Can we "prove" that EVERYTHING has a cause?

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So, since you asked for some help on this in your Post #5, I’ll go into a little more (dreary, long-winded) detail on the more narrow question you raised, “can we “prove” that everything has a cause?”

As I said above, absolute ontological proof? No, but then by the standards you seem to be raising there is no absolute ontological proof for ANYTHING. Since we don’t want to wind up spending the rest of our days lying on the floor of our darkened, filthy apartments, sucking our thumbs in the benumbed realization of this fact, we have to base our decisions on the information we have, and use the reason that we appear to have been given to make reasonable decisions about what we are going to do.

(For starters, you should, as a rule, distrust any school of philosophy that requires you to live your life in denial of your common sense, or to act contrary to the proffered philosophical precepts in order to live a normal and non-hypocritical life. So if a school of thought teaches you that there is no such thing as free will (per Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett), but you see them living their lives as if they, in fact, have free will, you should distrust their conclusions. If a guru tells you that the world is just an illusion but the guru himself drives a Maserati, you can probably discard his claims without a second thought. If a materialist writer tells you that there is no objective moral code and that all actions are relative, but persists in calling the people with whom he disagrees “wicked,” he’s a fraud. And if a scientist persists in claiming that it is possible, even one time, for something to come out of absolute nothing, with no possible cause…then he’s not doing science.)

On the narrower issue of whether things can ever come into being without a cause, you ask if it isn’t “possible” that something can come into being without a cause, I would argue, using the human standard of “proof” I outlined above, that no, it isn’t possible, from either a scientific or a strictly theological perspective, which is why we don’t see blue squirrels or green chickens popping into our lives out of nowhere willy-nilly.

This is because the principle that everything that comes into being has a cause is a properly basic belief, as most philosophers in the mainstream of that discipline, including Aristotle and Plato (see for example his “Timaeus,” especially sections 27 and 28) up to the present, have agreed is the case. Even Hume agreed this was the case (“I have never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause,” as he wrote in 1754), although he argued against the source of that knowledge.

Although this is an argument from authority (which is not a proof but can provide some substantial evidence), it also aligns nicely with what our empirical observations and common sense tells us to be the case. Common sense tells us that non-provable axioms, such as the axioms of geometry and formal logic, are probably true. (Or true enough that I am willing to risk my life by driving onto a bridge built by someone who used the laws of geometry to design it.) Modal truths which cannot be proven without resort to those unprovable axioms of logic - such as “I am not a chair,” also seem to be true, based on common sense (or what philosophers refer to as “intuition,” meaning something more akin to “common sense” than the way we often use “intuition” to mean something like ESP.) These seem to us to be essential truths that may not be provable but certainly seem self-evident. They may not be provable, but that’s the way you should place your bets.
 
My argument that the non-popping-into-being of green chickens on my desk or blue squirrels on a planet orbiting a far-flung sun certainly didn’t originate with me - philosophers like Jonathan Edwards and Arthur Prior (a great last name for a philosopher specializing in theories of time, I’ve always thought) at Oxford have made the argument that if we accept the premise that something can come into being from nothing without any cause, then there is nothing in the nature of “nothing,” which itself has no properties or potential or attributes, which would restrict such a thing to happening only in the macrocosmic sense (the creation of the universe) or in a sub-atomic sense, such as vacuum particle pairs. The denial of causality as a scientific and philosophical basic principle means we cannot expect to see any restrictions on when or under what conditions things might just spontaneously appear, or what kinds of things might spontaneously appear, and to argue otherwise would simply be a special pleading. How can “nothing,” which has no properties, somehow be so discriminatory as to restrict itself to such appearances under a strictly materialist worldview? And if it wasn’t nothing, but “something” that created something out of nothing, you have just denied your own premises.

If this non-causal view of materialism, which somehow (magically?) is able to be both unscientific and untheological, is true, then we should logically expect to see evidence for this in any number of things happening that are completely unexplainable - not only green chickens and blue squirrels, but the presence on our earth of chimirae, djinni, flying spaghetti monsters, afreets, dragons, fairies, unicorns, flying teacups, ghouls, and who knows what else flying around in our skies. Reality would look more like a Max Ernst or a Hieronymous Bosch illustration. We don’t live in such a universe (except in a few neighborhoods), so the evidence is strongly against such a materialist, non-scientific worldview. I have too great a respect for reason and science to believe in the view that something can spontaneously arise from nothing. That’s just magical thinking by people with a methodological bias.

Dr. Taffy, who posted above, suggests that the action of subatomic vacuum particle pairs must, in some way, happen without a cause, or at least (to move the goalposts a wee bit), with no “proximate efficient cause.” Clearly, because we have not advanced science enough to be able to recognize the cause, this does not mean there can be no cause. That isn’t even “Science/God of the Gaps” thinking, its just expecting magic to happen, and without even a magician. We just don’t know what the causation of certain sub-atomic particles is yet. No one actually working in the field of subatomic particles has yet proposed that there can be no cause for their actions, and that they “just happen.” That would be an invitation to throw up our hands and go home (and stop applying for grant funding).

The big problem for a materialist view of the universe is that they can’t even use that argument on the big, big Leibnizian question - why is there Something instead of Nothing, as none of those not-yet known factors that could explain the actions of subatomic particles can exist in an empty set. We’re talking about nothingness here, that thing that rocks dream about, zilch, nada, neechevo.

As ccmnxc has noted, the good Dr. Taffy’s argument that the possibility of a caused action can be used in a predictive fashion to calculate the probability of a caused action is irrelevant, and it’s not meant to disparage Taffy personally or to be condescending to his own faith in reason to point out that argument is worthless. It is a simple category error, in that we are discussing things that are posited to happen with NO cause, not with no KNOWN cause or with a disputed cause, or even (from Taffy’s view) to have never happened.

If God intervened in our space-time continuum to produce an unexpected event (Incarnation, virgin birth in a human, the return from death), it was a willed act by a thinking Being. We can no more predict the frequency of such occurrences than I can predict how often a specific person, not known to me, will visit my house, as the occurrence frequency will be based on the actions and independent desires of the causal agent, the unknown visitor. What those who propose that things are able to spontaneously appear out of nothing are claiming is a quite different assumption - that a causal agent, known or unknown, is not even required for an event to take place, and that the world is essentially surreal.

Okay, I gotta go wash the dishes for my wife.
 
minion said:
I’m not a philosophy major or anything, so please bear with me…

So, I was listening to a philosophy teacher on youtube claiming that Aquinas’ 5 ways are littered with assumptions. So eventually I came along David Hume (or at least a summary of his position) stating that we can’t prove that everything has a cause, therefore Aquinas’ cosmological arguments are invalid, because his assumptions are only probable, not absolute.

While I disagree with the position, I must admit I can’t completely, definitively refute it. Is there something obvious I’m missing?

Can anyone make a more solid rebuttal?
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Forget what everyone else is saying, they are not here to do philosophy. Let them hide the wounds of there doubts with their ego’s, and let us reason together friend.

The five ways is not a probabilistic argument. Neither has Aquinas ever said that he can observe cause and effect and therefore on that basis alone every effect requires cause. If that were the case Aquinas would not deserve the title of a great philosopher. Neither can the idea that some things move according to their nature alone (physical motion and the metaphysical principle of motion is dealing with two different aspects of change) and not according to some direct observable cause be called a refutation since those who understand Aquinas know that whether or not such is true (as is in the case of quantum physics) is irrelevant.

The five ways are based first and foremost on unchallengeable metaphysical principles. They are unchallengeable in the sense that if they were proven to be false they would either render logic (along with the refutation) superfluous and thus undermine all rational investigation (including the sciences) or render the very concept of existence meaningless. For example Descartes “I think therefore I exist” cannot be rationally refuted without refuting rationality itself because the very bases of the argument is reliant on the rational distinction between something and nothing and once you remove the distinction between something and nothing all rational distinctions and therefore “truth” itself becomes meaningless and induction becomes useless. All rational investigation begins with the recognition of the fact that there are absolute distinctions between things. A square is not a triangle for example. You cannot be something and nothing at the same time, etcetera.
  1. Out of nothing comes nothing
This premise cannot be challenged rationally without bringing rationality into question. Therefore we have no rational choice but to accept it as true.
  1. Everything that begins to exist requires a cause.
The metaphysical principle of change or cause and effect is not simply the recognition of particular kinds of Physical motion or behaviour. Indeed, not all events follow a billiard ball kind of relationship. Its true that some things simply move according to their nature alone. However, what Aquinas recognised is that change in general fundamentally involves the actualisation of states or beings that potentially exist. Each change, however minute, is the reduction of potency to act and therefore each change is itself an actualisation of that which at one time did not exist. Thus in order for anything to change something has to actualise the effect of that which is in act towards the realisation of that effect.
  1. Potency cannot actualise itself.
Potentiality and possibility cannot become real physical states or new acts of existence unless that which is already real brings it into reality. Potency by itself is nothing at all and therefore cannot actualise anything. Out of nothing comes nothing.
  1. Anything that changes cannot be the cause of change in general.
Aquinas is looking for the cause of change in general and not the particular mechanistic causes of particular things since it is already evident to Aquinas that nature evolves naturally according to physical laws. These are called secondary causes. Nature produces things according to its inherent powers.

However as I said, change itself involves the reduction of potency to act; without which there can be no change. Therefore that which actualises potency cannot be reduced to that which is changing.

5. The cause of change is that which does not change

The cause of change cannot be that which does change since its existence would also involve a reduction of potency to act. Thus the cause of change cannot be itself in a state of change. It has to be timeless and thus eternal. It’s being has to perfectly exist since it is not composed of potency and act. It has to be present not just as a first cause but also it has to be eternally present to the here and now in order to actualise potency and is therefore a sustainer of physical natures.

6. The first cause has a rational will.

Since physical nature is composed of potency and act, the first cause cannot be considered to be physical and neither cannot its act be perceived as a natural event since natural events require a reduction of potency to act. Therefore the reduction of potency to act can only be perceived as a goal directed event by default, since physical causes cannot be first causes. If the universe is not necessary and cannot actualise or sustain its own existence, then its continued existence is not natural.
 
Linux said:
Forget what everyone else is saying, they are not here to do philosophy. Let them hide the wounds of there doubts with their ego’s, and let us reason together friend.
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Dude!
 
Linux said:
Forget what everyone else is saying, they are not here to do philosophy. Let them hide the wounds of there doubts with their ego’s, and let us reason together friend.

The five ways is not a probabilistic argument. Neither has Aquinas ever said that he can observe cause and effect and therefore on that basis alone every effect requires cause. If that were the case Aquinas would not deserve the title of a great philosopher. Neither can the idea that some things move according to their nature alone (physical motion and the metaphysical principle of motion is dealing with two different aspects of change) and not according to some direct observable cause be called a refutation since those who understand Aquinas know that whether or not such is true (as is in the case of quantum physics) is irrelevant.

The five ways are based first and foremost on unchallengeable metaphysical principles. …(omitted for length). All rational investigation begins with the recognition of the fact that there are absolute distinctions between things. A square is not a triangle for example. You cannot be something and nothing at the same time, etcetera.
  1. Out of nothing comes nothing
This premise cannot be challenged rationally without bringing rationality into question. Therefore we have no rational choice but to accept it as true.
  1. Everything that begins to exist requires a cause.
The metaphysical principle of change or cause and effect is not simply the recognition of particular kinds of Physical motion or behaviour. Indeed, not all events follow a billiard ball kind of relationship. Its true that some things simply move according to their nature alone. However, what Aquinas recognised is that change in general fundamentally involves the actualisation of states or beings that potentially exist. Each change, however minute, is the reduction of potency to act and therefore each change is itself an actualisation of that which at one time did not exist. Thus in order for anything to change something has to actualise the effect of that which is in act towards the realisation of that effect.
  1. Potency cannot actualise itself.
Potentiality and possibility cannot become real physical states or new acts of existence unless that which is already real brings it into reality. Potency by itself is nothing at all and therefore cannot actualise anything. Out of nothing comes nothing.
  1. Anything that changes cannot be the cause of change in general.
Aquinas is looking for the cause of change in general and not the particular mechanistic causes of particular things since it is already evident to Aquinas that nature evolves naturally according to physical laws. These are called secondary causes. Nature produces things according to its inherent powers.

However as I said, change itself involves the reduction of potency to act; without which there can be no change. Therefore that which actualises potency cannot be reduced to that which is changing.

5. The cause of change is that which does not change

The cause of change cannot be that which does change since its existence would also involve a reduction of potency to act. Thus the cause of change cannot be itself in a state of change. It has to be timeless and thus eternal. It’s being has to perfectly exist since it is not composed of potency and act. It has to be present not just as a first cause but also it has to be eternally present to the here and now in order to actualise potency and is therefore a sustainer of physical natures.

6. The first cause has a rational will.

Since physical nature is composed of potency and act, the first cause cannot be considered to be physical and neither cannot its act be perceived as a natural event since natural events require a reduction of potency to act. Therefore the reduction of potency to act can only be perceived as a goal directed event by default, since physical causes cannot be first causes. If the universe is not necessary and cannot actualise or sustain its own existence, then its continued existence is not natural.
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Really Linux, I am truely impressed and I’m pleased to know that you really do care about what Thomas taught. I take it that you didn’t actually mean what you said here:

" Is God the esse of all contingent essences? (Debate)
First things first. You may see words that are used by Aquinas, but that does not mean i am from the school of Aquinas. I am not a Thomist; at least I am not one in the sense of being an unquestioning loyal follower. And I wouldn’t call my self one even if all my philosophical beliefs where 100% consistent with Aquinas. I am simply a philosopher seeking the truth. If that truth happens to fall in line with the teachings of Aquinas, then so be it. If not, I don’t care. Aquinas is only as valuable to me as much as he allows me to see the truth. I may use concepts and arguments from Aquinas from time to time, but my doing so does not come from the belief that Aquinas is unquestionable dogma. Those of you who want to dogmatically dictate the teachings of Aquinas as a rebuttal without presenting a genuine refutation of my argument, please don’t. An argument from authority or dogma holds no interest for me. I am only interested in the truth in so far as it is logical, and I couldn’t care less whether or not my arguments or concepts are consistent with those of Aquinas or anybody else since that is not my goal in the first place. Take my argument for what it is and give a genuine rebuttal. " :confused:

Linus2nd
 
AZ Mike, Linux - wow, thnx guys!

I’m not the quickest-witted person, so I may not respond right away, but I’ve read over your posts and will dissect them carefully 👍
 
I’d suggest that while it is true that we cannot prove with complete certainty, as we can with logic or mathematics, that every thing has a cause (in fact, as Christians we’d affirm God doesn’t have a cause or is at least continually and eternally self-causing - if that makes any sense), I think we can safely argue that every event (namely, every state of affairs A becoming state of affairs B) has a cause, either in itself or in something else. If this is true, then I don’t see any particular problem on this account with anything Aquinas is arguing.

For example, the number 1 is a thing and, as such, does not require a cause. I mean, what caused the number one? I suppose one could argue that it is a mental entity and is therefore caused by the mind thinking it, but I don’t think the mind actually causes 1 to occur but rather intuits 1. Regardless, 1 - and any number of things - do not necessarily require causes. However, an event because it is a change of affairs by its nature requires a cause, either in itself or in something else. If not, there would be no change of affairs. That’s why that common - and unbelievably odd - response to: “What caused the beginning of the universe?” of “Nothing” makes so little sense. We can’t logically see how a change in a state of affairs can be caused by no thing or cause.

Hume’s problem, as far as I can see it (pardon the pun), is that we do not observe causation: we just see events happen. But that is a category error since “cause” and “effect” are not by their nature observable. Furthermore, it assumes a very crude form of empiricism that I think is difficult to defend.
 
jonathan_hili said:
I’d suggest that while it is true that we cannot prove with complete certainty, as we can with logic or mathematics, that every thing has a cause (in fact, as Christians we’d affirm God doesn’t have a cause or is at least continually and eternally self-causing - if that makes any sense), I think we can safely argue that every event (namely, every state of affairs A becoming state of affairs B) has a cause, either in itself or in something else. If this is true, then I don’t see any particular problem on this account with anything Aquinas is arguing.

For example, the number 1 is a thing and, as such, does not require a cause. I mean, what caused the number one? I suppose one could argue that it is a mental entity and is therefore caused by the mind thinking it, but I don’t think the mind actually causes 1 to occur but rather intuits 1. Regardless, 1 - and any number of things - do not necessarily require causes. However, an event because it is a change of affairs by its nature requires a cause, either in itself or in something else. If not, there would be no change of affairs. That’s why that common - and unbelievably odd - response to: “What caused the beginning of the universe?” of “Nothing” makes so little sense. We can’t logically see how a change in a state of affairs can be caused by no thing or cause.

Hume’s problem, as far as I can see it (pardon the pun), is that we do not observe causation: we just see events happen. But that is a category error since “cause” and “effect” are not by their nature observable. Furthermore, it assumes a very crude form of empiricism that I think is difficult to defend.
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Watch Edward Feser here: vimeo.com/60979789

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
Really Linux, I am truely impressed and I’m pleased to know that you really do care about what Thomas taught. I take it that you didn’t actually mean what you said here:

" Is God the esse of all contingent essences? (Debate)
First things first. You may see words that are used by Aquinas, but that does not mean i am from the school of Aquinas. I am not a Thomist; at least I am not one in the sense of being an unquestioning loyal follower. And I wouldn’t call my self one even if all my philosophical beliefs where 100% consistent with Aquinas. I am simply a philosopher seeking the truth. If that truth happens to fall in line with the teachings of Aquinas, then so be it. If not, I don’t care. Aquinas is only as valuable to me as much as he allows me to see the truth. I may use concepts and arguments from Aquinas from time to time, but my doing so does not come from the belief that Aquinas is unquestionable dogma. Those of you who want to dogmatically dictate the teachings of Aquinas as a rebuttal without presenting a genuine refutation of my argument, please don’t. An argument from authority or dogma holds no interest for me. I am only interested in the truth in so far as it is logical, and I couldn’t care less whether or not my arguments or concepts are consistent with those of Aquinas or anybody else since that is not my goal in the first place. Take my argument for what it is and give a genuine rebuttal. " :confused:

Linus2nd
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I meant every word of it. Aquinas is not a football team.
 
minion said:
I’m not a philosophy major or anything, so please bear with me…

So, I was listening to a philosophy teacher on youtube claiming that Aquinas’ 5 ways are littered with assumptions. So eventually I came along David Hume (or at least a summary of his position) stating that we can’t prove that everything has a cause, therefore Aquinas’ cosmological arguments are invalid, because his assumptions are only probable, not absolute.

While I disagree with the position, I must admit I can’t completely, definitively refute it. Is there something obvious I’m missing?

The closest I can get is:
  1. Everything I can perceive in reality I can deduce to have a cause, even if I don’t necessarily understand the nature of the cause (ex. the technology behind the computer I’m typing on).
  2. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” itself has a cause (presumably Hume)
  3. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” in itself doesn’t prove that some things don’t have a cause.
3b) We’re not omniscient, so we can never be absolutely sure something exists that didn’t have a cause. If we did, we’d be God 😛
  1. Not a valid rebuttal I suppose, but science can’t work without inductive logic, and assumes there are patterns we observe that have causes we can deduce, though not necessarily understand the “essence?” of the cause (ex. gravity).
Can anyone make a more solid rebuttal?
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Actually Aquinas does teach the principle of causality (CP) and uses the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), but he considers them to be first principles. They are not proven. Nor are they accounts of direct experience. They are grasped intuitively by the intellect. In his view, no science proves everything since it has to start somewhere.

Aquinas’ response to Hume is basically: You’re right. The notion of causality as such is not contained in raw impressions made upon sense organs. It is the intellect through abstraction from sense experience that intuitively grasps causality.

CP
Every contingent thing that exists comes into being through the agency of an already existent extrinsic thing.
Nothing moves itself.
Whatever comes to be has a cause.
Whatever goes from potency to act is moved by something already in act.

PSR
Everything that exists has a sufficient reason for its existence.
Whatever exists has an explanation why it exists rather than not.

Things
Everything existent either exists of its nature or has been brought into being by something else that is the reason for its existence.

Statements
Every true proposition either follows from other true propositions that give the reason for its truth or can be justified by experience.

“Now these principles are either (1) more certain to us, as occurs in the natural sciences, because they are closer to sensible things, or (2) they are simpler and prior in nature, as occurs in the mathematical sciences. But cognitions which are only sensory are not the result of principles and causes but of the sensible object itself acting upon the senses. For to proceed from causes to effects or the reverse is not an activity of the senses but only of the intellect. Or “more certain principles” means those which are better known and more deeply probed, and “simple” means those which are studied in a more superficial way, as occurs in the moral sciences, whose principles are derived from those things which occur in the majority of cases.”
[St. Thomas Aquinas, *Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, VI, Lesson 1, 1146]

Aquinas follows Aristotle.

“Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error–opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premises are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive. From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises–a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premise, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact.”
[Aristotle, *Posterior Analytics, II, 19, 100b5-20]
 
Linux said:
I meant every word of it. Aquinas is not a football team.
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Seems to me you have a love hate relationship with Thomas. You use him all you want when it suites your purposes but dismiss him as a non-entity when he disagrees with you.
Perhaps when you have earned the same track record he has earned, they perhaps you can afford to be so cavallier, but since you have not done that yet, your attitude and language seem pretty arrogant.

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
Seems to me you have a love hate relationship with Thomas.
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I never said that I hate Thomas. I like Thomism. My arguments are an outgrowth of what I have learned from Aquinas. However I don’t do philosophy for Aquinas. I simply do philosophy, and if my arguments turn out to be in line with Thomism it is not because i blindly assume that Aquinas is the stick by which I measure the truth. Rather, it is because the truth happens to agree with Aquinas.
Perhaps when you have earned the same track record he has earned, they perhaps you can afford to be so cavallier, but since you have not done that yet, your attitude and language seem pretty arrogant.
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Linus2nd
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I don’t have to earn anything. Philosophy is not about “status”. It is about valid arguments. Its about understanding the reality around us. Its about finding the truth and nothing else. Aquinas understood that and that’s why he didn’t wait around for somebody validate him.
 
Linux said:
I never said that I hate Thomas. I like Thomism. My arguments are an outgrowth of what I have learned from Aquinas. However I don’t do philosophy for Aquinas. I simply do philosophy, and if my arguments turn out to be in line with Thomism it is not because i blindly assume that Aquinas is the stick by which I measure the truth. Rather, it is because the truth happens to agree with Aquinas.

I don’t have to earn anything. Philosophy is not about “status”. It is about valid arguments. Its about understanding the reality around us. Its about finding the truth and nothing else. Aquinas understood that and that’s why he didn’t wait around for somebody validate him.
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Well, if that is true, you must know that most of his philosophy is based on his concept of the act of existing which you have misinterpreted. But we are debating that on several fronts already.

Linus2nd
 
Fr_of_Jazz said:
Actually Aquinas does teach the principle of causality (CP) and uses the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), but he considers them to be first principles. They are not proven. Nor are they accounts of direct experience. They are grasped intuitively by the intellect. In his view, no science proves everything since it has to start somewhere.

Aquinas’ response to Hume is basically: You’re right. The notion of causality as such is not contained in raw impressions made upon sense organs. It is the intellect through abstraction from sense experience that intuitively grasps causality.

CP
Every contingent thing that exists comes into being through the agency of an already existent extrinsic thing.
Nothing moves itself.
Whatever comes to be has a cause.
Whatever goes from potency to act is moved by something already in act.

PSR
Everything that exists has a sufficient reason for its existence.
Whatever exists has an explanation why it exists rather than not.

Things
Everything existent either exists of its nature or has been brought into being by something else that is the reason for its existence.

Statements
Every true proposition either follows from other true propositions that give the reason for its truth or can be justified by experience.

“Now these principles are either (1) more certain to us, as occurs in the natural sciences, because they are closer to sensible things, or (2) they are simpler and prior in nature, as occurs in the mathematical sciences. But cognitions which are only sensory are not the result of principles and causes but of the sensible object itself acting upon the senses. For to proceed from causes to effects or the reverse is not an activity of the senses but only of the intellect. Or “more certain principles” means those which are better known and more deeply probed, and “simple” means those which are studied in a more superficial way, as occurs in the moral sciences, whose principles are derived from those things which occur in the majority of cases.”
[St. Thomas Aquinas, *Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Click to expand...
, VI, Lesson 1, 1146]

Aquinas follows Aristotle.

“Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of error–opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific knowledge, whereas primary premises are more knowable than demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive. From these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific knowledge of the primary premises, and since except intuition nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be intuition that apprehends the primary premises–a result which also follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of scientific knowledge. If, therefore, it is the only other kind of true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative source of science grasps the original basic premise, while science as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole body of fact.”
[Aristotle, *Posterior Analytics, II, 19, 100b5-20]

:clapping::clapping::clapping:
 
minion said:
I’m not a philosophy major or anything, so please bear with me…

So, I was listening to a philosophy teacher on youtube claiming that Aquinas’ 5 ways are littered with assumptions. So eventually I came along David Hume (or at least a summary of his position) stating that we can’t prove that everything has a cause, therefore Aquinas’ cosmological arguments are invalid, because his assumptions are only probable, not absolute.

While I disagree with the position, I must admit I can’t completely, definitively refute it. Is there something obvious I’m missing?

The closest I can get is:
  1. Everything I can perceive in reality I can deduce to have a cause, even if I don’t necessarily understand the nature of the cause (ex. the technology behind the computer I’m typing on).
  2. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” itself has a cause (presumably Hume)
  3. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” in itself doesn’t prove that some things don’t have a cause.
3b) We’re not omniscient, so we can never be absolutely sure something exists that didn’t have a cause. If we did, we’d be God 😛
  1. Not a valid rebuttal I suppose, but science can’t work without inductive logic, and assumes there are patterns we observe that have causes we can deduce, though not necessarily understand the “essence?” of the cause (ex. gravity).
Can anyone make a more solid rebuttal?
Click to expand...
Minion:

Anything that is a composite, i.e., consists of matter and Form, is caused, as it does/did not cause itself. Now, what precisely does a cause do? In general, it influences the actual being of something. It makes something to be in act. A cause influences the act of existing of something. To my knowledge there are no things that exist subsistently - except the first cause, whom we call, God. To postulate that there could be something (in the universe) that causes itself is just that, a “postulation.”

God bless,
jd
 
minion said:
I’m not a philosophy major or anything, so please bear with me…

So, I was listening to a philosophy teacher on youtube claiming that Aquinas’ 5 ways are littered with assumptions. So eventually I came along David Hume (or at least a summary of his position) stating that we can’t prove that everything has a cause, therefore Aquinas’ cosmological arguments are invalid, because his assumptions are only probable, not absolute.

While I disagree with the position, I must admit I can’t completely, definitively refute it. Is there something obvious I’m missing?

The closest I can get is:
  1. Everything I can perceive in reality I can deduce to have a cause, even if I don’t necessarily understand the nature of the cause (ex. the technology behind the computer I’m typing on).
  2. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” itself has a cause (presumably Hume)
  3. The statement “you can’t prove everything has a cause” in itself doesn’t prove that some things don’t have a cause.
3b) We’re not omniscient, so we can never be absolutely sure something exists that didn’t have a cause. If we did, we’d be God 😛
  1. Not a valid rebuttal I suppose, but science can’t work without inductive logic, and assumes there are patterns we observe that have causes we can deduce, though not necessarily understand the “essence?” of the cause (ex. gravity).
Can anyone make a more solid rebuttal?
Click to expand...
Aquinas never said ‘everything has a cause’, but ‘anything that comes into existence, i.e. contingent, has a cause’.

And by cause he did not necessarely mean a ‘deterministic, accidental cause’.

For example a beta particle in radiative beta decay might not have a deterministic and ‘efficient’ cause… but it has a material cause (the neutron that becomes a proton and emits an electron and a neutrino) and also a cause deriving from the ‘weak force interaction’.

if something happens with no cause… it makes no sense, it basically pops into existence, and that violates the laws of physics itself! (no virtual particles do not violate such laws, the come from vacuum energy which is non-zero, so they have a ‘material cause’).
So can you prove everything has a cause? Not unless you examin EVERYTHING in the universe.

yet logically everything contingent needs a cause. The laws of physics themselves demand it.

Sure some scientists today say ‘we can dismiss causality’… but they usually intend accidental acusality only and usually ‘time-causality’ (ie. effect always comes after cause).

So when scientists makes these claimes they have
1- a very restricted, limited and shaky understanding of causality

2- they speculate and they cannot prove a thing.

3- observations so far deny such ideas even in their restriced sense of causality,
 
Thanks for the additional (name removed by moderator)ut guys! I’m still at it, and trying to form a concise response.
 
Minion:

Scientifically, I think we can take this a lot farther. We can regard the four principle causes: Matter, Form, Efficacy, and Purpose. Is there anything that we know of that escapes these four causes? Everything came to be. Even Creation, although, strictly speaking, it is not a cause per se, as it didn’t start with something and produce something else (a composite) in its result. Yet it is causal in that the four causes were correlative with it.

A short time after the initial expansion, the rudiments of matter were given shape: imperfect form(s). There’s no question that Creation did not take place all by its lonesome. And, there’s no question that such primitive forms, and, ultimately, all other evolved forms did not transpire without the presence of an extraordinary thought process: a thought process that planned for the ultimate forms of its creatures’ perfections through an evolutionary process.

Now, we don’t know of everything on earth and within its seas, but, its clear that we have not come across anything - in the history of man and earth - that is unexplainable in terms of these primary causes.

Furthermore, all things move. There is nothing in the universe that is absolutely stationary (except continuous space). And, either things are moved by something else, or they are self-moved, which is really to say that they are moved by smaller things within them that are moved by things from outside them. Now, that which is moved is moved by a cause - if of nothing else than as the cause of the motion.

We can conjecture all we want, and to borrow a form from an old movie, “conjecture is as conjecture does.” It leaves us with the imaginary.

Therefore, we can conclude with certainty, that all things are subject to at least three, if not all four, causes.

God bless,
jd
 
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