Friday 28 October 2011

More on the Principle of Causation

I just thought I'd do another little blogpost, this time solely on the first premise of Kalam. Johnnyp76 is still adamant, that it is fallacious, despite totally failing to show how. Indeed, despite having his arguments torn to shreds, he just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again.

Properties and Compositional Fallacies
Johnnyp76s argument, as you may recall, is that nothing begins to exist. However, I have already shown why this is fallacious. This argument commits a fallacy of composition (a fact that he has not yet addressed) and that is:
1. Matter is neither created nor destroyed.
2. Things within the universe are made of matter.
3. Therefore, things within the universe are neither created nor destroyed.

Now, consider the following argument:
1. Human cells are invisible to the naked eye.
2. Human beings are made of human cells.
3. Therefore, human beings are invisible to the naked eye.

This argument is quite clearly fallacious, and, in the same way, so is the argument of Johnnyp76. A point that Johnnypy76 just has NOT dealt with is that things possess necessary and essential properties that make those things what they are. Johnnyp76 complains that when does a chair stop becoming a chair? Because we cannot clearly define what makes a chair a chair, then there are no properties to be defined. This argument is even more absurd. There are clearly distinguishing features that allow me to identify a chair, and that also allow me to differentiate between a chair, and say a person. If objects and beings do not have essential properties that set them apart from other things, then that would make everything identical... but everything is clearly not identical.

Of course, objects and beings DO have essential properties. For example, the properties essential to personhood are as follows. P is a person if and only if:
i. P is a rational being.
ii. P is a being to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
iii. Others regard (or can regard) P as a being to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
iv. P is capable of regarding other beings as beings to which states of consciousness can be attributed.
v. P is capable of communication.
vi. P is self-conscious; that is P is capable of regarding him/her/itself as a subject of states of consciousness.

An essential property of being human would be:
-has human DNA.
-is a mammal.

It certainly would not be hard to come up with a more accurate list of properties, but the point remains, just because you can't readily or even precisely identify every property, the claim that properties are just abstractions is patently false. There is a clear discernible difference between a car and a slab of metal.

Efficient Causes
The biggest problem that the universe is made up of efficient causes and effects, even if we grant the proposition that properties are meaningless abstractions. For instance, if we posit a stationary ball, if it were to be put into motion by something else, then that is an example of efficient causality. It was CAUSED to move. We thus have a new effect, which was caused to occur. This is the sense in which Kalam takes the words CAUSE and BEGINS TO EXIST, in terms of efficient causality. William Lane Craig is quite clear that when Kalam says cause, it means 'whatever brings about its effect.' This is true whether it is being caused ex materia or ex nihilo. It is metaphysically impossible for an effect not to have a cause. This goes doubly so when we are talking about creatio ex nihilo. Johnnyp76 needs to show that an effect coming into being uncaused is metaphysically possible, yet this he cannot do, which presumably explains why he chooses to parade around in front of us with these jackanory objections.

Of course, Johnnyp76 hasn't even shown how I can exist both before and after my actual life time. His argument that the materials that made me up existed then is simply fallacious, for in what sense can a piece of moss or a dinosaur be said to be me? In what sense can a chunk of matter that has no properties in common with the chunk of matter that now makes up my body be said to be me? Indeed, this is simply Johnnyp76 assuming physicalism to be true in the face of all kinds of evidence. I hate to be the one to break it to you Johnny, but if your worldview does not fit the facts, then it is time to change your worldview to fit the facts, not the other way around.

11 comments:

  1. Whoah there silver!

    Your analogy is utterly defunct.

    "1. Matter is neither created nor destroyed.
    2. Things within the universe are made of matter.
    3. Therefore, things within the universe are neither created nor destroyed.

    Now, consider the following argument:
    1. Human cells are invisible to the naked eye.
    2. Human beings are made of human cells.
    3. Therefore, human beings are invisible to the naked eye."


    These are NOT synonymous.

    The first syllogism is this:

    1) All A = B
    2) C = A
    C) Therefore, C = B

    It is utterly valid. You are equivocating perhaps on premise 2 by saying 'things' and 'matter'. These are synonymous. The 'thing' in the universe ARE matter. It's not MADE UP of matter, it IS MATTER.Your 'things' is merely a smuggling in of a conceptual label.

    Thus the syllogism becomes:

    1) All A = B
    2) A = A
    C) Therefore, A = B

    Thus, you are simply quoting me an obvious tautology. I need an example from you of matter being destroyed or created to be able to make a generalised rule on the causal behaviour of matter to then apply to the universe.

    This is what the Kalam seeks to do, and is ALSO why IT suffers from the fallacy of composition.

    I hope your readers are more critical of your writing than you are. Please stop misrepresenting me, it's libellous!


    "Because we cannot clearly define what makes a chair a chair, then there are no properties to be defined. This argument is even more absurd. There are clearly distinguishing features that allow me to identify a chair, and that also allow me to differentiate between a chair, and say a person."

    Again, you are simply incorrect here. You cannot understand the conceptual properties of these labels are entirely subjective and cannot, then, exist objectively, unless you maintian that every thought and label exists objectively which is utter nonsense. Does a forqwiblex that I have just made up now exist? Does the chair minus 7 molecules cease to exist? 1000? 1,000,000,000,000? When dis it become a chair? When 7/8 of the last leg were built? 1/0000? 9/10? Everyone has a different idea and answer because it is subjective conceptualism. At best you can say a concept begins to exist. If the last human died on earth sitting on a chair, then that chair is no longer a chair, since there is no human alive with the concept of chair in the mind to recognise it as such!!!!

    C'mon, this is basic philosophy! People argue essential properties, so unless you believe in Platonic Realism, these properties are essentially subjective and do not exist outside of the mind of the conceiver (though may correlate with other people's concepts of chair etc.).

    Here is where you continue to err:
    "the properties essential to personhood are as follows."

    No, these are the essential properties of personhood TO YOU. Others may or may not agree. If they do, that is merely a correlation. It does not mean these properties, which are abstract anyway and thus causally inert, exist.

    "We thus have a new effect, which was caused to occur. This is the sense in which Kalam takes the words CAUSE and BEGINS TO EXIST"

    No its not, and if it is, this is PRECISELY THE CRITICISM, because that is invalid. What caused the cause? The efficient cause should be regressed back to one which TRULY BEGAN TO EXIST. This is an argument about ORIGINATION, similar to that of free will. You are arguing about origination of causality. Which is why cosmological arguments talk of a PRIME MOVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  2. "Johnnyp76 needs to show that an effect coming into being uncaused is metaphysically possible"

    No I don't. I establish that the universe at the BB (on Craig's model, as this is debatable)is potentially an uncaused cause. As is God. You believe in God, no?

    My faith, as opposed to yours, is to believe that the universe has eternally existed in some way. However, this is different from pointing out that the KCA, using its logic, fails to:

    deductively or inductively assert that the universe required a cause for its existence. This may be true, I am not denying it a priori - not at all. What I am saying is that on both forms of logic, you cannot conclude that the universe required a cause using the KCA.

    The past uniformities based on premise 1 are fallacious, and refer to abstracts and conceptual ideas.
    Premise 2 is far from being known.
    Thus the conclusion neither follows from Premise 1 or Premise 2.

    As for your last paragraph, it is Craig's Jurassic era rebuttal which is clearly invalid, since it is the entire argument but given a different analogy.

    You are a different formation of matter than a rock, but you no more began to exist as matter and energy since they existed already. The 'you' (the label of you) began to exist in anyone who had a concept of you, but even here, everyone has a different idea of what and who you are. A cat, your mum, me,an alien, we all have different ideas of what you are. They can't all exist.

    We are STARTING to have a more civil debate here. Less of the bluster, more of the intellectual discourse to attempt to find a way towards a rational truth of sorts. I may be wrong, you may be wrong, but lets stop slagging off each other about it. It's not a game, and we shouldn't just be doing this for audiences, but to make us more knowledgeable people. A noble proposition.

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  3. Furthermore, I want to clear up the equivocation further.

    'Matter', 'things in the universe', and 'the universe' are all synonymous. The big bang universe was energy and mass condensed into a super-dense ball, or similar. The mass and energy WAS and IS the universe. It IS the things in the universe. It is matter. You are splitting things up unnecessarily by time, almost. This universe now is made up of the same axiomatic stuff that the dense ball was.
    In fact, using the term 'made up' is itself misleading, it simply IS the same stuff. The universe is not a different entity made up of lots of things. It is merely a quantity of those things (matter).

    This is where your equivocation and false claim on my supposed fallacy of composition takes place. The human is made up of cells which are different from the concept of human. Things, matter and universe are NOT different concepts, they are different words for the same thing (in this context). Hence no fallacy.

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  4. "You are equivocating perhaps on premise 2 by saying 'things' and 'matter'. These are synonymous."
    In other words, you are barely asserting physicalism to be true. Nice save.

    "Again, you are simply incorrect here."
    Another assertion. You have been totally incapable of showing how things lack properties. Indeed, your only argument is to keep repeating the same argument from ignorance over and over again. Here is something really simple. What are the essential properties of Hydrogen? Or Oxygen? Something tells me that there are definite, clear, and precise answers to these. Unless of course you want to disagree with the entirety of the scientific community.

    "No, these are the essential properties of personhood TO YOU."
    Actually, they are the criteria laid out by Daniel Dennett. And it doesn't matter if people disagree. Your sole objection is to deny the ontological reality of properties based on epistemic uncertainty, which is patently invalid. An argument from ignorance simply isn't a valid argument whichever way you look at it.

    "'Matter', 'things in the universe', and 'the universe' are all synonymous."
    Wrong. First of all, the universe isn't composed of matter. The universe is composed of space-time. Secondly, to claim that matter and things within the universe are synonymous is to a priori assume physicalism, which is invalid. Lastly, that would be like asserting that human beings and human cells are synonymous. The only way to deny that would be if you admitted that there are essential properties that constitute a concept of "human being" but it these properties that you deny exist.

    One last point, no I don't need to hold to platonic realism. I could either hold that platonic ideals do not have their own independent ontological status, but exist as ideas in the mind of God, or I could hold they certain facts exist within space-time, whilst a nominalist about others. Your objections just don't cut the mustard.

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  5. "The human is made up of cells which are different from the concept of human."
    Only if you hold that there are recognisable properties that constitute humans... but this is something you deny, so you have contradicted yourself.

    "Things, matter and universe are NOT different concepts, they are different words for the same thing (in this context). Hence no fallacy."
    This is simply a bare assertion on your part. In order for you to demonstrate this, you would have to show that physicalism/naturalism/materialism is, in fact, true. Your errors are many and legion, and yet you presume to lecture me? Ah, the irony. I also find it ironic how you criticise my style and character, when you have acted smug and dismissive consistently throughout our discourse.

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  6. “You are equivocating perhaps on premise 2 by saying 'things' and 'matter'. These are synonymous."
    In other words, you are barely asserting physicalism to be true. Nice save.”

    Are you barely asserting supernaturalism to be true? Are you falling into a Cartesian (and Craig does this too in his reformulation of the CA) fallacy of assuming a priori that the mind can exist without a bodily form? There are good arguments to say that this is logically impossible. This is a classic issue which I have addressed in an essay on Descartes (which I will upload soon).

    However, to the point in hand, you are still equivocating on what things means. As Dan Barker says of this point:

    “"The universe," to philosophers (or "the cosmos," to cosmologists), is the set of all things. A set is a collection of items. A set can be a member or subset of another set, and it can be considered a subset of itself, but a set cannot be a member of itself.[14] Yet the cosmological argument treats the universe as if it were an item in its own set. The first premise refers to every "thing," and the second premise treats the "universe" as if it were a member of the set of "things." But since a set should not be considered a member of itself, the cosmological argument is comparing apples and oranges. …
    What does "everything" mean? Standing alone, it is synonymous with the universe (or cosmos). But in the cosmological argument, "everything" does not refer to "all things that exist," because it is followed by the limiting clause "that begins to exist," implying (as we have seen) that there are some things (NBE) that are not a part of this particular set. "Everything" is understood, in this context, as two separate words--"every thing"--referring to each individual item within BE. This is supported by the fact that "begins to exist" is singular, referring to one "thing" in the set BE. (Craig uses the word "whatever," which means "whatever thing.")
    A "thing" is an object or system that is distinct in some manner from other objects or systems. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language definesthing as: "anything conceived of or referred to as existing as an individual, distinguishable entity; specif., a) any single entity distinguished from all others [each thing in the universe] . . ."

    In order to be considered a "thing," an object must be a part of a larger context within which and by which it can be limited. The object must be able to be "pulled away" from other objects.
    Is the universe a "thing"? When the cosmological argument moves to its second premise--"The universe began to exist"--we are being forced to view the universe as a particular item in the set of "things." But is the "set of all things" a "thing" itself? How is the set of all things distinguished from other things or other sets? In what context does the universe exist within which it can be identified as a distinct object?
    If we even suggest that the universe (cosmos) is a discrete "thing" (not just a concept), we are implying a realm above and beyond the universe within which it is contained, limited, and defined; and this amounts to simply assuming transcendence. Theistic philosophers hope no one will notice that the language they are using effortlessly conjures the existence of a realm beyond nature, portraying "the universe" from a distance, as if "it" had an environment. It is easier for nontheists, who are not tempted to mix logical spheres, to avoid such question begging.” http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dan_barker/kalamity.html

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  7. What are the essential properties of Hydrogen? Or Oxygen? Something tells me that there are definite, clear, and precise answers to these. Unless of course you want to disagree with the entirety of the scientific community.

    Well, you are now moving into the realms of abstracts about which the KCA makes no claims, since they are not ‘things’ and which most philosophers define as being causally inert, or a thing that fails to exemplify existence, or an object which could exist but does not (eg Zalta), or even objects which cannot exist apart from other entities. Essential properties are abstract universals logically or ontologically separate from the objects of sense perception. I do adhere to some form of phyiscalism for many reasons, but all that is irrelevant in light of the fact that the KCA is making physicalist claims.

    “"No, these are the essential properties of personhood TO YOU."
    Actually, they are the criteria laid out by Daniel Dennett. And it doesn't matter if people disagree. Your sole objection is to deny the ontological reality of properties based on epistemic uncertainty, which is patently invalid. An argument from ignorance simply isn't a valid argument whichever way you look at it.”

    I am well aware of this, probably taken from Craig’s paper on divine personhood and time (I forget the name of the paper) since he uses Dennett’s idea of personhood to try to deconstruct the argument against the incoherence of atemporal personhood. But they, if your ideas correlate with Dennett, are still properties of personhood TO YOU. Other philosophers have different opinions – take Stephen Law for example. As the SEP says: “On the explanatory characterization, the essential properties of an object are the object's deepest explanatory properties—those properties that figure fundamentally into explanations of the object's possessing the other properties it does. (For example, having six protons might count as an essential property of a carbon atom because this property figures fundamentally into explanations of its possession of other properties, like its bonding characteristics.) This sort of account threatens to make the essential/accidental property distinction subjective, since what counts as explanatorily primary seems to depend on the interests and abilities of the explainers.”


    There is a very real danger here of getting bogged down in possibly the most confusing area in philosophy: that of property, as in natural kinds, essentialism vs accidental properties, minimalism vs maximalism, instantiation, trope theory, particulars and so on. As valid as it may be, we would actually be discussing / working this out for many years to come. This is the stuff of your hardcore philosophers such as Quine and Armstrong.

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  8. “"'Matter', 'things in the universe', and 'the universe' are all synonymous."
    Wrong. First of all, the universe isn't composed of matter. The universe is composed of space-time.”

    Eh? Spacetime is a dimension, and thus not compositional: “In cosmology, the concept of spacetime combines space and time to a single abstract universe.”. Let us see what WMAP sees the universe as made of:

    • “4.6% Atoms. More than 95% of the energy density in the universe is in a form that has never been directly detected in the laboratory! The actual density of atoms is equivalent to roughly 1 proton per 4 cubic meters.
    • 23% Cold Dark Matter. Dark matter is likely to be composed of one or more species of sub-atomic particles that interact very weakly with ordinary matter. Particle physicists have many plausible candidates for the dark matter, and new particle accelerator experiments are likely to bring new insight in the coming years.
    • 72% Dark Energy. The first observational hints of dark energy in the universe date back to the 1980's when astronomers were trying to understand how clusters of galaxies were formed. Their attempts to explain the observed distribution of galaxies were improved if dark energy was present, but the evidence was highly uncertain. In the 1990's, observations of supernova were used to trace the expansion history of the universe (over relatively recent times) and the big surprise was that the expansion appeared to be speeding up, rather than slowing down! There was some concern that the supernova data were being misinterpreted, but the result has held up to this day. In 2003, the first WMAP results came out indicating that the universe was flat (see above) and that the dark matter made up only ~23% of the density required to produce a flat universe. If 72% of the energy density in the universe is in the form of dark energy, which has a gravitationally repulsive effect, it is just the right amount to explain both the flatness of the universe and the observed accelerated expansion. Thus dark energy explains many cosmological observations at once.
    • Fast moving neutrinos do not play a major role in the evolution of structure in the universe. They would have prevented the early clumping of gas in the universe, delaying the emergence of the first stars, in conflict with the WMAP data. However, with 5 years of data, WMAP is able to see evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos do exist in numbers that are expected from other lines of reasoning. This is the first time that such evidence has come from the cosmic microwave background.
    http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_matter.html

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  9. V“"The human is made up of cells which are different from the concept of human."
    Only if you hold that there are recognisable properties that constitute humans... but this is something you deny, so you have contradicted yourself.”

    Not at all. The properties, which are abstracts, are conceptual. We are talking about the nature and existence of properties. At the moment, the way you are talking, infers some kind of realism over properties, which are abstractions.

    “"Things, matter and universe are NOT different concepts, they are different words for the same thing (in this context). Hence no fallacy."
    This is simply a bare assertion on your part. In order for you to demonstrate this, you would have to show that physicalism/naturalism/materialism is, in fact, true.”

    Not at all. In fact, YOU have to show that supernatural entities exist, and if they do, how, and you have to show that they have causal power. After this, you have to show that the KCA, in talking about the universe as a set of things (itself incoherent) including supernatural entities. Ie, SE are ‘things’ which ‘exist’ and which ‘begin to exist’. As mentioned, most cosmologists will define the universe at the BB (and so will Craig, I wager) as a super-dense call of energy and matter (or anti-energy and matter). Thus it would be a category error to apply the behaviour of supernatural entities to a natural entity,

    “Your errors are many and legion, and yet you presume to lecture me? Ah, the irony. I also find it ironic how you criticise my style and character, when you have acted smug and dismissive consistently throughout our discourse.”

    I have dealt with this elsewhere. At times I may have been confrontational, but that was fighting fire with fire. I now want to concentrate on content and not rhetoric, however hard that may be for us both!

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  10. On the demands on scholars to conclude to presuppositions, my point seems rather salient presently. Mike Licona, a nice guy, has lost his teaching job because he DID follow the evidence.

    http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2011/11/christian-nt-scholar-and-apologist.html

    "As reported by Christianity Today (see here), New Testament scholar Michael Licona has apparently lost both his job as research professor of New Testament at Southern Evangelical Seminary and been ousted as apologetics coordinator for the North America Mission Board (NAMB).

    Why? In his 700-page book defending the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, Licona proposed that the story of the resurrection of the saints described in Matthew 27 might be metaphorical rather than literal history. Why is this a problem? As a result of Licona's questioning of Matthew 27, apparently some evangelical scholars, most notably Norman Geisler, accused Licona of denying the full inerrancy of the Bible."

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  11. I already know. This is very much a major problem and failing with the modern church. Christians are unwilling to engage in serious critical thinking and intellectual study in regards to their faith. How this undermines the truth of Christianity, however, is anybody's guess. And how this proves that all Christian scholars, or even all Evangelical scholars, are biased fundies is also unclear. Ironically enough, a number of Christians (including WLC and JP Holding) are supportive of Licona, even those who either disagree with his conclusion or are undecided.

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