(July 15, 2019 at 7:26 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 15, 2019 at 7:17 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Yes, I am aware of Aristotle's different notions of cause, such as formal, efficient, etc. I just think they are poor categories and not helpful for analysis.

It's odd, in that case, that you were using "cause" in a very different sense earlier in this thread. 

Why do you think that Aristotle's αἰτία are poor categories?

Because they are ultimately not informative or cause confusion. Formal cause is really the shape. Material cause is the composition. Effective cause is the cause. And ultimate cause only makes sense if there is an active intelligence.

The problem is an outdated metaphysics. Which, to be fair, I expect from writings that are 2300 years old.

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(July 15, 2019 at 10:42 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 15, 2019 at 9:58 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: There is NOTHING about "First Cause" in the argument. It's simply "cause". 

If we use the vocabulary that LadyforCamus suggests, I think it's clear why there has to be a first in the chain of essential causes. 

She suggests that the brute fact that things is exist is where we begin. I think that's a reasonable way to formulate the argument. 

Now, could there be anything prior to the brute fact that things exist? Is there something that could provide a foundation to the brute fact that things exist? I don't think so, because that thing would have to exist. So we'd have an existing thing resting as the foundation that things exist. And I don't think that makes sense. To make this work, you'd have to posit some kind of supernatural non-existent thing, and nobody here is fond of supernatural explanations. 

So I think it makes sense to talk about a first cause, in this sense.

So 'existence' is the 'cause' of existence.

Now, *that's* convincing........

(July 15, 2019 at 11:38 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote:

(July 15, 2019 at 9:58 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: I already gave them. You just don't like them. They are perfectly obvious, and they are true, whether you agree or not. There is NOTHING about "First Cause" in the argument. It's simply "cause". You are not the "master philosopher overseer" here, despite your arrogant patronizing posts. I do not need anything approved or agreed-to by you. I don't give a shit what you read or don't read. Stop patronizing me. Fuckwad.

But I haven’t said anything!

Oh was someone hacking your account ? 

Quote:To say that the people who have agreed with this argument are dishonest, you would have to know the private thoughts of thousands and thousand of people, most of whom are now dead. 

I don't believe you can do that. 

They may well have been wrong, but I don't think we're justified in declaring them dishonest or tricky. 

If you have arguments for why you disagree, rather than just pronouncements about your conclusions, I'll read them.

Are we suffering from a memory problem ?

I get the impression that you guys are misunderstanding what Belaqua is trying to say here, and the result is a strawman, unintentional though it may be.

(July 15, 2019 at 11:50 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Formal cause is really the shape. Material cause is the composition. Effective cause is the cause. And ultimate cause only makes sense if there is an active intelligence.

I'm afraid I don't agree with any of this. 

Formal cause is not only the shape, but the construction, the interaction of the parts, the operation, etc. A dead body has the shape of a person but not the formal cause. [edited to add: Probably people assume that Formal Cause is only shape because the common example teachers use is a statue. And for statues, it's true that Formal Cause is only shape because statues aren't active at all. But for more complicated things, things that operate, shape isn't sufficient.]

The material cause is the stuff it's made from. The word composition, to me, means how it's organized, which in fact is part of the formal cause. 

Effective cause is, I think, a term that you invented...? Usually it's efficient or moving cause.

And ultimate, or final cause certainly doesn't require an active intelligence. That is a misunderstanding. 

Suppose you were teaching a beginning anatomy class, and you spent an hour talking about the heart. The formal cause of the heart includes the heart's construction and movement. The material cause is the special kind of muscle that the heart is made from. The efficient cause is the parents making a baby, which grows a heart. All of this is necessary to understand if you want to understand a heart. 

But it leaves out an important fact about the heart: what it is for. It would be silly to talk about a heart and not mention that it pumps the blood around. But that's the Final Cause. And hearts have this Final Cause entirely because they evolved that way. There was no intelligent design or active intelligence involved. But to deny that hearts have a purpose -- a Final Cause -- would be silly, don't you think?

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(July 15, 2019 at 11:50 pm)polymath257 Wrote: So 'existence' is the 'cause' of existence.

That's certainly not what I said.

(July 16, 2019 at 12:34 am)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 15, 2019 at 11:50 pm)polymath257 Wrote: Formal cause is really the shape. Material cause is the composition. Effective cause is the cause. And ultimate cause only makes sense if there is an active intelligence.

I'm afraid I don't agree with any of this. 

Formal cause is not only the shape, but the construction, the interaction of the parts, the operation, etc. A dead body has the shape of a person but not the formal cause. [edited to add: Probably people assume that Formal Cause is only shape because the common example teachers use is a statue. And for statues, it's true that Formal Cause is only shape because statues aren't active at all. But for more complicated things, things that operate, shape isn't sufficient.]

Hmmmm....in that case, it seems even less coherent. So, the formal cause is the dynamics of the interaction of the parts? So it is dependent on the material cause?

Quote:The material cause is the stuff it's made from. The word composition, to me, means how it's organized, which in fact is part of the formal cause.

OK, that is different than how I understand the word 'composition'. I see it as what the thing is made from. The organization is more, like you said, a matter of the internal dynamics.

Quote:Effective cause is, I think, a term that you invented...? Usually it's efficient or moving cause.

yes.

Quote:And ultimate, or final cause certainly doesn't require an active intelligence. That is a misunderstanding. 

Suppose you were teaching a beginning anatomy class, and you spent an hour talking about the heart. The formal cause of the heart includes the heart's construction and movement. The material cause is the special kind of muscle that the heart is made from. The efficient cause is the parents making a baby, which grows a heart. All of this is necessary to understand if you want to understand a heart. 

But it leaves out an important fact about the heart: what it is for. It would be silly to talk about a heart and not mention that it pumps the blood around. But that's the Final Cause. And hearts have this Final Cause entirely because they evolved that way. There was no intelligent design or active intelligence involved. But to deny that hearts have a purpose -- a Final Cause -- would be silly, don't you think?

If you go that route, then the 'ultimate cause of the heart is reproductive success. The pumping of the blood is just a means to get that success.

But the 'ultimate cause' of reproductive success is, what? the laws of thermodynamics that determine whether energy is available for reproduction?

Once again, this seems to be a poor division of concepts. There is no 'ultimate cause' for the heart. It simply does not have a purpose in any reasonable sense. It has *effects* such as differential survival, but that isn't the same as the ultimate cause.

But let's go with this. Yes, the heart pumps blood. What identifies that 'function' as its 'ultimate cause'? Why not all the other things that the heart does? Because it isn't *just* a pump.

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(July 15, 2019 at 11:50 pm)polymath257 Wrote: So 'existence' is the 'cause' of existence.

That's certainly not what I said.[/quote]

Then I am confused about what you did say. I agree that having a non-existent thing (whatever *that* means) be the cause of existent things is strange. So why not just admit that some things have no cause? And that there could well be many such things?

And we can go further. Many quantum level events have no cause (and certainly none by Ari's definitions). This means there are quintillions of uncaused events all around us all the time.

(July 16, 2019 at 2:36 am)polymath257 Wrote: So, the formal cause is the dynamics of the interaction of the parts? So it is dependent on the material cause?

The formal cause includes the interaction. It is dependent on the material cause in that a body that isn't a physical object can't operate in the physical world. 

Quote:If you go that route, then the 'ultimate cause of the heart is reproductive success. The pumping of the blood is just a means to get that success.

But the 'ultimate cause' of reproductive success is, what? the laws of thermodynamics that determine whether energy is available for reproduction?

Once again, this seems to be a poor division of concepts. There is no 'ultimate cause' for the heart. It simply does not have a purpose in any reasonable sense. It has *effects* such as differential survival, but that isn't the same as the ultimate cause.

But let's go with this. Yes, the heart pumps blood. What identifies that 'function' as its 'ultimate cause'? Why not all the other things that the heart does? Because it isn't *just* a pump.

It's possible for things to have more than one Final Cause. The Final Causes of a pleasure boat would include: floating, impressing women, smuggling cocaine, etc. 

But Final Cause doesn't point to some ultimate "meaning of life." But this may be simpler than it appears. If a child asks you "what are the lungs for?" the answer is pretty obvious. 

Quote:Then I am confused about what you did say. I agree that having a non-existent thing (whatever *that* means) be the cause of existent things is strange. So why not just admit that some things have no cause? And that there could well be many such things?

Let's not slip back into "cause" as only "efficient cause" here. 

If the brute fact of existence is the First Cause, as we've been discussing it here, then can there be any essential chain that doesn't end in this brute fact? In other words, can any existent thing not depend on the fact that things just exist? As far as I can see, the existence of every single extant thing has this same First Cause. 

Quote:And we can go further. Many quantum level events have no cause (and certainly none by Ari's definitions). This means there are quintillions of uncaused events all around us all the time.

Here you've slipped entirely back into "cause" as efficient cause only. Quantum level events couldn't occur if things didn't exist. Though they may or may not have efficient causes, they depend for their occurrence on the laws of physics, on the fact that the universe exists. In the sense I have been using this all along -- Aristotle's sense -- all of these events certainly have a First Cause.

The first cause "did something" they never go on to say how it did it or offer any evidence. Where did the immaterial being get the stuff? how did it start it? Just saying it did it seems to be enough for them.

I say it was a time travelling water buffalo with its friend skip the field mouse that went back to the moment of creation and farted a special fart then time travelled back to the far future where field mice rule supreme. This has actually MORE chance of being true than the Judea Christian god because water buffalos and field mice do exist and time travel is not ruled out totally by physics.

(July 16, 2019 at 3:09 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: The first cause "did something" they never go on to say how it did it or offer any evidence. Where did the immaterial being get the stuff? how did it start it? Just saying it did it seems to be enough for them.

In the Aristotelian and Thomist system, the First Cause takes no action. It is not an immaterial being.

(July 15, 2019 at 10:42 pm)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 15, 2019 at 9:58 pm)Bucky Ball Wrote: There is NOTHING about "First Cause" in the argument. It's simply "cause". 

If we use the vocabulary that LadyforCamus suggests, I think it's clear why there has to be a first in the chain of essential causes. 

She suggests that the brute fact that things is exist is where we begin. I think that's a reasonable way to formulate the argument. 

Now, could there be anything prior to the brute fact that things exist? Is there something that could provide a foundation to the brute fact that things exist? I don't think so, because that thing would have to exist. So we'd have an existing thing resting as the foundation that things exist. And I don't think that makes sense. To make this work, you'd have to posit some kind of supernatural non-existent thing, and nobody here is fond of supernatural explanations. 

So I think it makes sense to talk about a first cause, in this sense.

I disagree. Along with existence is non-existence. 
Reality is more complex than "existence", (or could be). 
Where did non-existence come from.

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(July 16, 2019 at 3:33 am)Belaqua Wrote:

(July 16, 2019 at 3:09 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: The first cause "did something" they never go on to say how it did it or offer any evidence. Where did the immaterial being get the stuff? how did it start it? Just saying it did it seems to be enough for them.

In the Aristotelian and Thomist system, the First Cause takes no action. It is not an immaterial being.

Actually the Thomistic First Cause IS an immaterial being. It's his "god". 
In the Aristotelian system the "unmoved mover" (meaningless drivel) "that which moves without being moved') MOVES also .... ie "creates".
A being cannot "decide to create" and THEN "create" without at least mental movement, thus the entire argument is nonsense. 
Not only is this nonsense based on a total fallacy, (that which is observed in this universe, which Aquinas REPEATEDLY references, or appears to us to be intuitively true)  is how ultimate Reality works, That is patently false, and there are many examples .... Relativity, Uncertainty, and the tensors of Dirac. 
It appears you don't even get the basic elements of these arguments, to say nothing about what's totally wrong about them. 

Edit: This immaterial being is sentient, in the Thomistic model. It thinks. Therefore it moves and is moved by every passing thought, (which is preposterously ridiculous, in a model which calls it "unmoved"). Yeah, the old boys did a piss-poor job. Actually they knew nothing about a lot of important things, (acceleration, not "movement" requires energy), Relativity, neuroscience, etc. etc.

Saint Tommy got his god ideas from special revelation, not any prime mover argument. He was very clear and open about this.

It was never his intention to prove god and he didn’t think that he had.

He only wanted to show how his Christian god could fit into the classical body of thought taken to be authoritative in his own time.