You should spend time thinking about the Principle of Sufficient Reason and whether you believe it holds true. If you don't, you should spend time with the consequnces of that belief. If you ultimately conclude that it holds true, then we can talk about any other place you think the argument on page one fails.
I think I've addressed this point at length by this point. One of the chief problems with a priori arguments is that they rely heavily on their self-declared statements, which in turn require the word choice in the statements to make sense. Like a house of cards, if the slightest thing is out of place in an a priori argument there simply is no argument - it's not even a question of disagreement with its conclusions. But hey, I can keep listing things I find wrong with PSR if you like...I didn't want to go totally bananas on it. I'll even list an objection that covers a hidden premise you've been using, namely that PSR is the only possible proposition allowing for causal logic in the universe. Here's an alternative:
There are reasons for all things, and these reasons may include connections and causes that are beyond our ability to understand. So while we can posit that they exist, we cannot form causal conclusions about them since our conception of cause may not align with how they really are.So this variation might be called Agnostic-PSR, wherein we take it on faith that everything has a reason, but do not take it on faith that we can make positive statements about this.
And there's Tom's variation, where the farting goat creates reality and imbues it with the property wherein persistence is baked in without further input. That the farting goat vanishes subsequently was probably an unnecessary addition on Tom's part for the point to be made. This is the 'God setting everything in motion permanently' scenario which is oft mentioned. So here there would also be reasons for everything, but our ability to backtrace them would be cut off since there would not be any
active connectivity between the original reason and the current setup.
If you want to say that a philosophical statement should be accepted by someone else, which is literally the only reason to put forward a proof, then your #1, #2, and #3 priorities should be to establish common language and communication standards with your audience or interlocutor.
I disagree.[/quote]
You disagree that the primary objective in communication should be to communicate?
I have no interest in inventing a new vocabulary with each person I meet, creating my own little version of the tower of babel. If I meet a quantum physicist, I don't expect him to make up an entire new vocabulary to meet me half way. If I want to understand his ideas, I'll learn his vocabulary.
And if you think his vocabulary containts internal inconsistencies, you'll use his vocabulary anyhow without objection? It doesn't matter who in fact makes up the vocabulary; this isn't a question of who has the burden of coming up with the word choice. This is about the words being used having the same meaning in the minds of both participants,
however that should come to pass.
If someone is saying there's a disagreement about word meaning, and you insist there isn't, there is already a disagreement about word meaning!
What? I'm not insisting that you and I don't disagree. I'm just saying you're wrong and I'm right.
It doesn't matter who's wrong and right. What matters is that if we're stuck on a word's connotations then we can't proceed with things built upon the word until we agree the word's meaning is both coherent and consistent.
I have used the word cause in this thread as a synonym for the word reason, in the context of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. If there is a particular time I used it that you find confusing (i.e. you don't understand my meaning) ping it, and I'll be glad to clarify.
Yes but PSR does certain things within its parameters, and not other things. And in fact you have never really defined whether your use of it is entirely a priori, or employs a posteriori elements. I'm not sure if there's an authoritative understanding of this, but I suspect that historic uses of PSR were entirely a priori, meaning PSR was posited as a justification for making an a priori argument about first causes and such. Why can I say I know that God must be behind all things? The answer is I posit that my intellect and its logic are sufficient to think about it and come to a conclusion that is truth. So PSR ends up standing in as a permission (or an excuse) to posit these thought experiments (like first mover, like argument by necessity, etc) and say that they must make sense. I do not believe these uses of it would have claimed to have induced or derived PSR based on empirical results being consistent over time and therefore suggesting we can rely on our intellects for thought experiments. In fact the one would probably not imply the other anyhow. Your argument on pg 1, however, seems to be to use a posteriori information in its structure, and (as I've argued) unintentionally employs chronology. But realistically, would you agree that your argument is essentially completely a priori?
If I ask the question "Why does my keyboard not fall to the floor?" a fine answer is "because of the desk". be-cause. For the reason that. The desk is the cause of my keyboard staying aloft. The desk is the reason for my keyboard staying aloft.
I like Aristotle's four causes and I think it's a fine thing, but I'm not really invoking it here. It's a really simple thing to say: My desk is the reason my keyboard doesn't fall to the ground.
It's a fine answer if you're being informal, and it also employs physical laws which operate in time. I already said you didn't bring up Aristotle; what I could have added is that
you should, because the reason he divided things up into four causes was precisely to avoid mixing up what one means with a word like "cause". I don't like his divisions, but at least they acknowledge that you can't just lump reasons from different categories all together and use the word interchangeably.
-The desk is the cause of the keyboard staying above the floor.
-The atoms in my body cause me to exist.
-Matter persists because God causes it to persist.
The only thing these have in common is that you are offering explanations of things. But an explanation is an idea or a model, not a thing or an event. An explanation can be about an identity, for instance: 1+1=2. That's an explanation, but it's not something that exists and
causes effects in anything. Now you could use an awkward phrase like "1+1=2 is the cause of number theory" but that would be beyond awkward; it would not only fail to communicate anything but essentially puts us backward in understanding anything since we have to untangle a bad first step. It might be ok to say "1+1=2 is a necessary element of number theory" (let's say), but the word choice matters a lot in what you're saying. If the only commonality to "cause" in your usage is you're offering explanatory logic to something, it can mean basically anything, even made up things. And like I said it's such an awkward use of the word that it would better to employ an extant set of language (Aristotle's, just as an example) than to re-write English and use a word in a way where defining to your audience how you're using it requires a larger explanation than the proof you're presenting with it in the first place!
If you are confused by my words, ask me what I mean. It's simple friend.
That's my point, it's not simple. What you call a simple answer to a question of word meaning is actually an enormous rabbit hole where you are actually asserting all sorts of unannounced axioms to support that definition.
It looks perfectly coherent to me. Why does it look incoherent to you?
As I've mentioned, phrases such as "we can see that there are reasons for why things exists", "external cause", and "the nature of the thing itself" are deeply problematic for multiple reasons. Language
clarity is one such reason. Another is terms that are made to sound self-evident but which I think are not; in fact as I've mentioned I suspect their content is not coherent. Another is the fact of making an essentially a priori argument but using obervational data as support for it.
Now exists. I'm here, right now. I'm typing these words, right now. If you'd like to say otherwise, say it with some conviction and with clear arguments, not a vague appeal to who knows what. Give me a concrete reason to entertain your idea and I'll do so. Saying "probably" doesn't mean anything at all.
Lack of ability to say "probably" about complex topics is...probably a serious problem. That being said, I'm 100% sure you didn't understand why I wrote that, based on this response. Obviously you feel like there's a 'now'. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about whether there is
in fact[ such a thing as "now" in the formal sense, in the sense that you can freeze time and describe some kind of hierarchical structure in a moment
without any reference to before or after. You think you can do that, exemplified by your description of the keyboard and desk, but I think you are missing what I said earlier about EM repulsion happening in time only. It is not an instantaneous or static effect. There's no such thing as "EM repulsion
right now", there is only EM repulsion measured over time. This isn't just an artifact of inefficient measurement, any more than relativity is a reflection of bad time-measurement instrumentation. It's your insistance that you are not talking about chronology that I'm after here (which by the way is part of why I'm pretty sure this is a purely a priori argument). I'm saying the way you keep conceptualizing cause is in fact chronological, which is by the way ok, I think that is also how the original prime mover type arguments were also understood (i.e. to involve causes in time, not instananeous hierarchical structure).
Sorry for any typos, I don't have time to edit, gotta run!