[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]pat wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
So everything that exists has a cause, except when it suits your argument, then it doesnt.
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It’s not my argument. Second, if you think it’s wrong then prove it.[/quote]
Nothing to disprove, the introduction of an uncaused cause is as good as claiming that the toothfairy did it.
And, if this “uncaused cause” happened to be an anthropomorphic entity the toothfairy is as good a candidate as any.
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So you concede that the Uncaused-cause does in fact exist?
If the tooth fairy has the ability to create and cause, then yes. As far as I know the tooth fairy deals with putting money under pillow for teeth though.
I never said ‘he’ was an anthropomorphic entity. [/quote]
I do not concede that.
One simply cannot build argument on the notion that everything has a cause and then introduce an uncaused cause.
That is just postulating a premise without whitout which the whole argument would fall flat on its face.
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Go look it up…There is tons of stuff about it. Don’t take my word on it.
Second, it’s not a premise it’s a conclusion, to a very clean linear argument. Why can you not come to the conclusion of an uncaused-causer? Make perfect sense to me. Makes a lot more sense than utter nothingness begetting all existence. ← That is far more absurd. A nothing cannot make a something, because nothing isn’t. What isn’t cannot make what is, it’s simply not logical.
People have tried to refute it for centuries and no one has been successful. So good luck.[/quote]
Oh I know that you can do that, but that does not make it valid just because a lot of people actually did.
Just because human beings are somehow wired to search for causality does not mean that is necessarily exists in any specific circumstance or at all for that matter.
Also, if you can postulate an uncaused cause, I can simply postulate an eternal universe.
Pretty much has the same explanatory power, without the need to drag something into it that blows up your whole argument.
Why is there only one uncaused cause?
Why not many?
They could pop up all the time, which would pretty much ruin causality as we know it.
edit: Plus, I cannot refute something that is completely and utterly unfalsifiable.
I could make up tons of stuff you could not refute, which would not really make them true.
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You don’t think.
It’s not a postulation, it is a deductive conclusion derived by pure reason. You can either refute it, or not, those are the only choices.
You can’t “make up” irrefutable facts. They are either irrefutable facts or they are not. Can’t make them up out of nothing.
The logic of causation does not allow for multiple uncaused-causes. Logic simply prohibits it. There is one or none. As you travel up the causal chain the element of multiples starts to disappear and things gain commonality. For instance, a lump of shit and a bar of gold are still made up of the same subatomic elements.
There is no evidence through science or reason that the universe is eternal, though even if it somehow were, everything that exists is still contingent upon something else, so an eternal universe does not matter.
Either refute it, agree with it, or pretend like it does not exist. Those are your choices. [/quote]
Critique of pure reason by Immanuel Kant.
He demonstrated that pure reason can prove anything and its opposite.
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Then you misunderstood what he said.[/quote]
THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON
FIRST CONFLICT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS
Thesis
The world has a beginning
in time, and is also limited as
regards space.
++ The antinomies follow one another in the order of the tran-
scendental ideas above enumerated.
P 396a
Antithesis
The world has no begin-
ning, and no limits in space;
it is infinite as regards both
time and space.
P 397
Proof
If we assume that the world
has no beginning in time,
then up to every given mo-
ment an eternity has elapsed,
and there has passed away in
the world an infinite series of
successive states of things.
Now the infinity of a series
consists in the fact that it can
never be completed through
successive synthesis. It thus
follows that it is impossible for
an infinite world-series to have
passed away, and that a be-
ginning of the world is there-
fore a necessary condition of
the world’s existence. This was
the first point that called for
proof.
As regards the second point,
let us again assume the oppo-
site, namely, that the world is
an infinite given whole of co-
existing things. Now the mag-
nitude of a quantum which is
not given in intuition as
within certain limits, can be
thought only through the
synthesis of its parts, and the
totality of such a quantum
only through a synthesis that
is brought to completion
through repeated addition of unit to unit.
++ An indeterminate quantum can be intuited as a whole when it
is such that though enclosed within limits we do not require to con-
struct its totality through measurement, that is, through the success-
ive synthesis of its parts. For the limits, in cutting off anything
further, themselves determine its completeness.
P 397a
Proof
For let us assume that it
has a beginning. Since the
beginning is an existence
which is preceded by a time
in which the thing is not,
there must have been a
preceding time in which the
world was not, i.e. an empty
time. Now no coming to be
of a thing is possible in an
empty time, because no part
of such a time possesses, as
compared with any other, a
distinguishing condition of
existence rather than of non-
existence; and this applies
whether the thing is sup-
posed to arise of itself or
through some other cause. In
the world many series of
things can, indeed, begin;
but the world itself cannot
have a beginning, and is
therefore infinite in respect
of past time.
As regards the second
point, let us start by assum-
ing the opposite, namely, that
the world in space is finite
and limited, and consequently
exists in an empty space
which is unlimited.
P 398
In order, there-
fore, to think, as a whole, the
world which fills all spaces,
the successive synthesis of
the parts of an infinite world
must be viewed as completed,
that is, an infinite time must
be viewed as having elapsed
in the enumeration of all co-
existing things. This, how-
ever, is impossible. An in-
finite aggregate of actual
things cannot therefore be
viewed as a given whole, nor
consequently as simultane-
ously given. The world is,
therefore, as regards exten-
sion in space, not infinite, but
is enclosed within limits. This
was the second point in
dispute.
++ The concept of totality is in this case simply the representa-
tion of the completed synthesis of its parts; for, since we cannot
obtain the concept from the intuition of the whole – that being in
this case impossible – we can apprehend it only through the syn-
thesis of the parts viewed as carried, at least in idea, to the comple-
tion of the infinite.
P 397a
Things
will therefore not only be
P 398a
related in space but also
related to space. Now since
the world is an absolute whole
beyond which there is no
object of intuition, and there-
fore no correlate with which
the world stands in relation,
the relation of the world
to empty space would be a
relation of it to no object.
But such a relation, and con-
sequently the limitation of
the world by empty space, is
nothing. The world cannot,
therefore, be limited in space;
that is, it is infinite in respect
of extension.
++ Space is merely the form of outer intuition (formal intuition).
It is not a real object which can be outwardly intuited. Space, as
prior to all things which determine (occupy or limit) it, or rather
which give an empirical intuition in accordance with its form, is,
under the name of absolute space, nothing but the mere possibility
of outer appearances in so far as they either exist in themselves or
can be added to given appearances. Empirical intuition is not, there-
fore, a composite of appearances and space (of perception and empty
intuition). The one is not the correlate of the other in a synthesis;
they are connected in one and the same empirical intuition as
matter and form of the intuition. If we attempt to set one of these
two factors outside the other, space outside all appearances, there
arise all sorts of empty determinations of outer intuition, which yet
are not possible perceptions. For example, a determination of the
relation of the motion (or rest) of the world to infinite empty space
P 398n
is a determination which can never be perceived, and is therefore
the predicate of a mere thought-entity.
P 399
There you go, proof that the universe is finite and immediately following, proof that it isnt.
Your idea of causality would not have been Kants cup of tea anyway, because he thought that causality is a pre-existing condition for you to be able to “think” at all. That does not say anything about the real nature of “causality” but a lot about our inability to think in non- causality terms.
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Dude, he is talking about epistemology here using examples of what was known about the space and time at the time he wrote this. This is not a treatise on metaphysics, science, natural law or any of that. Kant was particularly interested in the limits of human understand and how far reason itself can take us. He is using examples of the finiteness and infinite properties in the universe to make his point about what can be known and how.
Kant merely separated causality itself, from our ability to understand it as two different things. He categorized everything, but he was a cosmologist so much so that he used it as plain fact to make points about his epistemology. On top of the fact that he was ta theist. He postulated that God must exist based on the existence of goodness, happiness and morality. <-This is a cosmological argument.
If you can prove the cosmological argument is wrong, go ahead. Different takes on epistemology do not invalidate it. Like Kant said, causation and our understanding of it are two separate things. That doesn’t mean our understanding is wrong, it just means that our understanding of it, is not the thing itself.[/quote]
He uses your argument, only better.
You cannot drag any empirical observations into this because you insisted on “pure reason”.
Well, he has just demonstrated that “pure reason” can prove both sides of an argument and completely destroyed your way of arguing it because the very moment “before”, for lack of a better word", a universe is “caused” there is no time.
If there is no time, then there can be no “cause”, because there can be no causal relationship as we understand it.
First A, then B, cannot happen if there is no “first” or “then”.
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LOL!
Time is not a necessary contingent for the cosmological argument to work. Especially if you are arguing from a metaphysical standpoint. Metaphysical constructs are not subject to time, therefore cosmology isn’t affect by it. Look it up…I have spelled it out in various forms about a dozen times in these forums, it’s your own damn fault if you don’t pay attention…
I don’t have the time or the patience to educate you on the matter, go look it up. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about…Your rebuttal was addressed in the like the 16th century or something, but it’s nothing new, at all.
JK~ I love you the same…