@Agnostic

Please, try not to be hopelessly vague in your replies.

Hope springs eternal

SP, could you please enlighten us then, as to how we should properly analyze cause and effect? What is a legitimate "causal regression analysis"?

For the purpose of analyzing the Ways of Aquinas we must consider real material causation at the most fundamental level we have access to.  Aquinas asserts "this cannot go on to infinity" as he describes a causal regress.  Because he had the erroneous notion that motion required a continuous external actor he was thinking in terms of regressing down, as it were, not back in time.  Because his premise was wrong his hierarchical regress was wrong, because every real material causal series is temporal, not hierarchical.

There is a hierarchy of human abstractions which might be called causes only in the loose sense of the word meaning explanations.  These terminate in, what Feser would call, the most basic laws of nature whatever they turn out to be.

While you likely will not achieve nirvana as a consequence of reading my words perhaps they are a least a little enlightening.

As I understand it, causality is established when the propositions:
1. if C, then E
2. if E, then C
Are both true (C = cause, E = effect). Whether the process is temporal is irrelevant.

You have written an abstraction, which is not a real material causal series, rather, you have employed logical notation.

In real material causation C and E are actually mutually temporally interacting.  Each is both cause and effect for each other over time.

Of course, causal analysis can be much more complex than this, but the fact is that (to use the table-cup example), the table being present is a necessary and sufficient condition for the cup being one meter off the ground.

What, in your view, is missing? Why is this a "crude" attempt at examining causality? What would looking at the table-cup system through a microscope achieve which the "crude" attempt doesn't? What does it add to the analysis?

As described to RomanJoe below the water-cup-table-Earth system is a vastly complex system of temporal mutual causation.  The members of the system, the electrons and quarks, will interact over time according to their arrangement.

If some other actor imparts a force on the system then the system will be rearranged and interact according to that structure.  All causal systems are described in this manner.  There is no qualitative difference between the grandfather-father-son relationship and any other causal series.  Members interact simultaneously in the present moment.  Past members contributed their interactions previously and those past contributions cannot be undone by dismantling the members.  Future interactions are not real, only imagined, and may or may not be realized, depending on what other actors may or may not come along.


The Thomist looks at the water-cup-table-Earth system very simplistically, just blurts out "this cannot go on to infinity" and concludes "therefore god, just like Aquinas said"

There is a huge gap between 4 large scale objects being considered for a few minutes and infinity!  that is why I call the A-T way of thinking so very crude and simplistic.  There seems to be little analytical desire or capacity for the A-T proponent, with consideration of just a few large scale objects somehow being tantamount to an infinite regress.  Crude indeed.

Scientifically minded people don't think that way.  We go to the next step, and the next, and the next to see how things really work beyond simplistic naked eye observations.  In doing so it becomes readily apparent that every real material causal series is temporal and stretches back at least as far as the big bang, and perhaps to a past eternal universe, clearly an "accidental' series of which the crudely asserted "essential" series is just a small temporary temporal part.



 

SP wrote:Where?  Can you give me a post #?
Yours is an argument free post asserting ignored arguments.  What arguments?  Where?

Dude are you in your senses? This is the second time you're asking exact same thing , I've already pointed you to those numbers,

I don't see any reference numbers in 331, 340, or 374.  Maybe they are back there someplace, dunno
 

I refuted your claims about conservation of "material" for simply one instances of it.  

There has never been an experiment that measured new mass/energy persistently popping into existence out of nothing, or blinking out of existence into nothing. 

Conservation of mass/energy is a vastly evidenced experimentally confirmed scientific fact.
Therefore there is no *necessity* for a first changer acting in the present moment to account for the observation of continued existence of real material objects because material does not change in its existential respect.



*Mass/energy conservation is an experimentally confirmed scientific fact.
*The total amount of mass/energy within a boundary is measured to remain constant except for mass/energy that crosses that boundary.
*Persistence of material in existence is an experimentally confirmed scientific fact.
*Material stays the same in its existential respect.
*Material does not change in its existential respect.

No changer is *necessary* to account for no change.

Thus, the Second Way fails as an argument for the *necessity* of a hierarchical first changer to account for the persistence of existence of mass/energy that is manifest and evident to our senses,

Calhoun wrote:

And once again SP, Your arguments against Essential causal series total non-sequitor.  From nothing you say does the conclusion follow that "therefor all causal series are accidental, you simply assert this at the end of your claims."

"arguments"? You're too kind, Calhoun.

StardustyPsyche wrote:

Could you be more specific by pointing out the line(s) where you think my argument is invalid?

All your lines. You're incapable of rational argumentation. If I were JT, I'd clean your thread. Your incompetence to answer basic requirements to a discussion should be a proof you're just here to lose your time.

And honestly, I've grown tired of seeing all the same messages posted around from you. You're not even explaining things. You don't explain your pseudoarguments. You're here to make noise. You could explain your arguments, but you're not. You're just stating nonsense over and over again. I asked you to make clarifications, and you managed to produce even more confused nonsense.

As Feser would put it, watching you here is like watching someone playing tennis with himself, and losing. Except you managed to throw the racket out of the field, lose the ball, and you're kicking the dog for not telling you.

So, if there's a vote, I vote for giving you three messages to explain yourself. If you can't manage to do it, and if you're just here to troll, ban you.

If I were to meet you IRL, I'd slap you. And I'd claim that I didn't do it, since I'm not a cause.

Last edited by FrenchySkepticalCatholic (12/23/2017 2:15 pm)

@Calhoun

This is particular is blatantly false , 
*Material stays the same in its existential respect.
*Material does not change in its existential respect.
And in particular what does the term "existential respect" mean in the first place?

How can you say my assertion is false if you don't even know what my assertion means?

I used multiple phrases to say essentially the same thing hoping you would understand at least one wording.

Aquinas said

Now it is not possible that the same thing should be at once in actuality and potentiality in the same respect, but only in different respects.

So, "respect" has become a common A-T term.  It means "aspect" or "feature" or "facet".

"Existential" means pertaining to existence.  The term "existential inertia" is used commonly in A-T by Feser and others.  Existential inertia means the observed tendency of material to continue to exist.

"Material" is a common word, so common that there is a very common philosophical term called "materialist".  Material is that which really exists as independent stuff, as opposed to an abstract so-called object, which has no outside realization and is only imagined as existing.

These are all common terms, at least in A-T and various branches of philosophy and science.  I say much the same things repeatedly but using various words hoping at least one such wording will be understood by the reader.

The biggest problem once again here is your thinking that Whole are completely reducible to its parts, That is why your arguments against cup on table and other examples of essential series in mistaken

Of course the whole is reducible to its parts and their arrangement relative to each other and their interactions with each other. 

SP Can you cite an example of a real material "essential" causal series?
Can you explain what "real material" is supposed to mean in the first place?

Previously Agnostic used logical notation to express a causal series and concluded time was irrelevant to the logical relationship.  The flaw in that approach was that logical notion is not a real material process, it is an abstraction, an analog, a symbolic representation.

Using symbols for analysis is of course very useful, but it has some pitfalls.  Humans tend to conflate the manner in which symbols are manipulated with the manner of how a real material process proceeds.  Often the procedure of abstracting a real material process drops important aspects of how the symbolized real material process actually works.  Sometimes this is done intentionally for simplification, other times it is done unawares.  It is critical that when employing symbolic representations that we bear in mind the differences between our symbolic representations and the real material process we are attempting to model.

"Real material" is the actual material, the actual stuff, that which exists independently or our concepts about it.

Once again I don't need to say a word before you make your claims intelligible in the first place. but Its obvious that series here would require first cause, because all members of such series require actualization of potential.

Right, leading to a cosmological argument, the origins of causation or motion or change in the deep past, at least as far back as the big bang, perhaps to a past eternal universe in which case there is no origin and the universe has always existed and everything in the universe has always been moving.

Else, there was somehow a beginning to motion and perhaps a beginning to existence, again at least as far back as the big bang.

That is the great unsolved riddle.  Aquinas did not try to solve that riddle in his Five Ways, rather, he attempted to show the *necessity* of a hierarchical first mover acting in the present moment to account for motion and existential inertia that is manifest and evident to our senses.  Aquinas failed because he failed to establish such *necessity*, because his premise was wrong on modern science:

Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another

That premise is false as a statement of *necessity* in the present moment.  Inertia of motion, the conservation of kinetic energy, says that an object will continue in its motion unchanged except for energy that is temporally either gained or lost by that object but is not gained or lost existentially.


 

@Stardusty Psyche:

"Thank you for confirming that my arguments are sound with yet another argument free post from you."

How does an "argument free post" confirm that your "arguments are sound"? Do not bother to respond; you need prayers, not arguments. Go in peace and God bless you.