“Everything That Begins to Exist Has a Cause.”
Simple enough, right? Well, maybe.
- Every change in this world is only a transformation of one thing into another, that is, a change in the “form” of existing matter. When we say that something came into being, are we using this phrase in the ordinary sense as in, “a child is born,” “a book has been printed,” “a hole dug”? Or should we be more precise, and if so, how?
- What exactly begins to exist? Objects? Object properties? Events?
- If properties, then essential or accidental properties? Which ones? (Is motion one such property? But motion requires no cause in order to persist. An object will remain in uniform motion relative to some inertial frame unless acted upon by some force.)
- Everything that begins to exist has which of the Aristotle’s four causes?
- Must the cause precede the effect in time? Can there be backward causation? Is it meaningful to talk of God’s creating the universe as a cause “in eternity”?
Perhaps what we need to do is look at the world and see which changes of which objects within it (both bodily and spiritual) require efficient causes in order to make them happen. Then the following a fortiori cosmological argument for the existence of God will work: if every change (except change in spatial location) here requires a cause, then much more does the universe itself, and the being which can cause things to be created from nothing is “what everyone calls God.” Then “everything that begins to exist has a cause” will be, if there are such things, a synthetic a priori statement.
Posted: December 15th, 2006 under Philosophy, Religion.