Argument from First Cause

[OrbisNonSufficit]

I apologize I thought I am posting new post but I edited old one…

Oops

 

[Dan_Defender]

To me, the main point of the first cause argument is that it says that every being has to go from potential existence to actual existence, except God.

 

[Freddy]

You do have a point, Freddy. I also find my answer as not evident. I was trying to revise it recently and up to now.

I think most of the arguments are similar to the one you used, Eugene (well, OK…not as tightly coiled as yours perhaps). But they all start with a belief in God - which is entirely understandable if you do actually believe in Him. But then look for questions that will result in that answer.

It would hardly have been a suprise to Augustine or Kalam that the questions they posed and the line of reasoning that followed from them resulted in the answer that they’d already reached.

Can you imagine Augustine thinking ‘Well, I wonder where this will end up’ when he started?

 

[FiveLinden]

Is that your “seeing” or “not seeing” supposed to be a kind of that “scientific understanding”?

Ummm, yes. Observation is the foundation of all science.

 

[Beryllos]

Material? No. Matter started at the Big Bang, hence the multiverse existed before any matter existed. Whatever it is, it is not material.

@rossum, your focus on matter is too narrow and that’s not what I meant by material. Matter and energy are interconvertible, and that’s not all. A few years ago, I learned that colliding black holes convert a large fraction of the matter into gravitational waves, which are nothing more than ripples in spacetime.

So when I wrote that the multiverse is a physical/material entity, I really intended that it is in the same category as space, time, matter, and energy.

To be even more general and encompass all scales, dimensions, etc., even if they are as yet unimagined and even unknowable, I assume that “multiverse” is all that exists in physical reality.

If that’s all there is, we’re doomed.

Catholic and similar faith/hope is that there are realities beyond the physical, and more to the point of this thread, a reality causing physical reality.

 

[rossum]

“And the Multiverse so loved the world that it sent its only Son”…?

Why does the First Cause have to send a Son? Sending a Son is not a necessary property of the First cause.

 

[Rau]

Material? No. Matter started at the Big Bang, hence the multiverse existed before any matter existed. Whatever it is, it is not material.

Define multiverse, if not “God”.

 

[Mmarco]

This is a classic ‘god of the gaps’ argument. The things we don’t know about consciousness are things we don’t know ‘yet’.

I think you have missed my point; we already know the laws which determine all biological and chemical processes, including cerebral processes, and we know that consciousness is not determined by such laws. Therefore, we can conclude that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon, consciousness transcends the physical reality, and we can identify God as the first Cause of the existence of our consciousness, which means that God is the Creator of ourselves as conscious beings.
What can we deduce from this definition of God?
Since God is the Creator of ourselves, He is certainly superior to ourselves. Since God has the capacity to create our intelligence, our consciousness and our will, He must be intelligent, conscious and He must have a will. In fact, since God is superior to us and He is the Creator of our own capacities, He must possess our own capacities in a superior way. Therefore the Creator of ourselves must be a conscious and intelligent God, i.e. a personal God.

‘Consciousness’ is not well-defined but to the extent that it is defined I can see nothing to indicate that it is non-material in origin or that anything can be ‘non-material’ in origin.

Consciousness is all our sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts. Consciousness is the only reality which we can directly experience in ourselves; we have the most direct knowledge of what consciousness is.
You say you can see nothing that indicates that it is not material, but I have given you solid rational and scientific arguments which clearly indicates that consciousness is not material.

 

[Mmarco]

I’m sure that you’ve come across the term ‘emergent property’. We can’t find ‘consciousness’ in a neuron but it’s a property of a specific arrangement of neurons (and synapses and chemicals and electrical charges etc).

The properties of neurons, in any arragment you can imagine, are always determined by the same laws of physics, which determine all the possible properties of material entities, in any arragment; the laws of phsyics do not include consciousness as a property of matter, in any arrangment you can imagine.

Similarly we can’t find the property ‘wet’ in a hydrogen or oxygen molecule. But it’s a property of a specific arrangement of said molecules.

Wrong.

Emergent properties are only concepts used to describe approximately microscopic processes. Your example of the property of “wet” makes my point; in fact “wet” is only the word we use to describe a system containing many molecules of water; it is just the name we give certain kind of geometrical distribution of the molecules of water. There are many possible geometrical distributions of particles, and we can classify such possible distributions with different names, and elaborate the concepts of wetness, roughness or smoothness, etc. However these are only arbitrary and subjective concepts and classifications,used to describe how an external object appear to our conscious mind, and not how it is . Actually, all the so-called emergent properties are not objective properties of the physical reality, but they are only abstractions or concepts used to describe our sensorial experiences or approximated models describing too complex systems. In other words, they are ideas conceived to describe or classify, according to arbitrary criteria and from an arbitrary point of view, certain processes or systems. In summary, emergent properties are intrinsically subjective, since they are based on the arbitrary choice to focus on certain aspects of a system and neglet other aspects, such as microscopic structures and processes.

Here comes my argument : arbitrariness, as well as subjectivity, implies the existence of a conscious mind, who can choose a specific point of view and arbitrary criteria.

It is obvious that consciousness cannot be considered an emergent property of the physical reality, because consciousenss is a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of any emergent property. We have then a logical contradiction. No concept which presupposes the existence of consciousness can be used to try to explain the existence of consciousness. We can conclude that consciousness transcends the physical reality.

 

[Gorgias]

Gorgias:

“And the Multiverse so loved the world that it sent its only Son”…?

Why does the First Cause have to send a Son? Sending a Son is not a necessary property of the First cause.

Agreed. After all, the ‘first cause’ argument doesn’t necessarily make the argument of a personal God. Yet, it does seem to imply a rational, intelligent God. That’s not what the “Multiverse” is.

 

[rossum]

Define multiverse, if not “God”.

The multiverse caused the current material universe. That is all. It is not alive, intelligent, omniscient, benevolent etc. It does not have a son, daughter or other offspring. It did not write any books. It does not have any prophets. It does not lay down any moral rules.

All we can be sure about is that it caused at least one universe and that it existed at the time that universe was being caused.

It bears some resemblance to the deist god, but even further stripped down.

A First cause has to a) cause something and b) exist for at least the time it is doing that causing. Anything beyond that is extraneous.

 

[rossum]

Yet, it does seem to imply a rational, intelligent God.

Why? Gravity causes things to fall. Does gravity being a cause require that gravity is also rational and intelligent? Intelligence is not required for causation.

 

[Gorgias]

Why? Gravity causes things to fall. Does gravity being a cause require that gravity is also rational and intelligent?

I don’t know why, but that makes me think of Python’s Holy Grail.

Intelligence is not required for causation.

Ahh, but we’re talking about the creation of a well-ordered universe. Kinda different than getting bonked in the head by a falling apple, wouldn’t you say?

 

[IanAG]

As I’ve been reading the replies and comments on this question it seems to me that only a very small minority of Catholics would be capable of not only putting this argument forward but also defending it.

It’s a little like learning a few words of French and then trying to have a conversation…all goes well until the native speaker replies.

I consider myself reasonably literate and intelligent but I struggle with it. Is that the point, are we meant to wrestle with these questions rather than finding unfindable answers?

After all, they are merely arguments.

 

[rossum]

Ahh, but we’re talking about the creation of a well-ordered universe.

The word “creation” has unwarranted implications. We are talking about a cause, as in First Cause, not about a First Creator.

Chemistry is well-ordered. There is a lot more H2O in the universe than HO2. Chemistry is not intelligent.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

I’m sure that you’ve come across the term ‘emergent property’. We can’t find ‘consciousness’ in a neuron but it’s a property of a specific arrangement of neurons (and synapses and chemicals and electrical charges etc).

The properties of neurons, in any arragment you can imagine, are always determined by the same laws of physics, which determine all the possible properties of material entities, in any arragment; the laws of phsyics do not include consciousness as a property of matter, in any arrangment you can imagine.

Similarly we can’t find the property ‘wet’ in a hydrogen or oxygen molecule. But it’s a property of a specific arrangement of said molecules.

Wrong.

Emergent properties are only concepts used to describe approximately microscopic processes.

It doesn’t have to be microscopic. An individual is not the same as a society but a society emerges from individuals and has characteristics different from the individuals that comprise it.

And even on a small scale we aren’t talking about subjective matters. Water is wet under normal conditions. And that is a different (and emergent) property to the components that make up water.

Notwithstanding that consciousness is an evolved property. We can see different stages or levels of consciousness in life today and there is no reason not to assume that it evolved in stages. As I asked earlier, if that was not the case then do you think it was just switched on at some point at exactly at the stages we see in different organisms today?

 

[Wesrock]

I feel like this I’m just rehashing what I’ve said when the same discussion came up in a different topic. I disagree with both Mmarco and Freddy’s positions on consciousness. Different animals certainly display different degrees of consciousness, which I’ll loosely define here as a unified awareness as a whole of sense data and perception. Many conscious beings also evidently display emotion. And I think this can be boiled down to material systems and material operations. However, I do think it requires acceptance that final causes, and teleology are real features of the physical world. These are necessary to be able to explain the intentionality (the “aboutness” of things) going on in consciousness in material terms. If we eliminate finality and teleology from the picture of the material world, intentionality goes with it, and we either need to (a) delegate it to the mental alone and accept some form of substance dualism, or (b) take the eliminativist position and deny that consciousness and thoughts aren’t real at all. I find neither of those options appealing or defensible.

As distinct from consciousness, I’d argue that human beings have an additional faculty not evidenced in other animals and not reducible to material operations, and this faculty is classically called intellection. Intellection is not about feeling emotions or experiencing qualia. Intellection is the process by which things are known in the true sense of the word, in which we grasp things in a universal way rather than just by particulars. It is not an emergent property of consciousness/physical processes, even if things are attained by the intellect through those physical processes.

 

[Freddy]

As distinct from consciousness, I’d argue that human beings have an additional faculty not evidenced in other animals and not reducible to material operations, and this faculty is classically called intellection. Intellection is not about feeling emotions or experiencing qualia. Intellection is the process by which things are known in the true sense of the word, in which we grasp things in a universal way rather than just by particulars. It is not an emergent property of consciousness/physical processes, even if things are attained by the intellect through those physical processes.

I’ve seen this argument in various forms whenever this topic comes up. In an attempt to deny that consciousness has evolved and hence is entirely natural and we simply express it in the highest form, it’s expanded to include intelligence. And when it’s pointed out that other animals are very intelligent it expands to include intellect. And we all patiently wait for someone to point out that chimps or dolphins have never composed a symphony. Which is mean to be the coup de grace as far as the argument goes.

If you hold to the position that we are just exceptionally intelligent apes then that view doesn’t get much traction (especially when it’s tied specifically to the posession of a soul).

 

[Mmarco]

It doesn’t have to be microscopic. An individual is not the same as a society but a society emerges from individuals and has characteristics different from the individuals that comprise it.

And even on a small scale we aren’t talking about subjective matters. Water is wet under normal conditions. And that is a different (and emergent) property to the components that make up water.

At this point we can only agree to disagree; I think I have clearly provided solid rational arguments proving that the so-called “emergent properties” are intrinsically subjective concepts and that consciousness cannot be an emergent properties, but it transcends the physical reality. You have raised no valid counter-arguments.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

It doesn’t have to be microscopic. An individual is not the same as a society but a society emerges from individuals and has characteristics different from the individuals that comprise it.

And even on a small scale we aren’t talking about subjective matters. Water is wet under normal conditions. And that is a different (and emergent) property to the components that make up water.

At this point we can only agree to disagree; I think I have clearly provided solid rational arguments proving that the so-called “emergent properties” are intrinsically subjective concepts and that consciousness cannot be an emergent properties, but it transcends the physical reality. You have raised no valid counter-arguments.

But you’ve completely ignored the point that comsciousness shows all indications of a gradually evolved characteristic. Unless, as I have asked twice, you think it has simply been switched on in it’s various forms at some point? Is that your position?