bahman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2023 12:53 pm
Regress means the action of returning to a former state.
That's not quite right. I know that a lot of dictionaries start with that definition, but it's too general to be informative of anything, and that's why they have to go into a whole series of more refined definitions...as in, what "regress" means in medicine, or in philosophy, or in mathematics...
In the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, it refers to
the sequence of cause and effect. Suggesting that something is a "cause" for something else means that we are "regressing" into the reason for the thing coming about. To ask why that "cause" was "caused," or to ask of what it was an "effect," in the cause-effect chain, is to "regress" one step further...and so on.
The Kalaam points out that an infinite regress
of causes is impossible. And the reason for that is if the causes are infinitely recessive behind any given effect, then there is no point at which the chain of cause and effect can "get going."
So yes, to suggest an infinite regress of causes and effects is absurd and illogical. We can know for certain that no such thing has happened, since it would be impossible. And the Kalaam points out that the universe itself is an effect of some set of prior causes, which are themselves the effects of prior causes, which are themselves the effect of prior cause, which are also the effect of prior causes...and so on. But the chain, we know for certain, cannot be infinite: because if we imagined that, then we would also have to conclude the universe could not exist, and neither could we. In fact, nothing could exist.
But something does exist. Here we are. So we know that there was an original starting point for the cause-effect chain that resulted in the universe's existence, and in our own.
And there, the Kalaam stops. It doesn't tell us what that original Cause of all things had to be, in specific. But it does make it necessary for us to conclude that there had to be an original Cause.
