Arguments against first cause/uncaused cause?

[BearCavalry]

I've always believed that the argument of first cause/uncaused cause is an unbeatable argument for proving the concept of God.

It doesn't prove whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Jainists have the right idea about God. It doesn't prove whether God is good or evil. It doesn't prove whether God is a personal, loving entity or something as impersonal as some self-causing physics concept that propogates the galaxy.

But I think it does prove the existence of God if God is defined as an entity so infinitely powerful that it becomes self-causing by permeating all time and space. I just don't logically see how something could come out of nothing. In my opinion, that's an absolute, self-evident truth the way Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is. However, I was curious if any of the cynics had anything to say.

[Ionian_Tradition]

I misunderstood what you meant by context before. When you put it that way, I agree with the context part completely. What I still don't agree with is that the context necessary for the creation of the universe must be gained by experience.

Consider the concept of "pain". We can see that in order for pain to be differentiated from that which it is not, it must be contextualized in such a way so as to be made fundamentally distinct. The nature of pain renders its intrinsic distinction rooted in a particular sensation. As such, what makes pain fundamentally distinct from pleasure is the manner in which it is felt, or experienced. In the absence of such experiential knowledge, "pain" becomes an incoherent term. This is because pain cannot be understood without reference to its sensation. The same applies for color, sound, texture, etc. All of these terms are defined and distinguished from their antithesis by way of some experiential factor. To divorce color from its appearance is to divorce it from its meaning. The same for any term which is contextualized by way of some experience. From this it seems clear that the context which renders terms like color, sound, pain, etc. coherent cannot be derived from non-experience because it is experience itself which severs to define said terms. Since the concept of a universe like ours requires experiential knowledge of such properties, it is obvious that the universe could not have been conceptualized prior to its own existence (you can't experience something before it exists). It follows then that the creation of the universe was not a product of conscious choice (the choice to act on a concept first requires the existence of the concept).

This conclusion is not warranted, so nothing that flows from it has been established. There are at least two problems with the line of reasoning that led to this unwarranted conclusion. One is the comparison of a finite 'man' to the infinite.

An infinite mind bereft of the context by which to lend its concepts coherency is nothing more than a mind which is infinitely incapable of forming coherent concepts for which it has no experiential referent. With that said, I feel compelled to ask, how might we infer from the first cause argument that this mind possesses infinite capacity? In what way is this even suggested by the argument?

The other is that physicists among others, are able to conceive things they have never experienced.

I must disagree. I invite you to show me one example of a concept, conceived by a physicist, which was not first contextualized from a prior base of experiential knowledge.

[Mithrae]

To conceive colour, one needs to see; but it doesn't follow that one needs to see in order to conceive different states of being or 'energy,' among which are the types we know and experience as electro-magnetic radiation and solid (in this case organic) matter.

How would you differentiate "states of being" without experiential knowledge of "being" itself? How could you conceive of a space in which such states of being might exist if occupancy of spacial location was foreign to your experience? What context, apart from experience, could you bring to the term "state of being" to lend it coherency? What context could any mind bring to such a concepts which is not first derived from its own experience?

A thinking entity which exists would have to have experience of being. Indeed unless it were completely homogenous - and I'm not sure a completely homogenous entity could be thinking at all - it would have experience of different aspects of its own being. So it would plausibly be able to concieve of different types of being from itself entirely, or of not-being. And if it conceived of two or more different types of being, it would necessarily have to imagine the manner in which they relate to each other - concepts which we know as space, time and causation.

Maths is possibly a better way to think about this than colour, sound etc. If you started with a couple of simple integers, but there were no limit of time, could you end up with algebra or geometry? Likewise I imagine that anything which could conceive different aspects of its own being could eventually conceive all the different types and structures of being we observe in the world.

[ytrewq]

I've always believed that the argument of first cause/uncaused cause is an unbeatable argument for proving the concept of God.

It doesn't prove whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Jainists have the right idea about God. It doesn't prove whether God is good or evil. It doesn't prove whether God is a personal, loving entity or something as impersonal as some self-causing physics concept that propogates the galaxy.

But I think it does prove the existence of God if God is defined as an entity so infinitely powerful that it becomes self-causing by permeating all time and space. I just don't logically see how something could come out of nothing. In my opinion, that's an absolute, self-evident truth the way Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is. However, I was curious if any of the cynics had anything to say.

I have always found the argument of first/uncaused cause to be a good example of poor logic that gives us no useful information.

Firstly, it smacks of naivety, where the argument is a kind of logical black box, where you put no useful information in, shake vigorously, and expect some conclusion of great significance to come out the other end. Common sense tells us you cannot get useful, significant information out of thin air, any more than a country can create true wealth and a high standard of living simply by printing money. Lot's of things in life are like that, where you don't even need to know the exact details of the argument, to know that the conclusion will be of little value. We are not even talking about garbage-in-garbage-out. We are talking about zero-information-in must equal zero-useful-information-out.

With that said, it is not surprising that it is easy to show that the argument is valueless.

Firstly, the argument creates a logical infinite loop, for the question will always remain, what caused whatever it is that you have placed at the end of the chain of causality? This is not kindergarten, so no special pleading is permitted. What and why caused whatever-it-is that caused the Universe?

Secondly, as you point out, it doesn't actually tell us anything about 'God', except to assign a name to that which we do not know. You can equally well substitute any word you like into the argument, such as 'Vix', instead of 'God' and the conclusion is equally valid or, to be more precise, equally meaningless. Many arguments of this sort end up to essentially be just a substitution of words. We can call the means and reason by which the Universe was created anything we like, such a 'Vix', or 'Tuk', or 'XXX', or 'Dog' or 'God', or whatever, but has this really gained us any useful knowledge that we did not know previously? Of course not. You can't gain true, useful knowledge of any significance just by assigning a name to something.

What often happens next, is that the WORD (and it is no more than that) that has just been assigned to mean the (unknown) 'cause and means by which the Universe was created', is then correlated with the word 'God' that appears in the Bible, which is a logical error on the grandest scale. There is no logical connection whatsoever, and grand confusion and delusion can only result from using the same word for both. As the word 'God' has alread been used in the Bible for an entity with many claimed powers, it is essential choose another word to mean 'the cause and means by which the Universe was created', being the word that was defined in the 'argument'. It doesn't really matter what word you use in the argument, but I would suggest something like 'Cambuc', being a convenient abbreviation for the (unknown) 'Cause And Means By which the Universe was Created'. Then there is no confusion. My apologies to BearCavalry, who I think understands this last point well.

The final conclusion is that the 'first/uncaused cause' argument doesn't teach us anything of value, except to assign a word (I prefer to use the word Cambuc) to the unknown cause and origin of the Universe.

[Ionian_Tradition]

To conceive colour, one needs to see; but it doesn't follow that one needs to see in order to conceive different states of being or 'energy,' among which are the types we know and experience as electro-magnetic radiation and solid (in this case organic) matter.

How would you differentiate "states of being" without experiential knowledge of "being" itself? How could you conceive of a space in which such states of being might exist if occupancy of spacial location was foreign to your experience? What context, apart from experience, could you bring to the term "state of being" to lend it coherency? What context could any mind bring to such a concepts which is not first derived from its own experience?

A thinking entity which exists would have to have experience of being. Indeed unless it were completely homogenous - and I'm not sure a completely homogenous entity could be thinking at all - it would have experience of different aspects of its own being. So it would plausibly be able to concieve of different types of being from itself entirely, or of not-being.

Such self reflection would be relegated strictly to the nature of its own thoughts. Experience of its thoughts would provide the context by which to understand thought and its content sure, but this would not provide the necessary context required to conceive additional concepts of matter, space, motion and other such non-mind properties for which there would exist no experiential referent.

And if it conceived of two or more different types of being, it would necessarily have to imagine the manner in which they relate to each other - concepts which we know as space, time and causation.

The problem here is there could be no meaningful context from which to coherently conceive a state of being "different" from its own. From what experience might it derive context regarding the concept of additional states of being which are fundamentally antithetical to the only states of being it possesses an experiential referent for? How could spacial existence be meaningfully implied from a non-spacial framework? How could the concept of "matter" be conceived from a state in which there is nothing from which to provide the term meaningful context?

Now I suppose this mind might derive the concept of finitude from witnessing its own thoughts come in and out of being. Perhaps this also might imply causality. However, this notion would prove lethal to the argument for the simple reason that if we assume this mind has always been thinking finite thoughts causally connected to corresponding antecedent thoughts, then it would seem that our eternal mind would suffer the problem of an infinite regress of thoughts which would prevent the concept of a "physical universe" from ever arising. In other words, there would always be an infinite number of antecedent thoughts preceding the thought which prompted the choice to create the universe. Thus the universe could never come about.

Maths is possibly a better way to think about this than colour, sound etc. If you started with a couple of simple integers, but there were no limit of time, could you end up with algebra or geometry?

In order to conceive meaningful quantitative relationships shared between these integers, there must exist a contextual framework from which the notion "quantity" is derived. The reason algebra can form from a knowledge of simple integers is because there exists a contextual framework which renders the notion of an "integer" coherent. Now, imagine if there were no contextual framework from which to make the concept of an integer intelligible...Could you still produce algebra if given an infinite period of time to do so?

Likewise I imagine that anything which could conceive different aspects of its own being could eventually conceive all the different types and structures of being we observe in the world.

Whatever context could be derived from different aspects of being, it could not provide context for states of being for which introspection provides no context. If I were a immaterial mind ruminating on the fact that I exist, and that I have thoughts that shift in content, this would not provide me the added context necessary to derive the notion of spacial existence. This is because the notion of occupying space is completely foreign to anything I have or will experience.

[Danmark]

This conclusion is not warranted, so nothing that flows from it has been established. There are at least two problems with the line of reasoning that led to this unwarranted conclusion. One is the comparison of a finite 'man' to the infinite.

An infinite mind bereft of the context by which to lend its concepts coherency is nothing more than a mind which is infinitely incapable of forming coherent concepts for which it has no experiential referent. With that said, I feel compelled to ask, how might we infer from the first cause argument that this mind possesses infinite capacity? In what way is this even suggested by the argument?

The other is that physicists among others, are able to conceive things they have never experienced.

I must disagree. I invite you to show me one example of a concept, conceived by a physicist, which was not first contextualized from a prior base of experiential knowledge.

When you talk of an 'infinite mind' and follow it with 'bereft of . . . ' it appears to this very finite mind as a contradiction in terms.

Re: the 2d point, I had in mind the thought experiments of Einstein; but if you ask me to find a physicist who reasoned without 'a prior base of experiential knowledge' that, as you know is impossible, since there is no one who could fit such an absolute definition. Even learning language; simply being alive would disqualify one. The way you have set up your definition as broadly as you have the question asks for an absurdity and at best proves nothing.

Part of the problem is your use of the word 'contextualized'.

I agree that for a human it is difficult to think of anything that can be learned without reference to context. This is the claim of the contextualized learning school of thought.

A behavioralist could argue that a child could be taught the symbol '2' and the symbol '4' and the concept that two of the form = the latter without grasping the concept that this relates to the child's prior experience with objects or counting; that is by simply accepting what he is taught by rote. Even if one could get around the idea that using the '2' twice must indicate previous context, learning certainly takes place faster and with more meaning if it is integrated into the learners previous database.

The experience of Helen Keller might present a challenge, but the argument of context is too easy to defend.

In essence, what you are stating in a complicated way is simply the obvious.

But if you are talking about an 'infinite mind' you are stating a different case because you are positing something that we cannot imagine or hope to understand except as a vague abstraction without real understanding.

[Ionian_Tradition]

This conclusion is not warranted, so nothing that flows from it has been established. There are at least two problems with the line of reasoning that led to this unwarranted conclusion. One is the comparison of a finite 'man' to the infinite.

An infinite mind bereft of the context by which to lend its concepts coherency is nothing more than a mind which is infinitely incapable of forming coherent concepts for which it has no experiential referent. With that said, I feel compelled to ask, how might we infer from the first cause argument that this mind possesses infinite capacity? In what way is this even suggested by the argument?

The other is that physicists among others, are able to conceive things they have never experienced.

I must disagree. I invite you to show me one example of a concept, conceived by a physicist, which was not first contextualized from a prior base of experiential knowledge.

When you talk of an 'infinite mind' and follow it with 'bereft of . . . ' it appears to this very finite mind as a contradiction in terms.

I think this is exactly my point. A mind possessing infinite capacity, which invariably lacks the experiential context from which to lend its concepts coherency, is a contradiction in terms. The notion of a universe produced by conscious choice implies this very contradiction.

Re: the 2d point, I had in mind the thought experiments of Einstein; but if you ask me to find a physicist who reasoned without 'a prior base of experiential knowledge' that, as you know is impossible, since there is no one who could fit such an absolute definition. Even learning language; simply being alive would disqualify one. The way you have set up your definition as broadly as you have the question asks for an absurdity and at best proves nothing.

It shows that experiential context is the means by which concepts acquire their coherency. Thus it shows that minds require experiential context in order to conceive coherent concepts. This is all my argument seeks to show. What else were you expecting?

Part of the problem is your use of the word 'contextualized'.

I agree that for a human it is difficult to think of anything that can be learned without reference to context. This is the claim of the contextualized learning school of thought.

A behavioralist could argue that a child could be taught the symbol '2' and the symbol '4' and the concept that two of the form = the latter without grasping the concept that this relates to the child's prior experience with objects or counting; that is by simply accepting what he is taught by rote. Even if one could get around the idea that using the '2' twice must indicate previous context, learning certainly takes place faster and with more meaning if it is integrated into the learners previous database.

Whether or not the child recognized that what it has learned was based on prior experiences is irrelevant, the fact remains that such prior experiential knowledge was required in order to understand what the symbol "2" is. That is my focus.

The experience of Helen Keller might present a challenge, but the argument of context is too easy to defend.

You'll note that Helen Keller was taught language through tactile sensation (the contextual sensation of cool water running on one hand and her teacher tracing the linguistic expression of "water" in the palm of the other). Touch is an experience is it not?

In essence, what you are stating in a complicated way is simply the obvious.

But if you are talking about an 'infinite mind' you are stating a different case because you are positing something that we cannot imagine or hope to understand except as a vague abstraction without real understanding.

Interesting that we are so comfortable ascribing to this exceedingly unfathomable mind very human capacities such as desire & volition... None the less, my argument is not predicated upon a complete understanding of "infinite minds", rather it is predicated upon an understanding of the nature of concepts, particularly that which lends them their logical coherency (viz. context born from experience).

[ytrewq]

I've always believed that the argument of first cause/uncaused cause is an unbeatable argument for proving the concept of God.

It doesn't prove whether Christians, Muslims, Jews, or Jainists have the right idea about God. It doesn't prove whether God is good or evil. It doesn't prove whether God is a personal, loving entity or something as impersonal as some self-causing physics concept that propogates the galaxy.

But I think it does prove the existence of God if God is defined as an entity so infinitely powerful that it becomes self-causing by permeating all time and space. I just don't logically see how something could come out of nothing. In my opinion, that's an absolute, self-evident truth the way Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is. However, I was curious if any of the cynics had anything to say.

I have always found the argument of first/uncaused cause to be a good example of poor logic that gives us no useful information.

Firstly, it smacks of naivety, where the argument is a kind of logical black box, where you put no useful information in, shake vigorously, and expect some conclusion of great significance to come out the other end. Common sense tells us you cannot get useful, significant information out of thin air, any more than a country can create true wealth and a high standard of living simply by printing money. Lot's of things in life are like that, where you don't even need to know the exact details of the argument, to know that the conclusion will be of little value. We are not even talking about garbage-in-garbage-out. We are talking about zero-information-in must equal zero-useful-information-out.

With that said, it is not surprising that it is easy to show that the argument is valueless.

Firstly, the argument creates a logical infinite loop, for the question will always remain, what caused whatever it is that you have placed at the end of the chain of causality? This is not kindergarten, so no special pleading is permitted. What and why caused whatever-it-is that caused the Universe?

Secondly, as you point out, it doesn't actually tell us anything about 'God', except to assign a name to that which we do not know. You can equally well substitute any word you like into the argument, such as 'Vix', instead of 'God' and the conclusion is equally valid or, to be more precise, equally meaningless. Many arguments of this sort end up to essentially be just a substitution of words. We can call the means and reason by which the Universe was created anything we like, such a 'Vix', or 'Tuk', or 'XXX', or 'Dog' or 'God', or whatever, but has this really gained us any useful knowledge that we did not know previously? Of course not. You can't gain true, useful knowledge of any significance just by assigning a name to something.

What often happens next, is that the WORD (and it is no more than that) that has just been assigned to mean the (unknown) 'cause and means by which the Universe was created', is then correlated with the word 'God' that appears in the Bible, which is a logical error on the grandest scale. There is no logical connection whatsoever, and grand confusion and delusion can only result from using the same word for both. As the word 'God' has alread been used in the Bible for an entity with many claimed powers, it is essential choose another word to mean 'the cause and means by which the Universe was created', being the word that was defined in the 'argument'. It doesn't really matter what word you use in the argument, but I would suggest something like 'Cambuc', being a convenient abbreviation for the (unknown) 'Cause And Means By which the Universe was Created'. Then there is no confusion. My apologies to BearCavalry, who I think understands this last point well.

The final conclusion is that the 'first/uncaused cause' argument doesn't teach us anything of value, except to assign a word (I prefer to use the word Cambuc) to the unknown cause and origin of the Universe.

I apologise for being guilty of exaggeration in the above posting.

It is not literally true that 'zero information' went into the Aquinas argument. More accurately, a 'small' amount of information is used, being observation from the real world that apparently all events are caused by something. For example, a ball flying though the air is usually 'caused' by a person throwing or striking it in some manner, and so on for all events. As that is the only information that went into the argument, all that can be logically concluded from it is that 'something' caused the creation of the universe. We don't know what the 'something is, of course, and all Aquinas ends up doing is assigning a word to this unknown something that created the universe. So I should have said, 'very little real knowledge went into the argument, so we might expect that very little real knowledge will come out of it', which is the case.

While Thomas Aquinas could not have known, it turns out that even his assumption that 'everything must have a cause' is wrong. Quantum events and results from chaotic systems simply do not have a cause, and that is a fundamental part of how Nature works. For example, imagine your train, which normally runs every hour, is late. In this case it is fair to say there was a reason, a 'cause'. Maybe it left late for some reason, or maybe for some reason it got held up on the way, but you may be very sure there WAS a reason. Aquinas reasonably assumed that everything had a 'cause', but not so. A Geiger counter measures radioactive decay, by producing an audible click every time an alpa or beta particle is detected. For example, if the source is weak, or you are far from it, you may hear a 'click' roughly every minute. However, while the average rate of arrival of the particles may be once every minute, the actual arrival times are random. Sometime you will observe two particles closely spaced, just seconds apart, while at other time you detect nothing for several minutes. What causes some to arrive early, and others late? With non-uniform arrival time of trains there IS a cause to be sure, but with arrival times of particles measured by your Geiger counter, there is NO cause. The randomness is simply built into Nature, and that is all there is to it. With the knowledge we have today, we are therefore not even entitled to assume there IS a cause for the universe coming into existence. Therefore Aquina's argument moves from telling us nothing of significance, to telling us nothing at all, though that is no slur on Aquinas.

None of this is any way an argument against the existence of a god such as the Christian God. All it means is that the Aquina's argument provides no evidence for the existence of a God, so some other evidence or reason for belief will be required.

[Danmark]

The experience of Helen Keller might present a challenge, but the argument of context is too easy to defend.

You'll note that Helen Keller was taught language through tactile sensation (the contextual sensation of cool water running on one hand and her teacher tracing the linguistic expression of "water" in the palm of the other). Touch is an experience is it not?



p=526081#526081]Danmark[/url]"]
In essence, what you are stating in a complicated way is simply the obvious.

But if you are talking about an 'infinite mind' you are stating a different case because you are positing something that we cannot imagine or hope to understand except as a vague abstraction without real understanding.

Interesting that we are so comfortable ascribing to this exceedingly unfathomable mind very human capacities such as desire & volition... None the less, my argument is not predicated upon a complete understanding of "infinite minds", rather it is predicated upon an understanding of the nature of concepts, particularly that which lends them their logical coherency (viz. context born from experience).

That Helen Keller understood the word and concept of water finally, when she felt it, is precisely why I said the context argument is too easy to defend. At least in the movie versions it was the feel of water that made her 'get it.'

We can only understand the nature of concept with the finite mind we have [obvious]. So how to we comprehend the infinite mind? What can we do? We can posit the concept that the infinite mind can conceive and accomplish something that we can neither comprehend nor describe. I'm not sure where that leaves us.

[Mithrae]

How would you differentiate "states of being" without experiential knowledge of "being" itself? How could you conceive of a space in which such states of being might exist if occupancy of spacial location was foreign to your experience? What context, apart from experience, could you bring to the term "state of being" to lend it coherency? What context could any mind bring to such a concepts which is not first derived from its own experience?

A thinking entity which exists would have to have experience of being. Indeed unless it were completely homogenous - and I'm not sure a completely homogenous entity could be thinking at all - it would have experience of different aspects of its own being. So it would plausibly be able to concieve of different types of being from itself entirely, or of not-being.

Such self reflection would be relegated strictly to the nature of its own thoughts. Experience of its thoughts would provide the context by which to understand thought and its content sure, but this would not provide the necessary context required to conceive additional concepts of matter, space, motion and other such non-mind properties for which there would exist no experiential referent.

And if it conceived of two or more different types of being, it would necessarily have to imagine the manner in which they relate to each other - concepts which we know as space, time and causation.

The problem here is there could be no meaningful context from which to coherently conceive a state of being "different" from its own. From what experience might it derive context regarding the concept of additional states of being which are fundamentally antithetical to the only states of being it possesses an experiential referent for? How could spacial existence be meaningfully implied from a non-spacial framework? How could the concept of "matter" be conceived from a state in which there is nothing from which to provide the term meaningful context?

We know of innumerable concepts which are not directly derived from experience - for example the Hindu and Buddhist notions of karma and samsara, the Christian notion of atonement for sin, imaginary numbers in mathematics, M theory in theoretical physics, dragons or faeries in fantasy and so on. It's by comparison and contrast to what we do experience that these concepts have some meaning, or extrapolation and negation perhaps. If a mind experienced this aspect of its being, and also that aspect of its being differing from the first, it seems entirely plausible that it could conceive another different state of being (extrapolation) which is not itself (negation).

You haven't shown that it is not plausible, or even probable.

Now I suppose this mind might derive the concept of finitude from witnessing its own thoughts come in and out of being. Perhaps this also might imply causality. However, this notion would prove lethal to the argument for the simple reason that if we assume this mind has always been thinking finite thoughts causally connected to corresponding antecedent thoughts, then it would seem that our eternal mind would suffer the problem of an infinite regress of thoughts which would prevent the concept of a "physical universe" from ever arising. In other words, there would always be an infinite number of antecedent thoughts preceding the thought which prompted the choice to create the universe. Thus the universe could never come about.

I imagine that to be considered thinking, there would have to be changes in thought. That needn't imply that everything of that mind's content would be finite.

Maths is possibly a better way to think about this than colour, sound etc. If you started with a couple of simple integers, but there were no limit of time, could you end up with algebra or geometry?

In order to conceive meaningful quantitative relationships shared between these integers, there must exist a contextual framework from which the notion "quantity" is derived. The reason algebra can form from a knowledge of simple integers is because there exists a contextual framework which renders the notion of an "integer" coherent. Now, imagine if there were no contextual framework from which to make the concept of an integer intelligible...Could you still produce algebra if given an infinite period of time to do so?

In this case we have the different aspects of our hypothetical mind's own being with which to count up to three or six or whatever. Few if any people have ever counted to one million, and yet we not infrequently use numbers much bigger (and fractions much smaller) than anything known through experience. My point is that once we've got some numbers - something from which to begin comparing, contrasting and defining relationships - there's no obvious limit to what might be conceived. Could adding and subtracting numbers plausibly produce some concept of linear space?

You haven't shown that it is not plausible, or even probable.

Likewise I imagine that anything which could conceive different aspects of its own being could eventually conceive all the different types and structures of being we observe in the world.

Whatever context could be derived from different aspects of being, it could not provide context for states of being for which introspection provides no context. If I were a immaterial mind ruminating on the fact that I exist, and that I have thoughts that shift in content, this would not provide me the added context necessary to derive the notion of spacial existence. This is because the notion of occupying space is completely foreign to anything I have or will experience.

Once you conceived other things by extrapolation and negation - other numbers or other states of being - you would plausibly (perhaps necessarily) conceive their relationship to each other. Let's bear in mind that according to current physics time and space are not quite the same as how we experience and intuitively imagine them, which highlights the problem I had with your initial comments: Our question is not "Could a hypothetical original mind conceive the universe as we experience it?" it's "Could a hypothetical original mind conceive a universe, which we now experience?" I don't think you've shown that it could not.

Discussing this question with you and Ragna a year or two ago persuaded me that this original mind couldn't be omniscient as Christians generally imagine it - it would have to learn and develop its concepts step by step. Maybe that's why the God of the OT ended up changing his mind about so many things

[Ionian_Tradition]

How would you differentiate "states of being" without experiential knowledge of "being" itself? How could you conceive of a space in which such states of being might exist if occupancy of spacial location was foreign to your experience? What context, apart from experience, could you bring to the term "state of being" to lend it coherency? What context could any mind bring to such a concepts which is not first derived from its own experience?

A thinking entity which exists would have to have experience of being. Indeed unless it were completely homogenous - and I'm not sure a completely homogenous entity could be thinking at all - it would have experience of different aspects of its own being. So it would plausibly be able to concieve of different types of being from itself entirely, or of not-being.

Such self reflection would be relegated strictly to the nature of its own thoughts. Experience of its thoughts would provide the context by which to understand thought and its content sure, but this would not provide the necessary context required to conceive additional concepts of matter, space, motion and other such non-mind properties for which there would exist no experiential referent.

And if it conceived of two or more different types of being, it would necessarily have to imagine the manner in which they relate to each other - concepts which we know as space, time and causation.

The problem here is there could be no meaningful context from which to coherently conceive a state of being "different" from its own. From what experience might it derive context regarding the concept of additional states of being which are fundamentally antithetical to the only states of being it possesses an experiential referent for? How could spacial existence be meaningfully implied from a non-spacial framework? How could the concept of "matter" be conceived from a state in which there is nothing from which to provide the term meaningful context?

We know of innumerable concepts which are not directly derived from experience - for example the Hindu and Buddhist notions of karma and samsara, the Christian notion of atonement for sin, imaginary numbers in mathematics, M theory in theoretical physics, dragons or faeries in fantasy and so on. It's by comparison and contrast to what we do experience that these concepts have some meaning, or extrapolation and negation perhaps. If a mind experienced this aspect of its being, and also that aspect of its being differing from the first, it seems entirely plausible that it could conceive another different state of being (extrapolation) which is not itself (negation).

You haven't shown that it is not plausible, or even probable.

All of the examples you've cited where contingent upon a prior base of experiential knowledge from which these novel concepts emerged. This base of experiential knowledge is what provides these terms the critical context they require in order to be made intelligible. Karma, for instance, requires experiential knowledge of human behavior, as well as experiential knowledge of less than favorable states of being, in order to form a coherent system of moral retribution based upon behavioral conduct. Likewise, Samsara would make little sense in the absence of experiential knowledge concerning both birth and death. In order to conceive a concept derived from an extrapolation of observed states of being, a mind must first draw upon experiential knowledge from which to form an extrapolation. In other words, you cannot extrapolate upon what isn't already there. You would have us believe that it is possible for a mind to extrapolate upon experiential knowledge of a immaterial state of being and then somehow arrive at the concept of a material/spacial existence. I would argue this is no more plausible an assumption than the supposition that the concept of "pain" could be extrapolated upon experiential knowledge concerning a state in which sensation does not exist. Again this is because a state in which there exists no context for physical sensation cannot be extrapolated upon to form a coherent concept of that which it lacks meaningful context for. Whatever the different aspects of our hypothetical mind's state of being are, they cannot form a context for states of being which cannot be contextualized by previously observed states of being.

Now I suppose this mind might derive the concept of finitude from witnessing its own thoughts come in and out of being. Perhaps this also might imply causality. However, this notion would prove lethal to the argument for the simple reason that if we assume this mind has always been thinking finite thoughts causally connected to corresponding antecedent thoughts, then it would seem that our eternal mind would suffer the problem of an infinite regress of thoughts which would prevent the concept of a "physical universe" from ever arising. In other words, there would always be an infinite number of antecedent thoughts preceding the thought which prompted the choice to create the universe. Thus the universe could never come about.

I imagine that to be considered thinking, there would have to be changes in thought. That needn't imply that everything of that mind's content would be finite.

Maths is possibly a better way to think about this than colour, sound etc. If you started with a couple of simple integers, but there were no limit of time, could you end up with algebra or geometry?

In order to conceive meaningful quantitative relationships shared between these integers, there must exist a contextual framework from which the notion "quantity" is derived. The reason algebra can form from a knowledge of simple integers is because there exists a contextual framework which renders the notion of an "integer" coherent. Now, imagine if there were no contextual framework from which to make the concept of an integer intelligible...Could you still produce algebra if given an infinite period of time to do so?

In this case we have the different aspects of our hypothetical mind's own being with which to count up to three or six or whatever. Few if any people have ever counted to one million, and yet we not infrequently use numbers much bigger (and fractions much smaller) than anything known through experience. My point is that once we've got some numbers - something from which to begin comparing, contrasting and defining relationships - there's no obvious limit to what might be conceived.

You haven't shown that it is not plausible, or even probable.

Observation of the quantitative relationships shared between observed states of being (experiential knowledge) allows for context to be provided for further extrapolation upon these relationships. Whatever quantitative expression is produced by such extrapolation will always be intelligible by virtue of the original experiential content extrapolated upon. On this we seem to both agree, but you take it a step further and argue that, for example, it is conceivable that a mind could draw on nothing more than experiential knowledge of quantitative relationships shared between states of being and somehow arrive at the concept of say "tenderness". Yet there is no experiential referent from which to acquire context for what tenderness might entail from observed quantitative relationships, therefore, further extrapolation of observed quantities will never lend context to said notion. Put simply, coherent extrapolation can only go so far as context allows.


That said, you've not addressed the problem of infinite thought regression which I believe constitutes a defeater of both idealism and the first cause argument.

Could adding and subtracting numbers plausibly produce some concept of linear space?

I think at best mere addition and subtraction will produce an increasing range of values. Notions of linear space however are contextualized by spacial existence...Something our hypothetical mind would surely lack, provided it preceded the physical universe. I'm not sure a strong correlation can be drawn between purely quantitative values and spacial occupancy.

Likewise I imagine that anything which could conceive different aspects of its own being could eventually conceive all the different types and structures of being we observe in the world.

Whatever context could be derived from different aspects of being, it could not provide context for states of being for which introspection provides no context. If I were a immaterial mind ruminating on the fact that I exist, and that I have thoughts that shift in content, this would not provide me the added context necessary to derive the notion of spacial existence. This is because the notion of occupying space is completely foreign to anything I have or will experience.

Once you conceived other things by extrapolation and negation - other numbers or other states of being - you would plausibly (perhaps necessarily) conceive their relationship to each other. Let's bear in mind that according to current physics time and space are not quite the same as how we experience and intuitively imagine them, which highlights the problem I had with your initial comments: Our question is not "Could a hypothetical original mind conceive the universe as we experience it?" it's "Could a hypothetical original mind conceive a universe, which we now experience?" I don't think you've shown that it could not.

This completely depends upon whether or not extrapolation and negation concerning this mind's own state of being is conducive for producing the necessary context required to render the concept of a universe intelligible. Given the antithetical nature of its being to that of its converse, I'm not sure how it is reasonable to assume that observation of itself will produce context for concepts correlating to something wholly other than what its narrow range of experiences can contextualize.

Discussing this question with you and Ragna a year or two ago persuaded me that this original mind couldn't be omniscient as Christians generally imagine it - it would have to learn and develop its concepts step by step. Maybe that's why the God of the OT ended up changing his mind about so many things

And thus it would seem the problem of an infinite regression of thoughts preceding the thought which produced the universe renders the existence of our universe logically impossible per (Christian) Idealism. I cannot help but think this renders Idealism untenable.