(November 12, 2019 at 12:08 am)Belacqua Wrote: The article from Aeon that you linked to is over my head, like all that quantum physics stuff, but I'm pretty sure they're using the word "cause" in the modern sense, which is solely what Aristotle would call "efficient cause." Only one of the four. It seems to be pretty widely accepted these days that some quantum events happen without an efficient cause -- a push or a trigger to make it happen. Very often when someone is talking about a First Cause argument, and saying that there has to be a chain of causes, someone else will speak up and say that modern physics denies this -- that quantum events can happen without a cause. But since this objection is limited to only what Aristotle would call efficient cause, it doesn't really harm a First Cause argument. If someone claims that quantum events can occur without efficient cause, and that this knocks down the Thomist First Cause argument, he is only showing that he doesn't know what the argument really says.
I don't think it's about quantum events implying an utter lack of causality here. I think what the article is about is how to make sense of causality from a metaphysical perspective. Is there a non-arbitrary first cause of some sort that we can potentially pinpoint in reality, or is the starting point arbitrary? Something like that. I will confess that some of the stuff in the article also went over my head, though I think I get what the conclusion was saying.
