The first cause argument is simply a logical premise by premise argument.
P1: Every being that has a beginning has a cause for its beginning.
P2: The universe has a beginning.
C : Thus its "possesses" a cause for its beginning.
Why is this a valid argument that there is a first cause?
Its a logical argument that banks on logical pondering based on exactly what is concisely explained in the argument itself. To elaborate or expand on it, philosophers argue that every being is contingent, which means this being can exist in other ways, contingent upon something else, and that "something else or other being" has a beginning, and if that being is contingent, it would be contingent upon something else. This will go on forever and ends up in an infinite regression. Thus the conclusion is that the universe has a beginning. Now it has to be applied to the argument above.
I should first restate what is being said in my own words:
P1: Every existence that has a point in time at which it starts has a person or thing that gives rise to it.
P2: All existing matter and space considered as a whole has, collectively, a point in time when it started.
C: All existing matter and space considered as a whole has a person or thing that gives rise to it.
The argument that every existence is dependent upon some other existence, dependent upon some other existence, dependent upon some other existence, etc. forms a vicious infinite regression. Therefore, the universe has a beginning.
There is not necessarily any such thing as "time" - only the marking of the rate of the series of infinitely ongoing change by an observer. The change is the constant in that system - not "time."
An interesting idea, would this change the argument to be...
P1: That which came into being has a cause.
P2: The universe came into being.
C: The universe has a cause.
?
you have merely showed that either
1. There is an infinite regression of causes
or
2. There is an uncaused cause.
In philosophy, infinite regress of dependency is bad.
Vicious Regress can be said to occur if there is an impossibility, an implausibility, or a failure to explain. An inifinite regress of causes is a failure to explain. The universe is "All existing matter and space considered as a whole."
The Hilbert Hotel is a demonstration of the possibility of infinite regress. There is no contradiction in that concept.
And the philosophical argument fails because the premises it uses are not substantiated. And, in fact, the first is known to be false and the second is likely to be invalid for a number of philosophical AND scientific reasons.
Comparing to the Hilbert Hotel misses the point.
No, it shows that the argument doesn't deal with a logical possibility.
You need to show that there can be no infinite regress. Such regresses will not have a start: they will 'always be going'.
Your *assumption* that there needs to be a start to everything is one that needs to be validated.
Philosophically, we don't care if there is an infinite regress, except to say that it fails to explain and therefore is not an acceptable argument.
What's wrong with an infinite regression?
And the answer is NO-there are things that begin to exist that are uncaused.
And it is a contradiction to the notion of a first cause.
Yes, I think it can exist. It isn't proven, but it is a distinct *logical* possibility.
Infinite Regress does not contradict the notion of a first cause.
I already said above: electron-positron pairs in quantum fluctuations.
Yes. The pairs come out of a vacuum. In fact, it is one of the properties of the vacuum that such pairs spontaneously and randomly form.
It's proven as well as most things in science (which never gives absolute proofs--but neither does philosophy).
But the fact remains that 'uncaused things that begin' is not a logical contradiction and is actually indicated by modern science.
I said, 'uncaused in classical terms'. At the subatomic level, substitute statistical analysis. Examples are the emission of any particular particle in the course of radioactive decay, and the subatomic events giving rise to the Casimir effect.
Depends what 'temporal sequence' could have meant at Time Zero, no?
The Cosmo / Kalam arguments are presented as 'proof' by necessity that God exists ─ I don't recall seeing them in any other context. And the demonstration of that necessity was the Argument from Design. As I said, that argument isn't available any more.
Science doesn't do absolute proof, but there is evidence. I don't really know why you're still asking about this, way back in post #10, I gave you this link: Quantum fluctuation - Wikipedia. It also give links to some of the effects that are a direct result of this (evidence), like the Casimir effect and the Lamb shift.
I think the objection stands that these are not philosophical facts.
The claim of something from nothing is an old claim made by people using "science", that has often later demonstrated itself to be simple ignorance.
Since they are a work in progress, we can't actually draw firm conclusions.
Wiki is just wrong in this instance (maybe just very out of date). The following is from Matt Strassler, an actual theoretical physicist.
"I’ve talked over the years with many experts in “quantum gravity” [the poorly understood but required blend of Einstein’s gravity and quantum physics, a blend that will be needed to explain extreme gravitational phenomena] and I’ve never spoken to one who believed that the universe began with a real singularity. Why? Because
the singularity arises from using Einstein’s equations for gravity
but we know Einstein’s equations aren’t sufficient — they aren’t able to describe certain extreme gravitational phenomena.
Specifically, when the density and heat become extremely large, quantum physics of gravity becomes important. But Einstein’s equations ignore all these quantum effects. So we already know that in certain extreme conditions, Einstein’s equations simply don’t apply. How could we then use those very same equations to conclude there’s a singularity at the beginning of the universe?
We can’t.
And if we don’t know how to alter Einstein’s gravity equations to make them into quantum gravity equations, then — well, we don’t know what happens instead of a singularity.
Now that was where things stood before inflation was known. Inflation changes the details of the history of the universe quite a lot. But it doesn’t change the basic conclusion about singularities: we don’t and can’t yet know what happened at the earliest moments of the universe, because we have neither data nor sufficiently clear equations to help us answer basic questions about it. Related to this, we don’t know precisely how inflation started (or even could have started) in the first place.
I’m not making this up out of my head. Just yesterday I was involved in a long conversation with professors and post-doctoral researchers at Harvard, in which we discussed various exotic mathematical methods for exploring the inflationary epoch and the era before it. The possibility that there really is a singularity at the beginning of the universe never came up once.
...
Yet all over the media and all over the web, we can find articles, including ones published just after this week’s cosmic announcement of new evidence in favor of inflation, that state with great confidence that in the Big Bang Theory the universe started from a singularity. So I’m honestly very confused. Who is still telling the media and the public that the universe really started with a singularity, or that the modern Big Bang Theory says that it does? I’ve never heard an expert physicist say that. And with good reason: when singularities and other infinities have turned up in our equations in the past, those singularities disappeared when our equations, or our understanding of how to use our equations, improved."
-- Did The Universe Really Begin With a Singularity?
The philosophical question does not depend on whether or not there was a Big Bang. Your information, even if it were true, is irrelevant.
No it does not mean that way.
For example if I ask the question as "What caused me to get Head instead of a Tail on the particular coin toss" then if the toss is truly random then we are forced to say there is no answer to this question. Saying that "You got a Head instead of a Tail because there was coin out there to be tossed" is obviously not an answer.
Yes, in fact, the reason why the question of the coin toss cannot be answered is ignorance. Our ignorance is what makes the outcome "random".
Once again, the *time* of the event is what is uncaused. The instability is the result of the number of protons and neutrons. But the *time* of the event is not determined.
I'm not sure this matters to the OP. Something that begins has a point in time when it starts. Time cannot be conceived as a being or entity existing independently of temporal phenomena. Time does not have an independent ontological existence.
_____________________________________________________________
My thoughts...
The argument is clearly valid, but is it true?
I think that the easier premise to attack in the OP is the premise that the universe began. The Big Bang is a Scientific Theory - not a philosophical fact, so that argument has no power here. !!!
What then?
Philosophically speaking, why does the universe have a beginning?
