Rumraket wrote:Mick wrote:Rumraket wrote:If what you're trying to ask if "why is there a causality at all, whether infinitely regressive or only finite?", one has to wonder why we should presuppose there is a reason. It might just as well be the nature of existence itself that it has these causal properties instead of inventing special entites outside of nature to keep it going.
I don't see why we have to take it seriously that existence must somehow be "kept going" from the outside. This is what I talked about earlier when I said you're inventing problems it isn't even clear exist, just so you can invent your god to solve it.
Not why there is any causality. But, in the context of larger argument, why is there any change at all? With the carts we know there is movement. We know that no cart moves itself-we know it is derived from another. So why is there any movement at all? Telling me that we should not suppose there is a reason why there is movement is awfully silly-but I already commented on that in the OP. Telling me that it might be the nature of existence constitutes a reason, though you'll have to defend that.
It seems to be a true dichotomy, either it is a property of nature or it is not. You obviously think it is not, and my question is why?
Well, you think there's a god that does it. Good for you, why should we believe it's your god that does it and not just nature itself? You think your god has the property of keeping nature going and "in existence", why can't it simply be a property of nature to exist?
Why should we take the contrary seriously at all? Nature is here now, it exists after all.
You're the one inventing the problem of it's potential non-existence. I don't see any reason to take it seriously.
Regarding your premises and associated commentary, I have a number of questions:
2. Whatever changes is changed by another (non-identical to it).
In relation to all of nature, why should we believe this is true? Why can't it simply be a property of nature itself that it changes over time?
You say of premise 2:
"
Premise {2} refers to an essential causal series only. Consider the alternatives to premise {2}. I can think of two: self-change and change from nothing."
But going up and reading about your terminology, you say this about essential causal series:
"
This causal series is simultaneous: Each member of the causal series is affected only inasmuch as the first member ('first' in the sense of being ultimate source) continuously imparts an effect."
So you have essentially begged the question in your 2nd premise, by stating that it only applies to an essential causal series, you imply causality is that, where
the definition of an essential causal series you operate with already requires a prime mover.
3. If something changes, then there is either a first, unchanged changer or an infinite, essential causal series.
Why must it be an essential causal series? Do you mean to say you think nature or causality itself is an essential causal series? I don't see any reason to take on these postulates.
4. There is no infinite, essential causal series.
Why must it be an
essential causal series? There obviouslt can't be an infinite essential causal series when you define the very thing to require a prime mover to begin with.
You also say about premise 4:
How about premise {4}? An essential causal series requires a first member or an ultimate source of the empowering effect, since the series only exists inasmuch as an effect is continuously imparted onto the each member of the series. Contra Hume, an infinite number of moving carts on a locomotive train would not explain why the train itself is moving, because none of the carts move unless there is a locomotive. Likewise, the music from a flute is sustained here and now only by an empowering breath.
Because - as you say, the carts are merely "intermediate causes", who only move because they are moved by the train.
My question is, why believe causality is analogous to a train in this way? Why can't causality have the property of movement in the first place? You obviously believe there is an entity that has this property of making things move, that can cause things to change, why can't causality itself be such an entity? That would be much simpler than invoking strange and alien god-concepts that are "pure actuality".
We certainly do observe change to happen in nature, all the more reason to think it's an inescapable property of it. Why invoke an external changer at all?
You say of self-change:
Nothing self-changes. Consider animals. Change in an animal is brought about by something distinct from the animal himself. If an animal grows, dies or moves, it is because of some change in or by one of his parts, or some outside actor, each distinct from the animal himself. I can reason similarly for any scenario.
But I think quantum theory gives us good reasons to doubt this is true.
In quantum mechanics, uncertainty is an inherent property of existence. This uncertainty entails that nothing ever remains static, that change is inevitable given long enough timescales. If quantum mechanics is really true, things really
can self-change. The changes are only constrained by the associated probabilites given by the uncertainty relation. That's for example why you get things like quantum-tunneling, an real and concrete observed behavior of matter.
You go on about self-change:
Furthermore: something changes only if there is a transition from potency (potential) to act (actuality). by something already actual (because only actualities are causally efficacious). But if that which changed underwent self-change, then it would have actuated itself before it actually existed, and that is unintelligible.
This picture changes dramatically if absolute simultaneity is possible, which someone like William Lane Craig likes to argue is. The idea then is that things change simultaneously with their existence. There doesn't, then, have to be some lag-period between cause and effect if they are allowed to be absolutely simultaneous.
On a-causality:
Consider a common example of “acausal” beginnings: virtual particles. Why is there a regularity of virtual particles emerging into being "from nothing" or "by nothing"? Why not zebras too? That last question seems silly, but nothingness has no potentialities or delimitations; and so there is nothing to regulate that there be a certain sort of change or emergence over any other. Therefore, if virtual particles can come from nothing or by nothing, then there seems to be no reason why zebras are excluded from this. (2)
We've already been over this, I don't even remember whether it ever sunk in to you. At this stage I don't even care. The answer is probability of particular microstates, and then there's the minor but still important point that virtual particles don't come from philosophical non-being(and nobody claims they do*), they emerge in empty space, a vacuum. Philosophers have made a pretty big deal out of pointing out that empty space isn't true philosophical non-being.
* In fact, it would be stupid to claim this since we can't ever create non-being in the first place. How would one even go about doing that? How much space would non-being take up? None at all, it has no properties like spatial dimensions. Consequently, you can't say that you've measured virtual particles emerging from nonbeing, since nonbeing is an incoherent concept in the first place.
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