Infinite Regress of Causality

[apaosha]

If we are to construct a metaphysics there are some things that we must start with. Firstly, the acceptance that we can only perceive reality through the medium of our senses, meaning that we are removed from a direct, absolute perspective, and that these senses are limited. To be perceptible however, a phenomenon must be capable of interaction, capable of affecting and being affected. This interactivity constitutes Time, which is a measure of change.
Interactivity then, change, affect, movement in time, must be considered a prerequisite to existence. In other words, causality.
Is it not absurd to wonder what caused causality, then?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop

It's not a loop if one for a moment thinks about what is being asked.
Causality proposes that "everything" is the product of something previous. To then ask what caused causality is to ask whether that proposition was itself caused. It suggests that causality was brought about through causality. It's circular. And nonsensical.
The strange loop here is based around the demand that causality itself be a part of a causative process, pre-existing itself somehow in order to bring itself about through, yes, causality. It makes no sense. One cannot answer the question because it is not logical. I liken it to someone stating that there being no absolutes is itself an absolute. But the human mind first proposes absolutes and then must employ them to negate them. It's at least as equally nonsensical.

Let us employ an example from the theistic perspective:

The assertion of a 1st Uncaused Cause (God) as the creator of the universe goes in steps.

1)It is noted, through observation of phenomena, that one "event" is the consequence of past "events"; cause/effect.
2)It is speculated therefore that such cause/effect is a general rule under which the universe operates.
3)This is taken further into supposing that the universe itself was caused... by something else.
4)This something else is assigned a mythology along the lines of God or Primal Chaos; either way, a creative agent.
5)The cause/effect hypothesis is applied to this creator.
6)In order to avoid infinite regression, the opening premise of causality is undermined through stating that this creative agent was "uncaused".

What is happening here is that the theist's theory is being contradicted by it's conclusion. In other words, the creator is the exception to the very premise that cites evidence for it's existence. It is postulated that the universe is caused by something, through the observation of the purported universal rule of causation, but this something is itself uncaused. Contradiction. A necessary contradiction if you are a theist and inventing the absolute reference point from which to derive your own perspective and legitimacy, because otherwise your creator is in turn the creation of something else.

I am suggesting that this evidence of a wider problem in human conceptualizations of reality and that it stems from the notions of cause/effect themselves, and how they are applied to our perception of the universe.

If no beginning or end can be demonstrated, but the manifestation of the past in the ongoing activity of the present can be.... the consequent conclusion necessitates an infinite and ongoing process.

Which did not begin, therefore no creation, therefore no God.

Time is the measure of change, not the measure of platonic form where a phenomenon switches out to be replaced by another distinct phenomenon, it's effect. The noumenon is a useful fiction but it does not describe what it refers to. There is no "gap" between one "event" and the next, as supposed by language... there is simply a flow, a movement which the mind freezes into Forms in order to comprehend and compare differing perception of a changing environment. Ideas such as cause/effect attempt to divide perception of this constant change and mutability in a static dualism of creator and creation - the cause and it's effect.
The "gap" is simply inferred by the mind comparing the perception of one moment's awareness to the next. In reality there is flow. Change of phenomena in constant motion, never still, never frozen.
A process, not a series of distinct events, such that there are "points" where the process could be said to begin or end.
Therefore, a 1st cause is the expression of the same error when applied to the universe as a supposed whole.

Cause/effect, with this implied dualism and platonic idealism inherent, is inaccurate. I would propose instead that the universe is not only undergoing infinite flux, it is infinite flux, in that it did not appear from nothing, did not begin and that the present is the ongoing manifestation of past interaction, never culminating, never completing but continuing as a consequence to what was.
Given this, one must assume that the universe is not the effect of a creative event, not the distinct product of a separate causative factor, but is the ongoing product of a process which regresses infinitely into the past without an arbitrary beginning before which there was nothingness.

[Nick_A]

I see it differently. Firstly I distinguish between Isness and existence which reveals the logic of first cause. God IS and the Universe EXISTS. From this point of view, the continuing process of existence served by the functioning universe or multiverses occurs within NOW or Isness. The universe is then the body of God much like the human body is an expression of an essence beginning at conception. The ineffable conscious source is outside the limitations of time and space and is both within its body and outside of its limitations.

This cycle of existence which begins, ends, and repeats, is a measure of time for Buddhism called a kalpa.

"Time in Buddhist cosmology is measured in kalpas. Originally, a kalpa was considered to be 4,320,000 years. Buddhist scholars expanded it with a metaphor: rub a one-mile cube of rock once every hundred years with a piece of silk, until the rock is worn away -- and a kalpa still hasn’t passed! During a kalpa, the world comes into being, exists, is destroyed, and a period of emptiness ensues. Then it all starts again."

The first cause then is what manifests lawful fractions of itself manifesting within existence within a scale of "being." The trick is not to look at existence as the cause of existence but rather existence as a cyclical process occurring within Isness or NOW as the cause of an involutionary projection.

[attofishpi]

Let us employ an example from the theistic perspective:

The assertion of a 1st Uncaused Cause (God) as the creator of the universe goes in steps.

So are you saying ALL theists espouse to such a belief?

[apaosha]

I see it differently. Firstly I distinguish between Isness and existence which reveals the logic of first cause. God IS and the Universe EXISTS.

Are you saying that god is not subject to time? If so he does not change, meaning he could not have created the universe. The states of non-creation and creation imply change, which is movement in time.

Or are you saying that if the universe is the body of god, then god is subject to time as the present is the current manifestation of god?

I'd like a bit of clarification please.

Let us employ an example from the theistic perspective:

The assertion of a 1st Uncaused Cause (God) as the creator of the universe goes in steps.

So are you saying ALL theists espouse to such a belief?

No. But one inescapably finds that this preconception is very common among them, though not as developed as my treatment of it here.

The same preconception can be seen in science too: the Big Bang. The human mind demands beginnings from which to orient it's perspective. We are linear thinkers.

[Nick_A]

apaosha

Are you saying that god is not subject to time? If so he does not change, meaning he could not have created the universe. The states of non-creation and creation imply change, which is movement in time.

Or are you saying that if the universe is the body of god, then god is subject to time as the present is the current manifestation of god?

I'd like a bit of clarification please.

I believe that God or the Source is NOW. Space and time are qualities of existence that occur within NOW. A person coming to understand this can see how the Source is simultaneously ONE and THREE. ONE is NOW. Its conscious division into THREE initiates existence or the process of creation. It isn't a matter of one or the other but Isness and the process of existence are levels of reality connected by the chain of "being."

[Notvacka]

If we are to construct a metaphysics there are some things that we must start with. Firstly, the acceptance that we can only perceive reality through the medium of our senses, meaning that we are removed from a direct, absolute perspective, and that these senses are limited. To be perceptible however, a phenomenon must be capable of interaction, capable of affecting and being affected.

So far, so good...

This interactivity constitutes Time, which is a measure of change.

Not necessarily. It might just seem that way. What if there is no change, other than a change of perspective? Any moment in time is both past and future, depending on our point of view. The distinction between past and future is made by "now", which is always subjective and never the same. Any particular moment of "now" must be as valid as any other. If the past is set, so must the future be. Since we have one past only, it figures that we can only have one future as well. And that future must be determined at some point in time. Hence, the future is as determined as the past. There is no change, we only percieve it that way because, as you say, we are "linear thinkers".

[apaosha]

This interactivity constitutes Time, which is a measure of change.

Not necessarily. It might just seem that way. What if there is no change, other than a change of perspective? Any moment in time is both past and future, depending on our point of view. The distinction between past and future is made by "now", which is always subjective and never the same. Any particular moment of "now" must be as valid as any other. If the past is set, so must the future be. Since we have one past only, it figures that we can only have one future as well. And that future must be determined at some point in time. Hence, the future is as determined as the past. There is no change, we only percieve it that way because, as you say, we are "linear thinkers".

You are stating that determinism equates to non-change. This does not follow. The present is the ongoing manifestation of the past and because of this it's course is set - yet it is still coursing, still moving, still changing.

One can only hold this to be true if one takes spacetime as a whole, sets oneself outside it and declares that the whole does not change .... in relation to anything else. Change is relative, remember. But an infinity cannot be considered a whole and existence cannot be said to interact with anything because by definition it cannot. What changes change? Nonsensical question.

Change does not mean, ha, free will.

apaosha

I believe that God or the Source is NOW. Space and time are qualities of existence that occur within NOW.

So you are saying that spacetime occurs within god; that it is an element of god, or the entirety of god? God is the NOW, the present, which is constantly moving in time?

A person coming to understand this can see how the Source is simultaneously ONE and THREE. ONE is NOW. Its conscious division into THREE initiates existence or the process of creation. It isn't a matter of one or the other but Isness and the process of existence are levels of reality connected by the chain of "being."

What does THREE represent? The Trinity? Past/present/future?

My position is that there are not levels to reality. There is no isness or being, as these imply staticity. There is movement, which necessarily did not start because what is static cannot change into movement. Therefore infinite regression.

[Nick_A]

apaosha

So you are saying that spacetime occurs within god; that it is an element of god, or the entirety of god? God is the NOW, the present, which is constantly moving in time?

God doesn't move in linear time. The processes of involution and evolution can be understood as vertical time connecting above and below. Linear time is experienced within creation.

The present doesn't move; it IS. We subjectively interpret the present as an aspect of linear time but there is no such thing since everything is in motion. The relative perception of Linear time occurs within NOW.

What does THREE represent? The Trinity? Past/present/future?

THREE represents the three essential forces. The first is unity, "no-thing, the second is every-thing in potential, and the third is that which connects them. They are simultaneously one and three.

My position is that there are not levels to reality. There is no isness or being, as these imply staticity. There is movement, which necessarily did not start because what is static cannot change into movement. Therefore infinite regression.

You seem to be describing a circle which has no beginning or end. These cycles known in the East as the "Breath of Brahma" can actually be the result of a devolution from isness into the process of creation. It doesn't have a beginning but rather the cycle as a whole is a devolution of a greater whole.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Cause/effect, with this implied dualism and platonic idealism inherent, is inaccurate. I would propose instead that the universe is not only undergoing infinite flux, it is infinite flux, in that it did not appear from nothing, did not begin and that the present is the ongoing manifestation of past interaction, never culminating, never completing but continuing as a consequence to what was.
Given this, one must assume that the universe is not the effect of a creative event, not the distinct product of a separate causative factor, but is the ongoing product of a process which regresses infinitely into the past without an arbitrary beginning before which there was nothingness.

"The universe is infinite flux" sounds strange.
You mean the universe is not the things or matter therein as well, i.e. Earth, planets, galaxies that make up what we call the universe.

'Flux' is always conditioned upon, relative to and presupposed 'things'. So there is still this question of what caused those 'things' to emerge. To the theists, there is still the first cause.

The best way to deal with "things" is Kant's thing-in-itself or the noumenon (despite your disagreement).
Per Kant, there is no such thing as a thing-in-itself, thereby there is no need for a first cause to bring about any independent things. Whatever things that exist, their existence is contributed by the subject and not by an omnipotent god.

To Kant, there are three distinct phases of human knowledge (not JTB) or judgments, i.e.

1. Experienced based, the empirical
2. Understanding ( I term it as rational)
3. Pure reason

Each phase has its own limits and rules.

In 1, empirical must be justified by evidence in accordance to its respective limits and rules. The basic applicable law is that of 'cause and effect'.

In 2, the understanding generate knowledge based on a schema combination of a priori and pure intuition knowledge. Such knowledge has a high degree of possible experience and when verified becomes empirical. Note scientific hypothesis.

Within 3, knowledge is a free for all and has no rules whatsoever. The knowledge is based on speculations which are extrapolated from 1 and 2. Their degree of possible experience is extremely slim. Pure reason can speculate and imagine anything. The significant speculations that Kant focused on were god, soul, immortality, pure freedom and some others. To Kant, knowledge from pure reason are transcendental illusions.

According to Kant, one cannot conflate 1, 2, 3 into one perspective and insist there is knowledge and truths.

When theists deduce from 'cause and effect' to a first cause, i.e. therefore God exists, there is a sophistry of conflating pure reason with the empirical perspective when there is no qualification of how such a claim is derived.

Speculations from pure reason do has some limited utility and potentials. Note Einstein's 'imagination is more important than knowledge'. In Einsten's case, imagination are based on the empirical, but for these imaginations to be accepted as empirical, they must be eventually justified via the scientific methods.
In contrast, the theists use their pure reason to generate illusions from the empirical, but then force the illusions upon believers and non-believers within the empirical perspective without any proper empirical proofs and justifications

There is no issue if whatever is claimed based on pure reason, are clearly qualified and the limits & rules are known.

There is only a problem when whatever is speculated from pure reason is claimed as real and conflated with experienced-empirical reality.
Worst still is, when laws are derived based on such unsubtantiated white lies and violence, cruelties and intolerances are committed on non-believers.

[Notvacka]

You are stating that determinism equates to non-change. This does not follow.

It's the other way around. Determinism follows from non-change. Time can be described as a spatial dimension, and within the four-dimensional space-time abstraction, nothing ever changes. You can of course speculatively relate space-time to something outside it, such as God, but within space-time, which equates all of physical reality, nothing changes.

The present is the ongoing manifestation of the past and because of this it's course is set - yet it is still coursing, still moving, still changing.

Yes, the present is ever changing. But the moment of "now" is not a thing. It's just a point of view, impossible to refer to in any meaningful way. You can't point to it, because if you try, you are pointing at a moment already past. You can describe it as an ongoing manifestation of the past, a snapshot of space-time or as the location of the soul, but you can never grasp it.

[Satyr]

Still waiting for an example of a THING.

"Now", that was funny.
Cut time up, simplify by eliminating dimension and call the boundaries you've created in your mind a Here and a Now...then declare it an absolute and name it God.

Now: a term denoting a span of time, in relation to a conscious mind, which starts with the utterance of the words NOW...N...O...W and ends, in general, with the last letter.
It is indivisible, for the retard, because he cannot fathom a world with no absolute states.
Here: a term denoting a region spanning form one edge of human perception to0 the other; a piece of existence snipped out of the ongoing flow and declared a static "place".

Now is the temporal absolute of the spatial absolute Here...as in Here and Now.
Since space denotes possibilities, Here designates a static point, in space/time, where all possibilities have converged into a singularity; Now designates the accompanying cessation of activity, as time is a measurement of change in relation to the organism's neurological functions and metabolic rates - a representaiton of the static point where no change is occurring...ergo no movement....an absolute inert point/particle in space/time.

"Outside" that is even funnier.
It takes the boundaries then projects them as all encompassing then places consciousness "outside" space/time or existence, and makes of it ALL a THING.

We exit existence, into non-existence, and there we declare our own projected consciousness as a universal one which is exempt, for no apparent reason except that it makes it work and it feels good, from what we experience...calling this God.
In other words God is the unreal living "outside" space/time, reality, in the unreal, or the non-existent....and He cares.

This projection is the ultimate example of the "positive" version of nihilism. The experiences, sensual world is negated imagining its opposite - the 0 to the 1 of existence.
Notice that both 1 and 0 are implications of absolutes in a binary system: 1= thingness, oneness, 0= its negation.
0 is associated with the classic or more honest version of nihilism whereas the 1 takes on the positive version as the perfect, the absolute, the complete is more comforting than the void.
In "positive nihilism" the world is denounced and annihilated but all the desirable aspects of it are retained: consciousness, life remaining contradictions to the absolute state which requires faith.
So where life evolves out of strife and struggle and is experienced as need/suffering, in this alternate reality all is erased; where life is activity in this alternate reality, the more "real" reality, life is static but active simultaneously; it can now live without needing or suffering in some ambiguous state of limbo.

If not that then all is God Himself, and He's some kind of loving, or uncaring, solipsist, dreaming the real into existence, which He already knows the outcome of but must test His creations with.
No, that's not it...God creates but does not need to, unlike every other creative act which is founded no need...here He is, once more, exempt from all experience.

No, that's not it...we need something more circular, requiring no justification: God is his own cause...that's it.
He is a personification, an anthropomorphic symbol, of the real which must be made as human and humane as possible to make Him tolerable and less intimidating.

[attofishpi]

No. But one inescapably finds that this preconception is very common among them, though not as developed as my treatment of it here.

So do you agree that a 'God' could be a result of causality?

[apaosha]

No. But one inescapably finds that this preconception is very common among them, though not as developed as my treatment of it here.

So do you agree that a 'God' could be a result of causality?

No. Because you would then have to show me god. A god which is subject to causality and therefore not really god.

It's the other way around. Determinism follows from non-change.

This does not follow either. How did a state of non-change produce change?
Again there is an implied change between the initial state of non-change and the subsequent state of change.

You are stating nonsense.

Yes, the present is ever changing. But the moment of "now" is not a thing. It's just a point of view, impossible to refer to in any meaningful way. You can't point to it, because if you try, you are pointing at a moment already past. You can describe it as an ongoing manifestation of the past, a snapshot of space-time or as the location of the soul, but you can never grasp it.

Yes, well. I am not attempting to freeze the present into a static absolute, a thing perhaps? which can then be labeled and understood. My objective here is to attempt to describe mutability with a language constructed of preconceptions that demand staticity.

The now is constantly moving. This does not make it incomprehensible and it does not make it impossible to point to. The eye can follow a moving object, as it were. Our perception of it is delayed because our senses feed us information of a now which is already old and so we are removed from it. Yet I do not see where the problem here is. That our senses are limited is a given which I have already accounted for in the 1st post.

But on the other hand, describing the now as the place of the soul is rather revealing of your quality and implies that I am over-thinking this answer.

"The universe is infinite flux" sounds strange.
You mean the universe is not the things or matter therein as well, i.e. Earth, planets, galaxies that make up what we call the universe.

'Flux' is always conditioned upon, relative to and presupposed 'things'. So there is still this question of what caused those 'things' to emerge. To the theists, there is still the first cause.

This is the actor-act dichotomy.
Language demands a relationship between the subject (the actor) and the predicate (the act); that there must be an actor which carries out the act and that these 2 are distinct in themselves somehow.
Describe an actor that does not act or an act without an actor. You cannot.
Heraclitus used the term "flux". I describe it as "the ongoing manifestation of past interaction" implying non-staticity, fluidity and lack of distinct boundaries.

Language is simplistic in that it comes loaded with preconceptions. If you base a metaphysics off of language, you carry those preconceptions with you. A "thing" is the mind taking perception of a fluid environment, freezing it and then comparing it to differing perception. The abstraction is not the real, it merely refers to the real. It then applies an action for this "thing" to perform.

Consider an apple. You bite it. Is it the same apple? What was it before it grew on the tree? Dirt in the ground which the tree collected and changed into an apple through a distinct interactive process. After you eat it it becomes shit and so on.... constant flow and change, never frozen, always active. But these stages: dirt, apple, shit are arbitrary classifications applied to what we decide are distinct events.

There is no such dichotomy in my reasoning. To rephrase Descartes:

Thought therefore existence.

Which is actually closer to the original latin....

[Veritas Aequitas]

"The universe is infinite flux" sounds strange.
You mean the universe is not the things or matter therein as well, i.e. Earth, planets, galaxies that make up what we call the universe.

'Flux' is always conditioned upon, relative to and presupposed 'things'. So there is still this question of what caused those 'things' to emerge. To the theists, there is still the first cause.

This is the actor-act dichotomy.
Language demands a relationship between the subject (the actor) and the predicate (the act); that there must be an actor which carries out the act and that these 2 are distinct in themselves somehow.
Describe an actor that does not act or an act without an actor. You cannot.
Heraclitus used the term "flux". I describe it as "the ongoing manifestation of past interaction" implying non-staticity, fluidity and lack of distinct boundaries.

Language is simplistic in that it comes loaded with preconceptions. If you base a metaphysics off of language, you carry those preconceptions with you. A "thing" is the mind taking perception of a fluid environment, freezing it and then comparing it to differing perception. The abstraction is not the real, it merely refers to the real. It then applies an action for this "thing" to perform.

Consider an apple. You bite it. Is it the same apple? What was it before it grew on the tree? Dirt in the ground which the tree collected and changed into an apple through a distinct interactive process. After you eat it it becomes shit and so on.... constant flow and change, never frozen, always active. But these stages: dirt, apple, shit are arbitrary classifications applied to what we decide are distinct events.

There is no such dichotomy in my reasoning. To rephrase Descartes:

Thought therefore existence.

Which is actually closer to the original latin....

I understand what you are saying, and that refers to your subject-predicate statement, i.e.
"The universe is infinite flux"
'The universe'[subject] is 'infinite flux' [predicate].

similarly,

'Thought' [subject] therefore 'existence.'[predicate]

why not just,

"is" which itself implies existence.

or better still, the Eastern philosophy's negation,

[ blank ]

[Notvacka]

Yet I do not see where the problem here is.

The problem is the way we divide time into past and future. In space, here is where I am, and there is everywhere else. In time, now is where I am and then is everywhere else. If you go from London to Paris, you don't claim that London has changed into Paris when you get there. Likewise, yesterday has not changed into today. Nothing ever changes but our personal point of view.

But on the other hand, describing the now as the place of the soul is rather revealing of your quality and implies that I am over-thinking this answer.

I offered "the location of the soul" along with "a snapshot of space-time" as descriptions on par with your "ongoing manifestation of the past". If you interpret it further, you are probably over-thinking it, though not in the manner you suggest.