The idea of causality is basically just the idea that we can understand something, anything, and that there is a meaning to our existence. The body and mind are put together to recognize and respond to causal patterns, just as the body and mind themselves are causal.
There is nothing that simply exists for literally no reason; to even form that thought “something exists for literally NO reason” is impossible, therefore anyone who claims to believe that is actually incapable of thinking, which means they are insane to believe they are thinking when in fact they are doing something else entirely.
A few logical consequences of the basic undeniable Fact that everything has causes:
causal chains go back in time and never terminate; there is no first cause nor is there an absolute Beginning to existence.
for the same reason there is no absolute End to existence either.
everything is determined by its totality of causes, regardless if these are known or not; therefore everything is deterministically fixed or “predetermined” absolutely by the totality of its causes.
humans have freedom because we are 1) capable of understanding causes on a real rational level, and 2) unable to understand our own physiological and psychological causes. Because we do, think, say and feel things for which we don’t know why we did, we feel that we are freely doing them.
the fact of 1-4 above does not undermine our real freedom and our existential core of meaning, because no matter how much theoretical knowledge we have of the fact of our being predetermined we can never know anything close to a totality of the specific causes themselves; and as we learn more of our causes we become more free anyway, because such knowledge propels us forward over and above that which formerly had limited us.
We must be strong enough to bear our own causes. This is what life means.
I care and expect less than you, so I am not as exasperated. I just know that cause is not like the flying spaghetti monster, and that it exists in as far as we use the term in a sentence; it’s an operative term in grammar, physics does not exist without it, any sort of deductive reasoning is impossible without it, but life is certainly possible without using the term; one does not need to formulate to oneself that one eats an apple because one is hungry; however, we can not prevent our behavior to make causal sense to someone used to thinking in terms of causality, which would be anyone.
Only very particular, personal and concentrated creative presence can exist without relating causally; such a state is a pure form of self-valuing which is self-caused; it includes the logic of which it is born in its outward behavior; it is discrete, like gold, in that whereas it does interact, it does not change its structural integrity with it.
Still, self-causation is also causation; on the other hand we can see it as a phrase that demonstrates that causation is not the end all, and that causation is cognitive model that exists because it has value. Value is the first cause of anything; it is thus also the general first cause.
“And god saw that it was good.”
It always struck me that he is a bit of a poseur; he knew damn well that it would be good. But ok, the important bit for the people is the synthetic part.
It seems that 4 and 5 are not a logical consequence of causation. Those are just your beliefs about freedom.
These two seem to be a logical consequence but if one thinks about it … the beginning and end of existence are beyond the current level of human understanding. Humans don’t know how or why things exist and they don’t know how or why it will end (if it does end). So, 1 and 2 are just attempts use the concept of causation to cover up big unknowns. It looks nice and neat but it’s a fiction.
No it is not that specifically, you are adding the notion that to have meaning or knowledge is to have cause, when causality is itself not concerned with meaning [to its or our existence]…
Causality:
1: a causal quality or agency
2: the relation between a cause and its effect or between regularly correlated events or phenomena
that isn’t like Lego philosophy [given analogy of rigidity], where you have an objective truth which 100% determines the following result. There are too many variables not least in the denumerable numbers of causes and correlations. not to mention that at base physical information is always fluctuating, but forming generalised patters as regulated by forces. There is no measurable >meaning< beyond information variance directly as it physically is.
This notion requires that reason exists prior to an or its own existence? There are no existent reasons or meanings, nor directives et al, as to why existence exists or for that matter reasons why it wouldn’t exist. Causality, cannot cause itself, there cannot be something there that causes cause, that just doesn’t make any sense and leaves an infinite trail. If there are principles, then building universes out of Lego is not the net result them, variance not rigidity is.
While i disagree with this claim, I first want to examine an assumption within it. That there is a meaning to our existence. Why are we to accept that this is correct?
Like Spinoza, you seem to be conflating reason with cause. Causation is assumed to be a physical process. What if God simply snaps his fingers and 'causes" something? Is that the same sense of causation as the billiard balls hitting one another? It’s certainly not impossible to form such a thought. If reason is causation then believing in miracles is “impossible”?
Which absolves us of moral obligations. This is not an objection to your claim; only a consequence of it.
The idea of causation and the “belief” in causation is just another way of expressing the base of reason itself, the fact that we can examine ourselves and our world to gain more understanding of these.
It’s notable that irrationalists like Hume and many on this forum here are unable to either provide a clear example of even one causal even and one uncausal event to back up their claim that “uncausality is possible”, as well as being unable to determine or argue for the line supposedly separating caused from uncaused events. If one cannot give a clear example of an uncaused event (something with no causality at all and which “just happens for no reason at all”), and if one cannot also establish and explain the line separating what determines if something is causal or not, then there is no reason at all to advocate for uncaused events.
There is a reason the PSR is unable to be directly attacked, that even those like Hume who want to attack it can’t even come up with a solid argument against it: the PSR is a reflection of the most basic tenant of reason as well as of consciousness and life generally, simply the idea that things are always expressions of underlying causes. It would be impossible to argue against this idea, and no philosopher has even been able to establish an coherent or convincing argument against it.
Two philosopher’s attempts to argue against causality, both of which fail:
Hume: said we can think the difference between a cause and its effect, therefore causes and effects are “separate” from each other, therefore the idea of necessary causal connection is suspect. Problem with his idea is that no one ever claimed the cause and the effect weren’t separated; of course they are separated, that’s what makes one a cause for the other. Causes and effects are separated in both space and time. Science also shows us that we can examine into the separation-space and -time between causes and effects and we find more removed orders of causes and effects inside there. The regularity of nature is very strong indirect evidence for causation. Hume’s argument fails because the non-separateness of causes from effects was never an essential part of the idea of causation anyway.
Charles Pierce: claimed that the regularity of nature is actually illusory because we can always repeat experiences and moments in nature and get different results, that everything was really unique and contingent (never absolutely repeating events), and that indeterminacy is always possible and even what we observe in the world around us. Problem with this argument is that the indeterminacy we observe in the world around us is merely contingency due to the fact that we lack a more comprehensive understanding of underlying causes in those cases. If the natural world really were indeterminate as Pierce claims, things like bridges and vaccines and computers and medications and pesticides would all be impossible due to their unreliable nature of producing the effects we desire out of these creations; technology and science demonstrate that we can rely on the ordered predictability of nature to behave in ways we expect, to produce a given cause from a given effect.
Likewise with our own cellular biology, for instance cellular respiration or DNA transcription or the heart beating, or any of the other numerous biological processes that keep us alive. These all demonstrate determinate regularity.
Anyone who can read the following description of the molecular cellular biology involved in something like eyesight, and then claim that nature is “indeterminate”, is simply not thinking through the philosophical rational implications:
Your post shows a disturbing amount of skepticism and schizophrenia. You seem completely unable of questioning your own beliefs because you have managed to understand a few philosophical concepts from barely a handful of philosophers (e,g, obviously Leibniz and Spinoza) and have painfully exhausted these beliefs to such a premise assuming ignorance that your arguments are very weak.
How does the prescence of cause and effect prescribe to inevitable meaning?
Why do you think causation immediately constitutes meaning and understanding?
This assumes reason and meaning to be a priori of existence. Good luck justifying that claim. For the sake of a complimentary counter-argument which does not necessarily repreent my own personal beliefs, I could argue that everything exists for no particular reason or meaning except for how consciousness is able to identify it as. The existence of anything natural, let’s say a tree, has no particular meaning or reason for its existence that any other being absent of human consciousness can rationalize. With the presence of human consciousness, we understand the meaning and reason of the tree as a growing plant of many years and many spawn which provides rich oxygen and exists within an important ecosystem. But all of these causes, effects, characterizations and meaning would not exist when humans are completely taken out of the picture. Nature, in its purest without man, renders our pathetic ideas of causality and (pre)determination as mere terminological concepts which hold many differing truths only for conscious humans. A synthetic object, let’s say a toaster, has no meaning other than what it exists to do. These kind of objects are still without reason and meaning if we take umans out of the picture. Can you understand the universal indifference of a toaster in relation to all other things when we take humans out of the picture.
This is very short, questionable, antagonizing and perhaps flawed line of reasoning. First, you should really think about substantially putting forth a less skeptical picture of absolute causality as meaning and understanding. Secondly, you should really consider what constitutes the capability of thinking. Your premises are so boring to read, painful to question, and overall, represent your redundant tendency to never deeply analyze and criticize your own beliefs (which really seem more like unoriginal thinking concepts from outdated philosophers of illogical conflation and doubt). Uncausality is possible because basically “Causation is a form of thinking that we impose upon our experience rather than something we directly experience (Hume).” I’m certain you now find me completely insane with all this Hume talk and opposition to your premises. I also see that you’ve done a slanderous injustice to Hume and Pierce by stating ambiguous summaries of more complex systems of reasoning. In the Pierce paragraph, you use only use examples of synthetic origin which do not occur in nature. Your antithesis there does not apply to Hume’s or Pierce’s views of natural regularity and contingency.
Fixed Cross:
You’ve sanctified physics and dedcutive reasoning without acknowledging that all things eventually rely on the use of terminology and how its application influnces meaning and understanding. Causality is inevitable but only to a certain extent along a spectrum of possible conclusions how it applies to physical and conceptual reality. You have, along with Wyld, have failed to see the importance of identifying where and why your applications of causality occur. You have both turned causation into some sort of all-encompassing dogma similar to the flying spaghetti monster. You cannot criticize you do not understand, and if you can both expand your understanding to other perspectives which are not currently your own, maybe you’ll start to see why it is important to question your own beliefs to the point of deep, coherent, quality explanation and articulation. I’ve noticed in most of your posts a kind of poetic injustice to philosophy. Philosophy is not about giving the right answers or understanding complex thinking concepts, its about asking the right questions. I’ve scarcely seen any of this actually practiced on this site, or at least in this forum, and that ideal seems to be losing its philosophical grounding when poetic scribe or extremely questionable premises are not questioned deep enough. I see so much opposition on all sides of these arguments but little questioning to develop stronger arguments.
Questions for consideration:
Why are causes and effects both separate in space and time?
How does the principle of sufficient reason undoubtedly conlfate with reason and understanding?
Does meaning exist in things outside of the mind without any observer?
Does causation exist without an observer, and if so, how does causation succeed the bounds of terminology and conceptual thinking?
How can we successfully, as Wyld proposes, objectively identify external causality without understanding our own causality (physiological and psychological)?
There is no universal law that makes event X be followed by event Y. There is merely a pair of these two events with no intrinsic relationship between each other which is then related to one’s past experiences in order to determine the probability of event Y following in the case event X occurs first.
Your reasoning is circular. So is Wyld’s.
You cannot disprove anything logically. That applies to uncausality too. Your efforts are futile.
I’m afraid that is both simple minded and false (but then you are quoting Hume, so…).
An acausal universe is not survivable. It is through the experience of causality that beings adapt, grow, and learn. When the experience of causality is cognitively examined, it is given the label, “Causality”. The cognitive mind, trailing behind experience, then questions if there is anything that is not causal, “Acausal”. The cognitive mind does not directly detect or sense the experience of acausal events and thus cannot confirm any such events. To confirm an acausal event requires repeated experience with it which is a consistency denying the definition of it. That situation leaves the cognitive mind having to merely leave it all as an unanswered question, “Perhaps there is something acausal in the universe, but I cannot confirm the thought.”
Confirming the non-existence of acausality requires definitional logic. And although many think otherwise, logical deduction in itself does not require that the universe be logical. Logic is the consistency of one’s mental truth seeking endeavor. Whether the universe is logical, consistent, causal or not is irrelevant to the fact that the mind must maintain logical consistency in order to find out about the universe.
Causality is assumed directly from experience (unlike Hume’s assertion). The only question is whether such experience is truly universal. And that question is only answerable through proper ontological definitions and deductions, not through direct experience.
Anyone who offers criticism such as “you misunderstand Hume and Pierce” without actually showing what is wrong with my analysis… or even worse, claiming I am misrepresenting what they said but then not actually offering anything of Hume or Pierce to demonstrate what I have ignored (other than the mere "Uncausality is possible because basically “Causation is a form of thinking that we impose upon our experience rather than something we directly experience (Hume).”), is… so dishonest it hardly bears thinking.
Kenny, why dont you elaborate on exactly what you think your one-line quote really means? What was Hume REALLY saying? That causality is only a “form of thinking”? How would Hume presume to know that, by… thinking?..
I don’t know what you expect of philosophy, kenny. I only know you’re only going to get exactly what you (really) want from it.
Hume’s problem is that he realized we can think whatever we want, we can think fantasies and pure imaginations, irrationalities and insane stuff; from this realization he de-values thought in its entirety. He didn’t realize that our ability to think the insane, irrational, unreal is actually a sign of the strength, reality and truth of thought, not the other way around.
One thing that became clear about Hume when I read a book of his letters is that his entire critique of certainty is simply him being displeased with the consistency demonstrated by Newton.
No one in that time wasnt shocked by the revealed consistency, but philosophers were especially outraged. Very funny.
Newton is of course still arguably the most influential thinker ever. Hume isnt even an ant under his shoe.
Hume still was an exponent of the a priori intuition, forgive my irony, that holds that the mind is above the world. Netwon find out that the mind was very much a function of the world.
None in that time understood the discoveries as such; only after Nietzsche does man sometimes think in such honestly reflective ways. But what was clearly felt is that the mind had lost its interpretative power, and was now enslaved to the Earth.
It took some centuries to produce a man who could interpret this relentless certainty as himself.
The first men of the mind who actually wanted to be their phenomenal beings were born in the 19th century it seems; Health as such is a recent phenomenon, I mean after it died out with the Presocratics, whom I consider to be the last and perhaps first instances of mental health until Nietzsche dug up their causes and reasons. - Joy, health, honor, etc; in fact, everything in that first paragraph I quoted on the etymology of “free”.
