Can there be real causation for a material atheist?

[harvey1]

Here is my argument against material atheism:

1. If a material atheist world exists, then there must be a material cause for every effect; there can be no effect without a material cause.
2. Slicing up time to the minimum slices of time, we see there cannot be material causes that materially connects time slice A to its effect in time slice B.
3. Therefore, a material atheist world does not exist.

Based on this argument, can anyone show that it is possible for a material atheist world to exist?

[Curious]

Curious, I hate to bust your bubble, but you never established your argument. You based your perspective on special relativity, but that's assuming that Lorentzian transformations hold in an absolute sense.

No it doesn't. When we talk about time, absolute doesn't even enter the equation.

This, btw, seems to contradict your very position since you are treating SR law as a prescriptive law which is actually against your own position of laws being only descriptive in nature (not absolute).

I treat SR as a description of a known characteristic or property, not as a prescriptive law.

Besides, you never responded to the other paradox that if time is not discrete, then you cannot have a cause since there are no identities for an event, therefore there cannot be an event that causes another for the simple fact that events do not have identity.

Where is the paradox? What about a constant force, this is not a discrete event that occurs at t=1 and ends at t=2. Or the inertia of an object, this does not have a beginning or an end, it is a property that is inherent to its nature. Whether or not time is indiscrete has no bearing on the fundamental nature of the object other than whether or not it acts within a discrete or indiscrete medium. It only affects the manner in which it acts, not whether it acts.

[harvey1]

No it doesn't. When we talk about time, absolute doesn't even enter the equation.

So, if Lorenzian invariance doesn't hold absolutely, then how is your argument applicable for time being discrete at planck time units (for example)?

I treat SR as a description of a known characteristic or property, not as a prescriptive law.

Is a description of what we know, or is it a law of how nature must be? If nature is not restricted to this known characteristic, then why say that time cannot flow discretely? (Actually, given the abundance of discrete time theories, I really don't know why you push this issue with such perforce.)

Where is the paradox? What about a constant force, this is not a discrete event that occurs at t=1 and ends at t=2. Or the inertia of an object, this does not have a beginning or an end, it is a property that is inherent to its nature. Whether or not time is indiscrete has no bearing on the fundamental nature of the object other than whether or not it acts within a discrete or indiscrete medium. It only affects the manner in which it acts, not whether it acts.

Again, the issue is how a purely material scenario can provide a causal account of inertia or force. In order to have a causal account, you need events. Events are causes of other events, or caused by other events. If there are no events in principle (i.e., time is indiscrete and no one event has an identity), then I ask my question for the upteenth time, "how is material causation possible?"

[Curious]

No it doesn't. When we talk about time, absolute doesn't even enter the equation.

So, if Lorenzian invariance doesn't hold absolutely, then how is your argument applicable for time being discrete at planck time units (for example)?

Who said time was discrete? You say time is discrete but offer no proof of this. I have given numerous reasons why I believe time is not discrete but am open to the possiblity that it may be. You seem here to be giving another reason to believe that time is not discrete.

I treat SR as a description of a known characteristic or property, not as a prescriptive law.

Is a description of what we know, or is it a law of how nature must be? If nature is not restricted to this known characteristic, then why say that time cannot flow discretely? (Actually, given the abundance of discrete time theories, I really don't know why you push this issue with such perforce.)

Because I can think of, and have given, many reasons to believe it is not discrete and these far outweigh evidence to the contrary. I am not saying that nature is not restricted. It is a matter of characteristics and properties. I have said that entities have characteristics which are inherent to their nature. If it is inherent to it's nature to be hard then it would be unrealistic to expect it to be soft. Different structures have different characteristics so nature is not restricted to a particular property, the particular structure or entity is though.

Where is the paradox? What about a constant force, this is not a discrete event that occurs at t=1 and ends at t=2. Or the inertia of an object, this does not have a beginning or an end, it is a property that is inherent to its nature. Whether or not time is indiscrete has no bearing on the fundamental nature of the object other than whether or not it acts within a discrete or indiscrete medium. It only affects the manner in which it acts, not whether it acts.

Again, the issue is how a purely material scenario can provide a causal account of inertia or force. In order to have a causal account, you need events. Events are causes of other events, or caused by other events. If there are no events in principle (i.e., time is indiscrete and no one event has an identity), then I ask my question for the upteenth time, "how is material causation possible?"

Why do they have no identity? Even frozen in time an object has an energy signature or content. Time does not need to be discrete to have events. An event might be discrete but the time need not be discrete. You could have a million events in the same period of time or a million events spread at various intervals. Why does time need to be discrete to allow an event to be discrete? It seems to me that you are suggesting here that a beginning of an event cannot occur at the same time as the middle of another event and that it must wait for the end of all other events before it can start?

then I ask my question for the upteenth time, "how is material causation possible?"

I have answered numerous times already Harvey1 as well you know. You base your belief here on a flimsy premise that neither I, nor anyone else so far in this thread has agreed with and then demand us to explain why material causation is possible within your flawed hypothetical framework. We have a billion examples of material causation and can observe a billion more which are verifiable. You on the other hand, have a theory that no one that I know of agrees with and is completely unverifiable and to which there are countless objections against. On top of this, you claim that your theory shows that material causation is impossible, a fact we know is absololutely incorrect. So lets look at the evidence for and against your argument:

FOR:
Harvey1 says so.

AGAINST:
Events do happen, we observe them.
Material causation is observable and verifiable.

Now it is obvious that whatever argument I give will have no effect on your rigid belief here so just look at the list and try to weigh up the pros and cons so far.

[QED]

Harvey, although I'd like to, I really can't put it any other way: you just seem to Curious and I to be 'playing with words'. Everything you've come up with so far appears to be an excuse to tell the world that "material causation is impossible". To press your point you've presented a branching set of false dichotomies in which you only present options that support your claim. For example, you say that if time is indiscreet then events have no identity therefore we cannot identify causes. So what? Our failure to accurately identify events in time doesn't mean there are no events or causes. Things still bump into each other and such events may be identified by their consequences. Then in arguing for an absence of causality in discreet time you draw an unjustified picture of time 'on hold' needing something to clock it from one frozen instant to the next. We simply fail to see the logic this view entails. Particles don't stop pseudo spinning do they?

[harvey1]

Who said time was discrete? You say time is discrete but offer no proof of this. I have given numerous reasons why I believe time is not discrete but am open to the possiblity that it may be. You seem here to be giving another reason to believe that time is not discrete.

I don't know if time is discrete or not. I'm saying that if we treat material causation under the guise of discrete time or indiscrete time, the results are the same: paradox. In my case, I'm not restricted to material cause, so it really doesn't matter if time is discrete or not. I can show how causation can occur in either scenario.

Because I can think of, and have given, many reasons to believe it is not discrete and these far outweigh evidence to the contrary. I am not saying that nature is not restricted. It is a matter of characteristics and properties. I have said that entities have characteristics which are inherent to their nature. If it is inherent to it's nature to be hard then it would be unrealistic to expect it to be soft. Different structures have different characteristics so nature is not restricted to a particular property, the particular structure or entity is though.

However, listen to what you are not saying. You are not saying that it is a law that something is X. You just commit only to the view that the best description we have for the limited domain in which we observe is that something is X. It could be Y or Z, or indescribable, outside that limited domain of observation. You have no basis to tell that it is not Y, Z, etc. outside our limited domain. The only way you can assert that our observations are valid outside our limited domain is if you say it is a law that SR applies outside our limited range of observability because the premises of SR are such that they cannot be violated in any domain (observable or not). However, if you do so, then this is a prescriptive law since there is a prohibition acting on nature from being Y, Z, etc., outside our limited domain of observation. Since you don't wish to say so, then your only recourse is to say that outside the range of observation the SR model is indeterminate.

Why do they have no identity?

When we say X causes Y, I asked you if X is some particular event that has a discrete identity, and you rejected that kind of event as real. This leaves you with saying that there is no X having a particular identity since each X we refer to is to be divided by an innumerable amount of more indiscrete events, and so on and so on. Therefore, there is no such thing as an event X. It's a label for classical event descriptions, that's all. It cannot cause Y since there is nothing real about event X to cause anything.

Time does not need to be discrete to have events.

If a real event X occurs, then this means that an event X has an identity that refers to that event versus some other event. It also means that it cannot be reduced, even in principle, to sub-events or other processes. For example, we cannot say that Bugs Bunny actually let Daffy Duck hold the firecracker, thereby causing Daffy to feel the firecracker explode. These events are fictious. They can be reduced to an event where some artist created these cartoon frames. If events can be reduced to other sub-events, then the same situation occurs. The macro-event is not actually a real event since it is composed of micro-events.

However, with indiscrete time, all micro-events are composed of still smaller micro-events and so on and so on. Therefore, there can be no real events in this scenario.

An event might be discrete but the time need not be discrete. You could have a million events in the same period of time or a million events spread at various intervals. Why does time need to be discrete to allow an event to be discrete?

Let's say the opposite. Let's say that event X exists in indiscrete time. When did event X occur? Well, if we try to identify the exact moment that event X occurred, then we find that there is no such exact moment that event X occurred. That leaves open the possibility that event X occurred over a span of time s, however within that span of time the event which we mark as X is composed of yet smaller events that occur within that span s, and as mentioned above, event X is not a real event since reduction to its sub-events has eliminated X as being real.

It seems to me that you are suggesting here that a beginning of an event cannot occur at the same time as the middle of another event and that it must wait for the end of all other events before it can start?

I'm not suggesting anything other than pursuing the implications of material causation and showing that all of these pursuits are paradoxial, and therefore wrong.

I have answered numerous times already Harvey1 as well you know. You base your belief here on a flimsy premise that neither I, nor anyone else so far in this thread has agreed with and then demand us to explain why material causation is possible within your flawed hypothetical framework. We have a billion examples of material causation and can observe a billion more which are verifiable.

Causation is not observable. We observe effects and associate the effect with a cause. However, this does not mean that we know the cause. In order to provide an account for material causation, you need to show how material causation can be possible in principle, and this is what you have not shown. Since you prefer indiscrete time, you need to show how an event X is real and how it can material cause an event Y which is also real. I don't think you can since you lack a means to show identity for any event, much less an event that causes another event.

You on the other hand, have a theory that no one that I know of agrees with

You must not know many people.

and is completely unverifiable and to which there are countless objections against

What kind of objections? And, all causation is unverifiable since it is a metaphysical issue. The point is not that we try to verify a cause, the point is that we show in principle how a cause can exist given the metaphysical scenario that we are postulating (e.g., material causation, Platonism, etc.).

On top of this, you claim that your theory shows that material causation is impossible, a fact we know is absololutely incorrect.

Curious, I know that this is what you believe, but you have to show that it is not correct. Based on your own particular beliefs, this means showing how events should be considered real if they can be reduced to other micro-events which compose the macro-event that you say can cause another macro-event.

AGAINST:
Events do happen, we observe them.

No one knows the reason why events occur, so observing them is not a priori reason to believe that events are materially caused.

Material causation is observable and verifiable.

Show me an observed material caused event, and show me that it is verifiable.

Now it is obvious that whatever argument I give will have no effect on your rigid belief here so just look at the list and try to weigh up the pros and cons so far.

What you call rigid I call thorough. For example, anyone after a few beers in a pub can make sweeping generalizations. Of course, the way to settle those issues is by analyzing the premises, etc., and this is what we must do.

[harvey1]

I really can't put it any other way: you just seem to Curious and I to be 'playing with words'. Everything you've come up with so far appears to be an excuse to tell the world that "material causation is impossible".

I don't think so. I think the problem here is that both of you have an incorrect conception of the world that is based on materialism versus logicism.

you say that if time is [indiscrete] then events have no identity therefore we cannot identify causes. So what? Our failure to accurately identify events in time doesn't mean there are no events or causes.

But, then what is an event? How do you define it? I define an event as something that exists. I don't consider Daffy Duck holding a firecracker such that it explodes as a real event, do you? Why not? Your answer should apply to your own definition of an event.

Things still bump into each other and such events may be identified by their consequences. Then in arguing for an absence of causality in [discrete] time you draw an unjustified picture of time 'on hold' needing something to clock it from one frozen instant to the next. We simply fail to see the logic this view entails. Particles don't stop pseudo spinning do they?

Again, I'm not saying that discrete time is correct. All I'm saying is that: whether you consider discrete or indiscrete proposals for material causation, they both lead to paradox. Therefore, material causation is invalid.

[Curious]

Let's say the opposite. Let's say that event X exists in indiscrete time. When did event X occur? Well, if we try to identify the exact moment that event X occurred, then we find that there is no such exact moment that event X occurred. That leaves open the possibility that event X occurred over a span of time s, however within that span of time the event which we mark as X is composed of yet smaller events that occur within that span s, and as mentioned above, event X is not a real event since reduction to its sub-events has eliminated X as being real.

Harvey1 your main argument seems to be your belief in the inability to pin down an event to a specific moment in time so this is what I will address. What about the moment of contact of 2 objects. There is here a distinct moment, before which there is no contact. After this moment of contact there is no distinction between contact and no contact so the event of initial contact is an event than can be pinned down and cannot be reduced to any other sub-event. Similarly, we can do the same with the release of an object, contact and no contact against no contact/ no contact and contact/ contact. There is a distinct moment in time here where the event occurs and this event cannot be reduced further to any number of sub events.

[harvey1]

What about the moment of contact of 2 objects. There is here a distinct moment, before which there is no contact. After this moment of contact there is no distinction between contact and no contact so the event of initial contact is an event than can be pinned down and cannot be reduced to any other sub-event.

So, for example, if two polarized photons are entangled (A and B) such that their polarized state is in superposition, then you would be saying in this example that when one is "observed" there is an exact moment in time when A takes on a horizontal (vertical) polarized state and B takes on a vertical (horizontal) polarized state? Okay, in that situation I would say there is a quantum law that exists such that non-local interaction is possible, and the identity of the "observation event" is interrelated with this quantum law (as well as all other interactions in Hilbert space: viz. encompassing the entire universe).

Although, I'm not sure why you would bring up this issue since it seems to work against a material cause since now you would have to admit non-local interactions via quantum laws into the discussion, which is the very thing that you cannot admit to if you wish to say there is material cause.

Similarly, we can do the same with the release of an object, contact and no contact against no contact/ no contact and contact/ contact. There is a distinct moment in time here where the event occurs and this event cannot be reduced further to any number of sub events.

If you wish to say that space is discrete, as many new theories suggest, then you would have to believe that there is some theoretical structure which is more fundamental than space (spacetime?) such as spinors, which again would violate material cause (which would enable talk of material motion). On the other hand, if you are staying consistent with your position that Lorentzian invariance is some sort of "pseudo-prescriptive" law that cannot be violated at some small enough scale, then an indiscrete notion of space would suffer from the having an identity of an exact position in space. If there is no exact position, then how can an object be said to touch another?

[Curious]

What about the moment of contact of 2 objects. There is here a distinct moment, before which there is no contact. After this moment of contact there is no distinction between contact and no contact so the event of initial contact is an event than can be pinned down and cannot be reduced to any other sub-event.

So, for example, if two polarized photons are entangled (A and B) such that their polarized state is in superposition...

What on earth are you talking about. I have given a perfectly simple example above and you wish to change it to something else. If you can show that the event in question does not occur at some distinct moment and can be reduced ad infinitum to a number of sub-events then please do so.

[harvey1]

What on earth are you talking about. I have given a perfectly simple example above and you wish to change it to something else. If you can show that the event in question does not occur at some distinct moment and can be reduced ad infinitum to a number of sub-events then please do so.

Your example seems to be assuming discrete space. If so, then discrete space is based on there being a non-material structure that composes space. If you take that position, then again you have contradicted the whole issue of material cause.

Do you see, Curious, no matter how you slice it, your view comes up speaking against material causation?