculate = life continuation as the Holy State of observation.

Observer = astronomer, astronomer observes through the atmospheric sound and gains his own insight through atmospheric sound and therefore believes in his own observations made through atmospheric sound. Atmospheric sound therefore causes false witnessing because the Earth Life is the only Holy Life. Trying to imply the holy life to the cosmos was the greatest error that a human Philosopher ever undertook.

[Fixed Cross]

Helandhigh - in both cases, self-caused and uncaused, it must be eternal. Time is after all also part of it.
What's certainly caused is its structure. The cause of this is implicit in its nature, what it is.

What I'm saying is that that it is is caused by what it is.
That is highly counterintuitive, but the only logical option.