----- Original Message ----
From: david buchanan <dmbucha...@hotmail.com>
To: moq_disc...@moqtalk.org
Sent: Fri, September 17, 2010 12:01:44 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Philosophy is deadly
Platt said:
... I buy the scientist's assumption that for every effect there is a cause
That
at the beginning of the universe cause and effect suddenly becomes inoperative
to Hawkins and some other cosmologists seems to me to be a grand cop out.
Steve replied:
I don't think that Hawkings is saying that cause and effect get suspended at
the
beginning of the universe alone. The somethings coming from nothings happen all
the time on the quantum level according to my understanding of his theoretical
view. .. Believers often argue that the universe must have a beginning because
otherwise we would have an infinite regress of causes. ...
dmb says:
It's ironic that the issue of cause and effect should come up in a thread that
declares the death of philosophy. So much of philosophy centered on that issue.
Kant famously said that he was awakened from his "dogmatic slumbers" by Hume's
empiricism, specifically by Hume's attack on cause and effect. Basically, Hume
noticed that causal relations are never experienced as such. We don't see
causes
so much as we add the notion to explain why one event follows another.
This was a big deal at the time because all events in the universe was
conceived
as one long chain of causality going all the way back to the moment of creation
itself, going all the way back to the first cause. The first cause is what
starts the whole chain of causes and prevents an infinite regress. This is "the
prime mover". It's God. This idea goes all the way back to Aristotle, but it
had
been integrated into Christianity during the age of scholasticism. So when Hume
attacked causality itself as non-empirical, there were profound theological
implications. No causality, no first cause.
Ron:
In Lambda he expresses "analogically" that the principle of a "prime
mover" is an explanation for the most general terms which seeks to take in a
totality of experience.
He stated sources of change are always composed of particulars. (Another angle
on the what he
considered to be the most primary of ideas, the one and the many, ) Of the
general and the specific.
The basis of all explanation. Therefore we can only speak analogically about
such things.
The idea of the "prime mover" explored before Aristotle by Democritus,
Empedocles Anximander
to name but a few, forwarded, contrarity, Love, the indefinable. But Aristotle
posited something
a bit different. The act of being aware:
" Now such a mover must impart movement as do the desireable and intelligable,
which impel movement
without themselves undegoing movement. But what is primary of desire and for
intelligibility is the same;
for what is desired apears to be good and the primary object of rational choice
is what is good. Certainly
and end is desired because it seems good; it does not seem good because it is
desired. So the starting
point is the activity of knowing. Moreover intelligence is moved by the
intelligible."
"knowing, by it's intrinsic nature, concerns what is inherently best; and
knowing in the truest sense concerns
what is best in the truest sense. So intellect finds its fulfillment in being
aware of the intelligible"
"Hence the possession of knowledge rather than the capacity for knowledge is
the
divine aspect of mind,
and it is the activity of intellectual vision that is most pleasent and best."
"it is in this better state, that
the divine has its being and its life."
Ron:
I thought this bore some relavence to the topic.
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