how is any of that a commitment to teleology? Like really, explain it in your own words. — StreetlightX

OK - but can I use my own words that I already used...or do I need to reduce the complexity of the language?

The assumption of ID and irreducible complexity is that there exists a teleological relationship between biological structure and functionality (i.e. it is 'made' like that to serve that 'purpose' — Siti

Again, just because a hypothesis begs a question does not mean that that hypothesis isn't true. — RogueAI

True, but if it leads to infinite causal regress why not just admit that we have no clue what caused it and focus on attempting to understand what we know exists? As far as we can possibly tell, the universe has been doing what the universe does for about 14bn years or so - what is the basis for assuming that at some entirely arbitrary point something very extraordinary happened when as far as we can possibly tell, most things are reasonably adequately explained by nothing extraordinary happening (Copernican prinicple)?

IC has no commitment to teleology. IC is essentially the thesis that shit happens; nothing more. — StreetlightX

What are you talking about...OK - here are Michael Behe's own definitions of IC:

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. — Behe

An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway. — Behe

And here's his conclusion from the same article:

If the improbability of the pathway exceeds the available probabilistic resources (roughly the number of organisms over the relevant time in the relevant phylogenetic branch) then Darwinism is deemed an unlikely explanation and intelligent design a likely one. — Behe

How is any of that not a commitment to teleology?

Then the rest of what you said is of no relavence — StreetlightX

I'm not following - because I talked about two ideas (ID and irreducible complexity) making the same assumptions (as they do) my comments are irrelevant? Kindly explain how that works.

Why don't you take those seriously? — RogueAI

I don't think they answer anything - there is absolutely zero evidence for intelligent aliens interfering in biological evolution - and how does it help anyway? If it were true then the big question becomes not where did we come from but where did they come from? Ditto, simulation 'theory'...who or what is the simulator? And in any case, even if we are in a simulation, evolution would appear to be helping us to understand how the simulation unfolds - which, if that's what it is, is what we need to know. Whether it truly is a physical reality or a simulation, our goal is to find out how it unfolds and where we fit into the greater scheme. I don't find either of these ideas particularly useful in terms of elucidating how evolution unfolds, even if they were true.

IC <> ID — StreetlightX

That's why I said "and"...

No. The null hypothesis is that nothing is going on at all. It has nothing to do with the supernatural, and nothing to do with the 'extraordinary'. That one's theory explains nothing at all is indeed an assumption, an assumption that all science must take seriously without which it gives up its right to call itself science at all. — StreetlightX

I think you're missing my point here. The assumption of ID and irreducible complexity is that there exists a teleological relationship between biological structure and functionality (i.e. it is 'made' like that to serve that 'purpose' - and assuming that we are not ascribing creative intentionality to prebiotic systems or microbiological lifeforms I can only assume that such teleological directedness is imagined to be supernatural) - such an assumption cannot be a null hypothesis. The correct null hypothesis is that no such relationship exists and that the evolution of form and functionality is a random walk - I don't see any compelling reason to reject the null hypothesis so far - do you?

What do you mean "off the hook"? — RogueAI

I mean since I do not take simulation theory or the idea that earth-bound biology was somehow "engineered" by advanced aliens seriously, I have no requirement to take intelligent design seriously.

Not in the slightest. The 'point of science' is to follow the evidence, and not make a priori assumptions as to what reality ought to be like. — StreetlightX

How can "irreducible complexity" be anything other than an a priori assumption? Scientists are not sleuths - its not a "crime scene" where evidence is "followed" - scientists are collectors of data and the "null hypothesis" should be the assumption that nothing extraordinary (i.e. 'supernatural') is going on because to assume otherwise is to pull the metaphysical rug from under the methodologically naturalistic feet upon which the scientific method stands. To admit irreducible complexity is to admit fundamental inexplicability - and if some things are fundamentally unexplainable, then the whole scientific enterprise is flawed because it is based on the assumption that the world is fundamentally explainable if only we could find the explanations.

No, but if we're going to take seriously the hypothesis that advanced aliens exist, we're going to have to take seriously the idea that ID might have taken place here. Ditto if we're serious about simulation theory. — RogueAI

Well that's me off the hook then!

Perhaps ironically, 'irreducible complexity' is - or ought to be - the null hypothesis of all evolutionary science. — StreetlightX

Do you mean that you were being ironic? No? OK then - well that simply doesn't work because the whole point of science is to break the reality into smaller and smaller bits in the attempt to better understand how the bits all work together to make the whole. Assuming that a system - at whatever level - is irreducibly complex, invalidates any further attempt to analyse that system. But its actually worse than that, because it really only depends on what level your looking at - the earth as an ecosystem, for example, is irreducibly complex in the sense that it could not have been any other way and still produce the exact variety of lifeforms and biological 'functionalities' as it currently has...but does that mean it must have been deliberately and intelligently created exactly as it is today?

Natural selection does not work teleologically - it merely filters out those that have a negative impact on survivability. Beyond that, more or less anything goes. So just because a particular arrangement of proteins etc. has a certain biological functionality in a particular organism now doesn't imply that the arrangement evolved for that purpose - it just means that the arrangement survived the evolutionary process to have that functionality now.

Materialism is just theology without God. — Wayfarer

Theology without a theos? I like that idea.

I am not a believer in ID either, but I think the field is at least a required counter-balance to mainstream evolutionary science. — Devans99

So should we also have a cancer-denying field of study to counter-balance mainstream cancer research?

Now we have this absurd list of 50 genders — Bitter Crank

That's what happens when you try to categorize a continuum...16 million colours - but there's still only one rainbow - and it is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Neither essentialism nor constructionism can adequately explain that.

It doesn't make sense to take an extreme essentialist or a constructionist position. Clearly, both methods of shaping behavior are in play, — Bitter Crank

I think that's right - but then what we can do (in the light of your other comments) about the 'essentialist' part of the process? To say, "its contrary to nature, therefore wrong" is surely both an extreme essentialist position and a typical conservative (especially religious conservative) view. And it is almost certainly - in the case of human sexuality - just plain wrong, because whilst sex might be entirely genetic, neither gender nor sexuality are. Homosexuality, for example, is a perfectly natural aspect of the animal world - even it is relatively rare (compared to heterosexuality). And the problem here is that since the 'behaviour' is the only part we can modify, 'we' focus on attempting to force the outward expressions of our natural/nurtural sexuality and gender to conform to an evolving cultural 'norm' that we imagine (or rather we are told by the 'priestly' class we are accustomed to delegate our moral-thinking responsibility to) is the 'natural' status quo. That is a categorical error, for the precise reason that it confuses the biologically-determined and (possibly) immutable fact of sex with the evolving socially- and individually-mediated expressions of acceptable gender and sexual orientation. The world simply doesn't work like that (even if a couple of billion humans think it does) - if anyone doesn't believe me, they should pop down to the local zoo and ask a bonobo.

Although my moderate worldview does not divide the world into simplistic dualistic categories, it also can't abide the absurdity of infinite regression. — Gnomon

Well in terms of human gender categories, it wouldn't be an infinite regress, just about 7 and a half billion maximum at one time (as of now). I'm pretty sure human gender identification is a bit of a continuum rather than either an essentialist dichotomy or an infinite array - like a rainbow - you can easily pick out a red bit, but where exactly is the boundary between red and orange? But the colours of the rainbows don't go on forever...although there is a fair bit more to the electromagnetic spectrum than meets the eye...if you follow my illustration...

I think I understand a little what you are saying? We say the cause of boil water is the heat, but if there is no oxygen in the water will it boil? I suppose water with no oxygen wouldn't even be water, but I am getting to, things can not happen if the condition for the happening is not right and we do not have grounds for claiming this happened before that happened. Is that anywhere close to right? — Athena

I think its more the recognition that "happenings" are the real "stuff" of reality - there are really no "points" in space or "moments" in time - these are purely mental abstractions - there are only smaller or greater intervals between the "events" that reality is composed of. The universe is a continual process of happenings - so is a human being and so is an electron...so the whole is a nested and tangled web of events - not objects jumping from one "state" to another.

All we really know about "the beginning" is that it seems, for some reason entirely unknown to us, that the "region" of the universe we could - in principle - observe, suddenly began to expand from very, very small indeed to incomprehensibly huge. We have absolutely no idea whether or not any "thing" existed "before" that (and some argue that "time" began at this theoretical "singularity" - but bear in mind this impossibly small, impossibly dense "point" need not have been all there was, its just all there was of what we can possibly observe looking back from "now" in our own "space-time" bound bubble of a theoretically observable universe. There are 1001 tales about what might have been before - ekpyrotic universes, 'brane theories, multiverses, rebounding universes, cosmological natural selection...

To leap from "Big Bang" theory to "First Cause" is completely unwarranted and there is no way of knowing whether the real "entire" universe is finite or infinite (in any sense) - space and time themselves may even work very differently "beyond" the theoretically observable universe - we will never know.

For me, its just more satisfying (given all the incomprehensibility I just mentioned) to think of the universe as an enormous happening that is continually unfolding - no need to have an ultimate cause or beginning because what we see every day is always a "beginning" and an "end" and "beginnings" and "ends" will probably continue to emerge from the process of reality ad infinitum.

I'm pretty sure that hasn't made it any clearer - but I know what I mean (I think) even if nobody else does! :grin:

https://owlcation.com/humanities/The-Philosophy-of-Truth — ovdtogt

"The correspondence theory seems to be easy to understand – on the surface. It says that something is true if it corresponds to known facts. So, “Grass is green” is a true statement. But, what if you live on the Arctic tundra or the Sahara Desert? Is grass green if you’ve never seen it?"

Is that right? "Known" facts? I would have thought that something would be true if it corresponds to facts (known or unknown)...wouldn't it? Or is the article making a statement about what we might be forgiven for believing to be true?

Anyway, I also think "what is true" is a question of both accuracy AND precision...

For example, to say "grass is green" is a true (accurate) statement IFF we assume an observer with the ability to distinguish green things, but it is an insufficiently precise statement for the general case (for example where there is no non-colour-blind observer see the "green" grass. A more precise statement would be to say that grass contains chlorophyll which absorbs the relatively higher and lower energy radiation in the visible region of the e-m spectrum so that it appears or would appear "green" to an observer capable of colour perception...(mind you even that might not be true in Japan - or Kentucky).

Anyway, my point is that "truth" is also a graininess thing - what's "true" on a microscopic, reductionist scientific view, might appear very different if one were adopting a more expansive and holistic vantage point and vice versa.

I should probably have said 'the matter that constitutes the universe exists within time'. Matter can't exist forever within time and with no matter the universe would be null - leading to the requirement for something external to time to start everything off. — Devans99

Well no again - matter is really just a form of energy (E=mc^2) and the net energy of the universe is exactly the same now as it was "in the beginning" and ever shall be (as far as we know) - probably zero. Matter cannot exist forever (perhaps - but we don't really know that either), but the energy that matter is "made of" (or is a form of) can never be lost (or gained). How then could it have a "beginning"?

The universe exists in time — Devans99

No - time exists within the universe - that's probably where you're going wrong.

If the first cause is timeless then it is beyond cause and effect. This seems the only possible explanation for the origin of everything - there must be an uncaused cause somewhere - else the universe would be null and void. Only something timeless can be an uncaused cause - there is nothing sequentially/logically before such an entity - it has permanent existence. — Devans99

But then the argument is invalidated because it is based on the premise that everything that exists has a cause.

Your argument is essentially:

There are no uncaused causes
Therefore there must be an uncaused cause

In any case, even if you're right, how do you know that it is not the universe itself that is the uncaused cause?

The whole point of my argument was to show that causes require prior causes — Devans99

Therefore there can be no first cause...because a first cause can have no prior cause and therefore cannot exist.

Its not about agreeing to differ, your argument - and Aquinas' argument - fails for the precise reason that its conclusion is a refutation of its premise.

Of course we can agree to differ on whether we believe there have been a first cause or not, but believing something doesn't make it a logical conclusion.

Can you point them out please. — Devans99

If you insist.

If, as you began your argument, there is no first cause, that does not imply that there are no other causes - indeed, my argument is that there may, for all we really know, be an infinite regress of causes - so that means that the cause you call the "2nd cause" still exists, it just isn't the 2nd one. This is the same argument as Russel made in the case of the negative integers, the fact that there is no first, simply does not imply that there are no others, it just means that you can't count them - and it really doesn't matter that he was talking about abstract numbers and you are talking about cause-effect 'events' - your argument fails because you are only proving that the causes are uncountable if the there is no first cause, just as the series of negative integers is uncountable because there is there is no first term. From that point of view, the two are exactly analogous.

To illustrate, lets take the Big Bang (as they call it)...

If you are correct and there is an ultimate first cause which was the cause of the Big Bang, then that First Cause is indeed the first cause and the Big Bang is the second cause...

But suppose there was some other sequence of physical causes of the Big Bang that preceded it, then the Big Bang is no longer the second cause, it is the umpteenth (i.e. an undefined number) cause...but it still happened and the universe it (apparently) brought into being with all its subsequent cause-effects still exists - we just can't put a number to it.

And suppose there were an undefined or infinite sequence of cause-effects leading up to the Big Bang. The Big Bang would still be one of them, just not one we could put a number to. And that is all your argument proves - that if there is no first cause, the sequence of causes of the universe as it is now is uncountable. And such it most obviously is. This does not, of course, prove that the there is an infinite regress of cause-effects, but it certainly doesn't prove there can't be.

What? — Devans99

Yes I see flaws in your logic.

Do you see any flaws in the above logic? — Devans99

Yes.

I'm not sure what to say - I've explained it as clearly as possible - including an example a child could follow - I give up. You will just have to continue onwards with your belief in magic. — Devans99

Okey dokey then! We've progressed from "dumb" and Wikipedia, to "child" and "magic"...and still no logical argument establishing the claimed impossibility of an infinite regress. I am beginning to lose hope!

By definition, an infinite causal regression (into the past) has no first cause - so none of the subsequent causes in the regression exist. — Devans99

Well that gets back to - who was it - Russel's (?) - counter argument...there is such a number as -1 (yes?) so in the series of negative integers, what is the first? Answer: there isn't one...the series is infinite, there is no first term, but all the other terms are still there - there is still a -456, and a -217 and -1...right?

So that was my original objection to your argument, and infinite regression does not mean that all the "subsequent" (to what?) causes don't exist, it simply means there is no "first" cause. To use that as an argument in favour of a first cause is self-defeating because it is a circular argument...essentially you are arguing that since there cannot be any cause effect sequence without a first cause there must be a first cause. But you still have not proved that there cannot be a "turtles all the way down" infinite regress of causes. Your argument still lacks a premise.

On the perpetual motion thing - since you are now resorting to using words like "dumb" and quoting Wikipedia, I can only assume that you have not yet thought of anything in the history of the universe that was not/is not moving? Right?

Your formulation leads to an infinite regress of causes into the past with no first/ultimate cause. Thats impossible - the cause of everything has to be external to time. — Devans99

But how can you prove logically that it is "impossible"? Just because someone - even someone as smart as Aquinas - can't get their head around it doesn't prove its impossible. So far all you and Aquinas and Lane Craig and...the Lord knows how many others who have attempted to make this argument in various ways...have done is to declare that an infinite regress is impossible...maybe it is, maybe it isn't - but you can't prove it. Neither can you disprove perpetual motion - you have failed several times already to name one thing in the entire history of the universe that is not continually moving. We have absolutely zero evidence for anything not moving - heck, according to the most recent science, even space itself is in "motion" - expanding...into? What?

Anyway, can you please provide a logical argument for the impossibility of an infinite regress and then you will have at least one premise for the Prime Mover argument. So far I can't see there any premises on which to base the argument.

All the particles involved always have well defined positions and velocities. — Devans99

Well no they don't really, indeed it seems to be a fundamental (not just practical) limitation of the universe that "particles" (whatever those are) cannot have both a clearly defined velocity (momentum) and a clearly defined position at the same time...but in any case, a clearly defined position and velocity can only be true at a "moment" - i.e. no time has elapsed - as soon as the clock ticks to the next attosecond, not only is the "state" of that particle abstract, it is also history...an abstract approximation of the history of that "particle's" process.

1. It is clear that nothing can exist permanently within time.
2. It is also clear that everything in time requires a prior cause.

I see no other option but a recall to a timeless 'something' that is the ultimate cause of everything.

If you disagree, what is your solution that encompasses axioms [1] and [2] above? — Devans99

I don;t have a solution that encompasses both of your premises because I would challenge the first premise...

First of all, how do you know that nothing can exist permanently within time? How can you even define "exist" without reference to time? What is the meaning of "permanently" apart from any notion of time? And in any case, if time began with BB, how do you know it will not also end with the Big Crunch (or whatever happens at the end of the process of the universe)? And if that is the case, would it not be true to say that the universe has itself existed (and will continue to exist) permanently throughout time?

So maybe we need to think about how your first premise is formulated because as it stands it is neither a self-evident axiom nor a testable hypothesis - and given that the universe has apparently been in existence since the "beginning of time", is still in existence now, and is giving every indication that it will continue to exist until "the end of time" - it is quite possibly just wrong.

So how about we say:

1. The universe does indeed exist permanently (it perdures, is a perduring process) within time
2. Everything in the universe requires a prior cause

Therefore, the cause of everything in the universe exists within the universe.

Of course that's not telling us very much - except that there is no need for "the work of an Almighty hand" to cause "the radiant orbs" to "move round the dark terrestrial ball" - they do it all by themselves - as far as we can possibly tell.

Opinions, arguments, pro et contra, ...? — jorndoe

Is preaching warranted? From a Christian POV (not that I have one of those, you understand), I'm told by some people who do have one, that preaching is not only warranted but mandated on account of the need for "all the Nations" to hear the Good News before the end comes...

Statistically, apparently, there are some 2.2 billion Christians out of total world population of about 7.6 billion - so that means if every Christian took this mandate on board and preached to no more than 3 or 4 others today, the end could very well come tomorrow. I'm not holding my breath!

I am not moving relative to anything else so I am in a state. — Devans99

You are moving relative to more or less everything else - you just don't sense it because because you are sitting on a fairly large lump of rock that is spinning you around its own center of gravity faster than a jet plane, whizzing you around the sun faster than a rocket and is itself being carried around the center of the Milky Way at half a million miles per hour...how is that "a state"? Relatively, of course, and those are the only kind of states there are...relative states - approximations - abstractions - not real...

...systems do not jump from state to state - that's really what Zeno's arrow paradox shows - arrows don't jump from state to state in space, they fly continuously through space - they process continuously... obviously our descriptions can't match that because we would have to have an infinite set of descriptions with infinitesimal graduations for every aspect of reality - the arrow hitting the target does not depend on any previous "states" of the arrow, it depends on the process of its flight, which is potentially (potentially mind you) describable (describable mind you) by any number of an infinite array of imaginary "states" (i.e. momentary - actually 'timeless' - locations and velocities). The locations and velocities are not real - but the flight (i.e. the process) is real.

Nothing can be causeless and nothing can be the cause of itself. — Devans99

Right - two of Aquinas' premises. Ergo - there can be no uncaused cause - right! And who says nothing can be the cause of itself? What does that really mean?

This is the main problem with Aquinas' logic (and Lane Craig after him) - the argument basically goes:

P1 there can be no uncaused cause
P2 nothing can be self-existing

Therefore there must be a self-existing uncaused cause

That would certainly rank as an epic fail in a Logic 101 exam.

Please consider the argument given in this OP:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6218/the-universe-cannot-have-existed-forever/p1 — Devans99

In this argument you contend that the "lack of an initial state invalidates all the subsequent states - a system’s initial state determines all subsequent states." But what exactly is a "state" - the universe does not really have "states" - it has, or rather it IS, process..."states" are purely imaginary and therefore by your own definition do not have physical existence. "States" are "freeze-frame" snapshots - abstractions, not realities. To refute this, simply name one thing that is not moving - i.e. is actually in a "state" right now (PS - to make it easier, "now" can be any time you like 14 billion years ago, 10 billion years in the future...whenever you like).

Everything that exists in time has a cause. — Devans99

Egg zackly! And to be a cause of a physical effect, one has to exist in time n'est-ce pas? Do you know of any cause that exists "not in time"?

An infinite regress of causes has no first or ultimate cause, so it's a simple matter of induction to show that the whole of such sequence cannot exist. — Devans99

Wrong - an infinite regress of anything has no first term - that's all you can say...using the example of the negative integers, I can think of the biggest integer I can imagine and because I can imagine it, it exists (at least as an idea in my mind) and so does the entire series of negative integers between it and -1 - and I know for sure that there is another 1 before it, and another before that (even if I can't name those numbers). Its exactly the same with causes - just because I don't know what the primordial causes of the universe becoming as it came to be at the point where we can begin to pick up the threads of cause and effect doesn't mean those causes don't exist. "Prime Mover" is just a gap filler - and in any case, the kind of "Prime Mover" Aquinas was talking about simply replaces one infinite regress with another - God (as he was 1 second before the act of creation, then as he was two seconds before, 3, 4, 10 million years before...and before you argue that time didn't exist "before" the BB, you will also have to convince me that how that could possibly have changed in no time. And that really is the problem with notion of a prime mover - it - whatever we imagine it might have been, would have to have "acted" to cause "change" in "no time". To me, its a far simpler induction to show that "action" and "change" cannot happen in "no time".

Perpetual motion without a prime mover is an impossibility. — Devans99

Motion with a prime mover is is not perpetual...but really the evidence suggests that perpetual motion is exactly what we see - if you want to convince me otherwise, you just have to name one thing (just one) that is not moving right now.

2. An Infinite Regress of Causes is Possible

This is plainly nonsense — Devans99

Is it? Apart from imaginary billiard tables, why? And also - think of it the other way round - if at some future point, all the particles in the universe were to stop moving there were no further change - what could possibly set it going again? So absent the assumption of a "Prime Mover", is there actually any compelling reason to imagine that reality has ever done anything other than continually change...forever before?