Does existence necessitate a first cause?

Does existence necessitate a first cause?

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Go to bed, Aquinas.

yes
nigger, aristotle beat him to it
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

why though? for all we know what exists has always existed

Aristotle beat lots of people to a lot of things.

almost certainly not. There's a cause for everything but the origin? We're just dumbfounded as to what it is exactly because the human mind cant comprehend the whole because it's just a part.

>There's a cause for everything but the origin?
Physics tells us there are acasual events within the universe happening right now. Electroweak symmetry breaking resulting in nuclear decay is one such phenomenon - by its very nature it has to be acasual.

How do they know it's random and they aren't just assuming it is because nobody can recognize the cause?

No. There's no reason to assume that the laws of physics as we understand them need to apply at all scales. We've already seen they work differently for the very small, so it's entirely possible that for the extremely massive they work differently.

No, mostly because first cause is a contradiction in terms

>How do they know it's random and they aren't just assuming it is because nobody can recognize the cause?
you can prove I'm the math that it has to be that way and then make predictions based on that.

What you're referring to are hidden variable theories, and they have been largely disproven. Google hidden variable theories or the bell inequalities for further reading.

Aristotle would agree. In fact, he was sure that the universe existed eternally. But his unmoved mover is not a temporally first cause. It is the thing that is ontologically first in sustaining the universe. Aquinas' arguments posit the same thing, he agreed that it was possible that the world had no temporal beginning, he took it as a matter of faith that there was one. His proof weren't about that.

>by its very nature it has to be acasual.

Care to explain ?

>Care to explain ?
I wish I could. I'm not trying to lord it over you or anything but that's just how the match works. Trying to describe it in English isn't very meaningful beyond what I've already said.

Look into hidden variable theory, which is the attempted refutation of those ideas.

*the math works

I just have a hard time accepting that those kind of experimental results can actually provide us with material to make ontological claims about the world with, so I like to see how it is actually being done. Because in my experience often the results of experiments can be interpreted in many ways, and many scientists have poor interpretations of just what their data actually entails and doesn't entail.

It is kind of like how classical Newtonian physics lead many to believe in determinism. But it was mainly because that style of physics was just abstracting what was predictable and what was quantifiable from the world into it's descriptive equations, so those of aspects of reality that were not determinate and predictable obviously were left out from those results. But this had nothing to do with the world inherently, and everything to do with the framework initially set out, it was simply confirmation bias. Essentially I'm curious about how the method of inquiry may be affecting the results, and what philosophical inferences are being made to interpret those results.

>ontologically first in sustaining the universe
huh? how can something be first and sustain the universe if the universe is eternal?

I believe he's saying it is the fundamental force that dictates physics. i.e. physical material is eternal, but the laws that govern it are causative.

So was Aristotle just imagining that celestial spheres were sitting in the air for an infinite amount of time until a large, fluffy demiurge just decided to push them?

Yes, the intent of what exists.

is that not exactly what the big bang theory is minus ascribing the cause to a deity?

fair enough

>I just have a hard time accepting that those kind of experimental results can actually provide us with material to make ontological claims about the world with
I mean, if we're talking about a first cause and causality then a concrete example of an acasual phenomenon is relevant at least in guiding thought. I'm not pointing to this and making any other claims than that it's a relevant phenomenon.

>Because in my experience often the results of experiments can be interpreted in many ways, and many scientists have poor interpretations of just what their data actually entails and doesn't entail.
You're not wrong but the average philosopher trying to incorporate quantum mechanical and/or relativistic ideas does a poor job. And since you can't talk with any real meaning about the nature of the universe without such knowledge many of the old arguments are invalid

>Essentially I'm curious about how the method of inquiry may be affecting the results, and what philosophical inferences are being made to interpret those results.
the only people really equipped to answer such questions are philosophers of science with advanced degrees in the relevant scientific subject matter imo

Because the fact that it still persist needs an explanation. The first cause doesn't answer "why did it begin?" because there was no beginning. It answers "why does it persist at this moment?" because that does need an explanation. It's the ontological grounding for the universe.

Aristotle's unmoved mover is simply the cause of the perpetual motion in the universe I.E. perpetual change ( the two terms are synonymous to Aristotle, with what we call motion being a special kind of Aristotelian motion).

Aquinas' unmoved mover arguments adds on an answer to why the universe continues to exist, but doesn't have anything to say about a temporal beginning either.

Nope - the celestial spheres were always moving like that according to Aristotle. You can't have time without motion according to Aristotle, so infinite past time = an infinite past motion. It's just that while the unmoved mover, the spheres, and the earth all have temporally coexisted eternally, there is an order of what is affecting what - the unmoved mover is affecting the celestial spheres, which affects the earth. But nothing is affecting the unmoved mover. Hence it is "first".

>a concrete example of an acasual phenomenon is relevant at least in guiding thought

Absolutely, that is why I am interested in how they move from their experimental results to positing acausal phenomena.

> the only people really equipped to answer such questions are philosophers of science with advanced degrees in the relevant scientific subject matter imo

It would certainly be helpful if there were people who had pristine philosophical and scientific knowledge these days - sometimes the two disciplines are forced to talk past one another, where a synthesis is what is needed to make everything properly rigorous. There are only so many hours in a life time though, unfortunately.

>It would certainly be helpful if there were people who had pristine philosophical and scientific knowledge these days - sometimes the two disciplines are forced to talk past one another, where a synthesis is what is needed to make everything properly rigorous. There are only so many hours in a life time though, unfortunately.
They exist but they're few and far between. They don't get much support from the scientific community either... most physicists are totally indifferent or look down on philosophy, so the pursuit is mostly considered a waste of time.

What if the universe were an organism?

Why should we extrapolate anything other than the universe as the first cause?

No

Well if Aquinas'/Aristotle's arguments goes through then the first cause cannot itself be in motion - or change at all, and the universe is constantly expanding.

And if Einstein is correct they are not correct (funny enough Einstein thought Spinoza was the greatest meta-physician of all)

Bell's theorem only excludes hidden *local* variables.