why (be) cause?
September 26th, 2006, search relatedRelated posts :: No related posts
In a message dated 26/09/2006 10:39:00 GMT Standard Time,
michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk writes:
Jud uttered this phrase recently:
reactions to causal objects
Two questions (or are they just one?) Jud:
1) given (for now) the exclusive, ubiquitous and universal happenstance of
what you (as el-mat) call “causal objects”, why do such entities (as such
entities) cause anything? Or, (what amounts to the same thing) what is the nature
of cause-qua-cause? Or, why cause? I’m asking for the because of cause.
Jud: Answer to 1) Because if they didn’t - they wouldn’t exist.
Michael:
2) given all of 1) above, what causes causal objects to cause (anything)?
Jud: Answer to 2) The fact that they exist as objects in the first place -
for all objects are causal objects. If like Dr. Eldred you are unhappy or have
difficulty with the word *causal* [as opposed to its synonym *changing*
there is nowt I can do about that I’m afraid. Talking with the eliminative
cognoscenti I would drop the adjective *causal* anyway, for it is a redundancy
really, and is only employed on lists such as this to signal to the ontofolk that
*change and *cause* are the same thing.
Michael:
(a) If nothing (or no causal object) causes causal objects to cause
anything, then is not this very nothing one more causal object? And thus one has to
admit nothing into the world of causal objects…
Jud: Answer to (a) That which causes causal objects to cause [change] is the
causal object itself. There is no *spirit of the causal object* or *life
force* or *Law of nature* if that’s what you mean? That is all ancient hocus
pocus. Contrary to what Hamlet mused there is no existential alternative.
Objects CANNOT NOT EXIST and objects cannot exist as unchanging non-causal objects.
There is no Deus ex machina of change because the machinery of change
[cause] does not exist. Only the changing object exists.
Michael:
(b) If it isn’t nothing that causes causal objects to cause anything, then
it is some thing (and given (for now) the exclusive, ubiquitous and universal
happenstance of what you (as el-mat) call “causal objects”) and that
something must itself be a causal object since nothing else is anything at all… and
now we have an infinite regress.
Jud: Answer to (b) It is CERTAINLY something that causes causal objects to
cause anything and that something is the individuate causal object which
impinges and is impinged upon. The human grammatical construction of plurality
does not exist. Hence *causal objects* do not exist. What exists are objectival
singletons in spatial positionalities of contiguousness or separation.
Ubiquitousness does not exist. Similar types of individual changing objects [as
typified by human sensorial systems] exist throughout the cosmos. *Happenstance*
or *events* such as *car-crashes* do not exist. Only the causal objects in
what humans [for convenience] call *a car-crash* exist - the cars, the
occupants, the road, the traffic lights, the oil on the road, the inattentive child
crossing the road without looking etc.
regards,
Jud Evans.
Personal Website:
_http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/index.htm_
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…)
