This is the crux presupposition in your thought:

Now when we rewind, we're of course rewinding such that all those facts we took note of are all the same

I reject this. When you rewind the clock, you are rewinding the facts which does not itself necessitate that when you start the clock again those facts will re-emerge. You haven't provided any justification for why one should believe that and it just begs the question by presupposing that causal determinism is true.

E.g., if it is a fact that I went for a run today and you rewind the clock to right before I began my run; then ceteris paribus we don't know that I am going to go for a run today. If we believe causal determinism, the loosest sense of the term, is true, then we have reasons to believe I will necessarily go for that run.

The problem is that you are claiming to refute libertarianism by presupposing causal determinism in the first place; and you are doing this by implicitly stipulating that when the facts are rewound those facts are inevitably going to happen again: that's just saying "causal determinism is true" with convoluted steps.

EDIT:

So, you end up needing to prove causal determinism to prove that your OP's argument is true; which defeats the purpose of your argument in the OP in the first place.

So, why should one expect the same outcome if we rewind all the facts?

Moreover, with respect to my original critique, what if we only rewound the physical facts?

I abstain from conversations having free will as the topic, insofar as the very notion of “free will”, as far as I’m concerned, has already confused the issue.

How does it confused the issue?

…is only the case under very restricted conditions, re: pure practical reasoning, in which the subject himself is necessary and sufficient causality for all that which is governed by those principles, sometimes even to the utter subordination of natural instincts

Can’t we subordinate our natural instincts all the time? How is this “very restricted”? Most people don’t have, e.g., brain tumors.

How does the bold part even work. Why would new causality being generated be any advantage at all? Suppose one uses this kind of free will to cross a busy street. Generating new causality seems to be pure randomness, as opposed to actually looking and using the state of the cars as the primary cause of your decision as to when to cross.

That is beyond the scope of my critique: I am merely pointing out to @flannel jesus that it is not a valid rejoinder to libertarianism to stipulate one will will the same (and thusly the change in causality is from some other source if the causality is different at all the second or third time we rewind the clock).

They tend to believe in a soul or immaterial mind and that reality has top-down causality to some extent; which would not be random: e.g., things ordering themselves in correspondence with an idea is not random at all. The idea is that the higher-ontological things have some sway over what exists at the lower-ontological things.

I am not a libertarian, but the way I would think about it is that our brains facilitate our ability to reason and reason governs our actions; so the "top" does have influence over the "bottom" causally to some extent. The memory your brain formulates influences your decisions, which can impact how the brain organizes itself in the future. Our brains are not like mechanical domino-style robots.

In your example we don't, or if we do it is presupposed we will will the same anyways, whereas in mine we do but we could will differently.

My point is not that libertarianism is correct but, rather, that your OP is a straw man of their position: no libertarian worth any salt is going to disagree with the idea that if you will the same then you will will the same. They are going to note that if you rewound their motives and reasons and the physical aspects of their action, then they may have had different motives or reasons and thusly willed differently. For libertarians, willing is a source of causality and not merely a biproduct of physical causality.

Do you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?

The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but aren’t the same.

If, in principle, reason were to manifest in a being which had a wholly different physical constitution, then it’s modes of cognition would be the same as it relates to reasoning even if the natural laws governing (and the natural organs or functions ontologically grounding) that reasoning is wholly different than our own.

Now, what are the kinds of being which have reason but do not have human brains? I don’t know, exactly because we’ve never met one.

Applied ethically, I think educating the people and arming them is the best solution against tyranny and injustice. I am not saying we get rid of the police or the justice system, but I wouldn't rely on it heavily like China does.

CC @flannel jesus

The physical causality could be the exact same and the intent pursued could be the exact same. Each option toward the given intent pursued is of itself, however, a more proximal possible intent toward the here distant intent one aims to actualize.

If the intent is the exact same, then only the means towards that end could be subject to change (in principle); so it would be impossible that one has the leeway freedom to intend differently in your example here (to Flannel’s point). Javra, what you are saying here is that one can intend something differently when they intend the same thing: it’s internally incoherent.

To be honest, I am not sure of the exact threshold; but I do lean towards the people over the government. I do believe, to relate to the OP, that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in, on, or with their private property as long as they, within that private property, create the privacy. So letting the government willy-nilly enter into people's bank accounts is a no-no: that gives them entirely too much power.

Not quite. I was saying that willing, under some forms of libertarianism, generates new causality that originates from the will and the willing may differ even if the physical causality differs (according to this view)(such as if there is a soul or something like that). So if some person performs action, A, with intent, M, and you rewind the physical causality; then:

1. A, which is comprised of intent with physical causality originating therefrom, is only rewound in terms of having the intent and the physical causality it introduced into reality; and

2. If M is from leeway freedom, then it does not originate from the physical causality you rewound; and

3. If #2, then that person could will A for another intent, N, or intent some other action, B, with some other intent.

:up:

CC: @Mww

It is also worth mentioning Kant's transcendental freedom, which does not fit cleanly between compatibilism and incompatibilism; and of which claims that our reasoning is governed by rational principles unrestrained by one's natural instincts.

This kind of view could be incorporated, to wit, into a version of compatibilism different than the OP's (but yet still naturalistic––although Kant wouldn't probably go for it); such that our brains are causally determined but, when functioned properly, facilitate our ability to be regulated in thought through reason's own principles instead of anything about the natural laws which govern the brain which facilitates it.

The key difference here would be that your OP accepts that there is some sort of connection between the causal underpinnings which facilitate reason and reason herself such that reason cannot think according to her own laws. Why should someone accept that?

EDIT:

E.g., when I determine that '1 + 1 = 2' it does not seem to be dependent on the underlying natural laws which facilitated my ability to determine it; but, rather, is governed by rational principles of logic and cognition which have nothing to do with those aforesaid natural laws. So long as my brain is healthy enough to facilitate it, my thinking powers will be able to reason in this way.

I think this is a conflation between physical and motive causality: I would recommend looking into Schopenhauer's "On the Fourfold Foundation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason". In short, a libertarian is not going to grant you that free will requires that one could have done otherwise if their will is the same when time is rewound but, rather, that one could have willed differently if the physical causality were rewound.

Generally my government policy is to starve it: I'd rather give the people too much control over themselves than the government too much control over the people.

I never claimed time doesn't exist.

This is a joke right?:

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.

That's the very first sentence of the OP.

Time is a concept.

Time may be real, a [self-reflective] concept, and exist a priori all at once. It is on your OP to demonstrate why it is only a [self-reflective] concept.

You cannot say time is real. It would be like saying water is real. Water is hot or cold, not real or unreal.

Water is definitely real: no one disputes that. To say it is not real, is to say that it does not exist in reality. You deny that water exists in reality???

Concepts are not real or unreal

Concepts exist: they are not real.

You either know a concept or you don't know it.

Whether the concept exists is a separate question than if I know about the concept.

They have been demonstrated, but not scientifically. I don't know why one would expect it to be proven scientifically when it is presupposed for science to work in the first place.

If you really don't believe we know what truth is, then you can't do science properly; because it depends on investigating the truth.

For my point there, any common sense use of the word will do. You cannot claim the time does not exist (or is not real) merely because people can fail to recognize it as such: that's a bad argument, and that is exactly what you are doing when you bring up indigenous people who fail to understand that they age.

Beyond that point of contention, I would say that what is real and what exist are different; because there are things which have being but are not a member of reality (e.g., the feeling of pain, the phenomenal color of orange, a thought, the a priori concept of quantity, etc.). As such, I denote what is a member of reality proper as real and what has being as what exists; and, therefore, everything that is real exists but not everything that exists is real.

Eh, scientism doesn't work nor logical positivism. E.g., you can't scientifically determine the nature of truth, logic, mathematics, knowledge, some a priori modes of cognition, etc.

There is nothing science can say of, e.g., the nature of a proposition.

Likewise, metaphysics which is not derived from science may still be informed by it; and the parts that are not are guided by that application of reason to evidence---not the imagination (if it is done properly).

The idea that one could fail to recognize that time is real does not negate nor suggest that it isn't real.

However, under the Kantian interpretation of time, yes, time is not real but exists. You seem to be conflating self-reflectively knowing time exists with it not existing. By concept of time, I am presuming you are exclusively referring to a concept derived through experience by self-reflective reason.

The process of aging is a temporal process--hence in time. One might say, now, that aging is a representation of causality which is atemporal; but the aging itself is certainly temporal.

That's because time still exists even though they haven't figured it out, Corvus.

That is single-handedly the dumbest bit of sophistry I've ever heard. Growing old is aging in the sense that I obviously meant it; and you just sidestepped the question.

Why would my body have to exist in space, but I can still age without time?

Kant said that, because time is a concept? In Kant, time is definitely internal mental condition (a priori) for human understanding. A priori here means it is innate, and doesn't rely on experience on the empirical world

For Kant, time and space are modes by which our faculties of cognition cognize sensations. You are claiming that there is a space beyond that a priori space but yet that there isn’t a time beyond that a priori time. What is the argument for that?

Any world events, objects or matter can be conceptualised, and time is a typical case of the conceptualisation

It is not a concept: it is a pure intuition of our sensibility; and so is space. A concept is kind of idea comprised of attributes; whereas an intuition is a seeming. An a priori concept, e.g., is quantity; an a priori intuition is space.

:up:

I don't know why space is a requirement for me to be real; and, if it does, then why time wouldn't.

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist.

Hmmm, I think @Mww would agree that objects being real checks out, but why would space be real if you hold time as merely a priori?

:lol:

I am just waiting for you to keep periodically mentioning this lmao.

I guess I don't understand what is entailed by being a mod. Why would you want to step down? Are you just trying to free up your time?

Irregardless, I wish you the best, fdrake. Quality philosophers are quite rare on here. I hope you choose to at least stay as a member on the forum.

You too, my friend! I look forward to our next conversation.

Unfortunately, I don't see any way forward either ):

I think we are going in circles at this point, so I am going to remove my hat from the ring. The last thing I will say is that, again, your arguments depend on conflations---especially between a set and its members and between C and A.

I think it becomes a requirement from believing that there is a simple being and it must have these properties and having to reconcile that contradiction. I think it ends up becoming more cogent than people let on: the properties we assign God are analogical, and not univocal, equivocation and they do seem to reduce to each other by-at-large. Maybe there's some hiccups with intelligence and pure simplicity, but I think it seems to work fine.

I apologize: I was not alerted to your original response because there were no references to me in there (technically).

• Here is a series
• That series has some prime item on which it is based
• And this we call god.
…
And the last step is a puzzle, Aquinas' "And this we all call god"

This seems to be a straw man. My OP goes into detail why it does not suffice to just identify this simple being as a simple being full-stop. I didn’t just say “and let’s just call this God”.

So taking an example from the SEP article, in order to say that ‘Whatever thinks exists’ we already have supposed that there is something that thinks, that the domain of thinking things is not empty

This is a conflation, though. The cogito ergo sum presupposes that something exists and that we can say that the thinker is that being. I don’t buy the argument, but, nevertheless, it is not presupposing that a thinking being exists to prove that a thinking being exists.

The first is that formal logic is just incapable of displaying the structure of such existential arguments.

Do you just mean that we must presuppose something exists to prove something else exists?

The cosmological argument hinges on the premise that there is something rather than nothing, the non-emptiness of the domain of being

True, but wouldn’t the domain of being have to be non-empty since we exist?

There's also the more obvious problem that god is both simple and yet has parts - will, intelligence, and so on. The quick retort is that these are all one, that god's will, intelligence and so on are all the very same. That's quite a stretch, since for the purposes of the argument they are each separated out. Faith is a powerful force. Yet if one begins with a contradiction, anything is provable.

Firstly, I think it is perfectly valid to see it from the outside as a sort of ad hoc rationalization given that there is an absolutely simple being and it has these properties (which are prima facie irreconcilable).

Secondly, I don’t think it is as incoherent as you might think. Omnipotence is just power which is reducible to pure will; pure will implies intelligence (no matter how rudimentary) and is reducible thereto; pure will is reducible to pure actuality; pure actuality is reducible to pure simplicity; pure simplicity (and actuality) imply immutibility; etc.

Apply the label "necessitarianism" to my view if you like

Sorry, I don’t understand what you are saying then. You seem to keep flip-flopping. First you mentioned that everything exists necessarily such that there is no way they could have failed to exist—which simply is necessitarianism—and then you turn around and say that you do believe that there may be ways that some things could fail to exist.

Here’s what I am thinking you are attempting to convey, and correct me if I am wrong: saying that a thing could have failed to exist if its parts did not get so arranged (or did not exist) does not demonstrate that it could have failed to exist because it may be the case that there were no other causal possibilities such that it would not have existed. Is that right?

You apparently believe contingency is the default: if necessity isn't proved (or accounted for), contingency should be assumed. I believe the converse: if contingency can't be proved (or accounted for), then necessity should be the default

No, I am using them in the traditional sense. The modality of possibility is about a thing not contradicting the mode of thought used to conceive it: this is not the same thing as conceivability. There are three modes of possibility (traditionally): metaphysical, physical, and logical.

Metaphysical possibility is such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate the nature of things; physical possibility such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate Nature (viz., physics); and logical possibility such that a thing could exist in a manner that does not violate laws of logic.

This is not the same as conceivability. E.g., it is physically impossible to jump to the moon but conceivable to jump to the moon; it is metaphysically impossible for H20 not to be water but it is conceivable; it is logically impossible for a != a but it is (to some extent) conceivable.

Moreover, contingency is the dependence of one thing on another for its existence; and necessity is the independence of a thing on any other things for its existence.

I think, for you, contingency is the possibility of non-existence for an existent thing (whether it be in the past, present, or future); and necessity is the impossibility of non-existence for an existent thing (ditto). Is that right?

In my sense of the term, a table is contingent upon its parts; and, if causal determinism or necessitarianism is true, could not have failed to existence.

My point is that the OP depends on my kind of contingency in terms of what the word refers to in its underlying meaning; and you cannot wipe this away by engaging in a semantic dispute about how to define contingency.

That depends on the metaphysical system you're using to account for it

Causality is traditionally and widely accepted as explanations of why a thing is the way it is. What you are probably thinking of is physical or material causality.

My impression is that yours depends on a form of essentialism that considers an object's identify to be associated with an essence, to which "accidental" (contingent) properties may attach

That is a fair assessment of the OP, but I don’t think this is true for the subsequent short-hand arguments I gave. It depends solely on the idea that this being depends on its parts to exist even if it could not have failed to exist; no different than how, e.g., platonic forms depend on each other atemporally.

Even if you don’t think there’s an essence to a, e.g., chair; I think you can agree that that particular chair would not exist if its legs, the wood it is made out of, etc. did not exist and you can also simultaneously agree that the chair, under your view, could not have failed to exist.

Without contingent properties, your argument from composition fails. That's because an object's constituents are an identity to the object itself.

No. The chair still depends on its parts to exist even if it could not have failed to exist. The chair does not exist as a brute existence.

No, spatialized language is the notion of the space metaphor to talk about time

I don’t think time can be described through space, but I am open to hearing why you think this.

It's a common thing to do, in language, to talk about people having abstractions as if they are themselves substances. Such as, "You have so much love!" Love is an abstract concept here that is treated as a thing that can we have so and so much of.

This is good. Here’s a couple things to note:

1. This is only a reification fallacy if anti-realism with respect to the topic is true. E.g., the number 2 is not real IFF mathematical anti-realism is true; and same with love.

2. Assuming things like, e.g., love are not real but exist as emergent-phenomenal processes of our organism, these still have parts. E.g., love is a feeling of strong intimacy, attraction, etc. for another and is composed, at a minimum, of a strong connection between a donor and recipient and all which is subject to time (viz., loving through time).

3. When I was talking about space and time as substances, I meant it in the realist sense; so that is not a reification fallacy. I was speaking of what it would look like if one believes they are substances.

Why the heck does it matter what necessitarianism would entail?

Your view is a form of necessitarianism, as exemplified by your example from “A Case for Necessitarianism”. The ideas you quoted are only compatible with necessitarianism.

Let’s back track a bit, because we are not making progress. Let me ask you this: do you believe that a table is dependent upon its parts to exist?

I previously called you out for what appeared to be, your conflating conceivability with metaphysical possibility

I was charitably interpreting your idea of a “non-actual possibility”: like I stated before, possibility is coherence of a thing with a mode of thought (e.g., metaphysics, physics, logic, etc.).

I explained why I'm convinced the past is finite

How is that relevant to the OP?

As an aside, I arrived at my view that the past is finite after spending a good bit of time examining the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Yes, I could tell: the Kalam argument is not neo-Aristotelian. It depends on an argument from efficient causes—which is a per accidens kind of causal series—whereas Aristotelian arguments stem from per se kinds of causal series. For Aristotle, in fact, matter is eternal and yet still requires a first cause; and even if it were finite then it would still need a first cause (according to him).

The OP’s argument is from per se causality.

My only point here is to demonstrate that I don't simply go into denial when seeing an argument I disagree with

I am not engaging in your argument for a finite past because it is a red herring: it does not matter if there is an infinite past of causal events or not for the argument of composition to work. If you think it does, then I would need to here why before spending the time engaging in your argument.

Composition and cause are two different things

Yes, but composition is a kind of causality—I’ve maintained this the entire discussion. Again, composition is a kind of per se causality whereas, e.g., begetting children is a kind of per accidens causality.

A contingent entity requires not merely a explanation for its being or being such as it is, but an explanation for the possibility that it could have been otherwise.

That’s nonsense. That’s never what contingency has been about in the sense I described; and will never exclusively refer to what you mean here. All you did is axiomatically preclude a discussion about contingency in the sense of being caused. Even if this axiom were granted, then we would just refer to caused beings then instead of contingent beings: this doesn’t help your case. If a chair is caused by, at least in part, the atoms which comprise it; then, boom, we have the same argument taking lift off…

"the necessity of a necessary entity just consists in its being the way that it actually is. Thus, an explanation of the entity’s being as it is will be an account of its necessity. "
(Page 3 of "A Case For Necessitarianism")

Yes, but this doesn’t mean what you think it does. This means that the entity’s composition suffices to demonstrate the necessity of that being because, under necessitarianism, causation could not have failed to be exactly what it is. This does NOT entail that this being is not contingent on its parts to exist—in fact, that is a necessary presupposition for what they are saying to be true. If the table, e.g., is not contingent on its parts to exist, then it would be false that its parts suffice to explain why the chair necessarily had to exist (for it would exist at least in part independently of its parts).

Suppose cause C indeterminately causes some one member of a set of possibilties to exist. All members of the set are possible, but only one will member will be actualized. The other members of the set are "non-actual possibilities"

No, no, no. If necessitarianism is true, then there are no other possibilities than the causality that occurred because nothing could have been otherwise—not even laws, numbers, logic, etc.

The only cogent interpretation of a ‘non-actual possibility’ would be either A) a possibility which failed to occur or B) something which is conceivable but not currently actual. With respect to A, this kind of possibility is not possible; with respect to B, it is possible but confusing language—it should just be referred to as conceivability.

That might be relevant if it could be shown that the past is infinite
…
But we don't need to debate that, because there's a worse vice for an infinite past:

You are not understanding this argument at all. Temporal causality is not necessarily a per se causal series. E.g., begetting children is a per accidens series of causality even if it stretches infinitely backward and forward in time—this kind of causality is not viscious and does not require any further explanation causally.

1) it is apriori more sensible to believe so - no examples of property-less objects can be cited

This would be a reasonable a posteriori argument if, again, we didn’t have an example now by way of demonstrating that a simple being is required to explain completely the causal chain of composition of an object.

2)it is an ad hoc assumption, that adds no needed explanatory power

It does, because we cannot explain composition otherwise.

What is extended and what is temporal?

Extension and temporality are pure intuitions. We get them from our experience of the world; or more accurately they are the forms of our experience.

You are asking of me, e.g., what does it mean to exist? Well, its a pure intuition. There’s nothing more I can say; nor can you.

What metaphors/analogies do you use and do you understand their limitations and errors?

Until you are absolutely clear on this we will not make head way.

We might be able to say some things about how space and time behave scientifically; but not what they are themselves. Space and time are the a priori intuitions of the sensory data (manifold) of our outer and (some of our) inner senses; and there may be a space and time akin to these a priori modes of intuition which may or may not behave similarly (e.g., Einstein’s special relativity). Our brain represents things which occur in a multiplicity as in space (whether that be material [e.g., my hand] or immaterial [e.g., the feeling of pain in my hand]); and it represents things which change in time (which may or may not include space—e.g., thinking). It is impossible for me to speak of anything without referencing spatiality and temporality because they are pure intuitions a priori in our brains—viz., they are so integral to the human understanding—but it is important to distinguish space and time proper (in the sense of the forms of the understanding) from conceptual space and time: the latter can be used to talk analogically about things which may not be in the former (e.g., Platonic forms, God, a non-spatiotemporal “particle”, etc.).

Outside is spatialized language which I don't choose to indulge in so I don't understand what you mean. Use different language. I don't accept it.

You literally cannot describe space and time without using them in language. That’s a waste of time to try and avoid.

Second, you keep using this substance metaphor to reify the notion of properties or talk about them if you don't know.

Is reification always good in your eyes and proper philosophical method?

What “substance metaphor”???

Third, going off of moorean intuition. . . everything I've ever experienced and said was ever a 'single piece' or a 'whole' has always been itself composed. I have never in fact met with an un-composed entity and therefore perhaps the notion of an 'un-composed' entity is itself a limiting abstraction that is therefore unreal and un-warranted to postulate.

That’s called in inductive case against an absolutely simple being; and it holds no weight against the argument from composition because it demonstrates the need for its existence. Your argument only works as a probabilistic-style argument IF we have no good reasons to believe a simple being exists. All you are saying is “well, we haven’t had any good reasons to believe there are black swans, so we shouldn’t”. Ok. But now we know there are black swans….

If you say something along the lines of, ". . . but I can imagine. . ." Then you need to justify the method or role of imagination in proper philosophical practice.

Did you read the OP? It is not an argument from conceivability. I will outline a shorter version here:

A5-1. A composed being is contingent on its parts to exist.
A5-2. Therefore, a composed being cannot exist by itself or from itself.
A5-3. Therefore, a part which is a composed being cannot exist by itself or from itself.
A5-4. An infinite series of composition, let’s call it set C, of a composed being would be an infinite series of beings which cannot exist by themselves or from themselves.
A5-5. In order for a composed being to exist, it must be grounded in something capable of existing itself.
A5-6. C has no such member as described in A5-5.
A5-7. Therefore, the existence, ceteris paribus, of C is (actually) impossible.

Here’s the other version:

1. A composite gets its composition from its parts.
2. If all the parts of a composite are themselves composite, then all the parts get their composition from their respective parts.
3. If all of the parts get their composition from their respective parts, then every member, or part, is lacking in terms of its composition and requires another (or others) that it gets its composition from.
4. If every member, or part, is lacking in terms of its composition and requires another for its composition, then no member has composition.
5. If none of the parts have composition, then none of the parts can give composition to another.
6. If none of the parts can give composition to another, then no parts can be parts of a greater composition.
7. Therefore, if all parts are composite, and a composition depends only on its parts, then there can be no composition.

Instead of bringing up red herrings and straw mans, maybe try actually contending with the above arguments?

It is important to note the difference between a necessary being in the sense of being incapable of failing to exist vs. in the sense of being uncaused. The former still allows for contingency of existence on other things, and the latter entails brute facts. I think this is the crux between us, which rides on a conflation between these two.

The OP is talking about a contingent being in the latter sense—not the former—and you are talking about a necessary being in the former sense—not the latter. I don’t think you disagree that a chair which, under necessitarianism, cannot fail to exist is still contingently existent on its parts such that IF the parts didn’t exist it wouldn’t either. All you are noting is that the chair and its parts could not have failed to be caused; but this does not take away from the OP’s point that they are caused. A necessary chair in the latter sense would be a chair that exists with no cause—I don’t think you are arguing that.

If C is contingent, this means ~C is a non-actual possibility

What the heck is a non-actual possibility?!?

This doesn't imply object C exists eternally (at all times). It just means that when it actually exists, it could not have failed to exist.

Right, but C would still be contingent upon the things which caused its existence even if it could not have failed to exist.

Concrete example: suppose determinism is true. This implies every event, and everything that comes to exist, is the necessary consequence of prior conditions.

No. Causal determinism dictates that every entity subject to natural laws has a cause: this does not entail that every entity has a cause and consequently does not entail that every entity is necessary in the former sense. What you are thinking of is called necessitarianism, and it is basically causal determinism’s roid’d brother.

Again, even if this is true, it is irrelevant because the caused thing—the effect—is or at least was dependent on its cause for it to exist (even if it could not have failed to exist because its cause must have occurred in such-and-such a manner to bring about it as an effect). E.g., the eternal chair is still contingent on its parts to exist.

It's erroneous to conflate conceivability with metaphysical possibility

Agreed, and I am not doing that. It is not merely conceivable that a chair is dependent upon its parts: that is actually true of chairs—period.

There must be a first cause because an infinite series of causes is viscious, NOT because an infinite series of compositions is viscious

This isn’t true, though; and that’s why my argument and classical arguments like this one do not rely on that. Aquinas’ prime example is an infinite series of begetting children: there’s nothing, i.e., impossible about an infinite series of per accidens causality. There’s nothing “viscious” about it; but there is something absurd about an infinite per se causal series.

The only rational choice is for you to agree with me, and drop your assumption.

:lol:

That's because I gave a real world example that falsifies your assumption.

Hopefully I clarified in this response how that definitely did not happen (:

Nothing can exist that lacks properties, so no object can exist that meets your definition of "absolutely simple".

Ok, but let’s go back to the composition quick argument I gave you: that demonstrates that your metaphysical theory here is false; so I have not reason to believe that nothing can exist that lacks properties.

What part of space and time being extension and temporality is hard for you to understand? If there's specific concepts of space and time that would be immune to the OP, then please feel free to bring them up: I don't see any. You can go the Einsteinien, Kantian, or literally any other route and it will not matter for the OP since we are talking about ontological parts which could be outside of space and time.

You're the one who introduced A, not me. :)

I am trying to give you the tools to provide clarity on your position. You still keep conflating them and talking about unclear sets.

If you have your own sets that you want me to work with, then please provide them in an analogous way to how I provided mine.

The scope captures everything causally because C != A. I've never claimed that it was equal.

If there is an infinite regress of causal things, then it would have to be. For if every real thing is a member of C, which is the case if every real thing is sufficiently explained in an infinitely regressive fashion, then there is no real thing which is not a member of C; and therefore no real thing which is not a member of C and A; so C = A.

Yes it can, because one of the answers to something causally is that it is uncaused. You seem to be putting this answer outside of causality, when I'm noting its one of the answers.

We are not quantifying over answers—and purposefully so (because it muddies the waters and leads to issues in inferences as seen in your OP)—but, rather, real things; and C is the enumeration of all of those real things that are also caused.

What I was noting is that if something caused C, when taken as its members, and is not itself caused then that thing is not a member of C; and this is patently true because C contains only real things that are caused—which precludes things that are not caused. A, ceteris paribus, assuming there’s nothing else to consider but the two, would look like: A = [F, C] – not C = [F, <…>] = A.

We're in complete agreement that sets aren't real. I'm just using it to give a better understanding of what I was trying to get across

This is crucial though to my point; because you keep asking questions that assume they are real. For example, you keep asking “what caused C?”. C is a set: it is not real. When we ask colloquially “what caused C?”, we charitably meant to ask “do the members of C sufficiently explain each other’s existences or not?”. Crucially, an infinite regress proper would be such that each member would suffice to explain the next member and so on; and, therefore, there is nothing required to explain the members outside of that set. There is nothing uncaused in this!!! The set being outside of the purview of causality is not the same as it being a real thing that is uncaused.

"What caused existence period?"

This is too vague. The only valid way to translate this, as far as I can tell, is to assume you mean “what caused these real things to exist?”, then, again, an infinite regression explanation would dictate that there nothing uncaused: each real thing is explained by the next or the previous or what not.

Existence itself is not a property like other properties: you can’t ask “why is there being?” like “why is there red things?”.

They are part of the causality of that universe, therefore they are part of the scope of causality in that universe.

Let me just grant your point here. Let’s say there’s a first cause, F, to the set C and the set W = [F, C]. Ok, fair enough. How does this change anything? An infinite regression would entail that there is no F and C just has an infinite amount of members which explain each others’ existences; and C itself is not caused or uncaused.

"What caused existence at all?" Can you answer that question Bob?

If I take it literally, then it is an invalid question. Existence is not a proper property. In terms of why do things exist, the question in an infinite regress would be that each one explains the other: that’s no problem to answer.

As you know, I would say that God is the explanation. The issue is that your argument tries to determine a priori that each cogent solution results in the idea of everything being uncaused; and this is simply not true UNLESS you conflate a set as a real entity.

What caused universe 1 to exist instead of universe 2 once you go up the causal chain within that universe?

The infinitely regressive set would be identical to the universe: again, you are treating the set as if it is real because you substituted the word ‘set’ for ‘universe’ here. There’s no extra-beyond ‘universe’ from the infinite collection of sufficiently explained real things if the person arguing for an infinite regress is right. Your question here assumes that there is still something real, namely the universe itself, which has not been answered; but all the ‘universe’ is here, in your argument, is the set of the all the real things. Hence, your question is just falsely framed.

This is different, per se, from asking about our universe and what caused it because we aren’t necessarily stipulating that the universe is just a set of all caused, e.g., cobalts.

The answer is not that F causes C. Its that C is uncaused.

If you agree that sets aren’t real, then you must concede that C cannot be caused or uncaused.

"What caused existence?" You didn't reply to this very specific question from the last post Bob, so I think you're avoiding it to refocus on the sets that I've already told you are just a tool to convey this notion

Hopefully my above response suffices to answer this. However, it doesn’t matter: that is the introductive question to the solutions (e.g., infinite regressions, infinite circularities, first causes, etc.) that your proof is supposed to demonstrate all of them leading back to everything being uncaused; and so if there is even on solution that doesn’t lead back to that, then your thesis is void. An infinite regression is one such example.