First order logic, set theory and God

[T0 Th3 M4X]

You don't need a fancy/complex argument. Theism/atheism exists similar as other things do, and there will naturally be an equilibrium that occurs over time. Theism will change to accommodate variations of atheism and vice versa. You'll gradually see theists adopt things from atheists, and atheists will refine their culture to be compatible with a theistic culture. Just think of it as symbiosis. If one could eliminate the other, then that construct would become irrelevant, but since it's not likely that we'll see that happen anytime soon, you'll see variations continually arise to maintain that symbiosis. Culturally speaking, both resemble each other increasingly as time goes on. What theism was 10 years ago isn't what it is today (greater emphasis on logic and rationale) and the same goes for atheism (adoption of church practices combined with a humanistic approach). That doesn't validate either ideology, but rather contributes a mutual dependence between one another.

[The Grand Nudger]

So, no, as stated I do NOT accept this.

Try a reformulation from grounding?

For any fact which can be grounded, there is another set of facts which ground it, those facts in the second set, themselves, are not facts which can be grounded.

This allows for the notion that all things are somehow explicable without constraining one's self to any specific form of explanation, such as a causal relationship.

[Rahn127]

Ok here we go.

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both.

I reject P1.

Given that both A & B exist, neither need to be caused to exist. There is no causation of existence when things already exist.
We can demonstrate a causation of change. A changes to B under certain conditions. The environmental conditions alter A into B

P2. The potency principle: If A -> B then for all C element of B, A -> C. In other words if A is the cause of B then A is the cause of every part of B.

I reject P2

Planets form from gravity acting on upon a dust cloud and over time, a planet forms. Gravity (A) is the cause of Planet (B), but gravity is not the cause of every part of B.
Gravity is not the cause for life. It doesn't cause a tree to grow. It doesn't cause a magnetic field. It doesn't cause every attribute of a planet.

P3. The principle of limitation: For all A, where A is an element of B, B -> A does not hold. This says a system (which Hatcher represents as a set) cannot be the cause of its own components. Hatcher justifies this by explaining any system has (1) form (the parts) and (2) function (the relationship between the parts). A car (the system) cannot be the cause of its own steering wheel (a part), because the car does not even logically exist until the steering wheel exists

I reject P3

There was a time when I was but a wee child with no teeth. Teeth are elements of human beings. I was a human being with no teeth and yet as I grew older, my body caused an element of my body (my teeth) to grow. A car is still a car without a steering wheel. It can be started. It can be moved by pushing on the gas peddle. It will most likely go straight for a while. You can remove a car seat from the car and it's still a car.

Setting a limitation on something until it fulfills every single aspect of some arbitrary set of conditions is just stupid.
Is a blind man no longer a human being because he doesn't have two functioning eyes ?
According to P3, he's not. In fact he doesn't even logically exist until he has every functioning part that makes up a human being.

The rest of the monkey scratching from Hatcher's proof of the existence of a god, I'm not going to touch.

Instead I'll focus on why I think Drone is an idiot.

Quotes from Drone
"For every complex problem there is a simple solution." - Oh really ? Lupus is fairly complex. Got a simple solution ?

"You don't get the decisive edge in an argument by simply brandishing retardedly your "Fallacy" wand at every chance you get" - The existence of a fallacy indicates that your conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, you fucking idiot.

"First, on what basis is first-order logic inefficient at describing reality ?" - (Mathilda) There is an awful lot of fundamentally important stuff that it cannot describe at all. For example thermodynamics, complexity and chaos.

"The event of a " baseball bat being whittled down from a tree branch" is something concrete that occurs at a particular spatiotemporal location. Perceptually speaking, The tree branch (cause) and the bat (effect) "

- (Me) The tree branch is not the cause. The whittling of the branch alters the form of the branch. As the blade shaves a piece of wood from the branch, it causes a little bit of wood to be removed from the branch. The bat is the end result of all of those effects of removing wood.

I could keep going but I think I've made my point.
Keep droning on drone.

[Angrboda]

Which PSR are we accepting and for what reason?

The PSR being discussed in this thread is stated this way:

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both. Put another way, this principle says that the question "why?" is always meaningful. Everything happens for a reason.

Whether you accept it or not, and for what reasons, is what I'm asking.

Well, I don't think that resolves it to a single PSR, but let's see what we can do with it. First, I think that it's rather elementary that a thing cannot cause itself, otherwise that thing would exist before it exists, and that would be absurd. So that leaves only other caused things, which yields an infinite series of ordered causes and no first cause. Do you agree?

[T0 Th3 M4X]

Ok here we go.

P1. The principle of sufficient reason: All phenomena are either self-caused (i.e. A->A) or other-caused (B->A; B is not equal to A) but not both.

I reject P1.

Given that both A & B exist, neither need to be caused to exist. There is no causation of existence when things already exist.
We can demonstrate a causation of change. A changes to B under certain conditions. The environmental conditions alter A into B

P2. The potency principle: If A -> B then for all C element of B, A -> C. In other words if A is the cause of B then A is the cause of every part of B.

I reject P2

Planets form from gravity acting on upon a dust cloud and over time, a planet forms. Gravity (A) is the cause of Planet (B), but gravity is not the cause of every part of B.
Gravity is not the cause for life. It doesn't cause a tree to grow. It doesn't cause a magnetic field. It doesn't cause every attribute of a planet.

P3. The principle of limitation: For all A, where A is an element of B, B -> A does not hold. This says a system (which Hatcher represents as a set) cannot be the cause of its own components. Hatcher justifies this by explaining any system has (1) form (the parts) and (2) function (the relationship between the parts). A car (the system) cannot be the cause of its own steering wheel (a part), because the car does not even logically exist until the steering wheel exists

I reject P3

There was a time when I was but a wee child with no teeth. Teeth are elements of human beings. I was a human being with no teeth and yet as I grew older, my body caused an element of my body (my teeth) to grow. A car is still a car without a steering wheel. It can be started. It can be moved by pushing on the gas peddle. It will most likely go straight for a while. You can remove a car seat from the car and it's still a car.

Setting a limitation on something until it fulfills every single aspect of some arbitrary set of conditions is just stupid.
Is a blind man no longer a human being because he doesn't have two functioning eyes ?
According to P3, he's not. In fact he doesn't even logically exist until he has every functioning part that makes up a human being.

The rest of the monkey scratching from Hatcher's proof of the existence of a god, I'm not going to touch.

Instead I'll focus on why I think Drone is an idiot.

Quotes from Drone
"For every complex problem there is a simple solution." - Oh really ? Lupus is fairly complex. Got a simple solution ?

"You don't get the decisive edge in an argument by simply brandishing retardedly your "Fallacy" wand at every chance you get" - The existence of a fallacy indicates that your conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, you fucking idiot.

"First, on what basis is first-order logic inefficient at describing reality ?"  - (Mathilda) There is an awful lot of fundamentally important stuff that it cannot describe at all. For example thermodynamics, complexity and chaos.

"The event of a " baseball bat being whittled down from a tree branch" is something concrete that occurs at a particular spatiotemporal location. Perceptually speaking, The tree branch (cause) and the bat (effect) "      

- (Me) The tree branch is not the cause. The whittling of the branch alters the form of the branch. As the blade shaves a piece of wood from the branch, it causes a little bit of wood to be removed from the branch. The bat is the end result of all of those effects of removing wood.

I could keep going but I think I've made my point.
Keep droning on drone.

Interesting.

It seems like you are using an argument in P1 that would support his notion to attempt to argue against it.  If A is sufficient of itself, then it could conceivably be the cause of B, or vice versa.  I don't think preexistence is assumed of either, but if A can trigger itself, it could conceivably trigger B subsequently.  (If the OP means something else, then maybe the person asserted this could shed some light with a little more detail.

In P2, it lacks a full enough explanation. If he's suggesting something like a chain reaction, then I could see his point.  If not, then you might have him there.  Still needs clarification.

What I think he means is A could lead to B, but B couldn't lead to C without A happening first.  So the initial cause allowed for the initial effect to potentially become a cause for C.  The potency is that A started it.  Kind of like a domino effect.  Without that first domino, you won't logically reach the last domino unless you get other input.  Even if you added something external, that external energy couldn't have impacted said domino without domino A starting the reaction, even though the secondary energy source impacted the reaction.

In P3 it could go either way as well.  The car can't logically be 100 percent of a car without all the pieces.  There needs to be a design and input of energy to reach that point.  Kind of an iffy argument.  I think it works forward but not backwards.  Once you complete the car, removing any piece or function of that car will not stop it from being a car, but rather just a broken car.

[Belacqua]

Now for P3, on the other hand, I don't fully agree with.

Agreed, P3 is less self-evident. I was trying to think of counter-examples on the bus this afternoon.

P3. The principle of limitation: For all A, where A is an element of B, B -> A does not hold. This says a system (which Hatcher represents as a set) cannot be the cause of its own components. Hatcher justifies this by explaining any system has (1) form (the parts) and (2) function (the relationship between the parts). A car (the system) cannot be the cause of its own steering wheel (a part), because the car does not even logically exist until the steering wheel exists. Thus the car's existence cannot precede the steering wheel's existence.

So let's take this at face value... The parts separately, before they are assembled, cannot be caused by the car. Because the car doesn't exist until the parts are assembled. 

Of course we have to distinguish here the essence of the car from the accidents of the car. The parts that are essential -- that define what a car is -- have to be assembled to make a car. That seems right. Once the car is assembled it might include a little 3-D printer that adds non-essential parts, like a hood ornament. But we can't say that a 3-D printer is a part of the car until the car exists. 

So I'm not seeing the fault in P3 yet, if there is one. 

Earlier on, Reltzik made a reasonable objection to this, by saying that all the components of a set or system as currently existing may have been formed by previous parts of that set. His example was just the group of all people. He rightly pointed out that all currently alive people have been made by the group of people, some of whom are still alive and some of whom aren't. 

dron3 replied this way: 

Let E be the collection of all components of H, such that E∈H

[...]

Precisely because the whole H does not even exist (to be a cause of anything) until all of its components E exist. However, the premise that " every (present) component of H owes its existence to H itself" is not fallacious by any means, since nothing excludes that a phenomenon (in this case H) cannot contain within itself a cause E for its existence. The conclusion you draw from it however, is logically unsound. It's not because the cause E originates within H that H is therefore, self-caused. It simply means that H is other-caused by E. E being the cause of H for which it is part, certainly doesn't imply that H→H but instead E→H.

This is a little tricky for me. But maybe I can extend the 3-D printer analogy... Suppose we have a little 3-D printer that extrudes all the parts of the car and somehow assembles them, in the process embedding the printer into the car. As far as I can tell, dron3 would say that this doesn't mean the car is self-caused. He would say it is other-caused by thingy which is (later on) included in the car. 

I freely confess this is all a work in progress as far as my understanding is concerned. If you have objections to this I'd be glad to read them.

---

Do we really have any reason to think that infinite phenomena have causes? All phenomena we have observed are finite, so that suggests that we only know about finite phenomena.

I'm not sure what you mean by "infinite phenomena." Are you thinking that a First Cause has to be infinite? 

I don't think we've gotten to that part of the argument yet.

---

Well, I don't think that resolves it to a single PSR, but let's see what we can do with it.  

It's the PSR that the OP's argument asks us to use. So for the purposes of the argument, that's what we're using. 

First, I think that it's rather elementary that a thing cannot cause itself, otherwise that thing would exist before it exists, and that would be absurd.

OK, so I think you're on board with P1. 

 So that leaves only other caused things, which yields an infinite series of ordered causes and no first cause.  Do you agree?

I think you're anticipating the end of the argument here. dron3 claims that with the combination of the three principles laid out in the OP, he avoids an infinite regress of causes. So I'm waiting to figure that out before I agree. 

Personally I don't see yet how it avoids such an infinite regress, but I'm still working on it. I hope that dron3 wasn't driven off by the childishness earlier on the thread, because I hope he can clarify.

---

Once you complete the car, removing any piece or function of that car will not stop it from being a car, but rather just a broken car.

Right, this is relevant, I think. 

Aristotelians talk about essentials and accidents, and how to define a thing. A dog is a thing with four legs, and if it loses a leg or two it is still a dog, but a sort of non-standard one. How much you can take away and still have a dog is kind of a tricky question.

[T0 Th3 M4X]

All-in-all, decent arguments. I think there's a certain "logic" to them but you need to add more variables and explanations to certain parts, and even if you could validate all three, they would all be parts of a greater something else that is unknown in all of it. But this in a lot of ways is how science works, because you could go back through and polish them based on objections that come up or identify new variables to strengthen the significance of it all.

[Belacqua]

All-in-all, decent arguments.  I think there's a certain "logic" to them but you need to add more variables and explanations to certain parts, and even if you could validate all three, they would all be parts of a greater something else that is unknown in all of it.  But this in a lot of ways is how science works, because you could go back through and polish them based on objections that come up or identify new variables to strengthen the significance of it all.

Agreed, we have just barely scratched the surface of the argument. If we're serious about accepting or rebutting it, there's way more work to be done.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or..... we're staring at a pile of garbage insisting that a diamond just has to be in there, somewhere...it's only an issue of lumping it up just right.

[GrandizerII]

Now for P3, on the other hand, I don't fully agree with.

Agreed, P3 is less self-evident. I was trying to think of counter-examples on the bus this afternoon.

From our temporal perspective, I don't think I can think of one that is observable by us. But that's ok, since this premise has not been shown to be necessarily true (and the OP could do that by showing that there is a logical problem with a set causing its elements, which I have not seen him do).

It may be empirically supported, but even so, what may be true of the things in this universe may not necessarily be true of the universe itself. Or what may be true of the things in Existence/Reality may not necessarily be true of Existence/Reality itself.

And keep in mind this premise seems to assume the A-theory of time, which is not exactly supported by modern cosmological science.

Note below:

P3. The principle of limitation: For all A, where A is an element of B, B -> A does not hold. This says a system (which Hatcher represents as a set) cannot be the cause of its own components. Hatcher justifies this by explaining any system has (1) form (the parts) and (2) function (the relationship between the parts). A car (the system) cannot be the cause of its own steering wheel (a part), because the car does not even logically exist until the steering wheel exists. Thus the car's existence cannot precede the steering wheel's existence.

In that last sentence, the word "precede" is used, implying a passage of time which is not posited by all theories of time. The B-theory of time, for example, has the flow of time being an illusion and that nothing objectively precedes anything else. All moments in time just are ("past, present, and future"). In this case, if the B-theory of time is true, then this is not a problem at all for the B-theorist. The B-theorist can simply ignore this as it does not assume the B-theory of time.

Any problems with this so far?

I'll skip the rest of what you said for now, but if you still need me to address them, let me know.