Thomistic cosmological argument - why does causal efficacy need to be given?

[Tomdstone]

One would have to make some argument to the effect that everything that began to exist has a cause. Aquinas argues that nothing that begins to exist could be its own efficient cause,

I don’t see why the multiverse would have to have a beginning to its existence.

 

[Tomdstone]

…there are consistent causal interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Specifically, which interpretations are you referring to?

 

[polytropos]

I don’t see why the multiverse would have to have a beginning to its existence.

Well, the argument (Aquinas’s Second Way) isn’t picking out the Big Bang and saying, “The universe began to exist, and it must have been caused by an uncaused cause.” (As, for example, the kalam cosmological argument does.) Aquinas’s Second Way starts with a single thing which began to exist and considers the regress generated by its series of efficient causes.

What about the multiverse? Well, the argument does suppose that any ungrounded chain of efficient causes will need to be associated with an uncaused cause. But Aquinas also claims that the only such uncaused cause must be purely actual (using his basic metaphysical notions of act and potency), since otherwise its being the efficient cause of whatever it causes requires that it has an efficient cause itself (ie. it only could cause without changing itself if it does not have any potential to change–which would entail its being pure act). So if the multiverse is the uncaused cause, then the “multiverse” is pure act, and “multiverse” is just an equivocal name.

So the distinction does depend on Aquinas’s metaphysical commitments to act and potency, which someone would have to accept prior to accepting the argument.

 

[Tomdstone]

Nothing happens without a cause.

According to the Copenhagen professor, Harald Hoffding, events may occur in sudden chaotic jerks or discontinuities, thus ruling out causality. Please see:
Religionsfilosofi (1901)
Filosofiske Problemer« (1902),
Moderne Filosofer (1904),
da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_H%C3%B8ffding

 

[Tomdstone]

…being the efficient cause of whatever it causes requires that it has an efficient cause itself …

This is something which is disputed when applied to either quantum events or to the multiverse at large.

 

[polytropos]

Specifically, which interpretations are you referring to?

The ones I offered, namely an interpretation that allows faster-than-light travel and an interpretation in which each particle is preordained for certain behavior.

And to be clear, as I said before, no one is proposing that these are plausible physical interpretations that physicists should adopt. That isn’t the point. Quantum mechanics has been raised as a counterexample to the principle of causality. To rebuff the counterexample, the defender of the principle of causality just needs to show that there exist some consistent causal interpretations of quantum mechanics (ie. to show that quantum mechanics is not necessarily a counterexample*). And there are. The interpretations given are consistent with the facts revealed by empirical study and with the principle of causality.

*The point of doing this is to show that quantum mechanics does not justify an inference to the falsity of the principle of causality, not that either of the given interpretations are the right interpretation (the role is analogous to a lawyer who provides a defense against the prosecution’s claims–the point of the defense is to show that there is a way of interpreting the facts that is consistent with the defendant’s innocence).

 

[Tomdstone]

The ones I offered, namely an interpretation that allows faster-than-light travel and an interpretation in which each particle is preordained for certain behavior.

And to be clear, as I said before, no one is proposing that these are plausible physical interpretations that physicists should adopt. That isn’t the point. Quantum mechanics has been raised as a counterexample to the principle of causality. To rebuff the counterexample, the defender of the principle of causality just needs to show that there exist some consistent causal interpretations of quantum mechanics (ie. to show that quantum mechanics is not necessarily a counterexample*). And there are. The interpretations given are consistent with the facts revealed by empirical study and with the principle of causality.

*The point of doing this is to show that quantum mechanics does not justify an inference to the falsity of the principle of causality, not that either of the given interpretations are the right interpretation (the role is analogous to a lawyer who provides a defense against the prosecution’s claims–the point of the defense is to show that there is a way of interpreting the facts that is consistent with the defendant’s innocence).

Faster than light travel is not consistent if you accept general relativity, because, if so, then events in the future could influence events which have already occurred in the past. Further, if everyone is preordained for a certain behavior, that would rule out free will and therefore be inconsistent with Catholic teaching. I could be wrong, but don’t think that your reasoning would be all that convincing to the defenders of the Copenhagen version of QM.

 

[CrossofChrist]

Since you guys are talking about quantum mechanics, here’s a relevant article.

It’s sort of similar to Ratzinger’s argument about the primacy of reason.

Anyway…

Okay, so I think I’m starting to truly understand the Thomistic cosmological argument, with the help of great philosophers such as Edward Feser.

Cool.

So, am I right in saying that the argument, unlike the kalam variant, does not rest on temporal regress but causal regress? So even if we have a line of causes that is infinite in both directions, or meet each other in a causal loop, there must still be something sustaining all of them, giving them their ‘causal efficacy’?

Yep.

The issue I’m still struggling with and trying to get to the bottom of is though; why must there be ‘something outside the series which imparts to them their causal efficacy’?

Because they are each being moved by something else; they are all instrumental causes, getting their ability to cause from something else. IOW, nothing has the power in itself to cause. Look at it this way: everything is an effect of the previous cause. If this goes back to infinity, then everything is an effect; there is nothing causing and therefore nothing moving.

Is ‘causal efficacy’ some metaphysical property that needs to be given? Isn’t it merely an illustration of how we are perceiving the world around us? What is this ‘causal power’ that is spoken of, as if it is a real thing that must be given to all things in order for them to function? How can this all be proven as a real necessity?

Are you asking why something doesn’t come from nothing?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

According to the Copenhagen professor, Harald Hoffding, events may occur in sudden chaotic jerks or discontinuities, thus ruling out causality. Please see:
Religionsfilosofi (1901)
Filosofiske Problemer« (1902),
Moderne Filosofer (1904),
da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_H%C3%B8ffding

I don’t care what he says, it doesn’t happen. Nothing except God is uncaused. I repeat also that there is no universal agreement about what is happening in these experiments. Remember you can’t actually " see " anything. You are seein " effects " and these are being interpreted, most likely to fit into some pet theory.

Linus2nd

 

[polytropos]

Faster than light travel is not consistent if you accept general relativity, because, if so, then events in the future could influence events which have already occurred in the past.

You are right that it would involve backwards causation. I don’t regard that as a logical inconsistency.

Further, if everyone is preordained for a certain behavior, that would rule out free will and therefore be inconsistent with Catholic teaching.

Not everyone. Every particle (at least those which appear to behave indetermistically). As long as one is not committed to reductionism and physicalism with respect to persons (as Catholics tend not to be), this does not seem to cause a prima facie conflict with free will any more than determinism itself would (which is not an issue particular to quantum mechanics).

I could be wrong, but don’t think that your reasoning would be all that convincing to the defenders of the Copenhagen version of QM.

Depends what you mean by convincing. As I’ve said, the proposals are not meant to be plausible physical interpretations which physicists ought to accept. I am just stipulating ways in which quantum mechanics could be made consistent with the principle of causality. The interpretations don’t have to be corrects or scientifically verifiable because that’s not why they were proposed. They are defenses to show that quantum mechanics does not function as a counterexample to a metaphysical principle which I have separate grounds for believing.

 

[Tomdstone]

I don’t care what he says, it doesn’t happen.

How would you explain the double slit arrangements and the position momentum measurements in quantum mechanics which appear to rule out event by event causality and thereby render the ontology of classical physics to be dead?

 

[Tomdstone]

You are right that it would involve backwards causation. I don’t regard that as a logical inconsistency.

I guess you must be joking. FTL travel does involve a contradiction because FTL travel would give you the possibility of travelling back in time. If so, you could change the course of history by shooting Oswald in September 1963 or by meeting your grandfather when he was two years old and then shooting him. - Where would this leave you after you shot your own grandfather when he was two years old?
And you are supposed to be arguing in favor of causality, not against it. But a cause always precedes an effect. With your proposal of FTL travel, you could conceivably have a situation where the effect occurs first, and then the cause, which would actually then not be a cause at all since it comes after the effect. Thus causality fails in the case of FTL travel.

 

[polytropos]

I guess you must be joking. FTL travel does involve a contradiction because FTL travel would give you the possibility of travelling back in time. If so, you could change the course of history by shooting Oswald in September 1963 or by meeting your grandfather when he was two years old and then shooting him. - Where would this leave you after you shot your own grandfather when he was two years old?

Not at all. The interpretation allows that specific subatomic particles move faster than light to account for the “action at a distance” in quantum mechanics. Ex hypothesi, it is consistent with all of the quantitative predictions of, say, the Copenhagen interpretation, so it doesn’t allow us to travel backwards in time and change history.

And you are supposed to be arguing in favor of causality, not against it. But a cause always precedes an effect. With your proposal of FTL travel, you could conceivably have a situation where the effect occurs first, and then the cause, which would actually then not be a cause at all since it comes after the effect. Thus causality fails in the case of FTL travel.

I don’t believe that temporal precedence is essential to causality as such. The Thomistic paradigm of causality, in fact, is simultaneous. Take the case of a potter shaping clay on a pottery wheel. The change effected by his hands as the clay spins is simultaneous to his acting on it. (This is why the Thomistic arguments can assume that the universe is eternal. The notion of cause that they employ does not depend on a temporal regress.)

What is essential to causality is the instrumental dependence of the change in the patient on the action of the agent.

 

[Tomdstone]

What is essential to causality is the instrumental dependence of the change in the patient on the action of the agent.

Which is something you do not have if the effect comes years before the cause.

 

[Tomdstone]

The interpretation allows that specific subatomic particles move faster than light to account for the “action at a distance” in quantum mechanics. Ex hypothesi, it is consistent with all of the quantitative predictions of, say, the Copenhagen interpretation, so it doesn’t allow us to travel backwards in time and change history.

But it does allow for the tachyonic anti-telephone where you can call someone in the past and speak to him. Say for example, you want to talk to your friend who died of cancer three years ago. You can do so with the tachyonic anti-telephone.
Wikipedia goes through the mathematics of the various situations with the anti-telephone:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
So, FTL argues against causality, not for it.

 

[polytropos]

Which is something you do not have if the effect comes years before the cause.

The effect does not come years before the cause in the faster-than-light case. It appears instantaneous to an observer. But what is important is that it remains instrumentally dependent.

This is why Aquinas distinguished between causal series per accidens and per se (in other terms, accidentally ordered and essentially ordered). A father’s begetting a son is a cause in a loose sense, but not the sense required for the sake of the argument, for it does not generate a regress: if a father has a son, who has a son himself, then the father can die while the series persists. The regress is not vicious, and the elements of the series, though “causes” loosely, are not instrumentally dependent on the other elements. It is a series per accidens, not per se. But all of the actions required to compose the broader processes of begetting a son (ie. intercourse, growth, etc.) do involve per se causal series.

And there is no reason why the causation in the faster-than-light interpretation should not be instrumental. The time gap does not preclude it.

 

[polytropos]

But it does allow for the tachyonic anti-telephone where you can call someone in the past and speak to him. Say for example, you want to talk to your friend who died of cancer three years ago. You can do so with the tachyonic anti-telephone.
Wikipedia goes through the mathematics of the various situations with the anti-telephone:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
So, FTL argues against causality, not for it.

This requires that signals can be sent faster than light, which is not the case if faster-than-light travel is restricted to the action-at-a-distance of quantum mechanics.

 

[Tomdstone]

This requires that signals can be sent faster than light, which is not the case if faster-than-light travel is restricted to the action-at-a-distance of quantum mechanics.

I am not sure, but are you speaking about the Bohmian theory of QM, in which positions evolve according to non-local equations? If you are speaking of the Bohm theory, then, of course, we should discuss the objections that Einstein and Pauli and others had to that theory.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Regarding your initial questions, a helpful metaphor is a series of mirrors. Suppose you see an image in a mirror. You check where the reflection leads to find another mirror, in which the image is also reflected. You continue on and on, but keep finding mirrors with images rather than the actual thing. But at some point the actual thing has to be there to produce the image in the first place. In short, a regress is either vicious, or it is not. A vicious regress, if it continues to infinity, is ungrounded. (One could also have a vicious circularity.) Aquinas’s First and Second Ways essentially claim that causation generates vicious regresses, necessitating a first mover or uncaused cause.

Uniqueness of the uncaused cause is posterior to the demonstration. The Thomist arguments purport to show that there exists at least one purely actual uncaused cause. Suppose there exists another purely actual uncaused cause. Then, in order to be distinct, it must have some property that the other does not have (or the other has some property that it does not have). But neither can have any potentiality relative to the other, so they must be the same.

It could start from any singular instance of change (or any substance that has an efficient cause, or what have you). But in order to argue for the necessity of an unmoved mover or uncaused cause, you would have to sustain the claim that each subsequent change has a cause/each efficient cause itself has an efficient cause. Otherwise, you would not necessarily generate a vicious regress.

Good, original explanation.
Linus2nd

 

[Sultan_Of_Swing]

We only have to show it in a couple of instants to prove the existence of God. Then we see that all events must have a sufficient cause.

Linus2nd

By showing it in a couple of instants, why does that show that all events must have a sufficient cause?