(Here I requote)At this point we are talking about the concept of "big", we have made "big" into a noun, to talk about it as a thing, just like the example of "existence" — Metaphysician Undercover — hunterkf5732
An adjective is not a different sot of noun. — Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting, I don't generally see it this way, rather I consider the eternal moment, rather than a narrow boundary. — Punshhh
That we experience a narrow present due to restrictions imposed on us due to incarnation in the place in which we dwell. The details of our dwelling place I don't take a lot of interest in, as the science to understand it has not been done yet. — Punshhh
I am not sure of the extent that you consider the momentary generation and dissolution of the objects of sensory experience. Or that they have some kind of longevity?
For me these objects are in a sense eternally present with me in the moment. — Punshhh
Yes "big" can be used as a noun, when we refer to the concept "big" as if it were a thing. That's the point, it's just not common practise to refer to this concept, as it is common practise to refer to the concept of "existence". Say I am describing the concept of big to you, I can say "big is large". Here, big is the subject (noun), and large is the predicate. If you consider "large" itself, you will see that it is a more common practise to use "large" as a noun, this turns "large" into a thing, a concept, such as when we say "at large", large is a thing, but concept only."...big'' cannot be used as a noun. — hunterkf5732
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. — Berowne (Love’s Labour’s Lost)
2. if some God of theism created the universe from something already existing, then whatever comprise the universe "always" existed, perhaps "eternally" (to the extent that's meaningful), and we might as well dispose of the extras, i.e. said God
if there was a definite earliest time (or "time zero"), then anything that existed at that time, began to exist at that time, and that includes any first causes, gods/God, or whatever else
It would then be natural to ask for sufficient and relevant (non-hypothetical) examples of violations of causal closure, in order to justify such extended causation (no special pleading please). — jorndoe
Theism tends to take substance dualism serious, where the mind part is associated with "soul" (or "otherworldly spirit"), which is thought to somehow inhabit and move (worldly) bodies. Some notion of "free will" is thought to reside in this "eternal" soul, as a kind of first cause, or an origin, in part. With this line of thinking, mind and free will are made to escape explanation, even in principle, since they're asserted fundamental, and, as such, inexplicable in terms of anything else.
Yet, religious substance dualism still cannot resolve Chalmers mind-body problems, cannot derive qualia, for example, and also runs into the interaction problem. It's a bit like simply deferring one mystery to another (proposed) mystery, and call it a day; it all seems suspiciously self-elevating or incredulous. Leaning on scientific findings, soul ideation of this nature, might be explicable as a result of introspection illusions, that are subject to an inwards self-blindness necessitating cognitive non-closure (exhaustive self-comprehension may not be attainable).
(Can there be multiple first causes anyway?) — jorndoe
Believe whatever, but free will is notoriously strange (and controversial) in philosophy and other disciplines. — jorndoe
Things have existence, it's an attribute, a property of things, they exist. — Metaphysician Undercover
Maybe?
How can you have a thing already, except it doesn't "have existence"?
Predicate ontologization or existence as ground?
Something's amiss. — jorndoe
So if we desire to apply the PSR to being, there is only the concept to apply it to.
If existence itself is a particular thing, and not a concept, can you point to this thing, or describe to me where I might find it.Why? I can obviously apply it to existence it-self, not the concept. — Marty
If existence itself is a particular thing, and not a concept, can you point to this thing, or describe to me where I might find it.
The PSR says that for every existing thing, there is a reason for its existence. A universal, or generality is a concept. Therefore a universal, or generality, is only an existing thing as a concept. So we have two principal categories, particular things, and universals, or generalities. To treat a member of one category as if it were a member of the other category is a category mistake.
Well, it's particular type of "thing" - namely the entire world. Definitely not an object/subject in the usual sense, but it's surely not a concept. — Marty
Yes, that's right. Take a look around your room at any object there. How would you propose to apply the universal "redness" to any object in that room? You could apply red paint to an object, but you can't apply redness, the universal. If you name that object "X", you make it a subject, and through predication you can say "X is red". You apply the universal to the subject, not to the object. You apply red paint to the object.Also, this doesn't make any sense with other universals. What about the universal redness? Does that mean you can't apply the universal redness to existing things? — Marty
spacetime is an aspect of the universe, but "before time" is incoherent; causality is temporal, but "a cause of causation" is incoherent — jorndoe
...but "a cause of causation" is incoherent — jorndoe
From necessary propositions only necessary propositions follow. — AJ Ayer
The kalam/cosmological argument appeals to causation as we know it. — Jorndoe
Not true, because causation 'as we know it', if scientific causation is the yardstick, which it appears to be, based on your definition, this doesn't recognize formal and final causes. What, for example, causes the laws of motion to have the values they do, and not have some other values, is not a scientific question. — Wayfarer
The kalam/cosmological argument appeals to causation as we know it; otherwise it would have to demonstrate another kind before appealing to it. — jorndoe
The most common use is that causes and effects are events, and events are subsets of changes — they occur, and are temporally contextual — causation consist in related, temporally ordered events.
That's how we know causation.
It so happens this is aligned with conservation. — jorndoe
The argument demonstrates through logic, that causation as we know it is insufficient to account for existence as we know it. Therefore it demonstrates the need to appeal to a further type of causation to account for existence as we know it. — Metaphysician Undercover
the main reply to the simultaneous causation argument is that the cases appearing to exemplify it are misdescribed — Mellor
Assuming only one type of causation like this leads to an infinite regress of causation. An infinite regress does not account for existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
All explanation, consists in trying to find something simple and ultimate on which everything else depends. And I think that by rational inference what we can get to that’s simple and ultimate is God. But it’s not logically necessary that there should be a God. The supposition ‘there is no God’ contains no contradiction. — Richard Swinburne
That would be your reading, not Craig's argument (at Leadership University, at Reasonable Faith). — jorndoe
Actually I've seen Craig claim that the cause of the universe is another efficient cause, but this produces the incoherency which you have referred to.Craig's aim isn't to show that there are things we don't know. But feel free to show there is a special kind of causation (without extraneous implicit presuppositions, special pleading or the likes), preferably applicable here, or, better yet, in a new opening post (might well be interesting). :) — jorndoe
Craig's justification of a non-infinite past duration is largely scientific (Big Bang, entropy, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem), as mentioned in the opening post, though he evades the no-boundary theories. — jorndoe
The assumption of an infinite past duration doesn't account for existence, because it doesn't give us the cause of existence. That's what Craig does indicate, that existing things have a beginning, and because they have a beginning, they have a cause. If we assume that the universe does not have a beginning, then it cannot be an existing thing as described. Then we cannot hand to the universe the title of "existence", because existing things are known to have a beginning, and we are denying that the universe has a beginning. So if the universe has an infinite past, "the universe" is necessarily placed in a category other than "existing thing", according to that description, and this designation does nothing for us in accounting for existing things, or "existence" in general, which refers to things that are generated and corrupted, contingent.Why wouldn't an infinite past duration account for existence? — jorndoe
I think that the changes he makes, perhaps to modernize the argument, distract from the overall coherency of the argument — Metaphysician Undercover
Although there are other contemporary versions of the cosmological argument, these are among the most sophisticated and well argued in contemporary philosophical theology. — Michael Martin
No-boundary theories are [...] consistent with Craig's solution for the cosmological argument — Metaphysician Undercover
Big Bang is not quite justification towards this, entropy may or may not be (also see the fluctuation theorem), the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem more likely is, no-boundary theories are incompatible.2. the universe began to exist
The assumption of an infinite past duration doesn't account for existence, because it doesn't give us the cause of existence. — Metaphysician Undercover
which refers to things that are generated and corrupted, contingent — Metaphysician Undercover
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