It's just hard to find any conceptual "meat" in this first principle. — Hoo
One has to appeal to the heart and to the will - not to the mind and the intellect — Agustino
.There is, monks, an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated. If there were not that unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born — become — made — fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn — unbecome — unmade — unfabricated, escape from the born — become — made — fabricated is discerned. — The Buddha
I'm not sure that makes sense...
The terms "instantaneous" and "cause" are already temporal, and "before time" is incoherent.
So, if said "first cause" did not begin at the definite earliest time, then what?
You could redefine "cause", but that would most likely be special pleading for the occasion. — Jorndoe
The principle of sufficient reason cannot apply to existence (everything) without circularity, since otherwise the deduced reason would automatically not exist — which is contradictory.
Therefore, applying the principle to the whole universe, automatically/implicitly assumes something "extra universal" — which just is a subtle form of begging the question. — jorndoe
I think the argument is: the PSR is either false or true (LEM). — Marty
the cosmological argument is an invalid a posteriori inductive argument because experience does not justify extrapolating from experience to "beyond" — 180 Proof
I am reporting back with the findings :D It's not that I can't believe the pink elephants - it's that I don't want to believe it, and I can't make myself want to believe it. Again - it's a matter of the will. If you convinced my will to believe that, then I would, provided that my intellect would not stand in the way.(Just try believing there are pink elephants on your lawn for five minutes sharp, and report back with findings.) — jorndoe
Thanks for the recommendation.We just watched "Holy Hell" (2016) on CNN the other day. — jorndoe
The principle of sufficient reason cannot apply to existence (everything) without circularity, since otherwise the deduced reason would automatically not exist — which is contradictory.
Therefore, applying the principle to the whole universe, automatically/implicitly assumes something "extra universal" — which just is a subtle form of begging the question. — jorndoe
Is an instantaneous cause temporal, though? I mean, I don't think so. Something that can be said to be in an instant wouldn't be occurring in time at all - that requires duration. I don't think this is a really discrete moment in time, like a Planck time unit, but something without duration. It's resistance to being caught into time at all. And if you think such a thing is impossible, then I would say you estimate time wholes behaving the same way as object wholes, but we might argue that time is not consistent of part wholes at all like extended objects are, and that you merely assumed such in viewing time as a spatialized continuum. — Marty
It's not about chemistry, it's about what makes chemistry possible. — Wayfarer
the cosmological argument is an invalid a posteriori inductive argument because experience does not justify extrapolating from experience to "beyond"
"The great mystery is not why there is dark energy. The great mystery is why there is so little of it,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford University, at a 2007 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “The fact that we are just on the knife edge of existence, [that] if dark energy were very much bigger we wouldn’t be here, that’s the mystery.” Even a slightly larger value of dark energy would have caused spacetime to expand so fast that galaxies wouldn’t have formed.
[Astrophysicist, Sandra] Faber declared that there were only two possible explanations for fine-tuning. “One is that there is a God and that God made it that way,” she said. But for Faber, an atheist, divine intervention is not the answer.
“The only other approach that makes any sense is to argue that there really is an infinite, or a very big, ensemble of universes out there and we are in one,” she said.
Once we have granted that any physical theory is essentially only a model for the world of experience we must renounce all hope of finding anything like the correct theory ... simply because the totality of experience is never accessible to us. — Hugh Everett III
The LEM is a little problematic. It seems to assume that propositions aren't fuzzy/ambiguous. But what is a reason or a ground? In our worldly lives, it seems that we naturally postulate necessities, which may just be shared, strong expectations when closely analyzed. As we become more critical thinkers, we become more conscious of what we are doing. We attain some distance and apply criteria like falsifiability, for instance. Then we want our postulated necessities or expectations-as-axioms to fit well together into an economical system. The ground may be (usefully described as) psychological.I think the argument is: the PSR is either false or true (LEM). If it's false, then the world as a totality would be without reason, including our very thoughts which are a part of it. But then our very reasons for justification would not have ground. — Marty
The problem is JornDoe, that 'the beyond' has now become a necessary postulate for many modern cosmologists, in the form of the so-called 'mutlverse speculation', on the one hand, or Everett's 'many-worlds hypothesis' on the other. — Wayfarer
It's not so straight forward as you make this out to be. Space and time are concepts. They are the means by which we understand objects and processes. Sure, concepts are aspects of the universe, but if our concept of space, or our concept of time is inadequate for a true understanding of reality, then it would be in some sense, wrong, or incorrect. In that case, the space, or time, represented by the concept would not be an aspect of the universe. The concept would be, in that respect, fictitious.@Metaphysician Undercover, spatiality and objects are related much like temporality and processes, and they're all aspects of the universe.
At least when going by common ontological terminology. — jorndoe
It seems if the cosmological argument proves the universe to be contingent it necessarily implies there's something beyond the universe. — Marty
can you give me examples of where propositions are fuzzy and ambiguous? — Marty
I'm wondering if it's not just the formalization of expectation. We are future oriented beings, so we want to find relationships in the past and present that help us meet or create this future. Obviously there is some serious structure in the everyday external world. Obviously we trust science, too, at least as far as technology. But why should any event have a cause or (in other words?) have been somehow predictable? Is it because we are helpless against utterly unpredictable events? It makes sense that we would have evolved to look for "causes" or to posit relationships in events. So maybe there's a gut-level itch for a cause and yet no strong argument for PSR beyond economy and instinct.Are you saying the PSR is a pragmatic and useful way of viewing the world? That only exists in the intellect? — Marty
Sure, I'll try.And can you give me examples of where propositions are fuzzy and ambiguous? — Marty
There's a view of the self as a self-reweaving network of beliefs and desires that I find plausible. I think the representational paradigm (truth as correspondence) is great for ordinary life, but I lean toward an instrumentalist view as ideas become more abstract. It becomes less clear that they correspond to anything. But if they bring us pleasure and get us what we want, we learn to trust them, or put weight on the them so that we'll defend them against skeptics or opposite beliefs. Roughly, our abstract beliefs are underdetermined by the social and physical constrains on our behavior. So there's a trial and error process of acting as if and then there's the constant attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance or friction between under-determined ideas as instruments. For instance, this theory is one such instrument, since you've probably been doing just fine without it. So, yeah, common sense with a variable cream on top where religion and metaphysics and poetry live. And must we assume that there is a single truth in abstract matters? Or just differing, useful mind-tools? Forgive the spiel! I was trying to give context...The need for a ground is merely to say all unconditioned beings must find their end in something other than themselves. Are you talking about epistemological foundationalism/anti-foundationalism? — Marty
Yeah, fine-tuning works best without modal realism and many-worlds, so maybe there's an odd sort of competition going on? Which do you think has the best chance of becoming verified/falsified (or scientific) anyway...? — Jordoe
* I don't agree with (1). I think that's rather an assumption that we don't really have any good empirical or logical justification for, as with the assumption that all events in general (not just coming-into-existence events) are causal.1. whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence
2. the universe began to exist
3. therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence
4. it's rational to believe that said cause is God — jorndoe
I am reporting back with the findings :D It's not that I can't believe the pink elephants - it's that I don't want to believe it, and I can't make myself want to believe it. — Agustino
the naive argument that the physical sciences have somehow eliminated the need to a 'supernatural' explanation, is not actually borne out by the current state of science, which feel compelled to appeal to 'alternative' supernatural explanations, such as the existence of infinite universes — Wayfarer
quite a few supernatural explanations have been supplanted by natural explanations throughout history, little or no natural explanations have been replaced by supernatural explanations
* (4) seems arbitrary; it seems to be a non-sequitur. What would actually follow is "Therefore there was some-we-haven't-the-faintest-idea-what that was the cause, where somehow unspecified it would make sense to say that the cause in question was not a part of the universe." — Terrapin Station
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