You have said: "... before first cause, nothing."

How do your descriptions of the inception of first cause have anything to work with other than nothing?

Consider -- In a valid argument, when all the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true.

Imagine a die with all possibilities. Now the die is rolled. Whatever lands is what is. If someone claims, "Its a six", we should be able to prove that it did roll a six. Once it is rolled we are out of the realm of possibility and in the realm of actuality. — Philosophim

Do you think your above premise -- rooted in something instead of in nothing -- avoids being evaluated as false and thus avoids casting doubt on the conclusion being true?

If you do, can you explain the avoidance?

Consider: x = the (all of) existence is necessary premise (this is logically antecedent to a first cause is necessary) (T) and y = your roll of the die premise (F)

We see in the conditional operator truth table that when

x ⟹ y, with x = T and y = F, the statement evaluates as F

Do you think your above premise -- demonstrably false -- avoids plugging into the x ⟹ y implication such that the statement evaluates as False?

If you do, can you explain the avoidance?

You've previously stated there're no limitations on what a first cause can be. Are you now presenting an elaboration that rejects the notion "there're no limitations on what a first cause can be and "anything that can exist might be a first cause"? are logically equivalent? — ucarr

No. Please explain how you came to this conclusion from what I wrote. — Philosophim

Here are the pertinent things you wrote:

I'm saying I'm not claiming any one PARTICULAR thing is a first cause. — Philosophim

So, you're saying anything that can exist might be a first cause? — ucarr

We're having a language barrier issue here. :) Think of it as a variable set Ucarr. I'm noting the variable of 'a first cause' is logically necessary. What's in that actual set, one or many more, is irrelevant. What actual first causes have happened over the lifetime in the universe is up for other people to prove. I am not saying that anything which exists can be a first cause. — Philosophim

In the first statement above in bold -- yours -- you ask for an explanation of my question:

... Are you now presenting an elaboration that rejects the notion "there're no limitations on what a first cause can be and "anything that can exist might be a first cause"? are logically equivalent? — ucarr

Your first quote above -- I'm saying I'm not claiming any one PARTICULAR thing is a first cause. -- is a logical descendent of: "There're no limitations on what a first cause can be."

My question was motivated by your second statement above in bold: "I am not saying that anything which exists can be a first cause."

Why is it not a contradiction of: "There're no limitations on what a first cause can be"?

The question is important because it's an essential supporting argument for your thesis.

On the same note: "A first cause is logically necessary." is the central focus of your thesis. Considering this, consider: Since logical necessity is a strict limitation, by your main argument -- There're are no limitations on what a first cause can be -- a first cause cannot be logically necessary. The necessity of its existence precludes its existence. Why is this not a Russell's Paradox type of contradiction that negates the truth value of your thesis?

...we weren’t discussing brain activity. — Mww

You think thought and communication are divorced from brain activity?

That the self is impossible without the brain is given, but is at the same time far to general a proposition to be of any explanatory help. — Mww

Have you read the book linked below?

Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter

It is actually the self finding fault with an act a posteriori, as effect, but not necessarily with its antecedent judgement by which the act is determined a priori, as cause. — Mww

How do you reconcile your above with your below?

The assertion, then, reduces to either the conveyance, not of the content, but of the thought itself, to the self that has the thought, a contradiction, or, there is nothing whatsoever conveyed to the self regarding thought and its content, that doesn’t already reside therein, such that, ipso facto, thought is possible. — Mww

I, on the other hand, hold the self is reducible to a unitary, or singular, rational identity. — Mww

So at twenty years a memory-bearing person is just the same as that memory-bearing person at five years?

I’m familiar with arguments in which the self is both subject and object. This happens only in expositions of it, wherein what the self is in itself as object, is confounded with the manifestations of the self’s doings as subject. In other words, the self is necessarily reified when attempting to explain itself. Which gives rise to the inevitable absurdity of the self reifying itself. Still, conceptions, intuitions, morals, thoughts, subjects and objects and whatnot, are all required pursuant to expressions of the human kind of intelligence, but the self doesn’t use any of them to do what it does, except to manifest itself as subject. — Mww

How is your propositional content within your above paragraph possible -- especially through the noumenal section -- without your intentional and thoroughly functional reification?

So, yes, I submit the self not only isn’t aware of itself objectively, but is absurd to suppose it needs to be. In fact, I reject the notion that the self is aware of itself subjectively, hence the redundancy, while merely granting the availability of some mechanism by which it seems to be the case. — Mww

Reflexivity and redundancy are not synonymous.

Since you're a brain in a vat -- self-cognitively speaking -- spending the rest of your days in solitary confinement within a white room would be for you a matter of indifference.

I commend you on your durable patience with me.

Are we looking at a concept of causation with an unlimited number of possible and independent first causes? — ucarr

My intention here is to understand that a first of all first causes, if it happens, holds no special status because first causes are independent.

The start of each chain is separate and independent — Philosophim

I've been striving to understand that the gist of your claim is to say each causal chain must have a first cause. In so stating, I understand you take no particular position on the ontic identity of a first cause and its following chain.

I'm noting the variable of 'a first cause' is logically necessary. What's in that actual set, one or many more, is irrelevant. — Philosophim

You've previously stated there're no limitations on what a first cause can be. Are you now presenting an elaboration that rejects the notion "there're no limitations on what a first cause can be and "anything that can exist might be a first cause"? are logically equivalent?

By immaterial existence I mean an abstract concept — ucarr

I don't care whether they're immaterial or not. Are they real? Yes. — Philosophim

Are you allowing that "real" names a comprehensive set of things that funds first causes and that whether or not this set includes both material and immaterial things is irrelevant to your work in this conversation? Do you agree your indifference in this situation leaves open the door for inferring that logical necessity of first causes is amenable to both material and immaterial causes? I ask this question because the ontic identity of first causes is not normally a matter of indifference within examinations of causation.

I can tell you that nothing has changed from our conversation in which I spoke to you Ucarr. So its best not to confuse yourself by trying to follow it [Philosphim's dialogue with Gnomon]. — Philosophim

You presume incorrectly my questions are darts aimed at your previous statements. I like to think I'm slowly improving my understanding of the intentions behind your words.

Are you advising me to stop undertaking my own independent inferential thinking because you think it [sometimes] erroneous?

In a concomitant action, are you trying to restrict the range of actions, techniques and approaches I can use in my interactions with you?

If you think you're repeating yourself in your responses, name the topic, tell me I'm repeating my questions thereof and I'll agree not to ask additional repeat questions on the topic.

First, if you remember a first cause cannot cause another first cause. — Philosophim

My mistake. I should've written: So, you're saying that even though a first cause is logically necessary, that doesn't necessarily imply the necessity of a first cause of all first causes?

Second, its possible that there was a first cause that happened, then other first causes happened later. Or it could be that two or more first causes happened simultaneously. — Philosophim

Are we looking at a concept of causation with an unlimited number of possible and independent first causes?

I'm saying I'm not claiming any one PARTICULAR thing is a first cause. — Philosophim

So, you're saying anything that can exist might be a first cause?

I don't even know what immaterial existence is. — Philosophim

By immaterial existence I mean an abstract concept -- or some such entity -- that inhabits the mind apart from matter. Have you not agreed with Gnomon (below) that concepts are immaterial and real?

That's simply a philosophical/mathematical concept, as contrasted with a physical/material object. — Gnomon

Also correct! — Philosophim

Its completely irrelevant whether there is immaterial existence or not. — Philosophim

Have you not agreed with Gnomon (above) that immaterial yet real concepts -- as distinguished from matter -- are useful for correctly understanding your thesis, and therefore pertinent to it?

This is not a claim of any 'one thing' being a first cause. Its just a logical note that there must be a first cause, and that first cause has nothing prior that limits or influences what it should be. — Philosophim

So, you're saying that even though a first cause is logically necessary, that doesn't necessarily imply the necessity of a first cause of all first causes?

Are we looking at a concept of causation with potentially unlimited number of first causes and yet no first cause for the set of first causes?

Is immaterial existence even a thing? I don't know. If it exists, then its a thing. If not, then its not. — Philosophim

You've said you're not making a claim that a thing -- such as a God, or the Big Bang -- acts as the first cause. Also, you've clarified that your thesis only posits the logical necessity of a first cause. Now you say you don't know if immaterial existence is a thing. Is it pertinent to the content and intentions of your thesis to suppose you take no definitive position on the materiality or immateriality of the logically necessary first cause?

Okay: You're saying:

First Cause is necessary to chain of causation it's outside of and affecting. — Gnomon

Okay: You're saying:

My understanding of a logically necessary First Cause is a philosophical conjecture, not a scientific observation. So there is no "whereness" to specify. — Gnomon

So, First Cause is an abstract entity that inhabits the realm of mind.

Okay: You're saying:

...but like all fundamental Principles, the Prime Cause is a theoretical Concept, an Idea with "no material physicality". However, the referent is not an anthro-morphic deity located in space-time, — Gnomon

So, Prime Cause has a referent.

Okay: You're saying:

Deism is known as the "God of the Philosophers". As I said in the previous post : "But one sticking point seems to be confusing a logical First Cause (of some resulting chain of events) with an objective Thing or God operating in space-time". — Gnomon

So, our world is a causal chain following from an abstract entity that inhabits the realm of mind.

Okay: You're saying:

The scientific Big Bang theory understandably avoided the philosophical question of where the Energy & Laws of Nature came from. That's because those logical necessities for a Chain of Causation are presumably Eternal & Everywhere. — Gnomon

So, our world is an eternal following-causal-chain in the sense that its origin, Prime Cause, is an eternal logical necessity.

...it’s [our dialogue] become too psychological for my interests, so, thanks for the alternative perspective. — Mww

You've let me know you won't dialogue with me further. Okay. I'm posting the following responses for the record; I try to always respond to counter-narratives.

There isn’t any space in a thought, and if the self just is that which has thoughts, one is temporally inseparable from the other. — Mww

I think brain activity occurs in spacetime. Also, when someone thinks, they know they're thinking. The knowing person is not identical to his/her thoughts being examined, otherwise the knowing person couldn't do the evaluation.

The self judges, so it can’t be that the self is judged. — Mww

Guilt is an everyday example of the self judging its own actions and finding fault with itself.

…..b) a judging self is self-aware in its acts of judgment….. — ucarr

Tautologically true, but congruent with every other aspect of what the subject does…. — Mww

When a person drives a car, he/she monitors his/her judgments about time and distance in order to begin breaking in order to avoid hitting the car in front. Knowing you're stopping the car in time to avoid a collision is not circular reasoning.

…..and self-awareness requires a separation of self (…) from self….. — ucarr

I find it a mischaracterization of self, in its irreducible sense. — Mww

The gist of my thesis is that the self is not reducible to a unitary person.

Self-awareness is redundant. Awareness presupposes self, and, self is necessarily that which is aware. — Mww

You seem to be implying self cannot be objectively aware of self. Have you never primped in front of a mirror before making a public address?

If self separates from self, what then becomes of self-awareness? — Mww

Consider an imaginary experience of internal conflict: both of your divorced parents invite you to Christmas dinner and you're torn between visiting one or the other household.

Thought and judgement, because they are related to each other….communicate? — Mww

You're trying to persuade your significant other to join you at the resort lodge for skiing. At one point during your pitch, the other person frowns. In your mind's eye you think: "I pressed too hard on my point about them owing me for favors done on their behalf. I'd better back off a bit."

Given that there is no such thing as an empty thought, it follows necessarily that when a self has a thought, it must be that the content does not get conveyed to the self, but arises from the self in conjunction with the thought the self has. — Mww

Is there any differential in space and time separating the self and its thoughts? I ask this question for two reasons: a) a thought is about the judgment of the self in reaction to a perception of the world; judgement implies a separation of judge from judged; b) a judging self is self-aware in its acts of judgment and self-awareness requires a separation of self not only from world but also from self; if there is no separation of self from self, then there is no self-awareness and thus absent self-awareness absent self.

This structure of thought as being inherently self-referential raises an important question: can thought occur without communication? — ucarr

Are you denying a supposed self-referentiality of thought? This question is central to the gist of my thesis because it focuses upon the structure of thought as an interconnectivity with communication throughout the interconnectivity an essential attribute.

Since you say:

...it must be that the content does not get conveyed to the self, but arises from the self in conjunction with the thought the self has. — Mww

I say:

As to the structure of a thought as a judgment arisen from its content as the existential ground of the judgment, this inter-communitive relationship I posit as the central module of perception, thought, communication and language.

But one sticking point seems to be confusing a logical First Cause (of some resulting chain of events) with an objective Thing or God operating in space-time. — Gnomon

Correct. People seem to think I'm using this to claim the existence of some specific first cause like the Big Bang, God, etc. I am not... — Philosophim

That's simply a philosophical/mathematical concept, as contrasted with a physical/material object. — Gnomon

Also correct! — Philosophim

I just want to be clear that a first cause as proven here is not outside of our universe, but a necessary existent within our universe. — Philosophim

Are you saying: a) the logical first cause has no material physicality; b) the logical first cause that has no material physicality exists within our universe?

So, if we are assuming that the chain of causation applies everywhere in the interconnected universe, then your immanent Cause could be its own Effect. For example the Cue ball is on the table, and can be impacted by the 8 ball. That's why my unique First Cause, or Causal Principle, is assumed to be off the table, outside the system affected. — Gnomon

Are you saying: a) unique First Cause is outside the chain of causation it affected?

I prefer not to specify where the imaginary Poolshooter is standing, and just call him an abstract-but-necessary Principle. — Gnomon

Are you saying unique First Cause is necessary to chain of causation it's outside of and affecting?

Can you elaborate additional details about the unspecified whereness -- positionally speaking relative to the whole -- of abstract-but-necessary Principle?

"I promise to fetch water for you if you give me some of that haunch" — Banno

Lady Killer on the make.

Can the content only ever describe the thinker more-so than what it is intended to describe? — NOS4A2

Yes. Language and meaning are always distillations of content. For this reason, language and its circumambient meaning are well done when heavy laden with concrete imagery that shows more than tells.

Try to refine your question to a single, focussed point of discussion. — alan1000

The center of my focus looks at a concept of the structure of thought as a complex of multiple parts. The essential parts are content, language and meaning. Content lies within the noumenal realm of things-just-are. Language is the transport for the meaning of noumenal content. Meaning is the interpretive narrative that hovers about the things-just-are noumenal content. When meaning comes into the picture, we're looking at narratives about narratives.

The complex of thought includes the noumenal content perceived through the senses plus what we think about our perceptions, the interpretive meaning supplied by the work done by thinking.

If narratives about narratives is an essentially correct characterization of thought, then it's clear thought and communication are inseparable. This is the gist of my argument against complete acceptance of Chomsky's argument rooted in the separation of the two.

Another important part of my focus is the characterization of the self as an irreducible complex that perplexes unitary characterizations of selfhood. So, self as emergent property of material physicality leads to a characterization of self as a distributed complex of interwoven fields.

Consciousness is the spinner thrown into the mix of interwoven energy fields. With the advent of consciousness within a material physicality based universe, the logic_science matrix of not-now-but-forthcomingness introduces absential materialism. The principle agent of absential materialism is abstractionism.

Mr. Abstraction -- A principle agent of thought who takes perceived patterns of material_physical phenomena and cognizes them into linguistic generalizations amenable to logical representation and scientific examination. The complex dynamical evolution of self-organizing systems gives an appearance of parallel realities, one extended and one unextended, but it's actually a distributed complex of interwoven fields.

This hypothesis doesn't seem valid to me even on its face, due to the fact that the individual has no existence independent of the collective (species). — Pantagruel

If you're referencing Chomsky's preference of language for thought over language for communication, I agree with your assessment. If there's anything essentially inter-personal and essentially communicative, its language, isn't it? Also, I'm guessing the infant learns to hear words and repeat them (or see visual patterns and connect them with ends) before forming intentional thoughts within a linguistic medium, whether verbal or visual.

Quantum physicist Karen Barad has produced a model of interaffecting matter that was inspired by the double slit experiments.

Phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without pre-existing relata. On the basis of the notion of intra-action, which represents a profound conceptual shift in our traditional understanding of causality, I argue that it is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the ‘‘components'' of phenomena become determinate and that particular material articulations of the world become meaningful. A specific intra-action (involving a specific material configuration of the ‘‘apparatus'') enacts an agential cut (in contrast to the Cartesian cut—an inherent distinction—between subject and object), erecting a separation between ‘‘subject'' and ‘‘object.'' That is, the agential cut enacts a resolution within the phenomenon of the inherent ontological (and semantic) indeterminacy. In other words, relata do not preexist relations; rather, relata-within-phenomena emerge through specific intra-actions. (Meeting the Universe Halfway) — Joshs

Maybe you'll help me unpack the Barad definition:

• Classically measurable things are primatively real connections; they are connections without implications of supervenient principles.

• Intra-action -- action within as distinguished from action between -- represents a profound conceptual shift in our traditional understanding of causality...

• ...through agency-mediated intra-actions boundaries and characteristic expressions of parts of classically measurable things become defined and, likewise, natural material systems featuring jointed parts become describable.

• A specific intra-action (involving a specific material configuration of a complex, multi-part system) enacts an agency-mediated cut (in contrast to the Cartesian cut - an inherent distinction - between subject and object), erecting a separation between "subject" and "object."

• ...the agency-mediated cut enacts a resolution within the clasically measurable real and narratable indeterminancy.

• ...related things do not preexist their grammatical organizing principles; rather, natural, related things classically measurable cyclically foreground via phase shifts through specific actions within.

Conclusions: a) subject_object is an intra-active phase-shifting dynamical process; b) intra-action nuances abstractly conceptualizable grammar of relations as emergent-property-of-material-things-
cum-foregrounded-interiority.

...any category of existing entities derives its sense and intelligibility from a wider context of relevance. This wider context of relevance comes first, and the meaning of the list of beings is derived from it. — Joshs

Is it correct to characterize your statement thus: abstract rules of organization have conceptual influence (the conferring of sense and intelligibility) upon concrete things?

Is it correct to infer from the above that in a reverse direction, concrete things make it possible to discern abstract rules emergent from concrete things?

Is it correct to induce a bi-conditional operator linking concrete things and abstract rules within a causal identity: concrete things imply abstract rules if and only if abstract rules imply concrete things?

Is it possible QM exemplifies a networked reality: wave functions and particle functions are interwoven within a universe that supports superposition regulated by probability measurements?

This is not a physics forum so I don't see the philosophical relevance of the quote cited... — 180 Proof

You don't see the philosophical relevance attaching to physical phenomena raising fundamental questions about the nature of reality?

...and conflating the Schrödinger equation with the 'Schrödinger's Cat' gedankenexperiment proves my point. — 180 Proof

You see no connection between the equation and the thought experiment?

What is the thought experiment about Schrödinger's cat?

He imagined a box containing a radioactive atom, a vial of poison and a cat. Governed by quantum rules, the radioactive atom can either decay or not at any given moment. There's no telling when the moment will come, but when it does decay, it breaks the vial, releases the poison and kills the cat.

The Schrödinger Equation -- As the QM counterpart to Newton's 2nd law in classical mechanics, it gives the evolution over time of a wave function, the quantum-mechanical characterization of an isolated physical system. — Wikipedia

The isolated physical system in the thought experiment is "the atom," whose decay the Schrödinger Equation predicts quantum mechanically. The equation demonstrates mathematically the uncertainty of the time of the decay, thus causing the cat's death. This being uncertain, the cat holds superposition as both dead and alive until the measurement effect of observation of the cat collapses the superposition.

Fundamentally, the Schrödinger's cat experiment asks how long quantum superpositions last and when (or whether) they collapse. Different interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics have been proposed that give different explanations for this process, but Schrödinger's cat remains an unsolved problem in physics. — Wikipedia

Although originally a critique on the Copenhagen interpretation, Schrödinger's seemingly paradoxical thought experiment became part of the foundation of quantum mechanics. — Wikipedia

You, 180 Proof -- a science-savvy commentator -- in seeking to distance TPF from science tells me I'm doing something right in my approach to the association of science and philosophy.

I understand him (Schrödinger) to be making reference to Schrödinger's equation for a superpositionally dead & alive cat. — ucarr

My quote is unfortunately misleading without the addendum: Schrödinger developed the narrative of the dead & alive cat in order to mock the artless embrace of superposition without acknowledging its collapse under measurement.

I understand him to be making reference to Schrödinger's equation for a superpositionally dead & alive cat. — ucarr

:roll: — 180 Proof

You hold Schrödinger's linear differential equation in contempt?

As the QM counterpart to Newton's 2nd law in classical mechanics, it gives the evolution over time of a wave function, the quantum-mechanical characterization of an isolated physical system. — Wikipedia

What's your take on this?

a kind of metaphysical POV [ ... ] affords us a metaphysics of practice — ucarr

I heve no idea what you mean, ucarr. — 180 Proof

The satellite is supposed to be a practical application of systemic overview, my characterization of metaphysics.

Deacon sounds like he's espousing what C. Rovelli aptly calls "quantum nonsense"... — 180 Proof

I understand him to be making reference to Schrödinger's equation for a superpositionally dead & alive cat.

...T. Deacon's thesis seems to be 'nonreductive physicalist scientism'... — 180 Proof

No. The long slog through the statistical bias towards equilibrium, i.e., entropy towards the far-from-equilibrium states required of life is illuminated in detail by the scientific work of Deacon in Incomplete Nature, a game-changer in the mind/body inquiry.

The slow-paced dogfight by natural materials engineering and natural fluid dynamics engineering towards the self-organizing dynamical systems that aggregate attractors that statistically mandate phase shifts from random resource elements and compounds into reciprocally reinforcing morphodyanics is the critically important continuum that bridges across simple matter to absentially material mind. The autogen is an early distillation of selfhood in the form of self-generation, self-repair and self-replication.

The end-directed aboutness functionality of telodynamics as the operating system of mind, emergent from yet rooted within material thermodyanmics is spatially distributed, time-mediated complex materialism.

Deacon closes his report on the supple interweave of the multiplex of matter that knows itself with:

If quantum physicists can learn to become comfortable with the material causal consequences of the superposition of alternate, as-yet-unrealized states of matter, it shouldn’t be too great a leap to begin to get comfortable with the superposition of the present and the absent in our functions, meanings,
experiences, and values.

So, from Deacon we learn that mental abstractionism is a state that oscillates between an expansion/compression cycle within nature.

Consider a modern, telecommunications satellite, such as the one making our internet dialogs possible.

Launched from earth, it hovers above in the thermosphere_exosphere. It sees whole earth in overview, a kind of metaphysical POV. In this position, it's poised to connect the dots and understand events systemically. It affords us a metaphysics of practice with concrete value to the general public. No academic flights of fancy indulged.

Clear overview of complex systems has essential importance. It generates useful constraints in the form of boundaries known as rules. This necessary role of the referee notwithstanding, we don't say the orbital satellite looking down upon us created us. No. It emerged from us and remains tied to us in a delicate superposition of the present and the absent.

Deacon's report does not example science privileged above reflection. Instead, it does the hard work of elaborating the continuum linking reflection with its material foundation.

Hello, 180 Proof. I've been learning from you, and I very much appreciate your patient instruction. I'm very gratified to have some of your attention.

I think you stand on solid ground whenever you correctly ground your conjectures in science.

You can do yourself a favor by keeping away from metaphysics for now. Metaphysics is your enemy because it lulls you into complacecey about not being your better self.

Metaphysics is little more than the logical grammar undergirding the conceptual dimensions of science. It's neither beyond nor above science. It's something akin to an emergent property of science.

Some metaphysicians might tell you it's the other way around. Shrug them off before they lead you astray. Never doubt that metaphysics cannot breathe without science.*

I hope you'll start working toward longer intervals off the drug of metaphysics while slogging the trenches of philosophy's harsh mistress: science.

You show promise as a theoretician when you make observations such as the following: "The primary attribute of energy is causation." That's thinking like a scientist. Keep doing it.

*If you think logic a science, consider that philosophical ideas are vetted by logic. What does that tell you?

A first cause is an uncaused existence, that then enters into causality. — Philosophim

Is instantiation into existence instantaneous, or does the process necessitate elapsing of time?

I think that there are infinitely many possibilities (including the possibility of a Big Bang and a Small Whimper). You cannot assign any special probabilities to either the Big Bang or the Small Whimper. However small a number you assign to each probability, either it will be infinitely small or the total will be infinity. This makes your assignments meaningless. — Ludwig V

:up:

I haven't walked through my initial through process... so let me do so
now. — Philosophim

The through line of causal logic is crucial.

If anything is possible, then could some things be more possible than another? — Philosophim

Yes. You're invoking probability.

I realized I could imagine any situation with odds, and realize that all odds had the same chance of happening when anything can happen. — Philosophim

I'll sound a note of doubt about this on the premise all odds on all things having equal chance of occurrence assumes unlimited time.

True randomness' is uncaused. — Philosophim

This implies randomness can be contemporary with the first of all first causes, and thus prior to all first causes subsequent to the first of all first causes. The effect of randomness being uncaused is that there are no first causes.

Also, if true randomness uncaused, as you claim, supports the prediction of certain outcomes, then it is -- your denials notwithstanding -- logical.


Firstly, when you're propounding your conclusion -- that first cause is possible and logically necessary -- you demand it be understood: unexplainable nothing must be accepted prima facie. This is the before-there's-nothing/after-there's-something transformation. So far, your arguments beg the question: How is there not a chain of causation from nothing to something? You have corrected me on my understanding of it as a chain of causation. You haven't explained why it's not.

Secondly, when you proceed to your logical argument this is true, your thinking -- like than mine -- does not remove itself from immersion within a logical perception of what you're trying to exclude from logic.

Your narrative contains a crucial disjunction between your axiomatic declaration of first cause and your exegesis of first cause with telltale rational underpinnings. These telltale rational underpinnings covertly assist you in your assertions of first cause's reality.

The point of disjunction happens when the causal chain reaches its last position prior to the location of first cause and the location of first cause. The gap stands between first cause on one side of the disjunction and second cause on the other side of the disjunction. First cause is not connected to the causal chain you claim it causes. The gap separating the leader from its followers is the gap between no-physics and physics.

Since you're talking about first cause causing a causal chain following after it, you have to bridge across first cause to second cause that bridges across to third cause, etc. You can't start building your bridge if first cause inhabits a realm no other existing thing inhabits. For this reason, whenever you attempt to talk logically about first cause causing second cause and so on, you have to covertly bring in logical connectors linking first cause to second cause.

The central flaw in your thesis appears to be inconsistency (between the no-physics realm and the physics realm). In your attempt to assert a no-logic realm as the start of a logical realm, you encounter the gnarly problem of explaining logically the non-logical inception of logic. Its easy to claim a no-logic realm causes a logic realm if you keep the two realms separated in a dualistic reality. The problem with this option is that the claim of a causal link must be taken as an article of faith.

Your first cause thesis is plagued by the same inconsistency devil plaguing theism and the big bang.

:up:

True randomness is merely a description to grasp potential. — ucarr

Must you exclude potential from the neighborhood of first cause? — ucarr

I'm not sure what you meant by this, could you clarify please ucarr? — Philosophim

My general interpretation of your introduction of randomness as a state of things totally unpredictable had it positioned as the state preceding incept of first cause. Subsequent to that thinking, you've clarified that nothing -- including nothingness -- can have causal effect on a first cause. So, nothingness, and randomness join the list of excluded causal prior states. After your most recent clarification about randomness being an aide to understanding potential, I'm seeking clarification whether potential inhabits the list of the excluded. The simple answer is yes. However, your mentions of nothingness, randomness and now potential vaguely suggest they're subject to the gravitational pull of causal status due to our reasoning minds needing talking points to grasp nothing-then-something inception.

I know you've denied dualism, so, at the risk of repetition, clarify again how a real realm of acausal nothing-then-something is continuous with our universe of phenomena apparently obeying physical laws. Directly below is why I repeat the question.

Let me give you an example of total randomness that you may not be realizing. It can be completely random that the universe has one first cause, the big bang, and never has one again. — Philosophim

Your underlined fragment suggests randomness in the role of the trigger of the singularity's rapid expansion. If that's not assignment of causal agency to randomness, its a talking point that flirts with such and the effect is the sending of a confusing and mixed communication. I now know that the purity of the randomness argues for no possible organization and no possible associated direction that in this context crosstalks with causation. Another thought -- I know you've already addressed it -- is that the pre-big bang of no physics is an utterly different state not only from our world today, but utterly different from the start of the shortest time interval possible post-big bang. I'm still in arrears of understanding how randomness-into-big band is not a partitioning of reality into two utterly distinct states populating a dual reality.

As I've already written, if randomness-into-big-bang not being a partitioning is an axiomatic presupposition, I can understand what's being conveyed while disagreeing with its possibility. But you argue that A ⟹ B ⟹ C... -- when you run it backwards -- loops around with logical necessity to a causeless inception point. I presume then, that what follows logically is another progression in a forward direction with endless circularity being the general state of things. I don't see any component of the argument that cancels the partitioning obvious to me. So, where does you argument cancel any notion of pre-big bang being a radically different reality than post-big bang, with expansion of the singularity inexplicably bridging across the utterly distinct realities?

You're saying "First causes simply are." is not a self-evident truth? — ucarr

No, they are a conclusion reasoned through by logic — Philosophim

So, where does you argument cancel any notion of pre-big bang being a radically different reality than post-big bang, with expansion of the singularity inexplicably bridging across the utterly distinct realities?

You're speculating about reality having no boundary? — ucarr

I'm just saying that the word 'reality' is really a word that represents all of 'what is'. — Philosophim

You're not answering my question, please do so. I'm pressing this point because saying all of what exists equals reality allows for the logical inference reality so defined has no boundary. Well, a reality with no boundary means the no-physics realm of nothing-then-something inhabits the same continuum inhabited by our everyday reality. This bilateral grounding of no-physics and physics compels you to explain logically how our universe contains a no-physics section and also a physics section without it being a dualist universe.

Ask as long as you have questions that need answering, its not a problem. — Philosophim

As you see above, I'm doing just that.

The wording about physics is a little to vague for me — Philosophim

You've been saying a principal first cause, although it can incept as anything, cannot violate the physical laws of the thing it incepts as, right? If I'm correct in thinking this, it seems to me also correct a principal first cause is constrained by the definition of the particular things it incepts as.

If you chafe at constraint applied to a principal first cause, that gives me an opening to point out mereological issues and question whether you need to address them.

Again, lets change this to be a little more to the point. "However, if it is found logically that all instantiations of causation entail externals, logical antecedents and contemporaries, then its a correct inference there are no first causes."

This is a logical argument, so of course is there is a logical counter it fails. — Philosophim

Do you agree making this determination is the heart and soul of our work in this discussion?

Is this interpretation correct: The above claim ignores mereological issues associated with the work of defining a first cause. — ucarr

Too vague. What do you specifically mean by mereological. — Philosophim

Mereological essentialism
In philosophy, mereological essentialism is a mereological thesis about the relationship between wholes, their parts, and the conditions of their persistence. According to mereological essentialism, objects have their parts necessarily. If an object were to lose or gain a part, it would cease to exist; it would no longer be the original object but a new and different one.

Wikipedia - Mereological essentialism

The last two sentences of the definition are especially important. If a first cause is a system, as is the case in your example of a first-cause hydrogen atom, then, as you've been saying, it cannot be a hydrogen atom if one of its necessary parts is missing.

Next comes the issue whether the necessary part is a thing-in-themself apart from the hydrogen atom. The answer is yes because we know electrons are parts of many elements and compounds, not just hydrogen atoms. So, if an electron is a thing-in-itself and its a necessary part of a hydrogen atom, then a hydrogen atom, even the first one, in order to exist, must contain an electron, another thing-in-itself like the hydrogen atom. Therefore, logically, we must conclude the electron is a contemporary of the hydrogen atom it inhabits, and thus the hydrogen atom cannot be itself and at the same time be a first cause.

First causes inhabit the phenomenal universe and create consequential phenomena in the form of causal chains, and yet the examination of causation as a whole comes to a dead end at its phenomenal starting point. — ucarr

Add, "It is possible" to the start of the above sentence and its good. — Philosophim

I understand you want to leave open the possibility the something-from-nothing origins of first causes are not permanently partitioned off from examination of causation as a whole by science, but your something-from-nothing just-iziming of first causes are, by your definition, beyond scientific reach.

The implication is that either within or beyond the phenomenal universe lies something extant but unexplainable.* Is this a case of finding the boundary of scientific investigation, or is it a case of halting scientific investigation and philosophical rumination by decree. — ucarr

A logical boundary of scientific investigation. In no way should we stop science or philosophy. — Philosophim

How is claiming logical necessity of things unexplainable refutable?

The notion of total randomness causing something-from-nothing-creations suggests a partitioned and dual reality. The attribution of dualism to this concept rests upon the premise that total randomness cannot share space with an ordered universe without fatally infecting it. — ucarr

No dualism. Dualism implies the presence of two separate things. There is not a separate thing. There is simply a first cause's inception. Let me give you an example of total randomness that you may not be realizing. It can be completely random that the universe has one first cause, the big bang, and never has one again. There are an infinite number of possible universes where there is only one first cause. There are an infinite number of universes with 2 first causes. And so on. — Philosophim

I've underlined the sentence where you might be hiding a cryptic dualism: If total randomness spawned our universe, one inference that can be drawn is that there is a continuum from total randomness to order. The possible duality is the transition point from total randomness (while still within total randomness) to order, or even to proto-order. If this transition point is really an unexplained jump from zero order to extant order, then that's your hidden dualism.

Something-from-spontaneously-occurring-self-organization preserves the laws of physics; something from nothing seems to violate physical laws — ucarr

If a first cause can be anything, and it is found to be true, that would not violate physical laws, that would simply become part of them. — Philosophim

Maybe the question remains: Does a postulated realm of reality without physics and its laws violate the laws of physics?

You think it reasonable to characterize something-from-nothing as "... a small adjustment to physics..."? — ucarr

Yes because like Newton's laws to Einstein's relativity, most of the time Newton's laws is good enough. Most of the time in physics a first cause would never be considered as a case would have to factually present a case in which there could be no prior causality. That's a ridiculously high bar to clear. — Philosophim

You seem to be saying discovery of a first cause is unlikely. The unlikeliness of its discovery has no bearing on the radical impact of such a discovery.

...the impact to physics is irrelevant to the logical argument itself. — Philosophim

You're right, but in this case I'm not attacking your logical argument. I'm attacking your characterization of the advent of something-from-nothing as an event requiring a small adjustment to physics.

It's your job to explain logically how something-from-nothing happens. — ucarr

You think there's a cause that explains how it happens. There IS NO CAUSE ucarr. =D Do I need to type this 50 more times? I do say this with a smile on my face, but please, understand this basic point. — Philosophim

...there is nothing prior that is 'making' something. Its nothing, then something. Inception works much better. "nothing to something' will make me have to write 50 more responses to people explaining that no, nothing is not some thing that causes something. — Philosophim

Yes, with your clarification here I better understand what you've been describing.

Some might think I'm playing a language game when I reflect on a first cause that has no cause being illogical. I defend raising this question because the gist of your argument is that first causation is logically necessary. Now, my argumentative question says a thing partitioned from its identity is illogical along the line of paradox. First cause, by definition, possesses the identity of causation. By definition then, first cause is in identity with itself. (No, I haven't forgotten your denial that first cause can be a self. My simple response is to say non-sentient things like first causes nonetheless are things in themselves.) It's perhaps a weird argument, but I'm driving towards saying inception of first cause cancels definition of first cause as causeless. This in part is a denial that inception as a starting point can be causeless. General Relativity with light holding highest velocity excludes any physical processes -- such as inception -- from occurring instantaneously.

Its nothing, then something. — Philosophim

Trying to partition an interval of time to a nearly infinitesimally small duration such that there's a moment after inception wherein cause is first established doesn't work because in that short interval of time you're implying first cause is not really itself, a paradox. If that's not the case, then there can be no positive time interval during which incepted first cause isn't itself establishing causation. So, no temporal creation without causation.

This is a logical attack on your claim by implication first-cause inception is instantaneous. Since you're leading with the claim first cause (by instantaneous inception) is logically necessary, you must defend your claim with logic. Axiomatic talk about nothing-then-something without a logical argument excluding, for example, General Relativity's exclusion of your claim from reality, won't do.

Ha! But no. The logical argument has always been there ucarr. Try to show it to be wrong anytime. — Philosophim

You're referring to your alpha logic in your OP?

Please try to address the argument as I do specifically and counter what it and I have been saying, not what you believe I'm implying. — Philosophim

You're saying I should only draw inferences strictly adherent to the precise sense in which you word your statements?

True randomness is merely a description to grasp potential. — Philosophim

Must you exclude potential from the neighborhood of first cause?

Please take the argument I've presented for why a first cause is logically necessary and point out where it falls into ad absurdum reductio. — Philosophim

You're saying you have reason to doubt your alpha logic can be reduced to ad absurdum reductio and, given this doubt, you want me to demonstrate such a reduction?

"Are you saying that a first cause is self-evident?" Because my answer is "No". — Philosophim

You're saying "First causes simply are." is not a self-evident truth?

As to reality, if reality refers to everything, there isn't something that exists outside of that set. That's logical. — Philosophim

You're speculating about reality having no boundary?

And thank you for being very discerning and thinking about this at length. I don't want to come across as if I think you're not doing a fantastic job. You are. I'm enjoying the discussion. — Philosophim

I've made important gains in my general abilities pertinent to rational conversation through our dialogue up to this point. I'll be heeding your suggestions for keeping close to the senses in which you (and others) intend your communications in words, phrases, sentences and concepts.

As for my getting stuck at the outer boundary of causation and thereafter being unable to enter into examination of causeless things, I put my best spin on what I've been doing by thinking I've been running through my inventory of commitments to causation en route to deepening my understanding of what you're trying to communicate with respect to your posited causeless realm of first cause. I don't want to further aggravate your annoyance with fruitless repetitions. With that goal in mind, I'm ready to withdraw from our dialog in favor of study suggested by what I've been learning from it.

Suppose I succeed in stopping my internal dialogue, have I earned a nod from Walter White? — ucarr

I don't know whether you mean the actor or the civil rights activist. — Ludwig V

I mean Bryan Cranston as Walter White, the Grand Wizard of Speed in a speed-crazy global empire. In the end, he could but retire to the sterile silence of his solitude and die.

He didn't say there was any problem about asserting well-formed propositions, did he? — Ludwig V

Maybe a practical application of the language of silence consists of the axiomatic supposition supporting analysis: things exist.

Philosophim seems to be saying, things exist causally. That's a mixed bag containing holism and analysis. Well, if holism leaps across the void and supervenes on analysis, that's a very suggestive conception. Is today's establishment science wrong in its pragmatic decision to keep within its analytical physicalism, with the axiomatic established as the boundary?

The key question for Philosophim is whether s/he's another immaterialist propounding a dualist reality without explaining the handshake between two parallel realms.

Have any of these mathematical conveniences ever been detected? — jgill

...they can be thought of as disturbances in underlying fields, they don't persist for long – and can't be directly detected. — New Scientist

I'm not sure what the foundational order of thinking is or even whether there is one. — Ludwig V

Note - "foundational order" is a pun with two senses: 1) the order inherent in thinking is foundational to the human identity; 2) the essence of thinking is its natural orderliness

I feel inclined to claim that order is thinking. Following this line, I want to say the world appears to us orderly because it's rendered to our awareness through our thinking. An idealist wants to establish the world is only ordered through thinking.

Neuroscience has no conjectures about the superstructure of neuronal communications?

But it is true that we are so reluctant to accept "no cause" that we try to corral it by speaking of probability, which at least establishes a sort of order in the phenomena. — Ludwig V

Consider the following sentence: Origin boundary ontology is a gnarly puzzle.

Is it sufficiently suggestive to give you a clear impression of what it's trying to communicate?

Are you inclined to believe origin stories must discard causation at the start point?

I'm saying at least one first cause is logically necessary, and the consequences of that being so. — Philosophim

Is the following rephrasing acceptable: At least one cause and its causal chain are necessary.

There is no prior or external cause. Typically saying, "self-cause" implies that there is first a self, then a cause. That's not what I'm intending. There is no conscious or outside intent. — Philosophim

I'm guessing you're excluding consideration of self-organizing, complex systems that are not conscious. — ucarr

I'm not including or excluding anything but defining what a first cause is, and what that means for us. — Philosophim

Is this interpretation correct: The definition of a first cause and whatever that entails is an acceptable object of examination within this conversation.

Is this a reasonable conclusion: A self-organizing, complex system is an acceptable object of examination within this conversation if it is not logically excluded from the definition of first cause.

If there is a first X in a causal chain, there cannot be something prior which causes that first X. A -> B -> C A is the first. You can't then say 1 -> A because then A was never the first, 1 was. This is about discovery, this is about what actually is first, whether we know that its first or not. — Philosophim

Is this interpretation correct: A principal first cause constrained by the laws of physics cannot imply anything external, antecedent or contemporary with itself. However, if the laws of physics logically necessitate all instantiations of causation entail externals, logical antecedents and contemporaries, then its a correct inference there are no first causes.

You can't... say 1 -> A because then A was never the first, 1 was. — Philosophim

Is this interpretation correct: The above claim ignores mereological issues associated with the work of defining a first cause.

Finding limits is part of completeness. — Philosophim

Do you agree with this interpretation: This claim needs to be investigated as a possible false analogy. Argument: It's one thing to find the systemic limits of a discipline such as science. It's another thing to suppose a permanent partition within a discipline: first causes author causal chains, but they cannot be investigated because they simply are. First causes inhabit the phenomenal universe and create consequential phenomena in the form of causal chains, and yet the examination of causation as a whole comes to a dead end at its phenomenal starting point. The implication is that either within or beyond the phenomenal universe lies something extant but unexplainable.* Is this a case of finding the boundary of scientific investigation, or is it a case of halting scientific investigation and philosophical rumination by decree.

*The notion of total randomness causing something-from-nothing-creations suggests a partitioned and dual reality. The attribution of dualism to this concept rests upon the premise that total randomness cannot share space with an ordered universe without fatally infecting it.

Are you sure an unsearchable beginning doesn't dovetail with eternal existence? — ucarr

Positive. Our ability to know it is irrelevant to what it is. Its entirely possible a first cause could start to exist at any time. That would be its beginning. If one does, has, or will, whether we discover it or not does not deny its logical possibility and then existent reality. — Philosophim

Our ability to know it is irrelevant to what it is. — Philosophim

Interpretation - Our ability to know is irrelevant to what we know. Supposition - This claim ignores QM entanglement.

Given QM entanglement, it may be the case that what can incept is limited by what exists. An everyday parallel is the fact that certain microbes don't spawn and proliferate in liquid solutions with a pH above a certain level.

Something happening by just-ising from nothing seems to preclude energy, animation, forces and material, not to mention an environment of similar composition. — ucarr

Its not that all of these things can't incept, its just that nothing else causes them to incept. — Philosophim

Something-from-spontaneously-occurring-self-organization preserves the laws of physics; something from nothing seems to violate physical laws: such a phenomenon suggests incept of energy to animate the creative process and energy suggests mass transformed to create the energy and mass transformed suggests energy to transform the mass...

...a small adjustment to physics is not a reason to deny a logical conclusion — Philosophim

You think it reasonable to characterize something-from-nothing as "... a small adjustment to physics..."?

The possibility of first causes does not destroy what physics is. — Philosophim

I've been examining your definition of first cause as something-from-nothing within a closed system wherein matter-mass-energy are conserved. Again, I ask if you think it reasonable to characterize something-from-nothing as a small adjustment.

You seem to be implying a priori knowledge permanently partitioned from empirical experience of ultimate causes and therefore uncorroborated independently is sufficient for belief in unsearchable first causes. — ucarr

You do maintain the standard of empirical proof of first causes. Nonetheless, you firmly assert their possibility. Since all you have at present is speculation via reasoning, I think it germane to the vetting process to invoke arguments like the one about conservation laws being preserved within a closed system. It's your job to explain logically how something-from-nothing happens. Merely stating that inception of a first cause is a case of: "It is what it is." amounts to a case of you dodging behind axiomatic jargon that's first cousin to street vernacular: "Hey, man. I don't know what else I can tell ya. It is what it is."

Here's the dodge: You claim a priori knowledge of the reality of first causes, then evade the work of empirical investigation by claiming the just-ising of first causes into our phenomenal universe. By using this dodge, you don't have to do any explaining of specific changes to known physics concepts that would have to be adjusted for the advent of empirical proof of first causes. You claim to support empirical proof of first causes, but you show no inclination to do any of the work entailed.

Normally, a priori theorems get vetted by the concepts established in the pertinent field. You preclude this vetting process by fixing on a theorem that specifically defines its subject as something that its pertinent field -- physics -- cannot investigate. By excluding causation as a whole from any examination of first causation, you dump the conversation into the field of Kant's noumenal ontology, a field that excludes not only science but knowledge in general.

It sounds like a hypothetical conjecture that excludes physics. If true randomness has no relationship with first causes, why do you even mention it? — ucarr

Because its the logical consequence of nothing coming from something. — Philosophim

You can't establish it as a logical consequence if you can't show and explain how randomness morphs into a dynamic organizer of something. You're hiding another homunculus. It's the homunculus that confers onto randomness organizational powers.

Also, you need to argue why something-from-nothing as a logical consequence is not an ad absurdum reductio. If you can't defend against such a conclusion, then first cause is non-existent.

Why does reality exist at all? Was there anything outside of reality which caused reality? Of course not. Meaning there was nothing that ruled that it had to be this way. — Philosophim

Your conclusion is not a self-evident truth -- since you claim to disavow self-evident truths, why are you claiming one here? Also, don't jump to the conclusion something outside of reality is self-evidently absurd: $√-1= i$

Why are we in the reality we observe? The simple answer: It's because we observe it. I'm saying what's real to us is a matter of perspective. We ask a natural question: Why is our reality what we perceive? The answer is that we ask the question because we're able to ask it. Even if we speculate about another kind of reality, we ask why it's not our reality because we're able to speculate about it.

It seems likely your use of randomness facilitates circular reasoning within your head. — ucarr

I don't see how this is circular. Please explain. — Philosophim

There's no organized run-up to the just-ising of first causes, so they are because they are. Your tautology is your shield.

Ucarr, something I've noticed is you say I'm implying or asserting things that I have not implied or asserted. — Philosophim

It's your job to refute my interpretations of what you write with cogent arguments.

Can you explain how first cause -- sourced in nothing -- and causing subsequent causal chain which cannot exist without its sourced-in-nothing first cause, can spawn anything other than nothingness? — ucarr

Sure. Because there is no constraint as to what a first cause can be. — Philosophim

So, first cause, like a deity, can create anything. Also, first cause, like a deity, cannot be explained causally. Instead, first causes and deities just are.

If the source of something is nothing, how can it cause anything other than what caused it, nothingness? — ucarr

Because that's what it is. — Philosophim

You don't need an argument to support this because its nature is by definition, right?

A first cause is simply the start of all other causation in that chain. You're over complicating it again. A -> B -> C Nothing caused A. Keep it simple Ucarr. — Philosophim

You're the one suggesting randomness caused first cause. You're the one suggesting the questionable equation between randomness and nothingness.

Your first causes from nothing might be invoking Wittgenstein's silent vigil over what cannot be spoken of. — ucarr

This again doesn't explain anything to me. What specifically in Wittgenstein's silent vigil is being evoked as you see it? Lots of people have very different opinions on what Wittgenstein was referring to. So I'll need your particular take to understand what you mean. — Philosophim

I'm speculating about your first causes just-ising into being as examples of ineffable creation.

On the contrary, I'm suggesting true randomness cannot be contemplated because it deranges the foundational order of thinking. — ucarr

It simply causes us to consider something we have not considered before. This does not disrupt thinking or logic. Its merely a continuation and updating of what we can consider. — Philosophim

It doesn't disrupt thinking or logic because it's thinking about randomness, not randomness.

You mean that randomness that is not an unknown explanation is the only "true" randomness. What makes it true, as opposed to an illusion? — Ludwig V

On the contrary, I'm suggesting true randomness cannot be contemplated because it deranges the foundational order of thinking.

Wittgenstein's silence in the Tractatus is defined against a very limited concept of what can be said - that is, of what "saying" is. — Ludwig V

Suppose I succeed in stopping my internal dialogue, have I earned a nod from Walter White?

That's the entire point of the post. :D I thought you assumed the logic leading to this conclusion was correct, then asking about the consequences of it. I'll summarize it again.

If we don't know whether our universe has finite or infinite chains of causality A -> B -> C etc...

Lets say there's a finite chain of causality. What caused a finite causal chain to exist instead of something else? There is no prior reason, it simply is.

Lets say there's an infinite chain of causality. What caused an infinite causal chain to exist instead of something else? There is no prior reason, it simply is.

It is impossible for there to not be at least one first cause. Therefore we know that first causes are possible, and have no reason for their existence besides the fact they exist. — Philosophim

You're saying the domain of this conversation is a logical examination of what follows within a causal chain in the wake of its first cause?

There is no prior or external cause. Typically saying, "self-cause" implies that there is first a self, then a cause. That's not what I'm intending. There is no conscious or outside intent. — Philosophim

I'm guessing you're excluding consideration of self-organizing, complex systems that are not conscious.

ts illogical to claim that something which has nothing prior that caused its existence, has nothing prior that caused its existence. Only the minds rebellion based on previous experience thinks otherwise. You understand the transition because it happened. That's it. That's the start of causality and the end of our questions up the causal chain. — Philosophim

I'm guessing you're saying first causes can only be interacted with as givens. There's no way to approach a first cause mentally. The only mental reaction possible to the existence of a first cause is acceptance of it as a given, as an unsearchable fact.

Its illogical to claim that something which has nothing prior that caused its existence, has nothing prior that caused its existence. — Philosophim

Is this your description of circular reasoning?

If you say first-cause entities have no causation whatsoever, and yet are not eternal, then you're positing a universe wherein science is not possible. — ucarr

Incorrect — Philosophim

Since first causes author causal chains, their just-ising into existence erects an impenetrable partition around the origins of our univese. If just-ising is the dead-end of physics and its examinations, then, yes, the domain of causality post-first-cause suspports science. However, the fundamentals as first causes are beyond reach of science. This renders post-causality science permanently incomplete.

Permanently incomplete science demotes it to local laws ultimately shrouded in mystery, and thus these local laws, having no metaphysical grounding, amount to little more than conjecture. Not knowing ultimate sources, local science must countenance the possibility that mysteries beyond the partition are really magic dissembling as science.

We just have to keep open that possibility that a first cause could happen. — Philosophim

Maybe this sentence exemplifies one of those language problems you've mentioned. Something happening means -- under normal circumstances -- an energetic, animate phenomenon employing forces and materials within a surrounding material environment. Something happening by just-ising from nothing seems to preclude energy, animation, forces and material, not to mention an environment of similar composition.

This might be the point where the homunculus in your argument is hiding out. When you exhort the reader to instantaneously accept the just-ising into being as a something divorced from everything save nothing, you're cryptically doing away with physics-yet-magically-assuming-it because you present without explanation some means of a human perceiving this change out of nothingness with his/her powers of perception intact, or is QM entanglement of observer/object not in effect with observation of a first cause aborning?

Virtual particles pop out of a vacuum attached to a QM universe. Moreover, they have physical causes.

We both know that's not our universe. — ucarr

No we don't. — Philosophim

You seem to be implying a priori knowledge permanently partitioned from empirical experience of ultimate causes and therefore uncorroborated independently are sufficient for belief in unsearchable first causes.

Not caused doesn't mean a first cause doesn't have a beginning. — Philosophim

Are you sure an unsearchable beginning doesn't dovetail with eternal existence? If just-ising into being is unsearchable, how can we know its not eternal? You seem to be ignoring that human perception of just-ising empirically assumes real physics, something you magically dispense with in your pure randomness.

True randomness is a description to understand the possibilities of a first cause. It is not a thing that exists that causes first causes. — Philosophim

It sounds like a hypothetical conjecture that excludes physics. If true randomness has no relationship with first causes, why do you even mention it? You need it to think about first causes, but having no physics, inception of first causes have nothing to do with us. It seems likely your use of randomness facilitates circular reasoning within your head.

Now, you're going to say first causes might govern our lives through the causal chains they author. Well, you have another homunculus transporting first causes across the bridge from no-physics to physics. I don't expect you can explain how no-physics shakes hands with physics. No, you can't. That's why you must say first causes do just-ising as their way to enter our world.

How can you perceive nothing then something with nothing temporal or existential or directional? — ucarr

I did not understand this question, could you clarify please? — Philosophim

Since first causes just-is their way into our world, there's no physics -- time, matter or vectors -- attached to their arrival. Sounds like a priori speculation without possibility of corroboration.

I don't see how you conclude this. If a causal chain is A -> B -> C, B causes C, A causes B, but nothing causes A. That's a clear distinction. — Philosophim

Can you explain how first cause -- sourced in nothing -- and causing subsequent causal chain which cannot exist without its sourced-in-nothing first cause, can spawn anything other than nothingness? If the source of something is nothing, how can it cause anything other than what caused it, nothingness? Yes, this is a logical argument, but you've stipulated that logic pertains within the causal chain. To continue, if nothing becomes something and causes subsequent somethings, how can you claim causal supervenience across a causal chain? Don't you have to maintain that original nothingness in order to claim supervenience? If so, then causal chains are really nothing. On the other hand, if you break the causal chain of nothing-to-something (you said it first: (from= causal) nothing to just-isness), how does first cause continue causality? Didn't Hume say something akin to this?

Randomness won't countenance links in a causal chain, so talk of links in causal chains is distraction which cannot distract from Wittegenstein's silence. — ucarr

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here either, could you go into more detail ucarr? Thanks. — Philosophim

Your first causes from nothing might be invoking Wittgenstein's silent vigil over what cannot be spoken of.

Do you acknowledge embracing the realist doctrine abstract concepts have an objective experience inhabiting its own reality? — Gnomon

realism - | ˈrēəˌliz(ə)m |
noun Philosophy
the doctrine that universals or abstract concepts have an objective or absolute existence; the doctrine that matter as the object of perception has real existence and is neither reducible to universal mind or spirit... — The Apple Dictionary

Your opening question describes a "realist doctrine" that sounds more like Idealism (or alt-reality) to me : postulating a mental realm of "abstract concepts" that exists in parallel to material reality, and may be considered more real than sensory reality. — Gnomon

I don't subscribe to that worldview [Idealism]. For all practical purposes, I am a Materialist and Realist. Yet for philosophical considerations (ideas about ideas) I must necessarily think somewhat like an Idealist. — Gnomon

No. As you see from The Apple Dictionary, my use of realism adheres to Platonic realism.

Maybe you are interpreting Descartes' "stuff" and "things" as referring to material objects. — Gnomon

No. I've seen how "substance" in a philosophical context holds a different meaning from the one known in the vernacular.

Nevertheless, the bottom line is that abstractions are not real : you can't eat an ideal cupcake, and an imaginary rose would not smell sweet. — Gnomon

Now you contradict your claim to be a realist.

"Potential" is not an objective thing out there in an ideal realm, but merely a mental projection of statistical Probability. We don't perceive Potential with our senses, but conceive it with our rational mind. — Gnomon

My personal -ism is Enformationism, which has a tentative foot in both worlds [material/immaterial]. — Gnomon

Please explain how -- given your endorsement of this seamless continuum from enformation to mind to matter -- the first two links in the chain -- both immaterial -- connect with material brain? — ucarr

Ah! That is the "Hard Question" for which materialistic science has no answer, and that idealistic philosophies merely take for granted. My thesis postulates an explanation --- not scientifically, but philosophically --- for "how" Mind & Matter interrelate. By analogy, the relationship is similar to that between fluid Water and solid Ice ; the are merely different Forms of the same Essence : The Power/Potential to cause change in Form. — Gnomon

essence | ˈes(ə)ns |
noun
the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character: conflict is the essence of drama.

Philosophy a property or group of properties of something without which it would not exist or be what it is.

Now you seem to be pitching your tent on the ground of the immaterial.

Yes. The metaphorical "homunculus" in my thesis is Causal EnFormAction, the hypothetical precursor of physical Energy, and of biological Matter, and of metaphysical Thought Processes. The "explanation" for how the "little man" came to live in the human mind is expounded in the website & blog & and is on-going in this forum. It's not a final Theory of Everything, but I'm working on it. — Gnomon

Now you're being forthright and clear about where you really stand. I thank-you for your candor here.

In spite of your many evasions, nuanced qualifications and circumspect language affording escapes from slam-dunk opposing arguments, you acknowledge being a dualism-adjacent theoretician.

Yes. The metaphorical "homunculus" in my thesis is Causal EnFormAction, the hypothetical precursor of physical Energy, and of biological Matter, and of metaphysical Thought Processes. — Gnomon

Praiseworthy indeed is your admission you don't really know how enformation is functionally structured into an interweave with matter. At present you can't give practical directions to researchers seeking to illuminate the passageways leading from computational neuroscience to abstract consciousness.

Deacon's realm of the ententional, populated by phenomena intrinsically incomplete yet interwoven with future states by end-directed goals, paves forward across a no-person's realm into a practical monism of matter-mind-concept.

...there is something prior that exists within the causal chain of the first cause up to the first cause itself. — ucarr

Okay, for the record, this isn't you intending to say something exists prior to the first cause? Can you restate your intended meaning; I don't know how to read your above quote except as you saying something exists prior to the first cause.

A causes B causes C is a causal chain. Every point within that chain has a prior point except the first cause. — Philosophim

I don't know how to read this except as a contradiction to the statement I addressed directly above.

The logical conclusion is that there must be at least one first cause. — Philosophim

How can you justify logically the existence of a first cause that simply is? This statement tries to make explicit that nothing causal or sequential is involved in the appearance of a first cause, but logic is specifically concerned with justifiable connections linking things together.

I don't use the term self-causation because that can convey the intent that the first cause actively caused itself. That's not what I'm saying here. — Philosophim

I think you imply self-causation in the case of a first cause. Since, by definition, nothing causal leads to a first cause, it follows implicitly that a first cause, if not eternal and uncaused, causes the inception of itself. What else could be the agency of the inception of a first cause if not itself?

...we do not identify a hydrogen atom as being able to create ex nihilo. — Philosophim

What about a first-cause hydrogen atom? Doesn't it have to incept ex nihilo? Let me repeat my earlier question in a different way: Doesn't every first-cause entity have to self-incept ex nihilo? If not by self-inception, how do first-cause entities incept? Perhaps you'll say: "We don't know." If you play that card, then you have to stop saying first causes are logically necessary. How can you claim to know the logical necessity of existence of an entity whose agency of existence is totally mysterious?

Again, this is not what is intended. A first cause does not cause itself. A first cause is not caused by anything. Its just there. Its extremely simple, don't overcomplicate it by adding in the term 'self'. :) — Philosophim

Firstly, what you write -- regardless of the intentions in your head -- controls the content of your communication.

Secondly, from the limitations you impose: a) not self-caused; b) not caused by anything else; c) possibly extant, it follows logically that your first-cause entities, if they exist, have always existed. Given your limitations, can you name any other possibilities?

Let's look at your first-cause entities from a slightly different angle: with your description, they're not eternal, and thus they must begin. If there's a point where something doesn't exist, and then a later point when it does exist, its logically necessary that this something began to exist by some means. How else can we understand the transition from nothing to something? If you say first-cause entities have no causation whatsoever, and yet are not eternal, then you're positing a universe wherein science is not possible. We both know that's not our universe. So, it follows that your thesis is inconsistent with the universe we know. Moreover, your two limitations -- a) not caused; b) not eternal -- are inconsistent with each other. Finally, by the two previous arguments, first cause as you define it is self-contradictory: not caused means no beginning; no beginning but not always existing means not beginning to exist, so existing means not not beginning to exist, which means not not caused...

No will. No self. No other. Nothing then something. That's it. — Philosophim

There is nothing prior. — Philosophim

anything goes randomness — Philosophim

True randomness has nothing to measure. There are no prior constraints. There's no set up. There's nothing, then something. That's a first cause. Completely unpredictable and unlimited as what it could be before it happens. — Philosophim

Why is true randomness -- completely unpredictable and unlimited, but active -- not the cause of what you call first cause? But it is: something, then nothing.

How is true randomness intelligible as a named activity if its nothing? Nothing cannot have a name.

How can what you call first cause be the resultant of intelligible activity if there's no causation? There's nothing to look at but the ultimate pretense of looking at.

How can you detect and measure levels of unpredictability and freedom from limitation with nothing unpredictable and unlimited? Rohrschach Test.

How can you perceive nothing then something with nothing temporal or existential or directional? If time is not essential then: Nothing then something is the cheating liar homunculus in the randomness.

Since every link in a causal chain is sourced in nothing, there's ultimately no distinction between first cause and links in a causal chain. The artificial partitioning into a causal chain is the abyss calling the nothing by a name unhearable.

There are no constraints in nothing, so constraint and causality cannot erase the signature of nothing stamped upon them.

Randomness won't countenance links in a causal chain, so talk of links in causal chains is distraction which cannot distract from Wittegenstein's silence.

To argue that our consciousness is highly emergent you must show that the features of our consciousness are supervenient over the underlying complex structure of neurons. This would mean that any damage to the brain has consequences for consciousness. I didn't think this is the case. But I admit that the distinction between weak and strong emergence is not a strong one. — Ypan1944

Do you accept selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- SSRIs -- an established medication treatment for major depressive disorder -- as an example of the deep interweave of mind and brain via supervenience? SSRIs can greatly relieve long-term depression, a state of consciousness embedded in the empirical experience of some individuals. They achieve their effect by increasing the volume of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that carries signals between neurons. — ucarr

In my opinion this is certainly a case of supervenience. But supervenience can both exist in weak and strong emergency. — Ypan1944

You say if damage to the brain has consequences for consciousness, then this is evidence consciousness is highly emergent, with supervenience over neurons.

So, I provide a well-documented example of deficient serotonin levels in persons with clinical depression. This deficiency is tied to brain malfunction that in turn causes strong negativity of personal experiences in the mind of the afflicted person. This evidence meets your standards of supervenience over neuronal activity with gross changes in consciousness.

You say you don't believe damage to the brain has consequences for consciousness.

You emphasize the strong versus weak emergence distinction, saying there's little difference, thus implying strong emergence is only slightly stronger than weak emergence.

Since supervenience -- whether strong or weak -- evidences emergence of mind, you presumably accept it as fact. Is your goal in this conversation denial of strong emergency?

At any moment in time, there is something prior that exists within the causal chain of the first cause up to the first cause itself. — Philosophim

With this claim how are you not deconstructing the central premise of your thesis?

To specifically state, "This first cause must have happened" requires us to prove it exists/existed. — Philosophim

Are you saying knowledge of a first cause can only be empirical, not a priori? So, this gives your claim the status of a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of truth?

Lets carefully define what we mean by a contradiction. A contradiction is often defined as "Two things that cannot coexist". So can two things that cannot coexist co-exist? No. Because that's what they are. Would there be things that might seem contrary to us? Yes. But if they both co-exist, they are not contradictions. — Philosophim

This is correct reasoning, but it suggests your claim needs to be altered to: Any logical first cause is possible. Again, this adds nothing to the database of established knowledge.

A first cause does not need to have any imposition, consciousness, or awareness of itself. It simply is. — Philosophim

Again, this is either self-causation or eternal existence without creation.

...its not a hydrogen atom as we currently define it, because hydrogen atoms cannot do that. — ucarr

Re: a hydrogen atom creating existences other than itself: it's not creation absolute, but hydrogen plays an essential role in causing the existence of many compounds. Chemistry tells us elementary particles, like stem cells, can be re-purposed across the spectrum of the periodic chart. So, nitrogen -- even as a first cause -- is not really a unique thing. That's because nitrogen, which has, like hydrogen, neutrons, protons and electrons, consists of types of stuff already extant. As a birth, its a new arrangement of familiar stuff.

.we do not identify a hydrogen atom as being able to create ex nihilo. — ucarr

You're not talking about causation of something within an established causal chain, such as our sun assembling hydrogen atoms within its elements-generating furnace. If you were, you wouldn't have used the verb: create.

The first cause is not free of causal logic either, it is the start. — Philosophim

This is more evidence you imply first causes are self-caused.

...a first cause must act causally — Philosophim

Do you agree the above contradicts:
A first cause does not necessitate that it be able to do anything. — Philosophim

No, can you add a little more to what you mean here? — Philosophim

You've saying a cause, first or otherwise, must act causally. So why do you also say (per the above quote) that it isn't necessary that a cause be able to to anything, which is a way of saying it's not compelled to act causally. Do you mean if it acts, it must act causally? If so, can you call something a first cause if it does nothing?

I think there's a difference between saying, "There's a reason for everything" and then spelling out what that reason is or how it must unfold. — Philosophim

Do you agree that:
...because all things are possible as first causes, its equally possible a hydrogen atom, as we identify it, just forms and exists as normal. There is not the need for anything out there... — ucarr

None of what I'm stating invalidates the scientific method. — Philosophim

As I understand you, your main claim is that first causes can happen sequentially in time. When describing these phenomena, you say vague things such as: a hydrogen atom forms ex nihilo, or you say even vaguer things such as: a hydrogen atom as first cause simply is, or There is no prior imposition. Its just existence. Does an atom will itself to exist? It is by the forces outside of its control. This is axiomatic jargon, not science. An example of scientific support for your argument might be something along the lines of saying: Because our phenomenal universe is open, it can continually increase its total volume of matter-mass-energy by absorbing such from other universes populating the multi-verse. Moreover, we know this because by calculating the total volume of dark matter within our universe at distant points in time from its inception to the present day, we see the total volume of dark matter steadily increasing.

I believe it may be possible in some instances for us to find a first cause scientifically. — Philosophim

Can you elaborate some specific details pertaining to how cosmologists can go about finding a first cause?

"Self-evident" means "human's can grasp them without needing to prove them". I do not believe in that. — Philosophim

Can you provide a proof for:

truth is what it is — Philosophim

As for axioms, I believe axioms must be proven, not 'given'. — Philosophim

You should consult your dictionary, unless you want to start a conversation explaining how you're redefining "axiom."

c) the universe, because it continues to incept new matter-mass-energy into itself, exists as an open system. — ucarr

No. I've said this several times now and its very important that you understand this. I am not saying, "X first cause happened, will happen, or has happened". Its possible, but it must be proven. It is equally as possible that no other first causes have happened, or will happen. You cannot predict if a first cause will happen. You must conclusively prove that a specific first cause has happened to say it has. — Philosophim

I make no claims that any one particular first cause happened, only that its logically necessary that there must have been at least one. — Philosophim

Since you think first causes are logically necessary, why do you say they're possible instead of saying they're necessary? Consider this tautology: all bachelors are unmarried men. Can you describe a set in which first causes are necessary members by definition?