That we can agree upon. My point is however is that the decay is not caused by something else, it is uncaused.As I said before: the cause for the apparent randomness of radiation is the **nature **of the atom.
I don’t think so. I think that you just misinterpret my term. I meant that decision does not belong to chain of cause hence it is uncaused in this sense.Reread your bolded sentence. That is a contradiction in terms. I think any other poster who comes and sees it will agree with me. Your own sentence contradicts itself.
I provided two counter examples to show that reality is not simply a causal chain. So you cannot simply keep track of the chain backward and claim that it reach to first cause who was made by God.At some point I had no explanation for what appears to be the randomness of life. I went on to develop an understanding of mother, father, etc. Innately, one assumes that there are reasons for what appears chaotic and searches for the underlying order. People get sick, and we look for cures. Matter has properties which we can know and manipulate. Because we do not yet understand something simply means that we don’t get it. It most certainly does not mean there is no order and underlying cause. You have to rethink this “proof” for radioactive decay being uncaused.
I have free will. I can behave in a way that hurts another or try to help them. My action is my responsibility. The goodness or evil of that act is not determined by me. If I laugh and ridicule a person, it hurts them emotionally and hurts me by damaging my relationship with others while taking one step in the direction of being a hurtful person. I neither cause the very reality of my being, having the capacity to act morally, nor the moral structure that defines human activity.
The Cause of the universe, physical, moral and personal is God.
One can always claim that one does not exist and that morality is purely subjective. One reads such confused ideas on these threads regularly. Good luck with that kind of thinking.
I would be happy to hear more.In regards to my own posts, I believe I’ve strayed off track in some areas. Rather than make any scientific claims about what we know or don’t know, the central issue is that A-T Scholastic understanding of causation is not as narrow as what is assumed in some other metaphysical views. If Q-M is contradictory to Thomism, it needs to be shown that Q-M contradicts the Scholastic understanding of causation, not that it contradicts the more narrow deterministic external cause definition commonly assumed by many today.
I’m going to read up on his further.
B. Conflating genus and species: Even when physicists and Scholastic metaphysicians are using terms in the same sense, critics often confuse what is really only a specific instance of the general class named by a term with the general class itself. For example, where the notion of “cause” is concerned, Scholastic metaphysicians distinguish between formal, material, efficient, and final causes. Where efficient causes are concerned, they distinguish between principal and instrumental causes, between series of causes which are essentially ordered and those which are accidentally ordered, and between those which operate simultaneously versus those which are ordered in time. They distinguish between total causes and partial causes, and between proximate and remote causes. They regard causality as primarily a feature of substances and only secondarily as a relation between events. They distinguish between causal powers and the operation of those powers, between active causal power and passive potencies. And so forth. All of these distinctions are backed by arguments, and the Scholastic maintains that they are all necessary in order to capture the complexity of causal relations as they exist in the actual world.
But the status of causality as such is precisely what the principle of causality is about. And that is why QM has nothing to tell us about the principle of causality. They are simply not addressing the same question. Given that you have already determined on independent grounds whether or not the principle of causality is true, QM may raise questions about how it is to be understood in contexts like that of the hydrogen atom (to allude to Oerter’s example). But there is nothing special about QM in that regard. One billiard ball knocking into another, melting and freezing, electromagnetism, gravitational attraction, plant and animal growth, volitional behavior, divine creation, all involve very different sorts of efficient causality. . . If you think that all efficient causality reduces to some crude, deterministic billiard-ball model, then QM might seem to be a challenge to the very notion of causality. . . But no Aristotelian or Scholastic would buy this simplistic conception of efficient causality in the first place.
The principle of causality itself does not make any claim about how exactly efficient causes operate in all of these diverse cases. It just tells us that whatever the details turn out to be, any potential will only be actualized by something already actual.
An interpretation of QM that is both Aristotelian and realist will, naturally, insist that it is not the laws of QM themselves that cause anything, since they are mere abstractions from concrete systems operating in accordance with their substantial forms. Hence it is in virtue of the substantial form of a hydrogen atom that it will behave in the manner described by QM, just as it is by virtue of the substantial forms of material things in general that they will exert a gravitational attraction on one another. Now for the Aristotelian, the substantial form of an inanimate substance is not the efficient cause of its natural operations; rather, those operations flow “spontaneously” from it, precisely because it is in the nature of the substance to operate in those ways. . . Hence that a planet exerts a gravitational pull is just something it does by virtue of its nature or substantial form; it does not need a continuously operating efficient cause to make it exert such a pull. That does not mean that there is in no sense an efficient cause of a thing’s natural operations, but that efficient cause is just that which gave the substance in question its substantial form in the first place, i.e. that which generated the substance or brought it into being. It is not something that needs continuously to operate after the thing is brought into being. Hence the efficient cause of a planet’s exerting a gravitational pull on other objects is just whatever natural processes brought that planet into existence millions of years ago, thereby giving it the nature or substantial form it has. Its exerting that pull is now something it just does “spontaneously,” by virtue of its nature. . .
Now, along the same lines, we might say that the hydrogen atom also behaves as it does “spontaneously,” simply by virtue of having the substantial form it does. Why do the electron transitions occur in just the pattern they do? Because that’s the sort of thing that happens in anything having the substantial form of a hydrogen atom, just as gravitational attraction is the sort of thing that naturally happens in anything having a substantial form of the sort typical of material objects. What is the efficient cause of this pattern? The efficient cause is whatever brought a particular hydrogen atom into existence, just as the efficient cause of gravitational attraction is whatever brought a particular material object into existence. That is one way, anyway, of giving an Aristotelian interpretation of QM phenomena of the sort cited by Oerter, and it is intended only as a sketch made for purposes of illustration rather than a completely worked out account.
I think we were talking about random event in quantum world and the fact that they are uncaused.Here are some highlights from a couple of blog posts from Fewer. They are quite lengthy, and I’d like to highlight more, but I’ll refrain.
Are you saying that these quantum fluctuations came from nothing?Yes they do. Otherwise we couldn’t be here. Moreover, there are quantum fluctuations around us which they are not due to presence of anything.
Er… Did you read the quotes or posts I linked to? Can you explain how they are understood as uncaused in an A-T understanding of causation?I think we were talking about random event in quantum world and the fact that they are uncaused.
I did. Thanks.Er… Did you read the quotes or posts I linked to? Can you explain how they are understood as uncaused in an A-T understanding of causation?
Yes.Are you saying that these quantum fluctuations came from nothing?
Yes, I read both. The first quote was unclear to me. The second quote was easy.Er… Did you read the quotes or posts I linked to?
I don’t understand that. Could you please elaborate?Can you explain how they are understood as uncaused in an A-T understanding of causation?
Perhaps you need to offer what your definition of “nothing” is, if you’re going to assert that these quantum fluctuations arose from it.Yes.
This is difficult but I try my best which of course is subject to discussion: A state of being with no property or a state of being which all its properties are NULL.Perhaps you need to offer what your definition of “nothing” is, if you’re going to assert that these quantum fluctuations arose from it.
Ok.This is difficult but I try my best which of course is subject to discussion: A state of being with no property or a state of being which all its properties are NULL.
No. Any being has a set of properties. Think of human. It is made of stuff, substance, it has specific shape, color, etc. I call shape, color, etc as properties.Ok.
So you’re saying that this state has no property–that includes no energy fluctuations?
Ah. So it’s not “nothing”.No. Any being has a set of properties. Think of human. It is made of stuff, substance, it has specific shape, color, etc. I call shape, color, etc as properties.
No. Any being has a set of properties. Think of human. It is made of stuff, substance, it has specific shape, color, etc. I call shape, color, etc as properties.
I think, perhaps, you should change your thread title to “Something out of something”.Ah. So it’s not “nothing”.
It’s actually…something.
Yes?
Well, nothing is not really sort of something given the first definition (because it has not any property) and is sort of something given the second definition (it has properties but they are NULL in sum or separately). Which one do you pick up? To me the second definition is necessary to have something out of noting. Obviously you cannot have something out of noting given the first definition.Ah. So it’s not “nothing”.
It’s actually…something.
Yes?
Something comes out of zero field energy. Zero field energy has no properties, shape, color, etc hence it is nothing. Can you imagine something which is made of some substance but has no shape? To me that is nothing.I think, perhaps, you should change your thread title to “Something out of something”.
Something (quantum fluctuations) came out of something (low level energy field).
Yes?
Really?Something comes out of zero field energy.
Egg-zactly right, STT.Well, nothing is not really sort of something given the first definition (because it has not any property) and is sort of something given the second definition (it has properties but they are NULL in sum or separately). Which one do you pick up? To me the second definition is necessary to have something out of noting.** Obviously you cannot have something out of noting given the first definition**.