On 03 Jul 2011, at 23:03, meekerdb wrote:
On 7/3/2011 11:46 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 3:44 AM, Constantine Pseudonymous <bsor...@gmail.com
> wrote:
it seems to me that there are certain preconditions that need to be
in
place in order for us to exist, and that furthermore and taking a
step
back, those preconditions necessitate further preconditions to have
been in place in order for them to exist.
so the real question is, is there perhaps a subtler order of
preconditions that is or needed to be in place that could account for
the subtler order of phenomena we perceive in the first person etc.
If you agree with the idea that everything that exists either has a
cause or does not have a cause it leads to the conclusion that
there must be some self-existent thing. So long as something has a
cause, it as you said, necessitates the existence of other things.
If you followed this chain of causes far enough you would find that
it either stops or goes on forever. If it stops then you have
found that self-existent thing (which exists without any prior
causes). If it goes on forever, it is either a loop or an
infinitely long chain. Either the causal loop or the infinite
chain may be considered self-existent objects, as they themselves
have no ultimate cause.
If you take mathematical truth to exist without a cause, for
example, the fact that Pi is less than 4, or that 28 is a perfect
number, or that the 12th element of the Fibbonacci number is 89,
then you can see how mathematical truth defines mathematical
structures. For example, the truth of where zn+1 = zn2 + c
diverges for any point on the complex plane defines an infinitely
large and varied structure known as the Mandelbrot set. Likewise,
various solutions to the equations of string theory may define the
mathematical structure much like our observed physical universe.
Mathematical truth seems like a good stopping point in the chain of
causality, because it is difficult to see how the truth of 1+1 = 2
could have a cause.
Jason
This seems to be category mistake. The kinds of things that make up
causal chains are events. The kinds of things that are true are
sentences. To ask what is the cause of the truth of a sentence is
to ask whether what it refers to is the case. Something like 1+1=2
doesn't have a cause, but neither does it cause anything, except the
truth of a descriptive sentence.
All what you say here depends on metaphysical assumption.
If we are machine, anything above the laws of addition and
multiplication is a universal machine idea, and this has to include
physics and observable.
UDA shows that any doubt you can put on this can be transformed into a
reason for NOT saying yes to the doctor.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
