Hey. I am trying to access the page to your article but your link appears to be broken. Could you fix the link, or else summarize your argument here?

I don't know what you think you are getting out of this line. Your initial premise has been reduced to well-known conservation laws — SophistiCat

The thought experiments refute your claim that the principle 'no effect can be greater than the sum of its causes' fails in the example of water boiling. As such, the principle still stands. I have apparently failed to convince you of it, but it has yet to be refuted. I can provide more supporting examples upon request.

No, I am saying that it's more complicated than you suppose and can't be adequately summed up by a simple aphorism. — SophistiCat

I am not sure if you are saying yes or no. Either the law of conservation of mass and energy applies in the case of the big bang, or it does not. If it does, then the big bang necessarily possessed all the mass and energy found in the universe today. If not, then not. While the laws of physics may change, logic does not.

These assumptions seem to be completely unjustified — SophistiCat

You are correct that the argument is founded on these assumptions, but they also seem rather common sensical. As such, they are the prima facie and the onus of proof is on the other side.
Regarding assumption 2: We don't need to know what is outside of the universe. We can just use logic: either the process is random or it is not. If random, then it results in the existence of our configuration to be highly improbable, therefore making the 'random' hypothesis highly improbable in return. If not, then the process is deterministic or designed, which in turn points to a designer.

You make a good point that empiricism is classified as an epistemology, whereas materialism is classified as a metaphysics, and so they are not synonymous. As such, I was mistaken in saying that all that is empirical is material.

Back to the original question, I wonder if all things that fit under the umbrella of natural science must be material. I am now leaning towards no, by thinking about your example of experiencing happiness: The statement "studies show that those who live in this particular way tend to be more happy" is a valid scientific statement, and does not necessarily lead to materialism.

First, to be clear, by 'configuration' I meant the narrow range of settings (such as the gravitational constant G) that allow for life to be possible. I am assuming this statement to be true, as I am no expert on the necessary ingredients for life. Let's just buy into it for now.

Now if I understand correctly, [the probability of an outcome] = [the number of desired outcomes] / [all possible outcomes]. In this case, the number of desired outcomes, that is, the configuration with all settings that allow for life to be possible, is close to 1 (assuming a really narrow range of settings). And the number of all possible outcomes is the number of combination of all possible settings. It appears to me that this number is infinite, if each setting has logically an infinite possibility of values. This results in a very low probability of our configuration to occur. Thoughts?

Are you saying that the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to the early post-Big Bang universe? I thought they were called laws because they applied to all cases (in physics).

Good point. But by limitations, I meant that God would not be above all things if he was a material being. As all matter and energy is subjected to the spatial and temporal laws, so too would be a being made of matter and energy, regardless of the amount.

Another argument for fun: If an infinite material being existed, then as you said, no material boundaries would exist outside of that being. But boundaries exist: I occupy a space and time and I am not part of that being. Therefore an infinite material being does not exist.

Science couldn't get going without maths and the rules of inference, and the like - so maths is prior to the sciences. — Wayfarer

I agree with this. Science presupposes logic, and math is the logic of numbers.

there are always some mathematical Platonists, i.e. those who believe that number is real but not material. — Wayfarer

That's me. We cannot conceive a universe where 2+2≠4. Therefore math is part of eternal truth.

What actually is meant by 'empirical' is simply 'something tangible' i.e. something that can be touched, felt, measured, either by the senses or by scientific instruments, which are extensions to the senses. — Wayfarer

That is why I ask if the natural sciences can deal with anything that is not material, because it seems that all that can be touched, felt or measured is either matter or energy. This would make naturalism and materialism equivalent terms.

'multiverse' speculation - the idea that the Universe we know, is one of countless 'bubble universes' that never come into contact with one another. — Wayfarer

At first glance, I see only two logical possibilities in that multiverse hypothesis:
1. The universes are connected in some way. Thus we can think of the whole as one big system, which would be equivalent to our view of our universe, where the laws of physics might be more diverse, but the laws of logic would be the same. Therefore the argument from first cause would still apply to the system.
2. The universes are not connected in any way. In which case, Occam's razor would deem this as an unnecessary hypothesis and shave it off.

So you say that empiricism encompasses all experiential things, which includes but is not limited to material things. Could you provide an example of an experiential thing which is not a material thing? Note: I think Aristotle was considered an empiricist because he claimed that experiences precedes our knowledge of universals, and he also believed in forms or essences which are not material things. However, the topic of essences in not part of the natural sciences.

So the move here is to point to a transient property, such as "boiling," and say that it always existed in potentia, and needed only a suitable cause to be actualized. This clever get-out-of-jail clause can paper over any difficulty with properties that appear to be new in effects. But why not use the same move on every property? Well, then it would be hard to link back to the original idea, that of invariant property transfer from cause to effect. For that you have appealed to energy, matter and other more-or-less conserved quantities, chosen ad hoc for each particular case. — SophistiCat

That's an interesting point. Here are thought experiments to show that the claims are not arbitrary:
1. Keeping the same source (fire), and replacing the receiver from water to another liquid (say oil), it follows that the energy increase will be the same for both receivers. Therefore the energy effect is independent of the receiver, and the property must come from the source.
2. Keeping the same source (fire), and replacing the receiver from water to another liquid (say oil), it follows that the property of boiling will not be the same for both liquids (different boiling points). Therefore the boiling effect is dependent of the receiver, and the property must come from the receiver.

Your 2-step argument is a good summary. It is however based on a lot of presuppositions that objectors will demand to defend. To name a few:
1. The universe has a beginning, to deduce that a first cause or causes exist.
2. This beginning has a single first cause, and not many.
3. 'Nothing can come from nothing', to deduce that the first cause itself has no beginning.
4. 'No effect can be greater than the sum of its causes', to deduce that the first cause is the greatest of all.
5. Time has a beginning, so that the first cause caused it to existence and therefore transcends it.
6. The first cause has no end. I think we can deduce this from the premises 4 or 5, but I am not sure.

But why didn't it simply culminate in wreckage, 'greater entropy'? Why did it give rise to the exquisite order of nature? 'Just happened' doesn't strike me as any kind of hypothesis. — Wayfarer

I'm with you on that one: The undeniable order in the universe strongly points to an order-giver.

I think an objector might say that "while improbable, this current configuration of the universe could have happened at random, and maybe countless of different random configurations failed before that one happened". Now maybe this hypothesis is not possible if, as you say, there can be no 'before' prior to the big bang. I just don't know much about this.

the referent of 'naturalism' is 'what is subject to study by the natural sciences', whereas materialism is the belief that only material objects and forces are real. — Wayfarer

I wonder still if the definitions are not essentially saying the same thing in different ways. Aren't natural sciences dealing only with things that are empirical; and all that is empirical is material? Maybe math is the exception, but I can't think of another one.

Yeah. Materialism does not leave room for the existence of God. God is conventionally considered a spiritual, non-material being, because a material being has limitations, whereas God does not.

I think all this new argument proves is that the Big Bang (assuming it is the first cause) was very massive and powerful.

Interesting. I am not advocating materialism, but I also thought that naturalism and materialism were interchangeable words. What is the difference between the two?

I was referring only to natural or material things. Indeed, non-material things like meaning, information, knowledge, values, moral law, etc., do not necessarily fit into the categories of either matter or energy.

What does the argument look like stated in those terms? — Srap Tasmaner

It changes my argument drastically if we only consider material things, but we can try it out for fun anyways:

- The first cause possesses all properties from all effects, and to an equal or greater degree.
- If all that exists is material (matter and energy), then all properties from all effects are material things.
∴ The first cause possessed all the matter and energy that currently exists in the world, to an equal or greater degree.

I say possessed (past tense), because due to the law of "conservation of mass and energy", the first cause no longer possesses the matter and energy that have been passed down to the effects.

So does your thesis of "conservation of properties," if we're calling it that, come down to a restatement of the first law of thermodynamics (with a nod to the second), once you've reduced everything to matter and energy? — Srap Tasmaner

I think that indeed we can reduce the thesis "conservation of property" to "conservation of mass and energy" when it comes to the natural or material world.

You also mentioned genes, so there's an issue about information... — Srap Tasmaner

Information or knowledge is neither matter or energy, because it can be shared without being lost by the emitter. Thus information fits the "conservation of property" thesis in the sense that the receiver may not receive more than what is emitted, but it does not follow the laws of thermodynamics because the information is not merely transferred, but duplicated.

Energy transfer is causal. I may have miswrote something along the way. In fact, I think we can generalize that in the natural world, all the properties passed down from cause to effect always come down to either matter or energy, because things in the natural world fit into either categories of matter or energy. Therefore properties of causal relationships of natural things must fit either of these two categories as well.

Sure there is. The effect of the word inscription on paper is caused not only by the typewriter but also by the writer using the typewriter. No writer = no inscription, because the typewriter does nothing on its own.

The motion of the typewriter keys onto the paper is caused by the motion of your hands. Or to generalize a bit more, there is energy transfer from you to the device.

I think I see where the misunderstanding lies. Let's go back to the principle:
"No effect can be greater than the sum of its causes (with an 's'). An effect can be have many causes, and thus only the properties in the causal relationship are found in both cause and effect. One of the only times a cause has all properties of the effect, is when the cause causes the effect into existence, because the effect has a single cause.

In the fire-to-water example, the fire did not cause the water into existence, and so the water may have several properties not found in the fire. The only causal relationship between the fire and water is the energy transfer. To break down the process into basic steps:
The energy from the fire (property 1) causes an energy increase in the water (property 1). Then the energy increase in the water (property 1), combined with the potential of water molecules to boil at 100C (property 2), causes the water to boil (property 2 actualized).

Another example where the cause causes the effect into existence: I am the product of my parents. All my genes are found in my parents. And if I never interacted with anyone or anything other than my parents, then I would never know anything more than what my parent know.

Well we are getting into small details, but it goes something like this:
The computer has the potential to inscribe words, and remains passive until you give it some input. To put it simply, that potential is actualized by the transfer of energy from your hands to the computer. (Really, your motion only causes a closed circuit in the keyboard-to-word system, and the energy is mainly brought up by the power socket, but this is too specific to this example only.)

To say the same thing with a clearer example, let's use a typewriter instead of a computer. Words on the paper are caused by the ink and the motion of the typewriter. The ink is from the cartridge, and the motion gets its energy from you. The ink is the shared property between the words and the cartridge. The energy is the shared property between you and the typewriter.

That is the gist of it. "Inscription" is a better fit for the property too.
Indeed, you are not the direct cause of the inscription because if we remove the computer, then unless you write with blood, there can be no inscription. On the other hand, being the author of the sentence, you are the direct cause of the meaning the words are intended to hold.

We can just modify the premise slightly, to say "Everything that we can conceive must exist in their simple components". The argument then becomes:

- No effect can be greater than its cause(s). (I still defend this)
- A first cause exists. (assumed)
∴ The first cause contains all properties from all effects, and to an equal or greater degree.

- Everything that we can conceive must exist in their simple components. (Hume)
- All that exists must be an effect from the first cause, directly or indirectly. (by definition)
∴ The first cause is composed of all simple components of all that we can conceive.

∴ ∴ The first cause is that which nothing greater can be conceived. (drops mic)

The fire underneath the boiling pot has neither the energy nor the temperature of the boiling water. It also does not possess the property of boiling. — SophistiCat

I don't understand your position. Are you denying that there is energy transfer from the fire to the water? If yes, then what is the causal relationship between the two, if any? If no, then what is wrong with my premise? That energy is the common property between the cause and the effect.

(Insert witty comeback with a monopoly reference here)

I agree. That is why I said earlier:

This does not mean that just because I can imagine a unicorn, that unicorns exist, but that the basic components of the unicorn (colours, shapes, sounds, ...) must exist. — Samuel Lacrampe

Does it make my reasoning invalid?

The first premise is, at best, a rather optimistic statement about our cognitive faculties. But, even if it happens to be true, I wouldn't take it as a metaphysical first principle: the world has no obligation to be comprehensible to the human intellect. And if you take it definitionally (possibility is conceivability) then you are trivializing your conclusion. — SophistiCat

Yep. I stand corrected. Upon further thinking, I too don't actually believe that all that exists can be conceived. Thanks for finding the flaw in that reasoning.

Corollary: God (should he exist) should be defined as "that which nothing greater can exist", and not merely as "that which nothing greater can be conceived". The latter implies maximum possibility, where as the former implies that we could conceive such a being, which is incorrect from a christian standpoint.

A boiling pot, for instance: neither the fire under the pot nor the water prior to the onset of boiling have the property of boiling. — SophistiCat

The fire emits the energy received by the water to boil, and the "boiling" effect is just the combination of the energy (caused by the fire) and the potential of water molecules to boil (not caused by the fire). And we know the energy received cannot be more than the energy emitted, due to the first law of thermodynamics.

For that matter, the fire that brings the water to a boil does not have the property of being at 100C. — SophistiCat

Indeed. The fire has a property of being greater than 100C, which agrees with my point that the cause(s) may be greater or equal to the effect.

I just caused that sentence to exist. It has the property of being composed of words; I am not composed of words. — Srap Tasmaner

Still an incorrect causal relationship. The words have a physical property (say pixels on the screen), and a meaning. The meaning of the words is caused by you directly, and they are also a property of you because you can think (i.e. you meant what you wrote). You are not composed of pixels, but the direct cause of the pixels is the computer, which has the ability to create these pixels.

Interesting article. So what it says is that if I died tonight, another "me" could still go to China, thus making that possibility actualized somewhere in this infinite universe. But I would like to refute that there are other "me" out there. The reason I am an individual is because my attributes are unique. Not all of them are unique (probably most of them are not) but the entire configuration is. There may be another being that looks identical to me, but at least we do not share the same position (x,y,z) attributes, thereby making that being "not me".

No probs. I was just paraphrasing. Here is the link. Additionally, I can summarize the argument on how he got to that conclusion, if requested.

Unless we have a means which would in principle decide the truth-value of a given statement, we do not have for it a notion of truth and falsity which would entitle us to say that it must be true or false.

This sounds like a self-contradiction: Do you (or Michael Dummett) have a means which would in principle decide the truth-value of that very statement? If not, then according to that statement, we do not have for it a notion of truth and falsity which would entitle us to say that it must be true or false.

So you should at least be aware that there are philosophers who have qualms about drawing "logical" conclusions about matters we can in principle know nothing about. — Srap Tasmaner

While I take your statement in consideration, I do not base truth on philosophers and their authority, but rather on philosophy. I trust you do the same.

I think some philosophers have said something similar in the past; but this seems absurd to me. Here is an example: I have never been to China. It is possible for me to go there. But say that I die in my sleep tonight. Then this possibility will never be actualized, even with infinite amount of time, past or future.

In any case, your conclusion (that the cause must possess all properties of its effects) obviously does not follow. — SophistiCat

But conservation of properties does not follow from this. — SophistiCat

I tried to prove this here. Where do you see a flaw in the reasoning?

That's fine. I too have trouble coming up with clear examples to illustrate general statements. But then let's provisionally accept that the statement 'no effect has a property not possessed by its cause' is not patently false, until either a clear exception arises, or a flaw is found in the reasoning of the original argument here.

"Everything that begins to exist requires a cause for its existence" is just a variation on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I don't think we are obligated to accept as a dogma. — SophistiCat

I think this is logically provable: Once again, let's start with the self-evident principle that 'nothing can come from nothing'. Therefore the event 'a thing begins to exist' must come from something. And a thing cannot cause itself into existence, because to cause something, one must first exist, which is self-contradictory. Therefore everything that begins to exist requires an external cause for its existence.

I think someone, maybe Alvin Plantinga, has argued that if God is possible then he must exist--that his existence in some possible world would be necessary in that world, and that if he's necessary in that possible world then he's necessary in all of them, and therefore he exists. It was something like that. — Srap Tasmaner

Very interesting. I will stay away from it because its complexity makes it hard to convince.

Kool! I will accept either the first or second correction. And so if we buy into the assumption that a first cause exists, then this first cause is 'that which nothing greater can exist or be conceived'. I'll recap:

- An effect cannot be greater than its cause(s) (I defend this here)
- A first cause exists (we assume this)
∴ The first cause it that which nothing greater exists

- If something can exist, then it can be conceived of, because we can conceive all logical possibilities.
- If something can be conceived of, then it must exist. (as defended by Hume)
∴ If something can exist, then it must exist.

∴ The first cause is that which nothing greater can exist.
Side note: this is what christians mean by 'God'.

Not what I'm talking about. Bivalence is different. We do not have to accept that "has a cause" is either true or false of entities that are in principle unobservable. — Srap Tasmaner

I disagree. I will explain my same point (original here) in smaller steps: Using the law of noncontradiction, either a thing has a cause or not. This is true regardless if the thing is observable or not, because the law of noncontradiction is an absolute. If it does not have a cause, then it does not have a cause for its existence. But everything that begins to exist requires an external cause for its existence, and cannot cause itself into existence, because to cause something, one must first exist. Therefore if a thing has no cause, then it cannot begin to exist, therefore it must possess eternal existence.

As an aside: I did some googling, and it looks like a lot of your ideas come from apologetics. I just want to commend you for coming here to test them out among people with different backgrounds and commitments. — Srap Tasmaner

Thanks bro. I hope this will not be seen as a fight between theists vs non-theists, but merely philosophers looking for truth.

You know you just emptied the predicate "has a cause" of all content by extending it to everything, right? — Srap Tasmaner

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, or you are misunderstanding me, because I am with you, that we cannot say that 'everything has a cause', only that 'everything that we can observe (the natural universe) has a cause'.

Some of us are going to balk at extending the principle of bivalence to propositions that, as you just told us, are in principle unverifiable. I might. — Srap Tasmaner

But the law of non-contradiction is an absolute. "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive. And this is true regardless of what A and B are.