Philosophy of Cosmology

[Xray]

But from the premise that everything that exists has a cause, it follows that there must also be something that caused existence to exist. Agreed?

No. O'ists (and atheists generally) do not accept that premise that everything that exists (or has ever existed) had a cause.

Would you agree that your answer weakens the positing of causality as a universal principle?

[George H. Smith]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum.

Ghs

[Xray]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum.

Ghs

That's what I was getting at: the whole issue ends up in in an infinite regress.

Would you agree that this weakens the positing of causality as a universal principle?

[Brant Gaede]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum.

Ghs

I think it was Barbara Branden who once said in answer to a question that there was no "first cause." The supposition, of course, is it's causes--not turtles--all the way down.

We can comprehend existence. What we can't comprehend is non-existence. That's because there is nothing to comprehend. The existence of non-existence is the contradiction we often fail to understand. Existence has to exist because non-existence cannot. That "void" does not exist. It's nothing at all. Existence creates space, and occupies it at the same time. That doesn't mean there aren't different things and densities all in flux. Obviously there are. But to reiterate, the idea of a first cause rests on the contradiction of the existence of non-existence. That's the hangup. Too many people think they comprehend and have to explain non-existence so they get hung up on the necessity of a first cause or something from nothing. Nothing comes from nothing.

--Brant

[dennislmay]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum.

Ghs

That's what I was getting at: the whole issue ends up in in an infinite regress.

Would you agree that this weakens the positing of causality as a universal principle?

What is wrong with a universe extending infinitely into the past, infinintely into the future and having causality all the way along? Causality remains a universal principle.

[Xray]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum.

Ghs

That's what I was getting at: thewhole issue ends up in in an infinite regress.

Would you agree that this weakens the positing of causality as a universal principle?

What is wrong with a universe extending infinitely into the past, infinintely into the future and having causality all the way along? Causality remains a universal principle.

If one accepts causality as a universal principle, then there must exist something (let's call it 'X') that caused the universe to exist.

From this it follows (if causality is to be accepted as a universal principle), that there also must exist something else which caused X to exist, and so on.

Therefore accepting causality as a universal principle implies accepting an infinite regress.

[BaalChatzaf]

If one accepts causality as universal principle, then there must exist something (let's call it 'X') that caused the universe to exist. From this it follows then there must also exist something else which caused X to exist, and so on.

Therefore accepting causality as a universal principle implies accepting an infinite regress.

Why couldn't the cosmos have always existed in some form or other? A quasi-cyclic eternal from eternal before to eternal after.

We have mathematical systems which are linearly ordered and have no first or last element (for example, the real numbers) so there is no logical contradiction in the notion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

If one accepts causality as universal principle, then there must exist something (let's call it 'X') that caused the universe to exist. From this it follows then there must also exist something else which caused X to exist, and so on.

Therefore accepting causality as a universal principle implies accepting an infinite regress.

Why couldn't the cosmos have always existed in some form or other? A quasi-cyclic eternal from eternal before to eternal after.

We have mathematical systems which are linearly ordered and have no first or last element (for example, the real numbers) so there is no logical contradiction in the notion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Can the idea of a quasi-cyclic eternal be reconciled with a philosophy resting on causality as a universal principle?

[BaalChatzaf]

If one accepts causality as universal principle, then there must exist something (let's call it 'X') that caused the universe to exist. From this it follows then there must also exist something else which caused X to exist, and so on.

Therefore accepting causality as a universal principle implies accepting an infinite regress.

Why couldn't the cosmos have always existed in some form or other? A quasi-cyclic eternal from eternal before to eternal after.

We have mathematical systems which are linearly ordered and have no first or last element (for example, the real numbers) so there is no logical contradiction in the notion.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Can the idea of a quasi-cyclic eternal be reconciled with a philosophy resting on causality as a universal principle?

Yes. A linearly ordered set in which each element has a predecessor and and successor but in which there there no first or last element can be constructed. For example the set of all integers, positive, negative and zero. There is no logical contradiction there.

An object or event has a cause and the cause has a cause and so on. Infinite regress does not produce a contradiction.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[George H. Smith]

Suppose you say X caused Y -- and I ask, What is X? You reply, X is nothing -- literally nothing. It doesn't exist.

The analogy (referring to the cosmos) would be: Y (the cosmos) exists, and since everythig that exists has a cause, there must also exist X that caused the cosmos to exist.

This wasn't my point at all. If the totality of existence, past and present, had a cause, then that cause either exists or does not exist. If the cause exists (or existed), then it is part of the totality of existence and cannot explain the totality of existence. If the cause does not (or did not) exist, then it could not have been the cause of anything. Ghs

Where does it say that being part of a totality excludes being able to explain the totality?

If the "first cause" is itself part of the totality of existence, and if the totality of existence requires a causal explanation, then the "first cause" also requires a causal explanation, in which case it cannot have been a "first cause." We then proceed to what supposedly caused the "first cause," where we encounter the same problem -- and so on ad infinitum. Ghs

That's what I was getting at: the whole issue ends up in in an infinite regress. Would you agree that this weakens the positing of causality as a universal principle?

This depends on what you mean by universal causation. I take it to mean that all events have causes. Nothing I have said weakens this principle.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This depends on what you mean by universal causation. I take it to mean that all events have causes.

George,

I understand this in the same manner. Universal means applicable throughout the universe.

The mistake I think some people make is trying to apply universal to the universe itself. In order to do that, you have to have an even bigger universe to contain the first one.

If there is anything like that, it sure isn't perceivable to two legged conceptual critters spinning in a hamster wheel pattern through time and space on a relatively tiny ball.

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote:

The mistake I think some people make is trying to apply universal to the universe itself. In order to do that, you have to have an even bigger universe to contain the first one.

end quote

I know I must be mistaken. Existence One which is also known as the universe was non existent at some-where and some-time which implies a Pre Existence One since something cannot emerge from nothing.

Existence One was infinitely small at the start of the big bang, yet Existence One is continuously expanding for the first time.

Existence One is not supplanting non-existence since non existence does not exist.

Or, per Dennis, Existence One has always existed and will always exist.

Are there dimensions outside of our existence? Could multiple universes exist in multiple dimensions?

I remember reading a book called, “Cosm,” by Gregory Benford.

The blurb:

After an accident in a brilliant young physicist's most ambitious experiment, it appears: a wondrous sphere the size of a basketball, made of nothing known to science. Before long, it will be clear that this object has opened a vista on an entirely different universe, a newborn cosmos whose existence will rock this world and test one woman to the limit: the physicist who has ignited this thrilling adventure.

Only the author of the landmark novel Timescape could so plausibly take the reader behind the scenes of major scientific research, so boldly speculate about the consequences of paradigm-shifting discovery, and so vividly capture the intense human drama as the forces of academia, government, theology, and the mass media battle for control of a mysterious new reality. COSM is Gregory Benford at his provocative best, exploring ideas at the frontier of mankind's understanding, and posing profound questions about Creation, human destiny, and the riddle of godhood.

About the Author

Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and was Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to sciences. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

end quote

I can handle scifi but I prefer to keep the philosophy out of my speculations like Feynman and Ba’al and thereby stay sane.

Peter

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Existence One was infinitely small at the start of the big bang...

Peter,

Here's a premise to check.

How do you know that?

And I mean 3 things, not one:

How do you know there is (or was or will be or somewhere in a time-loop) an "Existence One"?

How do you know it was "infinitely small" (whatever that means)?

And how do you know there was a Big Bang?

Michael

[Selene]

Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.

That is only when he is visiting our existence from his real home in Sljd, by the linking Nebula dimension of Ppw0t3;l which I thought everyone knew!

[Peter]

Michael wrote:

And how do you know there was a Big Bang?

end quote

Speculation. Molecular beings speculating changes matter at the Quantum Level.

I quoted from the book blurb, “Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.”

Adam responded:

That is only when he is visiting our existence from his real home in Sljd, by the linking Nebula dimension of Ppw0t3;l which I thought everyone knew!

end quote

That is funny. Let’s run with that.

Neither Gregory Benford, or Richard Feynman said the following.

The universe is something. The universe is infinite. Matter is in the universe. Matter is smaller than the universe, not infinite, fits into, and is moving in the universe.

Though it exists infinitely, the universe can only be perceived by humans if matter is present in the farthest observable part of the universe. Dark matter is NOT currently observable to molecular beings like us, though we know it is there.

If we observe the universe we change the universe, because the information exchanged between the observer and observed is real. The observation may or may not contain matter or energy as we currently understand it but some *thing* even if only information is exchanged upon observation, which changes the universe at the Quantum level.

If we observe close matter at the Quantum level we are changing that matter. If we observe the farthest observable reaches of the universe we are changing that farthest matter at the Quantum level. If we continue to change the matter at the farthest reaches of the universe, near matter including molecular being like ourselves will be changed.

We will risk the change and continue to observe because it is our nature to change the universe. Molecular beings can change the universe but we are not gods. It is just our nature.

Semper Speculatus cogitans fidele,

Peter Taylor

[BaalChatzaf]

How do you know it was "infinitely small" (whatever that means)?

And how do you know there was a Big Bang?

Michael

Infinitely small means 0 volume or a mathematical point. And we don't know there was a Big Bang, that is a stage at which the cosmos was a mathematical point. All we do know is that the cosmos is expanding now, and it was smaller in the past. If one "plays the Cosmos backwards in time" one concludes at some time in the far past the Cosmos was much smaller than it is today. The assumption that it started out as a point (0 volume object) is hypothetical.

As I have said before, I have dicey feelings about cosmology. We can never really reproduce the origins, we can only hypothesize about them. I am not ready to take the notion that Everything used to be squeezed into a 0 volume spatial entity with infinite energy , literally. This presumes the Cosmos sprang out of Something like a Cosmos in a box (a very small box at that).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Peter]

Ba’al warned us:

All we do know is that the cosmos is expanding now, and it was smaller in the past. If {one} "plays the Cosmos backwards in time" one concludes at some time in the far past the Cosmos was much smaller than it is today.

end quote

Yes! As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. Oh Yes! In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have expansion and contraction. And then we get spring and summer again. Confucius said to me, there is a Quantum ethics. My warning to you, Chauncey Gardner, is to stop thinking about dark matter. If you cannot observe dark matter at the quantum level then you cannot change it. It is, in a sense, off limits to molecular beings, which ensures our continued existence. If you ever do look at dark matter on the quantum level, a reverse action will occur: the molecular being will change, not the observed dark matter. Molecular observers would turn to stone. Living matter would become entropic. The dark matter would just get darker to observers though nothing really happens.

[Xray]

I am one of those who see the current universe as a form of steady-state. The red-shift is a slowly increasing speed of time but that can extend infinitely into the past and future. It is non-linear QM which allows a series of solutions towards a form of steady-state

universe [different than previous attempts].

But hasn't the steady-state theory been totally discarded by the scientific community?

[Xray]

This depends on what you mean by universal causation. I take it to mean that all events have causes.

The mistake I think some people make is trying to apply universal to the universe itself. In order to do that, you have to have an even bigger universe to contain the first one.

If there is anything like that, it sure isn't perceivable to two legged conceptual critters spinning in a hamster wheel pattern through time and space on a relatively tiny ball.

And since everything that we two-legged conceptual critters perceive and live with is finite and non-eternal, imo we cannot really wrap our mind around an idea like "infinity" and "eternity".

[Ellen Stuttle]

But hasn't the steady-state theory been totally discarded by the scientific community?

No. I think there are signs, dim ones but starting to glow a little, that a modified version of steady-state theory is on the horizon.

Plus, the cyclic multiverse theories are in a way steady-state theories.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

But hasn't the steady-state theory been totally discarded by the scientific community?

No. I think there are signs, dim ones but starting to glow a little, that a modified version of steady-state theory is on the horizon.

Plus, the cyclic multiverse theories are in a way steady-state theories.

Ellen

Sort of a unsteady, steady state. The Cosmos is persistent, even if it is changeable.

By assuming an eterna-verse, one does not need a Creator.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

But hasn't the steady-state theory been totally discarded by the scientific community?

No. I think there are signs, dim ones but starting to glow a little, that a modified version of steady-state theory is on the horizon.

Plus, the cyclic multiverse theories are in a way steady-state theories.

Ellen

I wouldn't take too seriously anything that the scientific community has discarded without examining all of the reasoning involved for yourself. I reject their reasoning as every supposed element proving consensus models is either not true or requires multiple fixes outside of experimental confirmation so as to remove the subject from proper science. More arbitrary variables than known quantities produces art - not science. Paint a nice picture - predict nothing.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

This depends on what you mean by universal causation. I take it to mean that all events have causes.

The mistake I think some people make is trying to apply universal to the universe itself. In order to do that, you have to have an even bigger universe to contain the first one.

If there is anything like that, it sure isn't perceivable to two legged conceptual critters spinning in a hamster wheel pattern through time and space on a relatively tiny ball.

And since everything that we two-legged conceptual critters perceive and live with is finite and non-eternal, imo we cannot really wrap our mind around an idea like "infinity" and "eternity".

Not so. Anyone who can deal with a linearly ordered set with no least or greatest elements it is not hard at all.

Mathematicians do it every day.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Xray]

And since everything that we two-legged conceptual critters perceive and live with is finite and non-eternal, imo we cannot really wrap our mind around an idea like "infinity" and "eternity".

Not so. Anyone who can deal with a linearly ordered set with no least or greatest elements it is not hard at all.

Mathematicians do it every day.

Ba'al Chatzaf

My focus re 'grasping infinity' is not on mathematics, but on the fact that concepts like infinity and eternity have no perceptual root for us as finite beings.

We all have used the infinity symbol countless times in school math, but this can be done without us getting in any conflict with our perceptual world because infinity and eternity play no role there.

But thinking about the cosmos is also thinking about the physical, and I think that's where it becomes difficult for us finite beings - whose mesoscopic perspective is causality-oriented; we need causal thinking in order to survive - to imagine that matter has 'always' existed, and that this existence has no cause.

If it is claimed that: (bolding mine).

The universe has always existed and will always continue to exist.

this implies that matter has 'always existed', and 'always existed' implies that there is no cause for its existence.

So while our whole thinking rests on causality, to claim that the universe has always existed places non-causality at the basis.

[Xray]

What is the identity of a quantum?

In indeterministic QM there is no identity. In de Broglie-Bohm deBB like QM theories [deterministic] the particles involved are those of classical mechanics [may have to add the work of Gregory S. Duane to make that point clear].

Don't buy the many myths describing quantum mechanics - if it sounds like BS you are most likely hearing a convoluted explanation from indeterminism lacking identity and causality and not the whole story.

Dennis

R. Feynman said that our being used to 'large-scale' behavior can make it difficult to understand why things seem to be so different in the quantum world. (transcribed from an interview shown on YouTube):

http://www.objectivi...16

"There's still a school of thought that cannot believe that the atomic behavior is so much different than large scale behavior. I think that's a deep prejudice. And it's a prejudice from being so used to large-scale behavior.

And they are always seeking, to find, (and waiting?) for the day that we discover that underneath the quantum mechanic, there's some mundane, ordinary balls hitting each other and moving us on.

I think they're gonna be defeated. I think nature's imagination is so much greater than man's - she's never gonna let us relax." (Richard Feynman)

Whereas Davd Bohm speaks of hidden variables never really having been refuted:

http://www.spaceandm...-david-bohm.htm

In the Fifties, I sent my book (Quantum Theory) around to various quantum physicists - including Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Wolfgang Pauli. Bohr didn't answer, but Pauli liked it. Albert Einstein sent me a message that he'd like to talk with me. When we met he said the book had done about as well as you could do with quantum mechanics. But he was still not convinced it was a satisfactory theory.

Einstein's objection was not merely that it was statistical. He felt it was a kind of abstraction; quantum mechanics got correct results but left out much that would have made it intelligible. I came up with the causal interpretation (that the electron is a particle, but it also has a field around it. The particle is never separated from that field, and the field affects the movement of the particle in certain ways). Einstein didn't like it, though, because the interpretation had this notion of action at a distance: Things that are far away from each other profoundly affect each other. He believed only in local action.

I didn't come back to this implicate order until the Sixties, when I got interested in notions of order. I realized then the problem is that coordinates are still the basic order in physics, whereas everything else has changed. (David Bohm, On Quantum Theory, Interview, 1987)

Classical physics says that reality is actually little particles that separate the world into its independent elements. Now I'm proposing the reverse, that the fundamental reality is the enfoldment and unfoldment, and these particles are abstractions from that. We could picture the electron not as a particle that exists continuously but as something coming in and going out and then coming in again. If these various condensations are close together, they approximate a track. The electron itself can never be separated from the whole of space, which is its ground. (David Bohm, On Quantum Physics, 1987)

Younger physicists usually appreciate the implicate order because it makes quantum mechanics easier to grasp. By the time they're through graduate school, they've become dubious about it because they've heard that hidden variables are of no use because they've been refuted. [bolding mine] Of course, nobody has really refuted them. At this point, I think that the major issue is mathematics. In supersymmetry theory an interesting piece of mathematics will attract attention, even without any experimental confirmation. (David Bohm, On Mathematics & Modern Physics, 1987)