Christoid Logic

[Neo-Scholastic]

The terms of the equations are something's not nothings.

Though hardly anyone would argue that it is the equations pre- existed. Rather, some kind of quantum state which the equations describe.

Yes, that is more what I meant to say. The symbols and the rules by which they manipulate values in themselves are indeed merely descriptive. At the same time, they model underlying proscriptive principles. In other words, equations can describe what happened after the fact and also predict what may happen in the future, but things still happen for a reason. The equations are about something causally active.

The modern notion of causality is based on separating one event from a subsequent event by intervals of time for utility. As Hume observed one can nearly always insert between two events some intermediate events separated by shorter intervals. For example, Big Jim Walker hustling Willy McCoy later causes Big Jim to hit the floor dead. In between these two events, there is Willy’s bar room challenge that causes Big Jim Walker to fight back. During an even shorter interval there is lots of shooting and stabbing that causes blood to cover everything but the dead man’s feet.

Prior to Hume, efficient cause was not defined in terms of disparate events; but by describing one event that links two or more objects expressing their properties. As such, an efficient cause is not an event or process but the objects that ‘cause’ the change. For example, the baseball striking a window is the same event as the window being shattered by the ball. In this single event, the baseball expresses its momentum and the window simultaneously expresses its fragility. Thus both the baseball and the window are, as objects, the efficient causes. The event results in the affected objects having different properties.