argument for universal causation.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

what is more of a priority to universal causation than the elements of the universe itself?

What elements... If you do not know the whole you cannot know parts. If you do not know the whole you cannot define the parts from the whole...Until we know all all knowledge is tentative... I live with it. I hope you can, as if we have a choice...

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;53414 wrote:

I did not know that was the issue of this thread. I thought it was about universal causation.

It's synonymous. Throw a brick through a window and we can talk about the window shattering because of the impact of the brick. But trace each generation of cause back to the formation of the planet, the formation of the universe, and the formation of everything, i.e. to the ultimate cause, and you need to invoke some sort of external agent that acts extrinsically upon this universe.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

As an infinite it is all beyond and nothing descrete... Universe is just a word..God is just a word. Existence is just a word..We can point at it but not conceive of it objectively...

you make it sound as though you think that as soon as a word is used to describe something that exists, that it suddenly no longer exists because it hasd been named. What is your point?

Fido wrote:

What elements... If you do not know the whole you cannot know parts. If you do not know the whole you cannot define the parts from the whole...Until we know all all knowledge is tentative... I live with it. I hope you can, as if we have a choice...

You know what this planet is dont you? You know what a human is dont you.

There are many aspects of this creation and this universe that you are aware of. I don't understand your point.

Aedes wrote:

It's synonymous. Throw a brick through a window and we can talk about the window shattering because of the impact of the brick. But trace each generation of cause back to the formation of the planet, the formation of the universe, and the formation of everything, i.e. to the ultimate cause, and you need to invoke some sort of external agent that acts extrinsically upon this universe.

Exactly, and it is that external reality that we must learn to factor into our reality. The great unknown is as real as the fingers you are typing with. Its elusiveness does not make it non-existant. And to understand the dynamics of the universe we cannot begin without understanding the canvas that everything is painted on.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

you make it sound as though you think that as soon as a word is used to describe something that exists, that it suddenly no longer exists because it hasd been named. What is your point?

My point is that concepts are judgments that we can only rationally make on the nature of finite reality...That does not stop people from slapping names on phenomena they have not begun to grasp objectively, but it is still not a concept... A name does not a concept make.

I will admit that we give a lot of our lives to words like justice, virtue, or liberty.. And these are not physical concepts and cannot be grasped directly in a physical sense.... Still they leave an impression of sorts like a particle in a cloud chamber... We cannot see or touch moral concept, or hold them as objects, but we can see the effect of their want or their presence in our lives... But they are not infinites, and as a practical matter exist not at all... Yet they are a part of our reality..

Pathfinder wrote:

You know what this planet is dont you? You know what a human is dont you.

There are many aspects of this creation and this universe that you are aware of. I don't understand your point.

If you cannot say the relation of the parts to the whole, then you cannot say truthfully that you know anything at all.. You can still make judgements of sorts on those parts of reality that can be seen as objects... Will your knowledge ever be complete??? People talk about infinites of which they know not the first part let alone the last... It is only talk...

What human is I cannot honestly say... I am not certain whether we are an organism or if the whole species is... I think the individual is a man and a woman since we are dioecious... But what are we when we are made of matter and conceive of ourselves spiritually??? What are we when we consider ourselves isolated individuals, and yet all we are and know is a gift of the life that gave us life??? I am in a middle world, having taken life from my parents and given life to my children; but I will never know what life is any more than I will ever know what human is, since it is an infinite and the last page on us has not been written, and the first page was not written...

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;53453 wrote:

Exactly, and it is that external reality that we must learn to factor into our reality. The great unknown is as real as the fingers you are typing with.

Well, real is real... but I have a lot more belief in the reality of a set of fingers on the other side of the universe than I do in a set of fingers outside the universe. Surprised

@Fido,

A name does not a concept make, but a concept is a concept whether it be named or not.

Aedes you are still thinking inside the box my friend. There is no such thing as outside of the universe. The universe is everything that is contained within itself. the universe includes everything that exists.

What I am saying is that the Unknown is within the universe and as much a part of this existence as you or I.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;53459 wrote:

What I am saying is that the Unknown is within the universe and as much a part of this existence as you or I.

Then you're forced to explain how something can 1) cause itself de novo, then 2) recede from itself to become only a component of what it caused.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

A name does not a concept make, but a concept is a concept whether it be named or not.

Aedes you are still thinking inside the box my friend. There is no such thing as outside of the universe. The universe is everything that is contained within itself. the universe includes everything that exists.

What I am saying is that the Unknown is within the universe and as much a part of this existence as you or I.

A concept is a judgement, essentially a definition, of which the subject must be de-finit....It is concepts that are true in regard to the reality represented, or false... You cannot begin to prove the statement you make in regard to the universe, and I am not saying it is false or true, simply that you have no concept of the universe in fact upon which to test or even form a theory....You or I, the moon, the planets, the sun, galaxy... Do we have universal laws??? We have universal conjectures...But we can work our way out from what we can observe as an object.... We know something of you and I, and that is a good place to start, but that is, the near stuff is, not a fraction of what we suppose to be beyond our sight...And then what caused that???

You must ask yourself why from our earliest days as humans that we have formed concepts of reality???The answer is that what one person knows is lost with the person, while what we can communicate can be saved almost indefinitly.... So no, we do not have concepts without names, and to primitives the names were the thing so that the stories about names like how the hipo got his name, and rumplestiltskins got into our history as well as warnings about not speaking of the devil, and not taking the name of God in vain... The name is the thing to our minds...Which is where concepts work...

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

It's synonymous. Throw a brick through a window and we can talk about the window shattering because of the impact of the brick. But trace each generation of cause back to the formation of the planet, the formation of the universe, and the formation of everything, i.e. to the ultimate cause, and you need to invoke some sort of external agent that acts extrinsically upon this universe.

How would that mean they are the same thing? To claim that there is some endpoint to the chain of cause and effect is not the same as claiming that there is a chain of cause and effect. The second may be true, and the first may be false, so they cannot be the same claim.

@bees,

It is illogical to attempt to define matters which are unknown as though they must be able to become known quotients of an equation if we just do enough calculating.

The fact that the reality of the universe remains a mystery does not mean that the components of it require evaluating to define, and does not mean that if they cannot be calculated into conclusive definitions that they must then be unrealistic. It simply means that the Mystery cannot yet be solved by the human.

I keep hearing people say we MUST be able to do this, and one must be able to do that...

WHY? Why MUST we be able to do anything? Why does there have to be a law dynamic that can be calculated before a concept can be considered? Since when did the understanding of the human become the catalyst for fact and truth? Would the effect of the law of gravity on Newton's apple be any less effectual had we not calculated a law about it?

Will you then say that if the human cannot understand the depth and breadth of a thing than such a thing can therefore not exist!

@bees,

I heard once where Mark Twain took a statistic about the growing length of the Mississipee river having to do with the deposites of eroded silt, and he said that some day the mouth of the river would have to bend back like a fishhook to reach the shore... In fact, a canal was made to keep the whole area silt free so boats could reach the city, which is itself kept alive as a port by man made means holding the river on a former course...

Reality is a great many causes and effects, apart from first causes, and logic is a single line of cause and effect; so that we can only extend our reasoning a short distance into the past or the future without error... Time changes everything; or at least, it always has...

@bees,

Time cannot change the truths of the past.

And reality is a great many causes and effects beginning with the first cause.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

Time cannot change the truths of the past.

And reality is a great many causes and effects beginning with the first cause.

Truth is the first thing time changes...Truth is not an absolute... It is a form of relationship...Truth must be true to some body.... A Form is not useful because it is true, but only as true as it is useful... So what use have I for a truth that lasts longer than I do, as if any truth could live longer than the one judging it true???

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

Time cannot change the truths of the past.

And reality is a great many causes and effects beginning with the first cause.

If you could picture all the causes and effects from the first cause, would they all look like a chain, one link leading to another??? Because I picture all as so many bowling pins on many demensions with each fall taking others with it, and leaving others unmoved... Logic seems to be like a row of dominos, with each cause having a predictable effect...Were were we to say that every effect has a cause, or even more likely, that all effects have multiple causes, and every cause has multiple effects, then you see how hard it is to reason from cause and effect, even while cause and effect as concepts are reasonable..Reality is nothing like a row of dominoes...

@bees,

Ah, now I see your problem Rover,

you are having trouble correlating reality and truth.

I cannot argue with that sort of confused state I am sorry to say.

What you have created is a reality of your own wehere there is no such thing as truth and reality is what you create.

Let me ask you than, when you create a reality, does it than become true that you were the creator of it, or is that also up for alterations of personal opinion?

Maybe what you have done in this life, the places you have been, the people you have met, the accomplishments you have achieved, are also not true and can be denied by someone else who comes along and knocks over those bowling pins.

Is there anything that you can conceive of as being undeniably true? Something that you know actually did happen and cannot be denied?

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder;53679 wrote:

Is there anything that you can conceive of as being undeniably true? Something that you know actually did happen and cannot be denied?

My 11 month old barfed his salmon down my shirt last night. That is undeniably true.

By the way, this illustrates one major difference between science and the philosophy of science. Science doesn't intrinsically concern itself with ultimate causes. The barfing of salmon can be examined and discussed unto itself in science without extrapolating back to the origins of all causes (such as the metaphysical salmon-barf that created the universe). Hmm, maybe Max created a whole new universe down my shirt.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

Ah, now I see your problem Rover,

you are having trouble correlating reality and truth.

I cannot argue with that sort of confused state I am sorry to say.

What you have created is a reality of your own wehere there is no such thing as truth and reality is what you create.

Let me ask you than, when you create a reality, does it than become true that you were the creator of it, or is that also up for alterations of personal opinion?

Maybe what you have done in this life, the places you have been, the people you have met, the accomplishments you have achieved, are also not true and can be denied by someone else who comes along and knocks over those bowling pins.

Is there anything that you can conceive of as being undeniably true? Something that you know actually did happen and cannot be denied?

There is nothing that is absolutly, objectively true... Truth has a certain meaning, as all forms of relationship have... But there still needs to be a judge, and a witness to truth; so truth must have meaning to have being... Some day the sun is going to swallow the earth, and all that we think is so great and true will be long gone with those who thought the thought... The world dies with me, and if the world dies then truth must also die.... Even if we do not talk about how time puts an end to all truth we can talk about truth as a utility... There our concepts can be measured against our reality... All the time, we form concepts of reality... Are they any more useful than true??? There is a reason people do not much think of Ptoleme's conception of the universe... It is wrong and has been proved false... What good is it then??? We need only forms which accurately describe and define reality.... As a concept, we know cause and effect bring reason to all that occurs in life... Presuming that form (cause/effect) holds true as a universal law, does it really give to us the ability to grasp what ultimate cause brought our reality into existence??? As is always the case with such absolute forms, it is people who fail them rather then the form failing the people... In fact, in this instance as in all others, it is forms which fail us, and fail all of humanity... If we cannot arrive at truth by it, the form fails the very people who must use it... The people are always right... Life is right; and our forms are always wrong, so if they are always false, they cannot ever be true, but only more true, and less false... Does that make sense to you???

@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

My 11 month old barfed his salmon down my shirt last night. That is undeniably true.

By the way, this illustrates one major difference between science and the philosophy of science. Science doesn't intrinsically concern itself with ultimate causes. The barfing of salmon can be examined and discussed unto itself in science without extrapolating back to the origins of all causes (such as the metaphysical salmon-barf that created the universe). Hmm, maybe Max created a whole new universe down my shirt.

Any intelligent force which had the power to create all we see, and all we know, and the life we know with could have saved the energy and given us the sense of being out of nothing, and in the sense of this unique and individual existence given us all the experience of this existence without troubling to give us being... That would be easy rather than the vast expenditure of energy in the entire cosmos...

@bees,

Part of what you are saying is very much what I believe pertaining to truth and its stability Fido. But I am beginning to think that what you are calling truth is actually the possibilities of what might be truths.

There is a difference.

What you are saying would make sense to me if you could just alter your definition a tiny bit to acknowledge that truth, although ever elusive, can still be an unchangeable fact when finally discovered.

@Pathfinder,

Pathfinder wrote:

Part of what you are saying is very much what I believe pertaining to truth and its stability Fido. But I am beginning to think that what you are calling truth is actually the possibilities of what might be truths.

There is a difference.

What you are saying would make sense to me if you could just alter your definition a tiny bit to acknowledge that truth, although ever elusive, can still be an unchangeable fact when finally discovered.

Reality can be at any given moment exactly what it is...How we conceive of that reality, how we express that reality, even how we sense that reality will always be flawed... We cannot tell the truth except accidently... Animal farm as fiction, was a better representation of truth than a whole series of history books... The more generally truth is framed the more often it is 'true'; but if you really want truth, make reality... It is a simple story, but worth knowing, that Napoleon labeled those who were beginning to study ideas, as ideologues... We remember him because he did, as we remember all who make thought fact... We forget all the talkers no matter how much truth they told...

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