Something From Nothing
So maybe nearly a couple decades ago. There was this argument, that, some thing must have always existed, otherwise, some thing would had to have come from no thing.
Back then the idea was that it was impossible for some thing to come from no thing(something from nothing), therefore, some thing must have always existed; be eternal, and that thing was God.
You could even slip a logical tautology in here so that one or the other must be true : either there is a thing that is eternal, or there is not a thing that is eternal.
Ultimately though, what transpired was openness to plausibility of a something from nothing scenario over that of an eternal thing, or a little of both, maybe.
Thus begins somewhat of an inquiry as to what exactly is meant by nothingness, and the nature thereof.
Back then the idea was that it was impossible for some thing to come from no thing(something from nothing), therefore, some thing must have always existed; be eternal, and that thing was God.
You could even slip a logical tautology in here so that one or the other must be true : either there is a thing that is eternal, or there is not a thing that is eternal.
Ultimately though, what transpired was openness to plausibility of a something from nothing scenario over that of an eternal thing, or a little of both, maybe.
Thus begins somewhat of an inquiry as to what exactly is meant by nothingness, and the nature thereof.
Comments (138)
Particles pop into existence from nothing all around you, all the time.
So what happened? The ancients (the idea goes back much further than a couple of decades) saw that one thing caused another, and decided that everything must have a cause. But that conclusion was an induction from their observations, and hence strictly invalid. Indeed, it's been show to be wrong by observations of atomic decay.
But the notion that everything has a cause was used to defend religious dogma, and hence has a strong adherence amongst the faithful; and adherence that will not be shaken by mere truth.
Watch what happens here next... those who defend the notion that nothing can come from nothing will overwhelmingly do so in order to protect their religious views.
I don't believe I have arrived at any scenario via this regression that results in a state of complete and absolute nothingness, but rather an acausal chain that functions in and out of time, ad infinitum.
So the universe is regressed to a point(no pun) prior to the aethereal expansion(inflation). Which results in a type of zero volume existence, or, zero dimensional point.
So this primordial zero volume existence would serve to engage some sort of elaboration as to what is meant by 'nothing', but not currently 'nothing' as in an 'absence of everything' scenario.
There is something.
There was always something.
Whether or not you consider potentiality to be ‘something’ that exists is a matter of conceptualisation. But potentiality is not an actual thing.
A static eternal state of nothingness?
Potentiality is a five-dimensional existence. It’s four-dimensional aspect would appear as a static, eternal state of nothingness.
So are we transferring the problem of infinite regression from a four dimensional spacetime continuum to an acausal continuum where there exists 'nothingness' between each of an infinite array of manifestations, or, universes?
Really? Why? How do you know this?
Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on your part? Virtual particles do give us something from nothing. And accepting that has not brought physics crashing down around us.
SO there are uncaused events. Cool. I agree.
Is this an explanation, or a nonsense, or a play on words?
Language is there to express ideas. That's what it does. To many the idea of absolute nothing producing something without there being some action is completely nonsensical. I struggle with it too
You just hate philosophy and a search for intellectual wisdom
The fucking flies will not learn the way out of the bottle.
Questions about the origin of the universe are not meaningless
Sure. Cosmology is a very interesting branch of physics. But that's not what you are doing.
And silence follows.
Your idol is Wittgenstein obviously, who by the way was a rude man who would run out the room like a little bitch because he didn't have the patience to do philosophy and come back claiming he found a sickness in language itself. His position was not intelligible
Hey, just babble in the time of the Plague. :cool:
Well, there is no convincing evidence that either spacetime or the potential of our universe (in relation to energy, at least) is infinite. Rather, evidence suggests that both concepts are probably finite.
I have considered an infinite possibility or pure imagination/meaning as a sixth dimensional aspect of existence, to which we can only relate as possible manifestations in an amorphous ‘structure’ of perceived potential (ie. mind). But this is pure speculation at this level - and I’ll admit it’s an extremely flimsy notion. All I’m doing is proposing a relational structure, and then finding ways to test and refine it.
Causality is temporally-defined: a four-dimensional awareness of what are atemporal relations in potentiality. But we have no reason to assume an array of spatially distinct universes, separated by ‘nothingness’.
I think if we get away from assuming that all dimensional aspects of reality are primarily spatial in nature, then we may realise that they’re also not structured as simply as the nested hierarchy of physics-chemistry-biology suggests. Many relational structures of the universe are primarily chemical or qualitative in nature, including sensory phenomenon.
I don’t. I’m not about to pretend I have any way of objectively proving the theory. It makes sense from my limited understanding of quantum field theory, in relation to my limited understanding of dimensional structure. I’m open to testing the logic, though.
Why isn't the whole universe lucid as oppose to spacial because space wouldn't exist without the big bang?
When I look at reality, I look at environment. When I consider time, I consider vital parts of environment. Is space as vital as star matter?
How can time run through space when I'm running on a planet? In theory, it would need to use Earth's ground, to go through me. It goes through the Earth is illogical, like a big human ego, rather than something more sane, something related to a lucid universe not a spacial one.
If you say it goes through Earth you say it's like a downward pressure. It can't go through both Earth and humans.
I understand that the universe is finite, but that the process which encapsulates it is eternal. When regressed to a point prior to the creation of space, I'm not so sure that there is not still movement within this primordial thing, i.e. time within the primordial as opposed to macrocosmic time which is the time that is observed external to us as change.
Maybe this is similar to this other dimension, or potentiality you are referring.
Virtual particles obviously require something to exist. If none of this were here, there's no reason to assume they would be here either. I can just as easily claim they come from something as nothing, unless you can show me where nothing is on a map.
"They just appear," well, they're appearing in a reality there's no reason to assume they could exist independent of.
I think part of the salience of virtual particles here is that they are offered as explanations for why events occur, but have no explanation for why they occur themselves. Hence at least the illusion of something from nothing.
It's worth a look at the logical structure of Quoting Colin Cooper
It's what Watkins called an all-and-some proposition - an existential statement within the scope if a universal: "for every X there is a Y"... for every something there is a something else.
Such statements, like all universal statements, are not provable but are falsifiable. "All swans are white" can be shown to be false by producing a black swan; but you cannot examine every swan to check if it is white - there may always be one you missed.
But further, in common with all existential statements, one cannot infer that it is true without committing the error of induction. That is, the following is invalid: here is a white swan, there is a white swan... hence all swans are white.
By putting the two together in an all-and-some proposition, one creates a statements that is neither provable nor disprovable.
SO the argument will proceed as follows:
C: You can't have something out of nothing
B: you can't prove that
C: but it is a really strong intuition; it makes sense.
B: But here is a something out of nothing (virtual particles)
C: That just means you haven't found the something... it must be there somewhere, you haven't looked hard enough.
And that's where @Colin Cooper, @neonspectraltoast, and @Possibility are at this point in the discussion. Oh, and perhaps @graham.
The notion that you cannot have something from nothing is a little bit of mythology that those with religious tendencies tend to grasp on to as strongly as they can.
The usual comeback will be to fail to understand the logic, pointing to some supposed flaw. This sort of response tells us more about the poster than the post.
But here is the thing. Accepting uncaused events is part and parcel of quantum mechanics as it is accepted by most physicist. That is, the part above that says "but it is a really strong intuition; it makes sense" is rejected by a large number of well-educated and informed individuals.
Hence the intellectual brace of uncaused causes falters and fails.
And again, what is salient is that intelligent, practical folk accept these uncaused events as part of the mechanism that allows all our electronic devices to function.
That is what undermines the mythical supposition that we can't have something from nothing.
I have nothing in my pocket. It causes me to wonder where my handkerchief went.
Claiming that virtual particles are a something out of nothing might be a bit of a metaphysical stretch. Please correct me if I am wrong, but virtual particles are considered to be short term perturbations in the quantum field, whereas as so called ordinary particles are long term perturbations. So, even virtual particles require the underlying quantum field. They may not have causes in a classical sense, whatever that might be, but they are not "somethings" from nothing.
Funny, but a bit flippant. The easy retort is that what causes you to wonder where your handkerchief went is your finding nothing in your pocket. But your finding nothing in your pocket is very definitely not nothing.
That I am inclined to believe is the consensus amongst physicists, hidden variable theories having had their day. But I'm not sure it is causation that is really the heart of this issue for most people. In QM as well as classical physics, an event is an observable phenomenon. Events that can be explained using classical physics are usually taken to be those that have causes. Events that cannot be explained using classical physics, but which can be accounted for with quantum mechancial physics, are those which are deemed not to have causes. Nevertheless, even uncaused events have explanations. So, it looks like everything has an explanation. But what about the explanations themselves? Perhaps it is a category mistake to even pose the question whether an explanation has an explanation.
"Nothing" gains its meaning in negating "something"; in ways not dissimilar to Austin's treatment of "real". That I have nothing in my pocket is not the same as my having nothing in my bank account or nothing in my head. The meaning of "nothing" comes from the absence of an expected something.
But we are tempted to talk about there being absolutely nothing, and here language goes on holiday, because it becomes very unclear what the absolute something is with which we are to contrast the absolute nothing.
You can see this fumbling in this very thread, inQuoting Possibility and in Quoting Colin Cooper and
Quoting CorneliusCoburn
edit: oh, and perhaps in Quoting jkg20
So the all-and-some logic above applies to "every event has an explanation".
Intellectual honesty requires that we admit that we do not know.
Else we become like the Pope in the Dave Allen Joke...
Agreed. And not just this thread.
I get the point, which is why I hinted at the possibility of a category mistake. It's late where I am, after some sleep I will try to think of some circumstances where it might make sense to ask of an explanation why it is the explanation. If there are any, then there will be some sense to the idea that an explanation has an explanation. To be honest, though, I'm not entirely convinced I'll be able to come up with anything, and even if I did whether it will be useful in proving the principle of sufficient reason.
Yes, but my intellectual ambition requires that I stretch myself beyond my limits.
Well, I guess the black cat might be there...
There's more here, that might be of philosophical interest. Take another all-and-some proposition, a bit of physics mythology: Energy can never be created nor destroyed (for every place energy appears to disappear, there is another place were the same quantity of energy appears...)
Now to make this work, physicists introduced a book keeping trick called potential energy. And it works.
Perhaps quantum fields are another book keeping trick.
(...this by way of trying to undermine my own argument.)
So far we haven't proven a cause, though there are theories that our actions are predetermined. I don't think so...I think individual identity is a wild card. I don't think it's really definable in philosophical or scientific terms. I wonder if particles have identities in some form.
Oh, sorry - I didn’t mean ‘logic’ in the mathematical sense. My approach to this is intuitive (I’m an Arts major) so it’s likely you’ll have a good laugh if I attempt to ‘lay out’ any mathematical logic formulation.
The way I see it, all possibility exists in a relational structure that initially has no intelligence whatsoever. All possibility encompasses pure fantasy and unimaginable possibilities, beyond logic, rationality and probability. If all information means the same, then there is no intelligence, no understanding. For anything to matter at all, there must be a way to distinguish between all meaning - not to determine what doesn’t matter, but to understand what does matter.
Shannon describes information as ‘the difference that makes a difference’ - the manifestation of an interaction or relation between two physical systems. If there is no possible information about what matters, then one key difference that would make a difference to possibility is the existence of potential or value. So, it makes sense that the initial interaction of all possibility manifests a broad and unrealised potential for... something.
This maximum potential, too, has no information, no intelligence. If everything is only random potential, then the difference that would make a difference between interacting potential is action. So an interaction between random potentiality manifests a random release of what we understand as energy, force and attraction: the four-dimensional universe in action.
This is the beginning of time, as it were: an uninformed event, a single manifestation of potential. Interaction between random energy, force and gravitational events manifest random particles of this potential information: something that matters and has potential in a relational structure of space - a Big Bang, with particles differentiating in relation to potential expansion, and then velocity, and finally potential distance/energy: the foundation of atomic relational structure.
The actual, macro-level physical universe begins here, and strives to fulfil its potential - piecing together information regarding this 6D relational structure of energy, direction, space, time, value and meaning - through interaction. At each dimensional level of awareness, there is a minority of dynamic between the integrated information of a relatively stable system and the vague, developing awareness of potential information - that what really matters is somehow more.
There you are, stuck in 2020. You can see the past, but not the future.
And yet you are obligated to choose.
Of course, the choice you will make is there, fixed in the block.
But you do not know what choice you will make.
And yet you must choose.
Causation, free will, predetermination and all that crap are irrelevant to the fact of the choice.
That's where Existentialism has it right.
That has nothing to do with the role our identity plays, though. It belongs to us, regardless of a block universe.
You’ll have to be more specific than that if you want to dismiss it. Talk about wibbly wobbly...
Existence precedes essence. Your identity is the sum of your choices. It's exactly about identity.
This is a common error when conceptualising dimensional shift: most sci-fi descriptions of four-dimensional shift assume an alternative space to the space that exists for us as physical reality.
It’s not an easy thing to conceptualise. Consider the dimensional shift from one to two dimensions: each point on the original line relates to each point on an additional plane as both a point and a line. From two to three dimensions, each point within the original shape relates to each point on an additional plane as a point, a line and a shape of its own. But that’s just mathematical space.
In reality, particles are positioned in relation to each other according to energy, direction, space, time, value and meaning, but the information each atom, molecule, object, event, organism or subject may have relative to each other is limited, and the variables are much more diverse.
I will be honest, I am tempted by a purely instrumentalist view of scientific theory. When conservation principles and their "parents" like the Noether theorem and the principle of least action start being taken as descriptions of reality and not just tools to model it and predict its evolution, questions like "what are these possible paths that Langragians integrate over?" seem to make sense, but then language goes on holiday and suddently I end up very, very confused.
By the way, that black cat ... do you think it's the one Schrodinger lost?
I never made a choice that imbued me with an identity. I just simply could realize that I was me. And something about the identity is immutable, regardless any choices I make.
Even if all of my choices are predetermined, they're still the choices I would make...the choices I did make. I know I, that is me, my identity, am playing an active roll. The future may be predetermined, but it is that way partially due to choices I am making.
If every explanation required an explanation then we would get caught up in an infinite regression of explanations.
There are circumstances where it does make sense to ask "why is this explanation the right one rather than that one?". There, perhaps, we would have to furnish an explanation for the explanation. However, the kind of examples I have in mind are quite specific, e.g. if we had competing explanations for a rise in crime in a certain city. But I'm way from convinced that it would make sense to ask of every explanation why it was the explanation.
Well, I'm not sure exactly how foolproof it would be in every single particular circumstance, but I would believe that the best explanations are formulated via the sciences, extrapolation, and formation of analogies.
Generally speaking, of course there are always other factors as well.
Examples of sense:
"What causes measles?"
"What caused the Second World War?"
"What caused the dinosaurs to die out?"
"What caused the lights to go out?"
Examples of nonsense
"What causes sugar?"
"What causes table tennis?"
"What causes logic?"
"What causes identity?"
Edit: With apologies to Austin.
Amazing how cancellation reduces an infinite set to a finite one. I still puzzle over the measure employed in those functional integrals. :nerd:
Like, for instance, your identity as a poster on this forum...
No one reads Sartre any more.
:rofl: Maybe, maybe not.
Explanations are ladders...
Is there a ladder that allows us to kick away the ladder?
Or is it ladders all the way down?
Are the possible paths that Langragians integrate over like what causes measles or what causes sugar?
You're really this obtuse, aren't you.
Sartre held that who one was, was a result of the choices one made; hence, one exists before one has an identity - existence precedes essence. You seem to hold to something quite different. But what, well, that remains obscure.
I don't understand people who think their identity is in flux. I am entwined with 7 year-old me as much as I am 39 year-old me. The identity that controls who I am becoming hasn't changed.
Maybe others just aren't as comfortable with this as I am. Maybe they want a different identity, to excuse the mistakes and shortcomings. I'm fundamentally the same person I've always been, though. I remember exactly what it was like to see through my eyes as a child. And my conscience has always been the same.
The difference is in awareness of why I go this way or that. I can be aware not just of alternative directions (as a personified leaf), but also aware of, connected to and collaborating with potential causal conditions that would determine and initiate a change of direction. All this, without even being consciously aware of choice as such, makes our situation different from the leaf’s.
At least superficially there is a distinction to make between two questions: 1 What kind of person am I? 2 What makes the person I am now one and the same person I was yesterday, last year......? Both have some claim to be called a question about personal identity. However, in 2 the notion of identity in question is primarily numerical in nature. Question 1 is wrapped up with moral and social concerns, and perhaps only makes sense in conjunction with its companion question "What kind of life ought I to lead?" Question 2 was a popular topic for analytic philosophers about half a decade ago. Some of them believed that answers to it should also have consequences for how we ought to act, and so consequently how we ought to be able to respond to 1. Some of them just looked at it as a purely metaphysical issue with no consequences one way or another for ethics. If you want to understand an opinion that might differ from yours, particularly concerning 2, try reading "Personal Identity" by Derek Parfit, you can download it online for free I am sure. For something subtler, try some of the articles by Bernard Williams in Problems of the Self.
Wittgenstein, as far as I understand it, saw the difference as more about temperament than facts. Even if we could ‘know’ all of the causal conditions which determine the direction we would take, the question of determinism/free will remains a ‘psychological’ rather than metaphysical one.
Personally, I think his attempt to isolate rational/logical thought from qualitative affect/temperament is misdirected, but he’s far from the only philosopher to do this. I agree that there is no way to prove or disprove free will from objective facts, but I think the uncertainty of both external perception and introspection are on par here as potential information. Together in completion (hypothetically), this information could enable us to structure potentiality such that we not only know all the causal conditions which determine the direction we could take, but also know the internal and external conditions under which we would initiate movement in one direction or the other. Inasmuch as we are aware of, connected to and collaborating with this potential information (both internal and external), our will is free - potentially, of course.
You are elegant and intelligent in you're response and logic . Yet you still fall into the trap of believing that if you can not see it , it can not be .
Once wo thought the world was flat , because we could not see it , we were the centre of our solar system , because we could not see further , that we were the centre of the Galaxy , even the universe . But we show our arrogance again when we think the Universe is the centre of all things . As we do now . We do not know everything , therefore I am not going to assume that because I can not see it , it does not exist . So , there can not be something from nothing just because we do not understand it . The Big Bang theory is another example , we do not know how or why , so must of been from nothing .
No definitely it comes from something...
Something, where there is nothing or more something and this is logic.
Perhaps nothing came later.
Joke: a voice takes over nothing, the space claims 'I am here'.
Potential is around.
You may as well think whatever caused the first act was something simple, because of potential simplicity of that action, if not just occuring naturally.
Nothingness as the absence of all things is impossible (logically inconsistent) because if there were nothing then there would be the fact (state of affairs) that there is nothing and this fact would be something.
So there is necessarily something. What is it? For now, let's just call it entity X1. Now we can ask ourselves: Would it be possible that there is nothing in addition to entity X1? The answer is that it would not be possible, because if there were nothing in addition to entity X1 then there would be the fact that there is nothing in addition to entity X1, and this fact would be something in addition to entity X1. So there is necessarily another entity, X2.
Now we can ask ourselves: Would it be possible that there is nothing in addition to entities X1 and X2? The answer is, again, that it would not be possible, because if there were nothing in addition to entities X1 and X2 then there would be the fact that there is nothing in addition to entities X1 and X2, and this fact would be something in addition to entities X1 and X2. So there is necessarily another entity, X3.
In principle, you could go on like this until you have enumerated all possible (logically consistent) entities and concluded that they all necessarily exist. Then there would be no additional fact that there is nothing in addition to all possible entities, because this fact would already be included among the possible (and necessary) entities you have enumerated.
Well, perhaps not. I'm not claiming there is nothing extraordinary here; only that our claims to put it into words fail.
Too many folk seek to cure their ontological shock by making stuff up. They find the cat that isn't there. See the other replies to your post. Folk are so uncomfortable saying "I don't know".
Actually, the ancients really took a while to grasp the concept of nothing. Basically zero is the only coherent understanding of nothing that has ever been formulated. Apart from that, there's always something.
I could possibly accept there are microscale uncaused events, but uncaused macroscale events (e.g., earthquakes)? Those have causes, and the chain of causation leads all the way back to the beginning of the universe, so it would seem that the creation of a universe is probably not an uncaused cause.
Given that all extant cosmological evidence indicates that it had a planck radius at "the beginning", the universe is a very-far-from-equilibrium "macroscale" effect of a primordial "microscale uncaused event" (i.e. quantum fluctuation), and therefore not a(n act of) "creation".
I think it is easier to think of chaotic non-linear thinking becoming organised as concepts bump into each other...as concepts bump into each other more will forms and the process accelerates. Hope that helps.:)
It's not clear what you mean by chaos exactly, but nevertheless, chaos would still be the chaos of something. It may even be a fact that chaos represents the absence of organisation, but that absense is not the ontological absence which 'nothing' typically denotes.
This statement is completely wrong. The ex nihlio theories are central to Judaism and most forms of Christianity (Mormonism excepted). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_nihilo. I don't know enough about Islam, but I'd expect the same. That is, quantum indeterminacy didn't rock the religious world. It rocked the scientific one, to the extent it challenged the long standing belief that, given sufficient data, we could predict all future events. Quantum indeterminacy has also been used to try to explain free will (a necessary religiuos concept) by some.
Pointing to the complexity and unpredictability of the universe is not a way to disprove religion. The way you disprove religion is to point out It was never proven in the first place. Such is the difference between faith and the scientific method.
Nothing is stateless, so it also can't be theorized unless we understand it by most common descript, void. That is not even information. It is a pre information circumstance. Something is a state at least. Any something, including us trying to theorize nothing, rely on the beginning referal, and make that jump that nothing is. It is a pre beginning time more accurately. It can possibly be theorized.
Thus it is definitely something and the law of nothing, or to be faced with a moral choice.
Potential and possibility are around.
Yes, you have an easy to understand causal chain for any normal event, all the way back to the beginning of the universe, and then at some point, the causal chain ends at some uncaused cause? That's going to be a hard sell. I don't think invoking planck raiduses is very convincing. Science has so far succeeded wildly about explaining things. We should expect that to continue in cosmology, not end with an uncaused cause.
I've never thought of quamtum indeterminacy as evidence of spontaneous creation. It's an epistemological claim of what we can determine or know, as opposed to a metaphysical claim that particles just spontaneously come from nothing.
They seem to appear in calculations, but whether they exist as real physical entities may be questionable.
First, and has been stated, "quantum vacuums" are not nothing, but something. "Nothing" is best described as "absence of being" so the question isn't "how do we get from quantum vacuums to the universe we see today" but rather "why is there anything at all (including quantum vacuums)." Krauss' book performs a bait-and-switch tactic where he pretends to answer the latter but only addresses the former.
I recommend everyone check out David Albert's review of Krauss' book: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html
Second, the idea that only religious people believe "nothing comes from nothing" is simply false. Albert is agnostic and has no religious axe to grind, he is just stating the obvious.
Third, therefore the mostly likely scenario is that there has always been something. Debating what that something is (God, some supernatural entity that isn't God, some fundamental particle etc.) is the subject for a different thread, but it seems pretty clear that at rock bottom, there must be something that exists as a metaphysical necessity.
The fact that there is a world does not mean there has to be a world.
Something cannot come from nothing. Something in the classical world of material objects (as were perceived them) can come from a quantum system that lacks such objects.
That is the so-called "something from nothing" scenario that have been postulated by some physicists, like Laurence Krauss, Alexander Vilenkin, and Sean Carroll.
An a posteriori necessity, right?
hahaha ok! Could particles pop into existence from nothing before the big bang? Now that's one Id really like to hear on, lol
If, as you say, "the physical world is contingent" - and I agree it is - then, it seems to follow, "the physical world" coming-to-be was uncaused, it continuing-to-be is uncaused, and it ceasing-to-be will be uncaused as well; and so, therefore, "at metaphysical rock bottom" there's randomness (i.e. omni-symmetrical, fluctuating, void), no? Furthermore, this randomness isn't a mere "something" - one thing among other things - but rather is 'everything' insofar as every "something", being contingent, presupposes it. If not, what am I missing?
But I don't think it is right to say that that contingent things are uncaused. For example: you and I are contingent, but we have immediate causes (our parents). Moreover, some argue that not only do contingent things have no power to create themselves, but they have no power to remain in existence without something else sustaining it (e.g. a purely actual actualizer or unmoved mover).
You lost me. Not following how what you said relates to the bit you quoted.
Just to be clear...
It was suggested that every event has a cause.
I have two counters to this.
The first is that particular quantum events do not have a cause. It would be an error to talk of cause in discussing why an individual electron traveling through a slit veers right and not left. Similarly, it would be an error to ask why this particular uranium atom emitted an alpha particle now, or why an electron-positron pair appeared here rather than there.
The second is an issue of logic. "Every event has a cause" is an all-and-some proposition and hence can neither be proved, nor disproved. It's best treated as a methodological assumption, legitimising the search for a cause for any given event. It is certainly not one of the laws of thought.
The upshot, for the purposes of this thread, is that we are not compelled to agree that every event has a cause.
I'm not sure who said "every event has a cause," but they are wrong. Everything that undergoes change has a cause, yes, but that is very different from saying everything has a cause.
Another resource everyone should check out is this blog post discussing the cosmological argument (and clearing up lots of misconceptions about its premises) http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html
Furthermore, there is a difference between something being uncaused and something having an indeterministic effect. As someone in the comments to that blog post says: "what does happen in the realm of quantum processes, is that a cause does not have a deterministic effect anymore, but a probabilistic effect."
In other words, there is a big difference between "random effect" and "uncaused effect". Just because scientists can't predict which direction a particle may go in does not mean it is uncaused anymore than the fact that I don't know which side a dice will land on means that it is uncaused.
I disagree; or at the least, this is unproven. It seems to me that my counterpoints still apply.
I'll have a read of your link.
That's very good. Taking it as the basis for a thread on the Cosmological Argument would lead to a far more interesting discussion than is usually the case here.
So I would still say that "what comes into existence has a cause" is at best unproven, and hence any argument stemming from it would be unconvincing.
This is a statement of speculative physics, of which there are many varieties and no one commonly accepted version. We just aren't there yet. Therefore this statement is not a firm foundation from which to draw conclusions.
Quoting Banno
Most would agree that an uncaused event is inconceivable. This is why "God" is sometimes used as a name for it. That word connotes, among other things, an insurmountable mystery.
So when speculating that we are not bound to accept causation for all events, one is asserting that the world may be beyond our capacity to imagine except with a placeholder.
Once that is accepted, the door has been opened to a far reaching skepticism.
Sorry - what? Are you still hoping for hidden variables?
Quoting frank
inconceivable?
Too strong. You conceive of it in writing that very sentence. So...?
Nah. It connotes a guy sitting on a cloud in charge of stuff. "God help us!", "God knows!", "Pray to God that doesn't happen", "God loves his children", "God said to Abraham..."... This ineffable mystery crap is just tacked on post hoc when we look at the top of the cloud and find it glaringly unoccupied.
Sure. You claimed that those who demanded every event have a cause were holding such antiquated views because their religion required it, despite current scientific views holding otherwise.
My point was that most mainstream Western religions hold that every event does NOT have a cause as a central tenant of their theological system. The concept of ex nihlio holds that creation came from nothing.
This is a straw man. @frank specially presented a definition of God that he was working under, but you changed it so that you could offer this criticism.
Quoting Banno
Has your view changed over the course of this thread? You seemed to go from a true disbeliever in causation to an agnostic.
No, he associated it with feelings "most" people have about the inconceivability of uncaused events. He claimed that it was the reason why God was used as a name for it, because of the connotations the word has. I'm denying that there's any evidence the word has those connotations for "most" people and therefore its very unlikely to be the reason why it is used in that way.
My hopes aren't the issue. Until we have QT that agrees with relativity, we have incomplete speculations and therefore no basis for metaphysical pronouncements.
Quoting Banno
No, I didn't.
If we take as a given that event X arose without a cause, then it would necessarily follow that event X arose from nothing, right?
Also, physicists don't know nuthin' bout nothing. :roll:
Certainly, "uncaused things" are contingent.