MindOverMatter:
It doesn’t potentially come into existence “uncaused”, for that would be the same as saying that it got its principled nature from absolutely nothing; a state of non reality; which is absurd since nothing is not a state of being, and thus cannot be meaningful applied to real beings in terms of an explanation.
This fits into a continuing theme I have going here on this forum. These kinds of metaphysical commitments are incorrigible. One cannot learn very much about modern science, particular at the fundamental, quantum level, without facing the prospects of profound absurdity in many aspects of it. Nature as a whole remains astonishingly intelligible, symmetric, uniform, but at the lowest levels, the evidence works right against human intutions and the metaphysical superstitions that spring from them. The human mind either assents to the evidence, and understands that many aspects of physical reality do appear absurd or irrational, even as the whole is rendered highly intelligible, or it does not. Metaphysical commitments such as yours above force you into “not”.
Note that I’m not arguing for the converse, a metaphysical commitment to the irrationality of nature, or the perfect acausality of anything. Rather, I’m pointing out that it is fatuous to make *a priori *commitments either way. Science is metaphysically committed to
some level of intelligibility, because that commitment is necessary to justifying any investigation at all. But it is
not committed to ultimate, exhaustive or perfect intelligibility of nature. Nature
may be highly irrational, unintelligible in some regards, even as it has become intelligible in others. Simplistic *a priori *rules only serve to impede and thwart one’s apprehension of what is, as it is.
It functions according to a principle intrinsic to its given
nature; and thats not any kind of a good reason to think that it came out nothing. Neither is their any reason to think that the quantum vacuum came out of nothing.Correct, but that’s only half the story. Neither is their any reason to thing the quantum vacuum came from
something. In our human experience, we develop this intution that “something cannot come from nothing”, and this intuition is strongly attested by those experiences. But it’s based, we now know, on a naïve concept of “something” and “nothing”. When we see something “created” at human scales, it is
always matter and energy being
rearranged. Man does not witness fundamental creation in any part of his experience. And yet, he thinks he understands fundamental creation, confused by his local experience of “somethings always coming from something”. An oak tree comes from a seed, and the surrounding soil and nutrients, and lots of sunshine and rain.
Man supposes this
physical experience is somehow
metaphysical, often enough. But that is unwarranted. We have
zero reason to suppose that physical dynamics and laws obtain in some metaphysical sense. They may, or they may not. We do not, and cannot know. All that remains is honesty (or not) concerning these epistemic limitations we have.
In respect of potentiality, it to functions according to its given nature; since out of nothing comes nothing. Sooner or later you are going to reach a point, where physical explanations do not explain why things exist. Science cannot explain it, because physics is redundant
as an efficient or existential explanation; and thus where necessity is as such that a beings existence can be inferred by absolute logic, metaphysics reigns with absolute authority.
You can balance any math equation if you grant yourself the cheat of penciling in a “metamathematical X” on one side to force a “balance” int the equation. Similarly, you can “understand” any physics problem if you allow yourself the cheat of the “metaphyisical X”, the “metaphysical cause”. Metaphysics can explain anything and everything, and isn’t accountable on
any level to reality itself, for the very reason you state – it sees itself as the authority, the master over the enslaved reality. Subordinated thus, no evidence, no reasoning from nature can defeat it, even in principle.
This is madness, an utter divorce from reality itself. As soon as your metaphysics are not corrigible by experience, nature, extramental reality itself, but instead they are held as plenopotentiaries over all these, you’ve checked into the asylum. You’ve thrown away the key to the door of the cell, as reality and evidence and experience are your only way out, and the “absolute authority” of metaphysics makes that impossible.
-TS
