The First Cause Argument

[McCulloch]

The First Cause Argument
Simply stated this argument asserts that everything in the universe has a cause, therefore there must be an ultimate cause. If the universe has a beginning then there must be something outside it that brought it into existence. This being outside the universe, this Creator, the first cause argument tells us, is God.
Is this a valid proof of the existence of God?

[Cathar1950]

I have to side with Grumpy on this one.

Here is your main error, logic can describe nature but it can never constrain it because in the real, material world that logic does not exist, nor can it have any effect. You keep trying to give material existence and effects to your immaterial thoughts, which have no existence outside of your mind.

It seems that Harvey is trying to give some sort of substance to the immaterial which he may equate with "spiritual" in his dualistic cosmos.
Here I see a classic case of what Whtehead calls "Fallacy of misplaced concreteness" (Mistaking the abstract for the concrete.)

Angeles:


concreteness, fallacy of misplaced the phrase coined by Alfred North Whitehead to refer to what he considered the fallacy of taking an abstract characteristic and dealing with it as if it were what reality was like in its concrete form.

Misplaced Concreteness
In criticizing the work of previous thinkers, Whitehead points to a persistent tendency on the part of many to perpetrate the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. This, as the title indicates, consists in mistaking the abstract for the concrete. More specifically it involves setting up distinctions which disregard the genuine interconnections of things. For example, (a) the old-fashioned "faculty psychology" discussed mere awareness, mere private sensation, mere emotion, mere purpose–each a separate and distinct faculty. (b) Another general illustration of this error is the fallacy of Simple Location. This fallacy occurs when one assumes that in expressing the space and time relations of a bit of matter it is unnecessary to say more than that it is present in a specific position in space at a specific time. It is Whitehead's contention that it is absolutely essential to refer to other regions of space and other durations of time. Whitehead expresses this idea more clearly and briefly by stating that simple location means a mutually exclusive "individual independence." (C) A third general illustration of the fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness is the Substance-Quality concept. This is the notion that each real entity is absolutely separate and distinct from every other real entity, and that the qualities of each have no essential relation to the qualities of others.

As has been said, Whitehead objects to these three variations of the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness because they involve a "break up" of the real continuity of experience. He admits the practical usefulness of these fallacies. His objection is to the use of these patterns of thought without recognizing their serious deficiencies. Whitehead suggests that this approach is useful in metaphysical speculation only with reference to the "subjective form." If the notion of simple location is taken seriously (in general) the reality of temporal duration is denied. Memory and induction become hopeless mysteries. If the subject (substance) - predicate (quality) notion is accepted uncritically the subject is confined to a private world of experience. Solipsism is inescapable. Whitehead also notes that frequently the substance-quality form of thought involves the notion of "vacuous actuality"; that is, there is a denial of subjective experience to the ultimate realities.

http://www.websyte.com/alan/termin.htm

[harvey1]

What I actually answered, not harvey's chop job.

I'm not sure what you are referring to. You keep responding to my posts using different threads, so it is hard to find out where you will respond next.

[harvey1]

I have to side with Grumpy on this one.

Hmm... The second time you have specifically mentioned siding with Grumpy (instead of QED or BM), both of you are terrible in spelling and punctuation, both of you react with a little anger in your tone, what does it all mean?

It seems that Harvey is trying to give some sort of substance to the immaterial which he may equate with "spiritual" in his dualistic cosmos...

So, how do I specifically commit this "fallacy"?

[Cathar1950]

Hmm... The second time you have specifically mentioned siding with Grumpy (instead of QED or BM), both of you are terrible in spelling and punctuation, both of you react with a little anger in your tone, what does it all mean?

I don't feel any anger. Some time when I quote you my grammar and spell checker get all excited. But I leave it alone.
Ok fine I side with QED and BM too. Is that better?

So, how do I specifically commit this "fallacy"?

Nature behaves logically because there are no other mathematically consistent worlds which would allow it behave any other way. If nature was Nothing in the beginning, then its evolution would be restricted to the logical implication of what mathematical relations exist that restrict it from staying as nothing. We could eliminate mathematical-talk by logical talk, but we could not eliminate both in favor of nothing-talk. In that case, you would still have nothing.

As a human construct mathematics would not exist before creation.
Logical talk presupposes a concrete world not the other way around.

[harvey1]

As a human construct mathematics would not exist before creation. Logical talk presupposes a concrete world not the other way around.

Most mathematicians are platonists. Most physicists who work on fundamental laws believe that the laws of physics have independent existence. So, you're gonna have to do better than your own intuition. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get you into a debate. You seem more content in making dogmatic comments on the side without providing any argument to any specific comment.

[harvey1]

the laws that the Universe operates by are clearly material, since we have observed them in some capacity (gravity, electomagnetism, quantum tunneling, etc.)

You don't observe laws, you surmise laws. Actually, I'm shocked that you would make that statement coming from Mr. 1950 Behaviorist himself. Don't you always preach that we are limited by observing behavior and not the inward algorithmic causes of an action? Why have you became inconsistent all of a sudden?

[What do you mean by "nature is logical"? Because, last time I checked, I couldn't weigh a proposition, or measure the temperature of a syllogism. I think you're making the jump from, "we think of nature in logical terms", to "nature is made out of logic", which is not necessarily true.

In other words, there are consistent algorithms which nature always follows as long as it is within the boundary of where those algorithms have been found to apply. So, for example, F=ma (Newton's second law) always applies to classical mechanical forces. In quantum mechanics this second law is seen as an approximation, but the equations in quantum theory show how planck's constant plays a significant role in the reason why it is an approximation. This is a logical structure. Now, conceivably it doesn't have to be that way. We could live in a particular type of atheist world where the world just randomly exhibited behavior to bring about our universe with a multiverse of other random universes which weren't as lucky--however that luck of having this kind of behavior is about to run out, and all hell is about to break lose (cats and dogs having sex, governments ending taxation, pens flying in the air for no reason, etc., etc., you get the picture). It is a lot like the metaphor of having enough monkeys in a room typing at typewriters, eventually if there is an infinite amount of time, Hamlet will be typed an infinite number of times by pure chance alone. However, for every exact copy of Hamlet there is a larger infinite number of versions where the last chapter, last paragraph, last word was mistyped, and therefore that copy is not Hamlet. Conceivably, this could be our universe. It looks like Hamlet is being typed, but who knows if we are the rare universe where the monkeys happen by luck to get it right, or maybe we are the more common universe where the structure goes off into looking totally random at any second.

Now, can we know that nature is logical versus lucky (as maybe you and perhaps even Grumpy would have us believe is possible), well I think yes. Knowledge to be knowledge doesn't have to be any less certain compared to our other uses of that term, and for that reason I think we are justified in saying that nature is logical (at least no less justified than saying that we are not brains in vats). Since mathematical equations and logical explanations of nature meet this level of satisfaction, I can be quite content in saying that I know that nature is logical.

Firstly, nature doesn't consider anything; nature just is.

Would you please explain Materialism 101 to Grumpy, he doesn't get that one simple point. Materialist treat nature as being what it is as a non-necessitated fact. As much as I try to explain it to him, he just doesn't trust me enough to accept this basic fact. Perhaps he will believe you.

Secondly, some mathematical formulae do not require any explanations; for example, the formula "sqrt(x^2) == x" does not require an additional explanation. I think what you meant to say was, "mathematical formulae that we invented in order to describe the laws of nature as we understand them require logical explanations", which may or may not be true, but I don't see how it proves your dualism true.

I was replying to QED, and the context was mathematical formulas for the laws of physics. Although, I do think there is a logical explanation for every mathematical formula. For example, "sqrt(x^2)=x" has an easy to understand logical explanation if one shows why a sqrt and taking the square are inverse operations.

This shows that platonism is true since it shows the extraordinary power of mathematics and logic to coincide and be used to predict what we do not know. For example, if we take that atheist conception where the world is a version of an unfinished Hamlet being typed by monkeys, then we wouldn't expect there to be any predictions about what will be typed next since as each word is typed, the likelihood that the monkeys will make a "mistake" and begin typing gibberish is much higher than if they continue typing Hamlet. The logical and mathematical structures that humans have discovered show why this won't be the case since the universe is following mathematical proofs (e.g., group theory proofs as used in symmetry groups in the standard model). That's equivalent to the monkeys typing Hamlet, and as they are doing it they are reading it outloud and telling us what it means.

This is a category error on your part. Nature exists, it behaves in certain ways, and we build models to describe this behavior. The models are not the behavior. Now, why does nature behave in these ways and not others ? "Because God made it that way" is one possible answer (though not a very good one, because it doesn't answer anything). "I don't know yet" is another (it's marginally better because it allows room for study). However, "because our models say so" is not a valid answer at all, because, as you said, models (i.e., math and logic) are just something we made up.

You have it wrong BM. Your options as to why nature behaves this way versus another way always boil down to two options: there is something that necessarily requires nature to do it that way (e.g., a law), or nature acts and behaves contingently. In the first case we throw out materialism without even considering it further (which is what we should be doing instead of wasting all our time coming to that conclusion anyway). Or, you consider it contingent in which case means that the monkeys are typing Hamlet and that the monkeys might stop typing Hamlet any second, and Ruffy and Kitty ought to be separated. I'm guessing that you are a monkeys typing Hamlet kind of guy, which means that you should come to the conclusion that mathematics and logic are lucky facts of our universe. Of course, how unparsimonious of you if you believe such silly notions.

[Bugmaster]

the laws that the Universe operates by are clearly material, since we have observed them in some capacity (gravity, electomagnetism, quantum tunneling, etc.)

You don't observe laws, you surmise laws. Actually, I'm shocked that you would make that statement coming from Mr. 1950 Behaviorist himself. Don't you always preach that we are limited by observing behavior and not the inward algorithmic causes of an action?

I'm not sure which Bugmaster you're reading, but it certainly isn't me. I've said repeatedly that we build models of the physical laws, by observing their actions in the world (and we do that by tweaking things and seeing what they do, basically). If we were omniscient, then we could probably observe the physical laws directly, but we're not, so we can't. This is, in fact, exactly how "weak behaviorism" works, and I'm shocked that you keep hanging on to your Mr. Ancient Greek Platonist viewpoint despite this :-)

In other words, there are consistent algorithms which nature always follows...

Actually, I'm not even 100% certain about that. Nature certainly seems to follow certain "algorithms", but I'm not omniscient, I don't know whether it always does this or not.

So, for example, F=ma (Newton's second law) always applies to classical mechanical forces.

No, this is actually false. Newton's Second Law (and his other laws, of course) is wrong for all objects all the time, but for big, slow objects, the margin of error is negligible. Newton's model did not describe the actual behavior of the universe precisely enough.

We could live in a particular type of atheist world where the world just randomly exhibited behavior to bring about our universe with a multiverse of other random universes which weren't as lucky--however that luck of having this kind of behavior is about to run out...

Why ?

However, for every exact copy of Hamlet there is a larger infinite number of versions where the last chapter, last paragraph, last word was mistyped, and therefore that copy is not Hamlet. Conceivably, this could be our universe.

No, it can't. By definition, the probability of our universe being our universe is 1 (100%). We're in it, we know it exists.

..or maybe we are the more common universe where the structure goes off into looking totally random at any second.

Sure, it's possible. But all evidence suggests that it has not done this so far (or, at least, it hasn't done so in a way that we can detect), so there's no reason to believe it will do so in the near future ("near" being "trillions of years" in this case). But it's always possible, of course.

Now, can we know that nature is logical versus lucky (as maybe you and perhaps even Grumpy would have us believe is possible), well I think yes.

Obviously, I disagree. We can be awfully sure, but we can't know for certain, unless we suddenly become omniscient.

...at least no less justified than saying that we are not brains in vats...

Exactly: you don't know that you're not a brain-in-a-vat, you're merely very sure of it.

Firstly, nature doesn't consider anything; nature just is.

Would you please explain Materialism 101 to Grumpy, he doesn't get that one simple point. Materialist treat nature as being what it is as a non-necessitated fact.

Firstly, I don't care about what Harvey's Classic Materialist (tm) believes, or what Harvey's Classic Behaviorist (tm) believes, I care about what I personally believe. Please stop straw-manning (is that a word ?) my arguments.

Secondly, what I meant by that statement is that nature most likely doesn't have a personality (i.e., it won't pass the Turing Test). It doesn't want or consider or believe anything. It's just there. And I certainly believe that our current Universe is a "contingent fact", as it were; there are several hypotheses in physics that describe how universes might form and un-form. I don't know whether the formation of universes out of quantum foam or whatever is a necessitated fact or not, but that's what science is here to find out.

Inicidentally, while I personally think that the "turtles all the way down" statement is likely false, I still haven't seen a decent philosophical defense of it (at least, not from a dualist such as yourself).

Although, I do think there is a logical explanation for every mathematical formula. For example, "sqrt(x^2)=x" has an easy to understand logical explanation if one shows why a sqrt and taking the square are inverse operations.

That's just the definition of sqrt, it's not a "logical explanation".

This shows that platonism is true since it shows the extraordinary power of mathematics and logic to coincide and be used to predict what we do not know.

Again, you go from zero to God (or, in this case, Platonism) in 0.5 seconds. You need to be more explicit in how you get from "sqrt(x^2) == x" to "platonism is true and sqrt really exists". I see absolutely no justification for making this leap of faith.

The logical and mathematical structures that humans have discovered...

I'd say, "invented". See my post on the difference between models and the things they model, above.

Your options as to why nature behaves this way versus another way always boil down to two options: there is something that necessarily requires nature to do it that way (e.g., a law), or nature acts and behaves contingently. In the first case we throw out materialism without even considering it further...

Why ? I realize that you can arbitrarily define quantum foam, or the Multiverse, or whatever, as immaterial, and you'll probably be sort of right (there was no matter before the Big Bang), but that does not automatically mean that platonism is true and that the sqrt function actually exists as an independent entity. Events that occured before the Big Bang are still observable, albeit in an indirect manner (i.e., their remnants in our own Universe are observable), whereas sqrt is not observable at all.

Or, you consider it contingent in which case means that the monkeys are typing Hamlet and that the monkeys might stop typing Hamlet any second, and Ruffy and Kitty ought to be separated.

Again, this is certainly possible. So what ? I can't see into the future, I can't see whether the eagle will dance with the butterflies or whatever.

[QED]

This shows that platonism is true since it shows the extraordinary power of mathematics and logic to coincide and be used to predict what we do not know. For example, if we take that atheist conception where the world is a version of an unfinished Hamlet being typed by monkeys, then we wouldn't expect there to be any predictions about what will be typed next since as each word is typed, the likelihood that the monkeys will make a "mistake" and begin typing gibberish is much higher than if they continue typing Hamlet.

This argument about higher orders of infinities applying to nearly but not quite complete Hamlets is very shrewd, but it needn't apply to the situation we're considering. Yes, if every fundamental interaction is being played out according to some such bizarre random sequence then it would, as you say, inevitably (i.e be infinitely more likely to) go "off the rails" at any moment. But we can argue that the job has been done already, with the sequence ending at the beginning of our time and with our physics evolving as a product of that event. So the physical laws would be liberated from the contingencies that gave rise to them and we would get to bask in their stability.

[harvey1]

we can argue that the job has been done already, with the sequence ending at the beginning of our time and with our physics evolving as a product of that event.

So, if I understand your argument correctly, you are saying that the monkeys that happened to type Hamlet will have the benefit of watching the play that they typed. The problem with that argument is that you have to have a new set of metaphysical rules take over. For example, what the monkeys represent is a world having no laws but just typing "physical events" that just happen to produce a particular kind of "order" in the world. The physical events in this Universe happen like a running hose of water that is left unattended in a large sandbox. The water that comes out might spell out a sentence of urgent importance (e.g., "hurry, sell Microsoft stocks!"), but the words that happen are not having their own causal effect. That would be to introduce another causal law (the law that we say doesn't exist by having monkeys). The words are just happenstance events that are complex enough to have conscious experience and their environment as the hose (or the monkeys) randomly pursues its unlikely outcome of making longer and longer well-ordered events as it moves further into the future.

[QED]

What practical limits do you place on one kind of order leading to another Harvey? I appreciate that we are looking at a regression not unlike that of the stack of turtles in some respects, but in each layer a transformation can take place synthesising a new level of order. It takes no imagination to see this principle at work in our own universe so I think we ought to make allowances for extending these principles in a universe of different universes. After all, I'm not aware of any proofs that restrict this universe to being the only one.