Ender

About time you answered one of my posts, Toyota! Well, there's a first time for everything.
Rather, a scrupulously empirical analysis of causality results in psychology instead. Currently I am reading Schopenhauer's dissertation, "On the Fourfold root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" to see whether he does Hume one better on a philosophical exposition of causality.
A law? That's an awfully nice illustration of a slippery slope, although your passage could pass muster in the days of scholastics. The law of non-contradiction is actually a result of an inherent metaphysics in our language, and an axiom assumed thanks to the biological nature of man. How else do we construe reality w/o a mental denial of contradiction? Is the law of identity (which entails non-contradiction) an assertion or an imperative? If it is the former, then it is not the ultimate presupposition and derives its authority from elsewhere. If it's an imperative, it is a mandate that rationalizes reality into human concepts. Regardless, neither the law of excluded middle or non-contradiction are axioms in Jan Lukasiewicz's logic. An example: It is false to say that either P is true or not P is true, for P can also be "possible." This entails that it is false to say that P and –P cannot have the same truth value. Classical logic is ill-equipped to deal with words like "possible" and "necessary" or statements that refer to future circumstances. In the case you were wondering, Lukasiewicz's logic is perfectly consistent and as applicable as Russell's logic, even w/o these two fundamental rules of classical logic.
Of course. Assuming the principle of sufficient reason is itself a whole 'nother thing, and entirely germane to those of theistic urges, especially the rationalist kind. That the PSR is a lock, stock and barrel ingredient of rationalism is in itself highly questionable. Not everything compels an explanation. The universe does set the context where explanation is possible, but the notion of explanation cannot be legitimately be extended to the universe as a whole. That would be a dishonest attempt at taking "god's view" of the universe itself, which is tantamount to adopting an objective view and stepping outside of one's perspective, and utterly absurd. You, as the theist, cannot consistently advocate the PSR after superimposing it onto the universe, and conveniently offer God as a PSR exempt. If God can be its own PSR, then you no longer have any position for arguing that the universe cannot be its own PSR. Thus, the act of positing an ad hoc concept, namely God, is superfluous and uncalled for, and quickly falls victim to a massive hemorrhaging- due to multiple wounds inflicted by Occam's razor.
The phrase "full explanation" is choking with straw and is unnecessary. It remains a fallacy of composition, since if there is a first state of matter where all subsequent states proceeds from, then all subsequent states would have had to exist from all eternity and hence the present state would not be at this moment. If the first cause began to be causal only at a certain time then something must have changed it at the time for its inactivity to have ceased. "somewhen" a change occurred and this must be questioned, and its cause- which is the change that preceded it- and ergo you have your inescapable infinite regress. The cause of any event must be another event, not an object or a state of affairs. Objects and state of affairs are brought into and pushed out of existence by a sequence of causally interconnected events. This is the entire history of the natural world and the entire physical universe. Causality is a relationship between changes or state of things, not objects. It is misleading and false to speak of things themselves as causes or effects. Every cause is a change. The phrase "the sun caused the ice to melt" is better stated as "the absorption of the sun's heat results in melted ice."
"clapse?" you mean relapse, I assume? I think you do not understand my statement- the explanation of each and every event in the chain is sufficient. Asking whether there is a separate explanation for the chain itself is a theistic loaded question, and is a function of the logic of illusion.
I apologize for the quick and tidy summary that requires a bit of background in empirical epistemology. That happens when you're posting in the philo forum too much! The sentence is a summary of a division in epistemology: facts and logic, or a posteriori knowledge and a priori knowledge, or synthetic and analytic statements.

The existence of a being is a matter of fact. All facts are a posteriori knowledge, contingent truths ascertained through experience. Only statements of logic or mathematics are analytic truths, a priori knowledge, and are demonstrable or necessary. Therefore, no existent of a matter of fact is necessary or demonstrable.

Phrases such as "necessary existence" or "demonstrable existence" are vacuous, meaningless, and are without any justification beyond linguistic gerrymandering crafted on the sly.

~theothanatologist~

Ender

Rimmer!
Sloppy of me. In my mad rush to beat everyone and post my knee-jerk reactions, I wasn't clear. I should have made myself more direct- and point out exactly what i was addressing to in the segment, which was: "God is ergo an uncaused, necessary being. "

Whenever i hear of the qualifier "necessary" as a definition of God, my onto-bullshit meter is activated. This is what i think should be taught to atheists everywhere whenever they smell anything "ontological" in the vincinty:

• Premise 1: No assertion is necessary unless its negation is a contradiction.
• Premise 2: No negation of a matter of fact is a contradiction.
• Premise 3: All assertions about the existent of things are matter of facts.
• Conclusion 1: Therefore, no negation of an assertion that something exists is a contradiction.
• Conclusion 2: Hence, there is no thing whose existence is necessary.

OTOH, a wiseass could wave the wand of Kripke here and blow it to smithereens though.

~WiGGiN~

[ May 10, 2002: Message edited by: Ender ]</p>

Answerer

Wait, wait everyone, I think that most of you missed something which is the possible existence of other universes. For what I gathered, even if an universe did have a beginning or an end, it doesn't mean that multiverse(if it exists) has a beginning and an end. Well personally, I don't feel that multiverse are just mere fiction or has a beginning or an end,so maybe in this case, we can say that spacetime is infinity.

GunnerJ

Thanks, Ender. I'll have to look into getting an onto-bullshit detector of my own.

Ron Singh

What makes you believe this?

Clutch

Mageth, the question is not about empirical support for the BB, which does indeed entail that time began with the universe. It's about the conceptual coherence of the (empirically still quite live) possibility that the past is infinite.

And this possibility is indeed coherent. The issue is whether the infinite-past thesis implies the existence of an event or instant with the following property: getting from that event to the present required the completion of an infinite series of instants. There is *no* such event or instant, however, on the infinite-past thesis. So, no problem.

Answerer

What makes you don't?

Ron Singh

1. What makes you think that I don't?
2. What makes you believe:

Ender

Sikh
Boy am i impressed with your capability to quote others. It would be all the more impressive if you did re-interpret the snippet in your own words and demonstrate your understanding. It's far easier to quote and hide behind others than putting your neck on the chopping block, isn't it?

~WiGGiN~

Ron Singh

Yea, but I was short on time and I had to go. And I am right now too. I'll get to it. Boy am I surprised at your italics abilities btw <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> .