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Is it necessary that every effect should have a cause?? the idea of cause and effect can be found throughout human history, with many philosophers and mathematicians involved, and not to forget, the famous idealogy of "karma".
Could this mean we are an effect of an unknown cause?
There is a cause for every effect. The decisions you make in life all have effects your choice is the cause. And even if you can't see the cause of something then maybe it IS the cause of some effect later on in your life
According to me, this theory sounds right only until we can determine the exact cause of an effect, if this could be explained, I believe it has the potential to be mankind's greatest achievement, revealing the secrets of this universe we reside in..
God created all things including us, plain and simple. God who is there, the eternal living God who is independent of all things created all things. Deny the simple obvious truth and you are left with never ending religious endeavors and philosophical meanderings trying to explain reality and whether you mask it in scientific terms or not, you will never know what you are talking about.
This is a joke. Everything has a cause if you understand it or not. God caused all things to exist, God is the only being who was not caused. Leave God out of your attempts to understand reality and the kind of rambling nonsense of the OP and so many comments here is what you are left with and it will never end....leading only to death and never finding the truth.
Those OP links reference articles that are jokes. Why in the world do people actually find time to compose such self-flattering gibberish and pawn it off as intellectually entertaining reading? ........ ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth
Here's an example of the pseudo-intellectualism of one of the OP links........
"But the key insight is that random fluctuation in traffic will affect John’s commute time, whereas random fluctuation in John’s commute time won’t affect the traffic."
This is "the key insight"? This is supposed to be profound? Not only is it not profound, it's just plain stupid. Random fluctuation in John's commute time could cause a traffic accident and shut down the lines of travel for hours. What a joke, there is no end of these mush brains pretending to be intellectually superior by crafting complicated expressions of thought as they try to mask their own faulty reasoning........and then crowds of people who worship them like the author of this discussion are likely to pay the for their work...........
Calling it an effect would mean that it has a cause. That's circular.
But no, everything does not need, or even have, causes. The fabrics of reality, or reality as people call it, doesn't need a cause. It has been observed that many times in subatomic processes, effect comes before the cause.
And nothing has a single cause - it's always a sum of all possible causes.
Sure I do. Premise A was that atoms exist with no cause. Your response was equivalent to god of the gaps. We don't know, so you filled in the gap for us.
I have no significant up votes nor do you have significant down votes. Are you giving an emotional appeal or an intellectual appeal?
Premis B was that the fabric of space had no cause. Are you reverting back to Hoyle's Steady State Theory? Looks like it. Looks like the Big Bang doesn't enter your calculations in any form.
"Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.Reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still broader definition includes that which has existed, exists, or will exist."
what if what we call reality(what we think and perceive) isn't actual reality?
that way, we will never know what it actually is and hence can't find causes to it..
And nothing has a single cause - it's always a sum of all possible causes
This, I totally agree with. the title of the debate was just to present to everyone a vague idea of what it is.
It has been observed that many times in subatomic processes, effect comes before the cause.
quantum mechanics has been way different from newtonian mechanics, but we still use the latter, can't the cause and effect theory be something like that? even chance, which is considered to be an alternative to cause and effect, well opposing each other, fails in subatomic processes..
how can we talk about the cause of something we can't perceive?
We can reason for it.
Any possible fabric of reality must be uncaused in itself, or self caused which is about the same thing, for there can exist nothing beyond it to cause it.
Any possible fabric of reality must be uncaused in itself, or self caused which is about the same thing, for there can exist nothing beyond it to cause it.
hmm, does make sense!!! but it sounds more like reality being the superset of cause and effect.. in that case, shouldn't we not talk about a cause for reality as such?
True, it does lead to the russell's paradox.... but what about the idea of "an effect not being caused by any other" being reality, where the statement of "not being caused by another" being the cause and the actual reality that we speak about being it's effect?
Time wasn't always like this. All dimensions are originally spatial ones.
But then, things got strange and it became time. The other dimensions are still curled up and couldn't expand, except these 3 of space and 1 of time.
So without a time, there can be no causation.
Anything that is created can not be the final fabric of reality, for it doesn't satisfy the condition of being without any external cause. The external cause, therefore, must have a seperate reality subject to the same check, and so on, which can not continue infinitely.
In the case of multiple realities,(i may be wrong here though) a preceding reality can be cause of another? this should go on until a certain uncaused reality..., totally makes sense, is that uncaused reality, the ultimate reality being the superset of all other causes and effects? but again if we trace back every effect's cause and continue, we would end up at this uncaused reality, which then cannot be the superset in that case..., hmmm.., if what i said was right, the "infinity" of realities we would have to trace back would be uncountable infinity, and to talk about the end, of such an infinity would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
Uncountable infinity? Nope, it seems just like the countable one. In fact, I see no reason to even bring up cardinality right now. It isn't something most are familiar with, and infinite regress is an absurdity either way.
we would end up at this uncaused reality, which then cannot be the superset in that case
It will be the superset of all other sets, and wouldn't have any superset larger than it. Try representing a set that contains itself without using the '...' of infinite regress. It isn't possible, and that's how I've solved the Russell's Paradox.
Being self-caused, on the other hand, is still possible. In our reality at least, anyway. Since our universe satisfies those rules, it can be uncaused except by the rules of reality, something which doesn't count as a whole cause. That's what it means to be self-caused. However, reality itself can not follow that, and therefore must be entirely uncaused. That, too, seems to be satisfied in ours, with absense of proper dimensions of time.
Uncountable infinity? Nope, it seems just like the countable one.
why do you say so? I feel we can find infinite realities within every realitiy, here. each being a subset/superset of the other.
It will be the superset of all other sets, and wouldn't have any superset larger than it. Try representing a set that contains itself without using the '...' of infinite regress.
yes, this is what lead me to call it uncountable infinity, as the set contains itself, and infinite subsets, again , in the subset which is the set itself.., and if this is the greatest superset ever, and cannot have a larger superset like what you said, how can we talk about the "cause" of it?
maybe this might not lead us anywhere, but how about the idea of:
an effect not being caused by any other being reality, where the statement of "not being caused by another" being the cause and the actual reality that we speak about being it's effect?
why do you say so? I feel we can find infinite realities within every realitiy, here. each being a subset/superset of the other.
Each reality would be a single one on the causal chain, so a possible infinite regress must be a countable one.
as the set contains itself, and infinite subsets,
Actually, with what I said there, and it being uncaused, the number of subsets would be finite.
an effect not being caused by any other being reality, where the statement of "not being caused by another" being the cause and the actual reality that we speak about being it's effect?
Nope, for "not being caused" is not a cause. That's where it connects to the debate question, and my starting statement that calling something an effect beforehand is begging the question.
"not being caused" is the reason why we have an uncaused reality, shouldn't we call that a cause is my question..
Because something can not be caused by not being caused. So it makes no sense to call it a cause in itself, not to mention that it renders causation meaningless.
but between any two realities you find in the chain, you will find infinite realities between them,
Possible realities, sure, but they aren't part of the chain. Just like all real numbers aren't part of counting.
so just merely rule out every other "real" number just because they are not used as common as the numbers used in counting? are we trying to be biased here to the numbers in the series of counting?
those numbers, irrespective of how often they are used, belong to the set of real numbers.
Because something can not be caused by not being caused. So it makes no sense to call it a cause in itself, not to mention that it renders causation meaningless
sure, not being caused contradicts being caused, but it does act as a cause to why something is uncaused..
That's not a desperate interpretation, but an empirical observation. Nature always follows laws and is continuous in itself rather than a combination of unrelated sequences. Anyone is free to try proving it wrong.
And anyway, science is an empirical study.
Before science, however, the unscientific idead were what had desperate interpretations.
So I don't think you know much of what you are saying with that.
In the case of multiple realities,(i may be wrong here though) a preceding reality can be cause of another? this should go on until a certain uncaused reality..., totally makes sense, is that uncaused reality, the ultimate reality being the superset of all other causes and effects? but again if we trace back every effect's cause and continue, we would end up at this uncaused reality, which then cannot be the superset in that case..., hmmm.., if what i said was right, the "infinity" of realities we would have to trace back would be uncountable infinity, and to talk about the end, of such an infinity would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?
in most cases there are causes to every effect ...that doesn't mean that every effect has a cause,....a typical exam0ple is just a simple scientific explanation of an ATOM...an atom is a small particle of matter that exists on its own...
nothing causes an atom to exist...its existence is an effect without cause
Some confusion has arisen in the minds of persons considering this Principle, from the fact that they were unable to explain how one thing could cause another thing-that is, be the "creator" of the second thing. As a matter of fact, no "thing" ever causes or "creates" another "thing." Cause and Effect deals merely with "events." An "event" is that which comes, arrives or happens, as a result or consequent of some preceding event. No event "creates" another event, but is merely a preceding link in the great orderly chain of events flowing from the creative energy of THE ALL. There is a continuity between all events precedent, consequent and subsequent. There is a relation existing between everything that has gone before, and everything that follows. A stone is dislodged from a mountain side and crashes through a roof of a cottage in the valley below. At first sight we regard this as a chance effect, but when we examine the matter we find a great chain of causes behind it. In the first place there was the rain which softened the earth supporting the stone and which allowed it to fall; then back of that was the influence of the sun, other rains, etc., which gradually disintegrated the piece of rock from a larger piece; then there were the causes which led to the formation of the mountain, and its upheaval by convulsions of nature, and so on ad infinitum. Then we might follow up the causes behind the rain, etc. Then we might consider the existence of the roof. In short, we would soon find ourselves involved in a mesh of cause and effect, from which we would soon strive to extricate ourselves.
not necessarily, when we are generalizing. I request you to to go through the three links. it is very important to look into because we have this idea opposing the classical idea of chance..
With questions on the nature of reality, it is t a question of ought, but is. So does every cause have an effect? On the level at which we function, it is reasonable to believe that every effect is caused. The world of quantum physics gets a little fuzzy. We either do not understand the causal relationship of certain phenomenon, or some effects are uncaused.
The question this brings to mind is:Does every cause have a singular effect; or can there be there multiple, mutually exclusive effects so that what is could have been otherwise.
