Wisdom of the Infinite Regress

[Steven Coyle]

Wonders if acausal phenomena is simply non-localized from another undetected region; either the same plane or another one which is infinite in scope beneath, around, under or beside it.

[guest_of_logic]

Diebert,

Must there be a cause at all?

According to what's taught around these parts, I would have thought that the answer to that would have been an emphatic "Without doubt - no thing is without a cause".

As you found out in your essay, the quantum realm itself already defies the concept of 'thing' or 'boundary' just like the concept of 'Nature' or the 'All' which we already know cannot have a cause.

I'm not sure why you say that - do you mean because the quantum principle does not have a temporal cause and is not caused except in the QRS sense in which it is caused by the universes that it "creates", just as much as it causes them when it "creates" them?

But please realize you did state that "causes that go back and back without limit" is being taught as principle. Or in other words that time as commonly measured would have no beginning. Still I can not relate to this as a viable target based on what I've been reading here over the years. And all you came up with was a rhetorical question to prove it was 'teaching'. [...] My point still being that I don't think anyone was implying space or time necessarily would have to be infinite.

Well I also linked you to threads where the idea was defended by both Kevin and David, and now in this thread you've heard it straight from the horse's mouth:

I describe the past as "beginningless", and I might also say there is an "infinite past" to suggest the same idea.

I've also quoted from Poison where Kevin makes it clear that he views himself as a teacher.

Causes could be found in hypothetical ideas that go beyond this but for all we know things will still be caused, temporal in our experience, ultimately in our philosophy.

"For all we know". That's the second hint that you've thrown into this post as to the possibility of a thing being without a cause. What's going on with you, Diebert? :-)

--------------

Pye,

Yes, it [a principle] is an abstraction, and hence, not an "it" at all!

I generally think of "abstract" as meaning one of two things, or both at the same time. The first has to do with stepping back and collecting that which is in common, which I think is the meaning you intend here. The second, though, means something like "having the sort of non-physical/conceptual existence that mathematical equations do", and it is this meaning that I suggest might also apply to our principles of physics. Nat has suggested to me in the past that another word that fits this context is "virtual". I wonder whether you will agree that a mathematical equation, to the extent that it has an existence at all, has an existence beyond space and time.

The big question then, would be: how is it that something abstract in the sense of a mathematical equation, otherwise described as virtual, can cause physical, non-virtual things like time and space? Could it possibly be that in some sense, all of reality as we know it is virtual too? This might be simply a semantic game of relabelling what is real to be virtual, or it might be a clue to something profound.

Nat has now clarified that a better word than "principle" would be "field", which seems to me to be problematic in that a field is generally conceived of as having spatial extent. I wonder whether - for the purposes of this model, and not necessarily for scientific accuracy - we might choose instead words similar to "mathematical equation", somehow stipulating that it is in some sense a unique type of equation in that it can actually cause things. How does that strike you?

What I am trying to assert here, though, is that a thing has no properties in itself until there is a world against which to manifest those properties.

Would you say the same thing of a mathematical equation?

To "isolate" a phenomenon in order for it to reveal its causal linkage is to change the very thing you are looking at. It is no longer in the world setting in which it is otherwise operating.

I understand you to be saying something similar to, "Context is all", which I would tentatively agree with in the context in which you said it. :-)

personally, I don't think there's anything of a wholesale nature "wrong" with humans in the first place - certainly not in some cosmic sense of error, in need of salvation

My idea of a need for salvation comes from one's circumstance, not one's nature, although in my opinion one's nature can be perverted by one's circumstance.

I appreciate the reach of your mind in positing the existence of a condition "devoid of space and time" - but one can see how close to the 'divine' this would have to be declared. In fact, this is very close in sentiment to theistic descriptions of god: the power to bring into being without exhibiting the same properties it creates (e.g. death, adherence to physical law, etc.)

Well spotted: this is why I brought theology into the essay.

Just so we don't have to make excuses for playing word-games here, consider as well that some of what I have been writing here is also in illustration of the possible limits of logical thinking, too.

I didn't get out of what you wrote that you were playing word-games, but as for the limits of logical thinking, the existence of these dilemmas (and now a "trilemma") could be due to that very thing.

And yes, I only have logic with which to dismantle logic as well, and hence it would still be logic in simply a new shape.

Logic is seemingly inescapable, and yet I dream of transcending it. Perhaps there is a higher logic of which our human logic and humanly discovered/created logics are but a minor manifestation. According to the founders - or at least to Kevin - logic is essentially A=A, the law of identity, and it is perfect. My understanding in contrast is that logic can generally be thought of as a system of moving reliably from one fact or set of facts to (an)other(s), and of evaluating individual propositions for consistency and plausibility. The latter logic of evaluating individual propositions can sometimes be referred to as "common sense", and this is where I see the most hope for transcending our logic: that what we intuitively understand to be sensible might not hold at higher understandings of reality. Higher understandings, indeed, might not even be expressible in words, or at least in our current vocabulary.

[Jason]

The principle of beginninglessness entails that causes go back and back without limit; that there is no "first cause". Around these parts, causality is defined very broadly so that it covers a variety of phenomena, but here we're concerned with temporal causality: that variety of causality in which cause precedes effect in time. Folk around here generally reject the notion of something coming out of nothing, and for that reason they reject that the Big Bang - if it is even a relatively accurate model - represents the beginning of time.

Laird I still don't think you fully understand QSR philosophy. Because of that you're only arguing with and against your own flawed version of it. This has been the case for much of, even most of, your time on GF when discussing QSR philosophy. Thus I don't see much worth in trying to respond to your posts if your aim is to investigate actual QSR ideas.

I also think, and have seen many times, that Kevin has a tendency to confuse his own philosophy and has often just not been capable of logical coherence when it gets down to the real nitty gritty. His abilities in these areas are the weakest of the three main proponents. Given how much time you've probably spent discussing these things with Kevin, perhaps he is partly to blame for your misunderstanding. I'd be wary when trying to discuss these issues with him.

Finally, QSR philosophy, particularly as expressed in David's Wisdom of the Infinite, usually proceeds in a stepping-stone teaching fashion. Early concepts are used to try to ease a person out of conventional mindsets and move them into more advanced and unusual perspectives on existence. But many of these early stages are not considered to be absolute or fundamental truths, and are entirely discarded further along. You are arguing against earlier stages and so not addressing the more fundamental steps and ideas in their philosophy. You are really largely arguing against teaching devices as I see it, and I don't think that there is all that much to be gained by arguing things at this level for you - you easily have the the intellectual abilities to move past these areas.

[guest_of_logic]

Jason, can you provide me with some specifics? You quoted a paragraph out of my essay but didn't explain what in particular you found deficient in it other than that it was dealing with "earlier stages" of QRS philosophy, whereas my essay is dealing instead with a matter of fact: is it possible for the proposition, "Time is beginningless and the past is infinite", to be true, and if not, then what sort of alternative can be found? How, then, would you view that proposition as being superseded once you've stepped up enough stones in the QRS philosophy? Note that all three of them defend it as a true statement, explicitly or implicitly, regardless of whether they intend it solely as a "teaching device".

The worth in responding to my posts could be for you to point out where you believe that I'm misunderstanding QRS philosophy.

[Kevin Solway]

. . . it explains how time could have an atemporal cause, using the quantum principle from modern cosmology as an example of what this might mean. What do you think of that possibility?

My argument is that "time" is none other than an appearance of causation. So wherever there is causation there is necessarily time. Therefore there can be no such thing as an "atemporal cause", since "cause" means "time" so far as the way our minds work is concerned.

[guest_of_logic]

My argument is that "time" is none other than an appearance of causation. So wherever there is causation there is necessarily time. Therefore there can be no such thing as an "atemporal cause", since "cause" means "time" so far as the way our minds work is concerned.

You do talk about causes that don't involve time though, don't you? You talk about things like an object being caused by all that is not it, and that is a type of causation that doesn't necessarily involve time.

[Pye]

guest asks: I wonder whether you will agree that a mathematical equation, to the extent that it has an existence at all, has an existence beyond space and time.

No, I would not agree with such pythagorean magick, for as excited as he was to locate the mathematical underlayment to music (and eventually other phenomenon), it is still a case of the concrete world and the function of the brain in seeking this kind of comprehensibility. You might consider looking into the work of Kurt Godel, 20th century mathematician, who (even if I cannot pretend to understand it all), worked this field to its definitive limits. There is a point, as I understand it, where even math itself breaks down internally - perhaps similar to other systems of logic when placed against the concrete world they mean to fully describe.

I'm reminded of Nietzsche (yet again) when he points out the curious condition of having to measure the world with things that don't even exist in the world. I have yet to successfully grow any 2s or 4s in my garden, and I have yet to run into an X-Y graph on the streets. Incrementation has very humble and practical beginnings - commerce. It was this self-same motivation that led humans to start a written, representative language at all.

[Pye]

Jason writes to Laird: Perhaps more importantly though, I wonder why you have apparently put so much effort into trying to debate/debunk this area of QSR philosophy. Is it important to you? Or is it merely passing time, a hobby? Do their views on this subject(or, at least, your interpretation of their views), confront you in some deep way? Or perhaps some other reason/s?.

We tend to 'teach' what it is we most need to learn/remind ourselves. :)

[Jason]

You quoted a paragraph out of my essay but didn't explain what in particular you found deficient in it other than that it was dealing with "earlier stages" of QRS philosophy, whereas my essay is dealing instead with a matter of fact: is it possible for the proposition, "Time is beginningless and the past is infinite", to be true, and if not, then what sort of alternative can be found?

Aha. I see that now. The title and my very quick skim of the start of your essay had me thinking that you were particularly focusing on the QSR philosophy in relation to these issues.

[guest_of_logic]

Pye,

guest asks: I wonder whether you will agree that a mathematical equation, to the extent that it has an existence at all, has an existence beyond space and time.

Pye: No, I would not agree with such pythagorean magick, for as excited as he was to locate the mathematical underlayment to music (and eventually other phenomenon), it is still a case of the concrete world and the function of the brain in seeking this kind of comprehensibility.

Yet there must first be something comprehensible in the external world for the brain to be able to discern comprehensibility, no?

You seem to be saying that the brain discovers patterns, and that the patterns are abstractions of properties of things in the world, rather than things-in-themselves. This does not furnish an answer to the question of the origin of those properties-of-things from which patterns and principles emerge, although it does push the question around.

To take the example of gravity: your perspective seems to suggest that it is the property of matter that it attracts other matter that leads us through our pattern-recognition cognition to abstract the principle of gravity. We might then be led to ask: why is it that matter has the property that it attracts other matter? One possible answer is to turn your perspective on its head, and to say not that "The principle of gravity is an abstraction of the property of matter that it attracts other matter", but rather that "Matter has the property that it attracts other matter because the abstract principle of gravity so causes it to".

I suspect that you will reject that formulation because it seems to reverse your understanding of the nature of the relationship of the abstract to the concrete, but isn't it simply intuition that informs your view of that relationship, and how else are we to account for that property of matter?

You might consider looking into the work of Kurt Godel, 20th century mathematician, who (even if I cannot pretend to understand it all), worked this field to its definitive limits. There is a point, as I understand it, where even math itself breaks down internally - perhaps similar to other systems of logic when placed against the concrete world they mean to fully describe.

I'm not sure which of Godel's work you're referring to - a quick check of his Wikipedia page suggests that you're talking about his incompleteness theorums, though. I've heard of them before, and I understand the essence of the proof of the main one, but I've not investigated the original, complete proofs.

I'm reminded of Nietzsche (yet again) when he points out the curious condition of having to measure the world with things that don't even exist in the world. I have yet to successfully grow any 2s or 4s in my garden, and I have yet to run into an X-Y graph on the streets. Incrementation has very humble and practical beginnings - commerce. It was this self-same motivation that led humans to start a written, representative language at all.

Fair enough, and it's a hard sell that an abstract equation (albeit one of some novel ontology) could cause anything "real": I'm simply exploring possibilities given that those already on the table seem flawed to me.

Jason,

The title and my very quick skim of your essay had me thinking that you were particularly focusing on the QSR philosophy in relation to these issues.

Fair enough - the title isn't the best description of the essay's content: I chose it mostly for its playfulness and its reference to WOTI - part cheekiness and part marketing.

[guest_of_logic]

I added section headings because I thought that it would make the essay easier to read, or at least easier to skim, which is what some people seem to be preferring to do.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

The irony, of course, is that this is coming from people whose own Victorian-era ideas must be protected at all costs from the whole of 20th century philosophy, which is utterly ignored here, as well as from any aspect of scientific inquiry which would potentially threaten the supremacy of the metaphysical ideas which allow them to imagine themselves the guardians of Absolute Truth.

Yawn... nah, that's just Victorian rambling, the Ukraine kind. That most of 20th century philosophy is ignored should be not surprising in what is essentially existential philosophy with its common anti-academical stance. Also a stance against systematization, against increasing utilitarianism and the technocracy that indeed defines much of 20th century thought. This has nothing to do with Victorian ideas, it already went against the Victorian principles at the time! And to link this all to some disregard toward scientific principles sounds pretty desperate and baseless. It attempts rather to ground science and undeify it where possible.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I wonder whether you will agree that a mathematical equation, to the extent that it has an existence at all, has an existence beyond space and time.

No, I would not agree with such pythagorean magick, for as excited as he was to locate the mathematical underlayment to music (and eventually other phenomenon), it is still a case of the concrete world and the function of the brain in seeking this kind of comprehensibility.

You might consider looking into the work of Kurt Godel, 20th century mathematician, who (even if I cannot pretend to understand it all), worked this field to its definitive limits. There is a point, as I understand it, where even math itself breaks down internally - perhaps similar to other systems of logic when placed against the concrete world they mean to fully describe.

This has to do with the question of what we call reality, or a truer reality. Even the concrete world is constructed by signs, interpretation, evaluation, brain chemistry and so on. Not necessarily a "true" world or one with an absolute nature. Mathematics and the symbols it wields does have better papers to claim a more absolute, objective nature while containing intricate richness that could account for the complexities we perceive in our experiences.

Gödel comes in here not to teach us that math "breaks down" but that we have to move always to a higher, richer system to provide the axioms, the evidence for all the true statements of the lower system. It could as well be a Platonic viewpoint. In these discussions I love to quote Hofstadter on this topic: "Provability is a weaker notion than truth".

Nothing in Gödel or mathematics prevents the acknowledgment of absolute truth, which would be true statements in the highest conceivable system known to man that still allows for linguistics to express it. But here too provability remains the weaker notion.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Must there be a cause at all?

According to what's taught around these parts, I would have thought that the answer to that would have been an emphatic "Without doubt - no thing is without a cause".

But what's a cause? Is it a thing? The cause is part of the thing itself and the thing does not really exist. It finds itself in the play between cause and effect, which is essentially: change. So the cause in itself isn't really "there" either, only as appearance but then with its own causes. That's why I think Kevin wrote initially the question and it's a valid one.

As you found out in your essay, the quantum realm itself already defies the concept of 'thing' or 'boundary' just like the concept of 'Nature' or the 'All' which we already know cannot have a cause.

I'm not sure why you say that - do you mean because the quantum principle does not have a temporal cause and is not caused except in the QRS sense in which it is caused by the universes that it "creates", just as much as it causes them when it "creates" them?

Not at all. It's just that because the quantum world is not a world of things, in the usual macroscopic sense of an entity, that we should be cautious to talk about causes or the lack of them in this scope.

Causes could be found in hypothetical ideas that go beyond this but for all we know things will still be caused, temporal in our experience, ultimately in our philosophy.

"For all we know". That's the second hint that you've thrown into this post as to the possibility of a thing being without a cause.

There are more than one way you could read into what is a sort of pun. There are conceptual things without a cause naturally. Like the "totality of existence" although these things do not exist and are therefore not a thing at all. Nothing at all. But for all we could ever know....

[Kevin Solway]

You do talk about causes that don't involve time though, don't you? You talk about things like an object being caused by all that is not it, and that is a type of causation that doesn't necessarily involve time.

Yes, I'm talking about those causes that don't appear to be simultaneous.

For example, if it appears that our observable cosmos had a non-simultaneous cause, then we say there is "time".

[Anders Schlander]

The passage of time appears to us because of the changes produced by cause and effect. So as long as causes and effects appear to us, so does time.

And since there can't be anything without a cause, it follows that time must be beginningless.

Beginningless = eternal or infinite does it not?

I don't think i understand. Nothing that exists can be without cause. So any particular 'thing' would have causes, effects, and thus exhibit time together with another 'thing'. Beginningless would the the infinite, or everything that exists together forming the formless......

but is time then eternal aswell? Time being produced by 'things' and thus does this mean that change/time is eternal, as long as there is existence, due to cause and effect - yet any given thing is ever-changing and never the same thing as it was a moment ago, so practically finite, yet the process is infinite? - only as long as there is existence of things.

It seems to be that the changes cause and effect brings are from experience, but it also seems neccesary for a duality to act upon eachother to exist in the first place, as they co-exist. Though, where change comes into the picture, must be a mechanic of those dualities that we simply see infront of us. how dualities that we see infront of us arise is impossible to come to an end to, because to ask how love and hate exists we have to look in our minds, and how our minds formed, and how what formed our minds formed. But we can still see what a mind is, and grasp we come to differentiate things and know love and hate and such...

[Unidian]

I also think, and have seen many times, that Kevin has a tendency to confuse his own philosophy and has often just not been capable of logical coherence when it gets down to the real nitty gritty. His abilities in these areas are the weakest of the three main proponents. Given how much time you've probably spent discussing these things with Kevin, perhaps he is partly to blame for your misunderstanding. I'd be wary when trying to discuss these issues with him.

That's kind of a strange statement, since Kevin is the acknowledged progenitor of QRS thinking. It's a bit like saying "if you want to have a clear understanding of Buddhist thought, avoid paying too much attention to the Buddha."

Finally, QSR philosophy, particularly as expressed in David's Wisdom of the Infinite...

So, we're actually talking about Quinnology here, rather than some mythical "QRS philosophy" that somehow excludes the ideas of its own originator.

I'm starting to agree with Dan's oft-repeated claim that there really is no "QRS" at all. GF seems to be primarily a Quinnology site, as far as I can tell - and before we can agree on the validity of Laird's points, I guess we'd have to figure out exactly whose version of "QRS philosophy" he is criticizing. Laird cites several things from Kevin, but is rebutted here with references to Quinn's perspective, which seems to me to be rather different.

[Pye]

guest proffers: Yet there must first be something comprehensible in the external world for the brain to be able to discern comprehensibility, no?

(We're almost there :)) This is coming very close to the phenomenological truth: consciousness is always consciousness-of. But we are never looking at two separate entities - not consciousness-itself, or the things-themselves. The two happen together, make each other, if you will.

guest: You seem to be saying that the brain discovers patterns . . .

Given the above, we can see the language of separation here: patterns existing in the world; brain coming up against them and "discovering." I would be more inclined to say they are created at the same time.

guest re: gravity: your perspective seems to suggest that it is the property of matter that it attracts other matter

Not until there is other matter to create this phenomenon. Again, gravity does not sit inside any given entity inherently (and certainly not in a vacuum). There is no possibility of isolating such a phenomenon from the world setting in which it occurs. Our brains are part of that world-setting.

Let me return to the sentiment in this paragraph here:

guest: Logic is seemingly inescapable, and yet I dream of transcending it. Perhaps there is a higher logic of which our human logic and humanly discovered/created logics are but a minor manifestation. According to the founders - or at least to Kevin - logic is essentially A=A, the law of identity, and it is perfect. My understanding in contrast is that logic can generally be thought of as a system of moving reliably from one fact or set of facts to (an)other(s), and of evaluating individual propositions for consistency and plausibility. The latter logic of evaluating individual propositions can sometimes be referred to as "common sense", and this is where I see the most hope for transcending our logic: that what we intuitively understand to be sensible might not hold at higher understandings of reality. Higher understandings, indeed, might not even be expressible in words, or at least in our current vocabulary. [underling mine]

Myself, I would not be inclined to draw a sharp line between logic and intuition. Neither would I be inclined to rank one above the other: in my estimation, they are part of the same thing. Intuition (intuition that accurately concludes) strikes me simply as the subtler reception of these self-same cause-and-effects that the logical brain works hard to give form to. I love that you "dream of transcending [logic]," but one assumes in this transcendence that you have not lost a grasp on the world; you've simply located another way of grasping it.

The problem with intuition is the amount of times it can go wrong, so to speak, because of this self-same subtlety of signals being created between the viewer and the world viewed. With no action on the part of reason to give these notions form, things can stay vague. A bio-chemical squirt can be mistaken for one's anxiety over grandma's impending death. And the bio-chemical squirt itself might be caused by the anxiety itself!

But if you are imagining yourself in a place where all of the mutual creation of yourself and the world takes place upon this subtler plane - and it never misses the settling in of sense to it all, then I would find this a most worthy condition. But if you want to talk about it to anyone else, you will have to put it back into the forms that - so far - are the only forms with mutually agreed- upon rules. And that'd be logic. I prefer to speak of reason myself, for there are some senses of the world that escape mathematic precision. Consider the world of ideas that Kevin, David, and Dan want to bring forth when they violate A=A in something like "feminine=unconsciousness."

I've enjoyed our discourse, Laird. I like the questions you ask, the way you write, and the timbre with which you do it. Goes to show that adversarial pugnacity is not the only way to reach a sense of understanding :)

[Pye]

Unidian writes: I'm starting to agree with Dan's oft-repeated claim that there really is no "QRS" at all

Wise decision :)
The crowd is untruth. I'd submit as well that this site is not Quinnological, either. I'd submit that only David is. An entity such as a "site" simply does not exist. But the individual people who write on it do.

(Are you the "Tao guy" I once encountered here? [I could be mistaken.] I would have liked to keep talking to him :))

[skipair]

There's no QRS, but not for the reason some of you seem to think. There is basically no difference in what they say regarding fundamentals of reality, but only because they recognize something that is greater than them: reason.

The differences that people pick out are the attitudes and approaches of conveying it.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Unidian writes: I'm starting to agree with Dan's oft-repeated claim that there really is no "QRS" at all

The crowd is untruth. I'd submit as well that this site is not Quinnological, either. I'd submit that only David is. An entity such as a "site" simply does not exist. But the individual people who write on it do.

Indeed.

This is my experience as well during the last few years here. If anything this forum approaches somewhat of a blank page (some would say bland page) where people tend to project their own convolutions on. In terms of philosophy there's nothing really new or shocking being exchanged or taught here, to suggest some defining Solway or Quinn overlording or teaching position. Once in a while you can spot an oddity or eccentricity which one could try to make into a huge deal but compared to any other forum I've ever visited this might be heaven, or deep space perhaps, without too much gravity pulling but ones own.

The more places one visits online, the more books you read offline, yes even 20th century and 21st century leading thinkers, the more people you connect to in your life and especially rehash, penetrate the accumulation of experiences with the many sides of culture and society, the more one applies some of the insights into decisions, in starting to look and listen with greater attention, the more one starts to realize this forum deals with many universal real issues in a manner that's not new, not strange and you'll find all kinds of resonances with it in many unexpected corners.

Take the QRS away, even take all the sites down and I believe nothing would change. Many people will still talk about the same stuff on all the other forums, write similar articles on their own sites. Their message about reason and consciousness is just too universal, too right on the mark to depend on these few worthless worms carrying such initials.

[Unidian]

Are you the "Tao guy" I once encountered here? [I could be mistaken.] I would have liked to keep talking to him.

I can be. It's a role I was playing at that time to hone my responses a bit. Did you want to discuss Taoism?

[Pye]

Unidian asks: Did you want to discuss Taoism?

hi. I'm always up for that. If the Tao guy is ever into it, I would like to ask him what he understands is the dispensation of the feminine in the Tao. More pointedly, is it something to be rid-of, as a few of the thinkers here seem to insist. Not to get the whole mas-fem thing broiling again, just what the Tao guy thinks.

(I'm thinking you are acquainted with "VicDan"? Does he still frequent these parts? I liked reading him, too.)


P.S. Diebert: well-observed, this netting phenomenon . . . .

[guest_of_logic]

Diebert,

But what's a cause? Is it a thing? The cause is part of the thing itself and the thing does not really exist. It finds itself in the play between cause and effect, which is essentially: change. So the cause in itself isn't really "there" either, only as appearance but then with its own causes. That's why I think Kevin wrote initially the question and it's a valid one.

I don't think that that's why he wrote it. Here's Kevin's rhetorical question in context from PFTH:

"Firstly, it may be true that all things have causes. But Nature Herself is not a "thing" and therefore cannot be said to have causes. "Things" can only exist for observers, and as we are manifestations of Nature, we cannot stand apart from Her to observe.

Secondly, no law says that all things must have causes. Show me a single cause! Show me where that cause begins and ends - it cannot be done, so why all this talk of "causes".

Thirdly, why create the notion of a "necessary being" at all? Such a being is actually an unnecessary being. Why must things have an ultimate cause? Why can't causes stem back endlessly?"

The second point is where Kevin raises the issue of causes not really being "there"; by the third point he's treating them as real again, and it's in the context of causes being real that he offers in the form of a rhetorical question his view that they stem back endlessly.

It's just that because the quantum world is not a world of things, in the usual macroscopic sense of an entity, that we should be cautious to talk about causes or the lack of them in this scope.

OK, I see where you're coming from now. There's a need for us to refer to something at least resembling causality though, since in this explanation it's due to the quantum world that anything exists at all, but to say that the quantum world consists of "things" which are also "causes" is potentially confusing, because they aren't causes in the temporal sense, and, as you say, they aren't things in the usual macroscopic sense.

Diebert: Causes could be found in hypothetical ideas that go beyond this but for all we know things will still be caused, temporal in our experience, ultimately in our philosophy.

guest_of_logic: "For all we know". That's the second hint that you've thrown into this post as to the possibility of a thing being without a cause.

Diebert: There are more than one way you could read into what is a sort of pun. There are conceptual things without a cause naturally. Like the "totality of existence" although these things do not exist and are therefore not a thing at all. Nothing at all. But for all we could ever know....

So then do you consider that it's possible for an atemporal, non-spatial quantum principle to be the source of time, such that time has had a finite duration, as outlined in the second half of the essay?

---------------------------

Kev,

You do talk about causes that don't involve time though, don't you? You talk about things like an object being caused by all that is not it, and that is a type of causation that doesn't necessarily involve time.

Yes, I'm talking about those causes that don't appear to be simultaneous.

For example, if it appears that our observable cosmos had a non-simultaneous cause, then we say there is "time".

Does time itself have a cause, and if so, what is that cause?

---------------------------

Pye,

I've enjoyed our discourse too. You out of everyone who responded have been the most willing to critique the essay on its own terms, and I was pleased that you focussed immediately on its weakest spot, because part of the point of presenting the essay here was to stimulate discussion that might improve the ideas contained within it.

Our exchange has stimulated my thoughts, and I see potential for an essay exploring the relationship between the abstract and the concrete; between consciousness, the objects of consciousness and their referents, the latter of course being one of the themes of the final chapter of David's opus, and I having wanted for a while now to address more specifically some of the claims made there in that respect anyway.

I do have a couple more responses to make here though.

I'm not inclined to draw a sharp line between logic and intuition either. In fact I think that statements like the following are fairly accurate: "It is with our (logical) intuition that we determine whether a logical proof succeeds or fails; our (logical) intuition tells us whether a logical statement is consistent or contradictory". I also suggest, and which is why in that quoted statement I prefaced each "intuition" with a parenthesised "logical", that there are forms of intuition that are not so logic-based, but that those are not the types of intuition to which either of us are referring here, even though they are related.

As for transcending logic: yes, in a sense it would entail not that one lose one's grip on the world, but rather that one broaden one's grip out of the tight, clenched fist by which one usually evaluates the world, perhaps even turning one's hand over, splaying it open and allowing reality to rest in one's upheld palm, no longer grasping and squeezing the truth out of the world, but the weight of the world's truth rather pressing into one's upturned flesh. Metaphorical and vague, yes, but I am yet a prisoner of logic-as-it-is, and cannot conjecture clearly what it might look like outside the cell.

[guest_of_logic]

As you may have noticed, none of the founders of this forum has been posting here for some time now, and frankly, no one else here possesses any significant degree of wisdom.

My personal invitation to Kevin to participate in this thread seems to have yielded a result: so, Carl - wise enough for ya? I'm hopeful that Dan will at least skim over the thread, even if he's too preoccupied with his YouTube endeavour to devote sufficient time for a meaningful response - he is at least aware of it. The whereabouts and occupation of David I have no idea about, and nor does anyone else seem to. My PM to him on resuming our discussion in the "Causality and Consciousness" thread is still unanswered, as is the post itself - by David, that is, as others have chimed in.