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o_mlly
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Plenty of living things are contingent and non-intelligent. To prove a necessary intelligent being, we must observe a contingent intelligent being.
Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause
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o_mlly
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Observe? I think you mean imagine. And you can imagine just about anything you want. But if you do have observations – photos preferred – of intelligence emerging from non-intelligence, please cite the evidence. In the absence of any evidence, at least offer an argument in support of the claim. The argument starts with an observation that can be verified like, “I saw a plant talk once, therefore …”
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Bradskii
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You want photos of intelligence emerging? What the…?Bradskii:
Observe? I think you mean imagine. And you can imagine just about anything you want. But if you do have observations – photos preferred – of intelligence emerging from non-intelligence, please cite the evidence. In the absence of any evidence, at least offer an argument in support of the claim. The argument starts with an observation that can be verified like, “I saw a plant talk once, therefore …”
Why don’t you read what I write. We can currently observe a continuum of repsonses to the environment from plants which turn to face the sun, through amoeba which avoid harmful chemicals to insects which construct nests to spiders which build traps to rodents which hunt to birds that can work out puzzles to animals that have forethought to humans who can explain what a continuum of responses to the environment is.
Now if intelligence had simply popped into existence at some point where there was none before then you might have a point. But it didn’t. So you don’t.
Follow your own lineage back through the millenium. At various stages you will come across a creature that was less intelligent than one from a few million years in its future. That is so mind-numbingly obvious that I feel embarressed that I have to write it out. Unless of course you want to argue that some tree dwelling ape from a few million years ago was just as smart as you. Or that intelligence did emerge one Tuesday afternoon in some delightfull sunny fruit-laden all-is-well-in-the-world garden.
In which case…end of discussion.
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Wesrock
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To be frank, we can’t really proceed with o_milly’s or fishermancarl’s argument without first establishing what rational intelligence is and a more in depth discussion of causality. Is intelligence simply computation? Or are there emergent non-material properties or operations that come in on top of the material processes? Is there such a thing as final causality and immanent causation in the natural world?
I’m not saying we answer these things now. But in order to argue that material processes in a natural world completely absent of final causality (materialist position) absolutely could not produce a rational intelligence (something more than just computation), much more would need to be established first. For example, that rational intelligence cannnot solely be a matter of efficient causality as commonly understood.
I’m not saying we answer these things now. But in order to argue that material processes in a natural world completely absent of final causality (materialist position) absolutely could not produce a rational intelligence (something more than just computation), much more would need to be established first. For example, that rational intelligence cannnot solely be a matter of efficient causality as commonly understood.
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Hugh_Farey
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Not at all. No doubt your humble servant also comes across as obnoxious from time to time, whereas in fact I’m as friendly as a new puppy and just as strokable…
Anyway, everything you say about other universes may well be true, and is being discussed. Our own little space-time continuum seems to have had a beginning in time, which is what, for the sake of convenience, I was using as a baseline, but it may be cyclic, and the Big Bang simply followed a previous Big Crush and so on. Or it may be one of many other little space-times, all of which have their own timescales. Reconciling time between them is a bit of a mind boggling concept, although CS Lewis, of Narnia fame, had fun exploring it.
However, I do think that a true state of nothingness does include the fact that no ‘thing’ can emerge from it. It has no potential for ‘things’. (If it did have potentiality, then of course, it wouldn’t be ‘nothing’). So whatever there is, if it is not part of something which has been going on for ever, must have emerged from something which has been going on for ever. And that ‘something which has been going on for ever’ must have included the potentiality to produce the universe, or universes, both in how it operates and what it is.
Must we take that as a given? I agree that it’s not easy to grasp. But I also agree that “It was all God’s doing” is not an adequate explanation. As it happens, I think it was “all God’s doing” but I’d sure like to know how he did it - and, for that matter, whether he’s intelligent or not!
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Wesrock
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Should we take that as a given?
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PickyPicky
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I suspect you’re pretty sure he’s intelligent.
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PickyPicky
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Within our space-time state of things, at any rate, causation is a time event. If two events occurred at exactly the same moment we would be certain one could not have caused the other: causation involves one event preceding the other.
Of course we could say that ain’t the case outside our space-time state of things, but of course if things outside our space-time state of things run in an unimaginably different way they are indeed unimaginable and there is little point our minds trying to grapple with them.
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Wesrock
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Well, we could say the window broke because the boy threw the brick, but another way of looking at it is as one event where the window is breaking because the brick is pushing through it, and the brick is losing momentum because the window is providing resistance…Wesrock:
Within our space-time state of things, at any rate, causation is a time event. If two events occurred at exactly the same moment we would be certain one could not have caused the other: causation involves one event preceding the other.
Of course we could say that ain’t the case outside our space-time state of things, but of course if things outside our space-time state of things run in an unimaginably different way they are indeed unimaginable and there is little point our minds trying to grapple with them.
However, my main concern wasn’t even just the temporal portion of it. Should we we take it as a given that causality is just about events?
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Bradskii
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Ask a dozen people what intelligence is and you’ll get a dozen answers. And all of them could be correct, because what entails intelligence varies from organism to organism. People automatically think of human intelligence and stop there. But, as I indicated above, intelligence has evolved from the most basic of automatic reactions through an infinite gradation of responses to the environment.
Run the tape backwards and you may reach a point where you might say that intelligence is not to be seen. Just as, if we ran the tape backwards, you might say that what we have at some point in the past is not what we could descibe as human.
But what that animal would develop into would be human. And whatever it is that the organism posessed that you said stretched the definition of intelligence too far would develop into intelligence.
Other than that, how on earth do you think it might have arisen?
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Wesrock
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No, they wouldn’t all be correct, at least not for the purposes of this discussion and the quality we’re trying to single out, which just isn’t a matter of computation or a scale.
I for one don’t hold to the idea that the natural world is devoid of teleology or final causation (something philosophical materialists deny), so it is conceivable that the power to cause rational intelligence to emerge were in the natural causes (either eminently or virtually) that led to the evolution of human beings. [There’s also the possibility of a divine addition to the natural processes at some point in our evolutionary history, but I prefer not to assume that.] However, if there is final causation in nature, I’d have to conclude it originates from an intelligent origin, anyway. I haven’t gone into why here.
But this proceeds from my conclusions about philosophy of the mind. If final causality is absent from nature, and if there is no such thing as final causality even in the mind, then I’d have to conclude with eliminative materialist Paul Churchland that there is no such things as a mind, or perceptual experience, to begin with etc… No actual intelligence. You and I aren’t actually having a discussion. We’re not exchanging thoughts or ideas (as those don’t exist). There are no concepts or even information in these exchanges.
Granted, not everyone who denies final causality is an eliminative materialist, but I don’t think other positions which deny final causality in nature but try to conclude that there still is a rational mind are that coherent.
But this isn’t really a philosophy of the mind topic, though I think one would need to have a discussion about philosophy of the mind and causality in nature before one can get to the conclusion “non-intelligence can’t cause intelligence.” And a mistake everyone’s making with that statement is assuming that it’s saying that the non-living processes and things which led to our evolution must themselves be intelligent, and since they’re obviously not, “gotcha!”.
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catholic1seeks
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@Wesrock and @IWantGod, could you link or provide the post numbers to your main arguments (for God’s intelligence)? I’m trying to watch this thread, but I think I’ve lost the starting points of some of the discussion.
Thanks!
Thanks!
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PickyPicky
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No, quite so. I am taking events to be sets of circumstances, and you are right, events proper are just part of that. And, as your example of the window demonstrates nicely, it is never possible to isolate a single factor as the cause of a change in circumstances: in your example both the momentum of the brick and the resistance of the window are causes of the effect.
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o_mlly
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A puppy within its own lifetime adapts to its environment and changes its behavior. Fido no longer soils the carpet. That’s evidence of intelligence. Do you want before and after photos?
If you have a parallel plant example you may have a point. But the appeal, as usual, is to the fog of “back through the millenium” and that just won’t do.
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Bradskii
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Thanks for playing.
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o_mlly
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You’re welcome. Feel free (or determined?) to come back again.
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Wesrock
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Hey. I just learned that it is possible to filter a single user’s posts. If you click on their name a box will pop up. On the right side of the box there are two buttons. One to send a message and, just below that, an option to filter posts.
I presented an argument based on the Principle of Proportional Causality and the Fifth Way. The PPC argument follows the same logic as the one presented by Edward Feser in Five Proofs.
PPC Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause - #18 by Wesrock
PPC The Existence of God: The Argument From Motion - #5 by Wesrock (this post has the same argument, expanded a little)
Fifth Way: Why you should think that the First-Cause has to be an Intelligent Cause - #24 by Wesrock
I’ve made a bunch of other posts, too.
If we hold to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, that God is Intelligent and has a will seems to necessarily follow. If God is unintelligent and just a thing causing according to his nature, there would be no reason intrinsic to God about why he created this way instead of that way, no explanation for him acting according to some unintelligent law instead of some other unintelligent law, which just means that there must be an explanation extrinsic to the thing we called God (which means he’s not God and something else is) that caused this universe instead of some other. A vicious regress is only prevented if God’s action is not caused by any external factors or conditions which means it must proceed both voluntarily and intelligently.
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Bradskii
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Why don’t we re-write that so it’s a lot clearer and concise:
If what caused the universe was not intelligent then there may be no reason why it was created this way as opposed to any other. So it can’t have been what we call ‘God’.
Period.
I see no infinite regress, vicious or otherwise, galloping over the horizon. Your problem is that you start with God. Who is meant to be intelligent. And if a line of thought ends up with something unintelligent that perhaps created the universe then you simply say: ‘Well that can’t be right because it’s not God’.
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Wesrock
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No, that’s not the argument. The argument means that there must, by logical necessity, be some further cause to “Thing A” if it cannot be explained by some principle intrinsic to Thing A. And if the Thing A we were calling the First Cause is itself caused, that’s an absurdity, for the First Cause is that which is not caused. Therefore Thing A is not actually the First Cause, but is itself caused by something else.
And that’s not the only line of argument I’ve presented.
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Wesrock
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It boils down to this:
Person A: Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and therefore there must be one thing that is not itself caused.
Person B: But what if this thing has a cause?
Person A: Then the object being considered is not the one thing that is not itself caused and the regress continues until we reach the thing that is not itself caused.
Person B: Gotcha!
Person A: Uh… No.
The argument is not proposing a specific number of things, only that there must be some thing which is not itself caused. Therefore if there is anything about a thing that requires a cause, that cannot be the first cause. Or rather, the first cause must be without anything thing that requires a cause.
Person A: Blah blah blah blah blah blah, and therefore there must be one thing that is not itself caused.
Person B: But what if this thing has a cause?
Person A: Then the object being considered is not the one thing that is not itself caused and the regress continues until we reach the thing that is not itself caused.
Person B: Gotcha!
Person A: Uh… No.
The argument is not proposing a specific number of things, only that there must be some thing which is not itself caused. Therefore if there is anything about a thing that requires a cause, that cannot be the first cause. Or rather, the first cause must be without anything thing that requires a cause.
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