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I wonder if any "established" objectivists (as opposed to myself as a novice) agree that an infinite regress of causes is logically impossible..and if they could help shed some light on this conversation?

I would also like to know if any who fit in that category would be interested in discussing the further parts of my argument concerning the nature of the uncaused cause.

**NOT that I want to discontinue my discussion with Aleph_0; I'm rather enjoying it in fact. But I don't want this to fizzle out into just the two of us stuck on this one point. Otherwise I could rename the thread "Causality" or something**

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I don't remember if you responded to this "argument" before. If so, please refer me to it.

If there was never a first, there would never be a second. If there was never a second, there would not be a third, etc... to the present.

There are present causes & effects, therefore there must have been a first.

There are present causes and effects, but there is no reason to suppose that any of them are the 1st or 50th, or e^(e^(e^79))-th one. This argument is a reductio ad absurdum, but the conclusion of the reductio is something which is not absurd, and which is in fact the very question at issue.

If you don't "buy" that, then perhaps it would be wise to stick with your analogy of my argument because you DO hold that there cannot be an infinite regression in REASONS for something.

Perhaps, though note that I did present an argument which claimed that the two are actually disanalogous.

And in a sense, a cause is a reason for an effect.

Yes, but not a reason in the sense that it is a justification for our holding a belief, and it is only in this sense that I believe an infinity of reasons is unacceptable as justification for any belief.

There are current effects which are explained by previous causes which are further explained by previous causes, etc.... but if there was never a first cause there would never be a foundational reason for the way the effects are at present.

how's that?

This, I think, is the argument I provided above, so I believe my previous response applies.

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If two meteors collide in the depth of space, which is the cause and which is the effect? If you and I are driving cars and collide in an intersection which is the cause and which is the effect? All things, including the cue ball and pool table, are in motion. And, as Newton pointed out, each action has an equal and opposite reaction. My position is that your Law of Cause and Effect is tantamount to asking "why" - which as I stated is an unanswerable and incorrect question. One can only observe the Universe one cannot change it.

The collision of the two meteors and of the two cars would be the cause of the destruction of both. Collision=Cause. Destruction=Effect. Just because two objects act equally upon each other does not mean there is no cause and effect.

I could be horribly wrong about this but I suspect Rand (and any science/knowledge loving person) would shutter at such an idea that "why?" is an improper question to ask and that the universe is only observable- not changeable. It seems as though this idea would destroy all science, experimentation, inventions, and reason.

This is why I posted the other thread asking what is meant by "Existence exists". It seems that when Newton asked why the apple fell from the tree, some objectivists would have replied "Existence exists! That's the way the Universe is. Are you attempting to subvert reality by asking why!?"

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Yes, numbers come from exhaustive one-to-one correspondences. That does not imply the lack of a termination point, lack of correspondence.

Take the one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and the even numbers, given by the map n |--> 2n. Let us say that, when we evaluate the map for a given natural number, we are evaluating the function f. Suppose f(n) = f(n'), then 2n = 2n' thus n = n'. This proves injectivity, and surjectivity is obvious. Thus this is an exhaustive one-to-one correspondence, and the domain is infinite. Likewise, nothing bars the existence of a one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and things in reality. Sure, short human life span prevents a person actually going around and telling you what the n-th number corresponds to, but that doesn't forbid a correspondence actually existing. Correspondences don't depend on human thought, unless you're one of those Primacy of Consciousness peoples.

So perhaps you can supply a proof then...

First, your silence on the issue of what the term means is deafening.

Second, if the function maps n to 2n, f(n) doesn't equal f(2n)

You had injectivity as soon as you said n -> 2n. Yet, injectivity doesn't prove an exhaustive one-to-one correspondence. Surjectivity shouldn't require the assumption f(n) = f(n'). What gives?

What bars a one-to-one correspondence between the natural numbers and things in reality is the fact that reality is finite. Your "nothing bars" is question-begging, my friend.

My consciousness may be the primary one, we'll see.

Mindy

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You never asked me what the term means, and here I assume you mean "correspondence", though you could be referring to "infinity". I assumed, since we have been using both in conversation already and I have repeatedly stated what "infinite quantity" means, that the point was not in question. Your lack of reading comprehension, though, is telling.

I didn't say f(n) = f(2n). I said that on assumption that f(n) = f(n') then n = n'. This is the definition of injectivity, which is part of the proof that a function is a one-to-one correspondence. Again. Reading comprehension. As for surjectivity, it absolutely doesn't require the assumption that f(n) = f(n'), and I didn't assume it. I stated that surjectivity is obvious. If you want me to spell that out too, I can. Note that I had injectivity and surjectivity as soon as I had n |--> 2n, but there is still the matter of proving it. The map which assigns (x, y) in Z/2 x Z/2 to x + 2y is instantly an injection and a surjection into Z/4, but unless my audience is mathematicians, I think I ought to say a little bit about why that's so.

Again, you assume but do not prove your assertion that reality is finite. Until you can prove this, you cannot use it to convince me or any rational person of anything in this regard. Because of the blatantness of your circularity, if your next post does not concede the point or make some genuine attempt at proving the point at issue, I am going to assume that you are either dishonest or intellectually incapable of pursuing this conversation in a fruitful way.

Edited by aleph_0
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You never asked me what the term means, and here I assume you mean "correspondence", though you could be referring to "infinity". I assumed, since we have been using both in conversation already and I have repeatedly stated what "infinite quantity" means, that the point was not in question. Your lack of reading comprehension, though, is telling.

I didn't say f(n) = f(2n). I said that on assumption that f(n) = f(n') then n = n'. This is the definition of injectivity, which is part of the proof that a function is a one-to-one correspondence. Again. Reading comprehension. As for surjectivity, it absolutely doesn't require the assumption that f(n) = f(n'), and I didn't assume it. I stated that it's obvious. If you want me to spell that out too, I can.

Again, you assume but do not prove your assertion that reality is finite. Until you can prove this, you cannot use it to convince me or any rational person of anything in this regard. Because of the blatantness of your circularity, if your next post does not concede the point or make some genuine attempt at proving the point at issue, I am going to assume that you are either dishonest or intellectually incapable of pursuing this conversation in a fruitful way.

No, I didn't ask you what the term means, I told you. I told you the meaning of "quantity" excluded the indeterminate, that "infinite quantity" is an oxymoron. Surely you noticed?

I've been after you for a while to address the objection that the very meaning of the concept, "quantity," prevents its being modified by "infinite." I repeated that as late as yesterday. It doesn't seem to be of importance to you, but it is of the greatest importance.

I don't believe you have read any mere assumptions from me that reality is finite.

Injectivity only requires that the domain, A, is contained in B.

I wrote f(n) = f(2n) in error. I meant to say f(n) = 2n, so that f(n') = 4n.

Didn't you mean to say that my accute comprehension is damned inconvenient sometimes?

I think you had better do just that, make convenient assumptions. You're stuck otherwise.

Mindy

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There are present causes and effects, but there is no reason to suppose that any of them are the 1st or 50th, or e^(e^(e^79))-th one. This argument is a reductio ad absurdum, but the conclusion of the reductio is something which is not absurd, and which is in fact the very question at issue.

Perhaps, though note that I did present an argument which claimed that the two are actually disanalogous.

Yes, but not a reason in the sense that it is a justification for our holding a belief, and it is only in this sense that I believe an infinity of reasons is unacceptable as justification for any belief.

Ok. But isn't the reason you hold that as unacceptable because by nature, that type of reason has a prerequisite (a previous necessity) which in that case is a foundation/justification/ or whatever you wish to call it? What I'm trying to say is that a belief must rest upon something (prio to it, logically) and therefore an infinite regress is impossible because if you never get to the bottom/"beginning" than there is no actual foundation for the belief. But the reason you hold that type of infinite regression out as special is because of the fact that there is a prior necessity/prerequisite. Does that make sense? And is it correct?

I would argue that cause & effect is the same type of thing. Because an effect (like a belief) has a necessary prerequisite (a cause, in this case), there must be a bottom/"beginning" of the cause-effect chain or else there would never be sufficient cause for the effect.

Try taking that same sentence and re-wording it with "belief" and "justification" instead of "effect" and "cause":

"Because a belief has a necessary prerequisite (a justification), there must be a bottom/"beginning" of the justification-belief chain or else there would never be sufficient justification for the belief."

It's the same logic.

Could you explain why you would accept it with one but not with the other?

Also, isn't cause and effect just a concrete or "empirical" form of justification and belief? Cause and effect are used in inductive study while justification and belief are used in deductive study...? I'm sure it's much more complex than that, but aren't they the same in that manner?

This, I think, is the argument I provided above, so I believe my previous response applies.

Could you elaborate on that response because I did not see the connection to the argument.

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Ok. But isn't the reason you hold that as unacceptable because by nature, that type of reason has a prerequisite (a previous necessity) which in that case is a foundation/justification/ or whatever you wish to call it?

I argue that a human cannot have, as justification for a belief, an infinity of reasons because man's mind is limited and cannot contain an infinity of reasons. There may be ways to state the nature of a collection of reasons so as to indicate otherwise, but taken at face value I don't think this can reasonably be disputed.

What I'm trying to say is that a belief must rest upon something (prio to it, logically) and therefore an infinite regress is impossible because if you never get to the bottom/"beginning" than there is no actual foundation for the belief.

Right, when reason is considered as something that a human being has in mind concerning a fact. Yet I think that there are other kinds of "reason" that are not thoughts in a person's mind--namely, the reason why an object is in the place that it is. This reason is not just in the human mind, though the mind may grasp the reason. The reason is an objective fact, and there may be infinitely many such facts which necessitate a state of affairs, in the sense I described in my previous post.

Also, isn't cause and effect just a concrete or "empirical" form of justification and belief?

Not at all. Above I made the distinction between reason in a human's mind and a reason as an objective fact. To stress the difference, I may have reason to believe that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll (I don't know if there is good reason for this belief, I don't really know about the facts of the case, I'm just supposing that there might be such reasons.), but in fact there was no gunman on the grassy knoll. The reasons in my head do not necessarily correspond to causes in reality, even if my reasons are good ones in the sense that I am blameless for accepting them as reasons. My reasons are my valid and sound thought processes; objective reasons are things like causes, or properties of an object. Now observation of a cause-and-effect relationship, and the observation of the cause, should be good reason to believe the effect will follow--but we shouldn't conflate the two concepts.

Could you elaborate on that response because I did not see the connection to the argument.

The point of the argument was to demonstrate that relational properties permit of infinities, and that the property of "being a cause" is relational.

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I argue that a human cannot have, as justification for a belief, an infinity of reasons because man's mind is limited and cannot contain an infinity of reasons. There may be ways to state the nature of a collection of reasons so as to indicate otherwise, but taken at face value I don't think this can reasonably be disputed.

Right, when reason is considered as something that a human being has in mind concerning a fact. Yet I think that there are other kinds of "reason" that are not thoughts in a person's mind--namely, the reason why an object is in the place that it is. This reason is not just in the human mind, though the mind may grasp the reason. The reason is an objective fact, and there may be infinitely many such facts which necessitate a state of affairs, in the sense I described in my previous post.

Not at all. Above I made the distinction between reason in a human's mind and a reason as an objective fact. To stress the difference, I may have reason to believe that there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll (I don't know if there is good reason for this belief, I don't really know about the facts of the case, I'm just supposing that there might be such reasons.), but in fact there was no gunman on the grassy knoll. The reasons in my head do not necessarily correspond to causes in reality, even if my reasons are good ones in the sense that I am blameless for accepting them as reasons. My reasons are my valid and sound thought processes; objective reasons are things like causes, or properties of an object. Now observation of a cause-and-effect relationship, and the observation of the cause, should be good reason to believe the effect will follow--but we shouldn't conflate the two concepts.

The point of the argument was to demonstrate that relational properties permit of infinities, and that the property of "being a cause" is relational.

I just read your new thread on the subject of an infinite quantity and I would like to perhaps leave that part of this conversation for that thread (for the same reasons you stated in creating the thread). I anticipate doing some heavy thinking (and maybe reading) on the subject and following up on that thread. I think you already know this, but my current position would probably fall under the "axiomatic" argument; however I am obviously unable to articulate it at this time.

Thank you for the lively conversation and I look forward to seeing more on the subject in your new thread.

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The point of the argument was to demonstrate that relational properties permit of infinities, and that the property of "being a cause" is relational. aleph_0, post 109.

"Being a cause" is relational with respect to its effects. In order to be assigned the status of a cause, it had to be related to some number of specific effects. You can't boot-strap infinity into this relation, because you can't specify infinite effects.

It seems to me that where relational properties can be said to be infinite, it is the abstractions that are infinite, while the properties remain finite.

Mindy

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After about the first page and a half of this thread, the conversation became heavily focused on the possibility/impossibility of an infinite regress of causes. Aleph_0 has begun a new thread on that topic. I encourage anyone who is interested to take part in that discussion. I hope to take part as well. However, I would like to try and continue this discussion with any who might be settled on that particular issue and who would be interested in discussing the further steps of my argument.

SO, assuming there cannot be an infinite regress of causation....

You have reified "cause" and "effect". Physical entities interact with eachother according to their natures, and these interactions have a "cause" and effect". Their specific natures and initial conditions are the cause, and the effect is the resultant change in their motion, shape, or other measurable quantity. Things are not causes nor effects. The interaction of things has causes and effects.

I realize that I may have mis-spoke in some of my terminology. While I am not personally fully convinced that entities cannot have causes, I am willing to concede that point (for now) in order to carry on the discussion. The reason is that even if entities cannot fall into the category of cause/effect, events can; and therefore the Law of Cause and Effect still stands.

The concepts of "cause" and "effect" refer to interacting existents. So the concepts of "cause" and "effect" logically depend on the concept of existence. To assert that existence can be an effect is to steal the concept of "effect", ignoring the context in which it is grounded. As a result, you necessarily run into the contradiction of saying that something simultaneously exists and does not exist, and has a specific nature and does not.

I don't think I asserted that existence (as such) is an effect- rather that a particular existent in it's non-original form is an effect. And what I mean is that the changing of it's form in any sort of relationship is an effect which was caused by something acting upon it.

Jacob, you seem not to have "heard" what people are saying about where "cause" might apply and where is cannot. A thing doesn't have to have a cause. An event does. Things are not effects, though motions and changes and alterations of and in things are.

You must argue for your claim that existing things are all effects but one. That does not, on the face of it, make sense. It violates the applicability of the term "effect."

An additional point: you say "there must be one existent that does not fall in the category of an effect-- thus being uncaused," which is exactly the old cosmological argument, and deserves the same old reply: that it is an arbitrary assertion. If everything needs a precursor, so does God. If God doesn't, why does the universe?

-- Mindy

I am arguing that "all of the motions, changes, alterations of and in things are" an effect and therefore require a cause- there cannot be an infinite regress of causes and therefore there must be a primary cause that did not have a cause before it. As I said above, I am willing to alter my language for now and instead of saying "there must be an existent that is not an effect", I will say "there must be an event that is not an effect". I stressed in my opening definition of the Law of Cause and Effect that "everything" does NOT need a precursor. Only effects need precursors. If God is an effect, He needs a precursor (and wouldn't be "God"). However, here we are focusing less on entities (God vs. the universe) and more on events.

The whole question is malformed. Entities don't fall into categories of "cause" or "effect". Entities are neither causes nor effects. "Cause" and "effect" are abstract concepts derived from observing the interaction of entities. As I said, you are reifying "cause" and "effect".

Please see my replies above.

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Although this is quite wide of the present topic, there is nonetheless some relevance. Has anyone else here looked at Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology model? To the extent that I understand it and loosely speaking, under certain conditions, the universe "loses track of how to keep time". Penrose proposes that, as the universe expands and particles decay, just such conditions occur and, in a specific sense, that state is indistinguishable from the state of the universe just after the "big bang".

The relevance to this topic is tied up in the "loses track of how to keep time". Here's a quote:

Physically, we may think that again in the very remote future, the universe “forgets” time in the sense that there is no way to build a clock with just conformally invariant material. This is related to the fact that massless particles, in relativity theory, do not experience any passage of time. We might even say that to a massless particle, “eternity is no big deal”. So the future boundary, to such an entity is just like anywhere else. With conformal invariance both in the remote future and at the Big-Bang origin, we can try to argue that the two situations are
physically identical
, so the remote future of one phase of the universe becomes the Big Bang of the next.

Fascinating.

Edited by Alfred Centauri
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I should note that, even if we do accept that infinite quantities do not exist, it remains to be seen that infinite quantities of causes are impossible, since causes are not actual, independent existents.

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'Jacob86' timestamp='1281144013' post='258772'

I realize that I may have mis-spoke in some of my terminology. While I am not personally fully convinced that entities cannot have causes, I am willing to concede that point (for now) in order to carry on the discussion. The reason is that even if entities cannot fall into the category of cause/effect, events can; and therefore the Law of Cause and Effect still stands.

I don't think anybody has challenged the Law of Cause and Effect itself.

I don't think I asserted that existence (as such) is an effect- rather that a particular existent in it's non-original form is an effect. And what I mean is that the changing of it's form in any sort of relationship is an effect which was caused by something acting upon it.

Things exist. They don't need causes to exist. They have effects on themselves and other things.

Mindy

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I don't think anybody has challenged the Law of Cause and Effect itself.

Things exist. They don't need causes to exist. They have effects on themselves and other things.

Mindy

Ok, but events do have causes. does there not need to be a beginning in the cause and effect chain??

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Also, real quick. I understand the contention about a Consciousness that is only conscious of itself being illogical. That is why Objectivists discard Aristotle's prime mover theory. However, is that the ONLY reason??

I don't know if Aristotle would have said that the Prime Mover is solely consciousness and that it is solely conscious of it's own consciousness. Isn't it possible that the Prime Mover is an Existent that is conscious and that was conscious of it's own objective existence? This does not seem any more foolish than Myself being conscious of my own objective existence. Are you saying it is illogical for a conscious Being to be conscious of it's own existence??

This seems to be the only case Objectivism has against Aristotle's Prime Mover and it seems fairly weak. In fact, in his Prime Mover theory (and in my argument) you not only have the primacy of existence but you have existence, identity, and consciousness (all 3 necessary axioms) wrapped up in one existent/ "being".

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Ok, but events do have causes. does there not need to be a beginning in the cause and effect chain??

Causing effects (being a cause) is abstract in the sense that it does not involve all aspects of the causal entity. A thing's mass causes gravitational attraction, while its momentum propels an object lying in its path, and its thermodynamic state is such that it warms the air around it. If you are used to thinking of causes as being just the event of the interaction between objects, it is harder to realize that the actual "cause" is a whole entity. During its life-span it causes countless changes/motions. If we think of it as being a cause only when we observe one of its effects, we get confused. To think of it that way would be to reify the abstract property that underlies the effect brought about, taking one aspect as the whole "cause." But it is the entity that "possesses" its attributes, and it is thus the entity that is the cause.

The cause endures beyond many of its observed effects. My elbow and a glass of water on the table may co-exist in friendly proximity until my elbow moves a certain way, in which case my elbow propels the glass off the table. It is the elbow that caused the glass to be broken. The elbow itself was affected so as to move a certain way, and, in that episodic state, it caused the glass to fall. We are used to speaking as if the event, my elbow moving in that certain way, were the cause. I can see how that is misleading when it comes to a metaphysical formulation of cause and effect.

Precision requires us to speak more carefully. We need to keep it straight that episodes and characteristics are of entities, rather than they exist themselves. It is the entity that exists. Its reality is the reality of all of its properties and characteristics, invariant and varying ones.

Thus, for example, my elbow had the ability to move in just that disastrous way from the beginning. It even moved a few times before it knocked the glass off. My elbow underwent several states, several effects, before its potential to knock the glass off was actualized. Let's assume it was the sound of the door-bell that caused me to move my arm so as to knock off the glass. Since you are familiar with a string of events, you might focus on the chime of the door-bell as the "cause" of my moving my elbow, which then "caused" the glass to fall, and its falling to be the "cause" of its being broken. That is a common and sensible way to describe things as long as you aren't losing sight of the fact that, metaphysically, all those causes are actually objects, not just the ringing and moving and falling.

Let me try to make this painfully plain. The door-bell cannot cause an object such as an elbow to rebound in a given direction with sufficient force to dislodge a glass of water. The door-bell is just a moderate sound. It isn't loud enough, powerful enough to move the glass, much less move my elbow. Now, what sort of amplifier could we invent that responds to door-bells, and acts to swing elbows side-ways, and sits next to tables, and is likely to set a glass of water on that table within a distance such that a more or less normal bodily movement might dislodge the glass? That "amplifier" is me (I mean, of course, just a person.)

If you take the abstractions: sound of door-bell, movement of elbow, dislodging of glass; and string them together to explain what happened, you are chaining the changes themselves. That gives rise to the cause-effect model which leads to considering whether there is an infinite sequence of causes and effects. But, you don't gain understanding from that. Why does a door-bell propel an elbow? What you need to refer to in order to make sense of that sequence of events is the person, the object that was acted on and which then acted. It takes a very sophisticated "thing" to turn the sound of a door-bell into a fallen glass. It takes a person. It takes that special kind of object that a human is, in all its complexities and dispositiions, to bridge the gap between those physical events.

(OK, I hope you can overlook the point that I chose an example in which it is an elbow that knocks off the glass. I don't want to edit the whole thing to make it an object the person was holding, etc.)

So, I think we need to recognize that common parlance lends itself to descriptions that, if taken literally, lead to a false metaphysics. It is not a series of "cause" events that produce "effect" states or events, which then bring about further "effect" events, etc. It is, rather, particular entities, with their specific character, that act, act on, and are acted on.

Take away the specific identity of the object, and you are left with a Humean world of incomprehensible sequences of events.

At a deeper level, the intimacy of existence and identity plays out here. It is entities that exist. It is existents that have identity. It is identity that underlies cause. It is entities that are causes. Being and being what "you" are are inseparable. Being what you are and acting and reacting as you do are inseparable. Being and acting/interacting are one state. Being and identity. Identity and behavior. Behavior and existing. Existing and exist-ing. The subject form and the verbal form, "Existence exists."

Hope that helps.

Mindy

Edited by Mindy
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Causing effects (being a cause) is abstract in the sense that it does not involve all aspects of the causal entity. A thing's mass causes gravitational attraction, while its momentum propels an object lying in its path, and its thermodynamic state is such that it warms the air around it. If you are used to thinking of causes as being just the event of the interaction between objects, it is harder to realize that the actual "cause" is a whole entity. During its life-span it causes countless changes/motions. If we think of it as being a cause only when we observe one of its effects, we get confused. To think of it that way would be to reify the abstract property that underlies the effect brought about, taking one aspect as the whole "cause." But it is the entity that "possesses" its attributes, and it is thus the entity that is the cause.

The cause endures beyond many of its observed effects. My elbow and a glass of water on the table may co-exist in friendly proximity until my elbow moves a certain way, in which case my elbow propels the glass off the table. It is the elbow that caused the glass to be broken. The elbow itself was affected so as to move a certain way, and, in that episodic state, it caused the glass to fall. We are used to speaking as if the event, my elbow moving in that certain way, were the cause. I can see how that is misleading when it comes to a metaphysical formulation of cause and effect.

Precision requires us to speak more carefully. We need to keep it straight that episodes and characteristics are of entities, rather than they exist themselves. It is the entity that exists. Its reality is the reality of all of its properties and characteristics, invariant and varying ones.

Thus, for example, my elbow had the ability to move in just that disastrous way from the beginning. It even moved a few times before it knocked the glass off. My elbow underwent several states, several effects, before its potential to knock the glass off was actualized. Let's assume it was the sound of the door-bell that caused me to move my arm so as to knock off the glass. Since you are familiar with a string of events, you might focus on the chime of the door-bell as the "cause" of my moving my elbow, which then "caused" the glass to fall, and its falling to be the "cause" of its being broken. That is a common and sensible way to describe things as long as you aren't losing sight of the fact that, metaphysically, all those causes are actually objects, not just the ringing and moving and falling.

Let me try to make this painfully plain. The door-bell cannot cause an object such as an elbow to rebound in a given direction with sufficient force to dislodge a glass of water. The door-bell is just a moderate sound. It isn't loud enough, powerful enough to move the glass, much less move my elbow. Now, what sort of amplifier could we invent that responds to door-bells, and acts to swing elbows side-ways, and sits next to tables, and is likely to set a glass of water on that table within a distance such that a more or less normal bodily movement might dislodge the glass? That "amplifier" is me (I mean, of course, just a person.)

If you take the abstractions: sound of door-bell, movement of elbow, dislodging of glass; and string them together to explain what happened, you are chaining the changes themselves. That gives rise to the cause-effect model which leads to considering whether there is an infinite sequence of causes and effects. But, you don't gain understanding from that. Why does a door-bell propel an elbow? What you need to refer to in order to make sense of that sequence of events is the person, the object that was acted on and which then acted. It takes a very sophisticated "thing" to turn the sound of a door-bell into a fallen glass. It takes a person. It takes that special kind of object that a human is, in all its complexities and dispositiions, to bridge the gap between those physical events.

(OK, I hope you can overlook the point that I chose an example in which it is an elbow that knocks off the glass. I don't want to edit the whole thing to make it an object the person was holding, etc.)

So, I think we need to recognize that common parlance lends itself to descriptions that, if taken literally, lead to a false metaphysics. It is not a series of "cause" events that produce "effect" states or events, which then bring about further "effect" events, etc. It is, rather, particular entities, with their specific character, that act, act on, and are acted on.

Take away the specific identity of the object, and you are left with a Humean world of incomprehensible sequences of events.

At a deeper level, the intimacy of existence and identity plays out here. It is entities that exist. It is existents that have identity. It is identity that underlies cause. It is entities that are causes. Being and being what "you" are are inseparable. Being what you are and acting and reacting as you do are inseparable. Being and acting/interacting are one state. Being and identity. Identity and behavior. Behavior and existing. Existing and exist-ing. The subject form and the verbal form, "Existence exists."

Hope that helps.

Mindy

I'm pretty sure I agree with this view of causes (that they are the entities which have effects based on their identity, etc..) but I've avoided referring to "things" as causes and tried to emphasize "events" because I've been accused of reifying them. Anyways, I don't reject your illustration- however, I don't know if it is the most helpful simply because it involves human volition which is sort of a whole other debate. I'm not necessarily speaking of things that volitional beings do which effect nature through reason (it SEEMS that is a special and different type of cause and effect from that of natural objects acting as causes and effects upon one another). does that make sense?

I know I could be accused of the same thing because I originally invoked the "traditional" illustration of a game of pool. I apologize.

But, apart from volition, isn't the case quite different? There isn't an "amplifier" which confuses the necessary consequences of certain changes among objects. If an objects nature is such to remain stationary unless acted upon, and it happens to move, than it must have been acted upon (or caused to move).

Perhaps a better way to frame this is to imagine asking the question "How did that happen?" of every change among all of matter and realizing that every change must have an answer unless or until we get to an original change which was initiated by a volition which belongs to a being that is eternal. This is because either change occurs through the willing volition of a conscious being or it occurs through interaction of inanimate matter who's movement and changes always require further explanation.

Does this make sense?

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But, apart from volition, isn't the case quite different? There isn't an "amplifier" which confuses the necessary consequences of certain changes among objects. If an objects nature is such to remain stationary unless acted upon, and it happens to move, than it must have been acted upon (or caused to move).

I should have written an example that didn't involve a human. Lazy. Volition wasn't part of my example, it was a startle reflex. <_<

But I'll give one sans human action. Compress Uranium 238 enough, and you get an explosion. Compress coal the same amount, and you get coal dust. Same "cause-event," but very different effects, because the entity is different. I'm sure you can think of innumerable other examples. Cool air to 30 degrees F and you get a smaller volume of air. Cool water to the same temperature, and you get a larger volume of water. Different things with different characteristics react differently to the same event. It is the thing which possesses characteristics, and the characteristics that decide the effect.

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<snip> (that they are the entities which have effects based on their identity, etc..) <snip>

Still seeing this as the likely source of confusion.

"The Law of Causality is the Law of Identity applied to action."

You are treating identity here almost as a separate feature of the entity. Identity serves more as bridge, as Piekoff pointed out, connecting existence and consciousness.

"Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification."

Consider a universe full of interspersed entities. Each entity's gravitational field acts and is simultaneously acted upon, by every other entity's gravitational field.

The Deuterium protons have an electrical repulsion that keep them apart from other Deuterium protons.

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I don't know if Aristotle would have said that the Prime Mover is solely consciousness and that it is solely conscious of it's own consciousness. Isn't it possible that the Prime Mover is an Existent that is conscious and that was conscious of it's own objective existence? This does not seem any more foolish than Myself being conscious of my own objective existence. Are you saying it is illogical for a conscious Being to be conscious of it's own existence??

Note that Aristotle's view of a Prime Mover is not your view, not just in the matter of consciousness, but also in the entire argument for its existence. Aristotle's First Mover is not a causal agent--it does not physically push and pull stuff, I believe it was Aquinas who made this argument. Aristotle's First Mover is a logical first-cause. In the series of questions, "Why is a plant green? Because of its leaves. Why are the leaves green? Because of the chlorophyll. Why is chlorophyll green?..." Aristotle's First Mover is the logical cause which grounds all of these facts. It is not as though he is causing things to change over time.

This seems to be the only case Objectivism has against Aristotle's Prime Mover and it seems fairly weak. In fact, in his Prime Mover theory (and in my argument) you not only have the primacy of existence but you have existence, identity, and consciousness (all 3 necessary axioms) wrapped up in one existent/ "being".

To my mind, this causal notion of a First Mover is rejected in Objectivism (I think rightly so) precisely because there is no reason to accept it. There is no obvious reason why the universe could not have infinitely many causes. Any reason you might have for rejecting infinite causes, it cannot be based on any finitism, since we now agree that causes are not things and so there is no problem with supposing that they are infinite--since this would not violate the finiteness of all things.

But, apart from volition, isn't the case quite different? There isn't an "amplifier" which confuses the necessary consequences of certain changes among objects. If an objects nature is such to remain stationary unless acted upon, and it happens to move, than it must have been acted upon (or caused to move).

You assume that there must have been a point at which everything was motionless, which I don't see a reason to accept. Without the theory of the Big Bang (and modulo issues of certain quantities of elements existing, indicating some passage of time), it seems a perfectly reasonable hypothesis about the universe, that it simply has always been pretty much like it is now and always will be. But beyond that, we could have gone through infinitely many Big Bangs. I see nothing inconsistent about any of this.

Perhaps a better way to frame this is to imagine asking the question "How did that happen?" of every change among all of matter and realizing that every change must have an answer unless or until we get to an original change which was initiated by a volition which belongs to a being that is eternal. This is because either change occurs through the willing volition of a conscious being or it occurs through interaction of inanimate matter who's movement and changes always require further explanation.

Does this make sense?

My argument above was against precisely this, unless you have some additional reason for thinking that an infinity of causes really doesn't constitute a cause.

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Just wanted to point out again that causality, referring to "action" ,ultimately refers to entities. To claim an infinity of causes is to claim an infinite number of entities. All existents are entity dependent. Entities are causal primaries.

Edited by Plasmatic
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Just wanted to point out again that causality, referring to "action" ,ultimately refers to entities. To claim an infinity of causes is to claim an infinite number of entities. All existents are entity dependent. Entities are causal primaries.

Even one entity might have an infinite number of causal interactions, assuming endless "time." Each cause does not require a separate entity.

Mindy

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