The First Cause

[lelinator]

If you believe in errors in reasoning, it seems you’re not skeptical of reality on some level being logical.

I believe that reality, as I perceive it, is coherent. But I can form no rational conclusion as to why. To do so is beyond the capacity to reason.

 

[Wesrock]

Wesrock:

If you believe in errors in reasoning, it seems you’re not skeptical of reality on some level being logical.

I believe that reality, as I perceive it, is coherent. But I can form no rational conclusion as to why. To do so is beyond the capacity to reason.

Still, a metaphysical belief that must be presupposed before other practices, such as the physical sciences, can proceed . It’s philosophy, about the nature of reality, and not scientifically verifiable.

 

[Tcurry]

So much for a response

 

[lelinator]

So much for a response

Okay, back to the OP. You cannot expect metaphysics to give you anything more than a glorified guess as to the nature of the first cause.

If you think it can, then you’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. The proper first question is…why should you believe that metaphysics has a hope in Hades of figuring out the nature of the first cause.

 

[Wesrock]

Tcurry:

So much for a response

Okay, back to the OP. You cannot expect metaphysics to give you anything more than a glorified guess as to the nature of the first cause.

If you think it can, then you’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. The proper first question is…why should you believe that metaphysics has a hope in Hades of figuring out the nature of the first cause.

Just to rephrase this, you’re asking why we think we should be able to make rational assertions about the nature of reality and things such as time, space, causality, substances by our observations of reality.

 

[lelinator]

Just to rephrase this, you’re asking why we should be able to make reasonable assertions about the nature of reality and things such as time, space, causality, substances by our observations of reality.

But even if you figure all that stuff out…time, and space, and causality, you still can’t draw any conclusions about the nature of the first cause. It may be that reality’s not really there at all, in any objective sense. So what you perceive about it may not tell you anything about its cause. In which case what you’re really concerned about is your cause…and how do you intend to figure that out?

 

[Tolle_Lege]

However, recent reading I have done has poked some holes in that argument, for example the possibility of the multiverse, or the Big Bang being a Big Bang and then Big Crunch which then repeats itself.

We still can’t find over 90% of this universe, but these academics want to propose a bunch of other universes without fully understanding our own? This is just wacky guesswork, no matter how many “scholarly journals” publish it.

Then the Big Bang-Big Crunch repeating…still, at some point, one has to wonder where the initial Big Bang came from. Again, just a guess. I don’t take any of these goofy propositions seriously. Just noisy chatter, doing whatever they can to eliminate God from Creation.

 

[lelinator]

Again, just a guess. I don’t take any of these goofy propositions seriously. Just noisy chatter, doing whatever they can to eliminate God from Creation.

But you can’t exclude metaphysics and theism from your list of goofy propositions. And no offense, but theism would seem to reside on the goofier side of the ledger. Although in this case goofy is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Gorgias]

No, you observe and you form hypotheses, not conclusions.

Almost. Science doesn’t stop at ‘hypothesis’, but rather, continues onward in order to confirm hypotheses. Nevertheless, you need to have metaphysical grounds in order to expect that “observation” leads to valid “hypothesis”, and that hypotheses can (validly) be confirmed, and that this actually means something in the real world.

 

[SalamKhan]

Have you ever considered looking into the thought of non Christian philosophers, such as Avicenna or Mulla Sadra?

 

[niceatheist]

What science has that virtually no metaphysical system has is the notion of provisionality. Yes, underlying science is the notion that the universe is ultimately predictable, and that’s why work has long been done on testing whether the laws of physics are uniform throughout the observable universe. But the provisional nature of science states that while thus far, that seems to be the case, science cannot say that was or is always the case. There’s a smugness to metaphysics, even in Aristotlean systems, that belies a certainty that cannot be supported.

 

[IWantGod]

What science has that virtually no metaphysical system has is the notion of provisionality.

That’s because science is dealing with a particular aspect of a being or nature that has many variables or possibilities to consider when identifying particular causes, which is why scientific knowledge cannot be known with absolute certainty. Science is measuring nature in it’s particularity, it’s mechanisms, it’s particular processes. Metaphysics deals with being in general, that a thing has an act of reality and what it means for it to do so. Nobody uses metaphysics for scientific questions, and neither would a competent scientist or philosopher confuse metaphysics as being a less reliable method for knowing the objects of science, for the simple fact that they deal with different aspects of our experience. One aspect can be known with rational certainty, and the other cannot.

You assume that provisionality is a universal sign of legitimacy or reliability when it comes to epistemology, but in reality it merely reflects a limitation in ones method when understanding or knowing a particular aspect of our experience.

So i agree with you that metaphysics is a poor substitute for the scientific method, but it was never meant to be a substitute, and to treat it like it is reflects only ignorance of that subject matter.

In other-words you are making a straw-man of science and metaphysics.

 

[lelinator]

One aspect can be known with rational certainty, and the other cannot.

Those two words almost never belong together.