Why?

What Causes Causality?

Published on September 8, 2004 By Phil Osborn In Philosophy

This line of thinking did not originate with the meeting of Christian Apologetics which I attended recently, but the arguments presented at the meeting were so cogent as to compel me to rethink my own atheistic positions on this issue, something which I have not tried to do for a lot of years.

I did not go into the meeting - my third one so far - with the intention or expectation of discussing or debating causality or free will. In fact, I was specifically invited to present what I consider to be a rock solid line of argument in defense of morality from a non-theistic perspective. I believe that I succeeded in doing so, as none of my central arguments on that issue were successfully challenged. So, the Christians fell back on the free will vs. causality arguments, where my thinking is admittedly not as clear to myself as I would like it to be. So, a useful challenge, anyway.

Briefly, the position outlined by the Christian proponents runs as follows. If you claim that the universe is causally deterministic - that is, whatever happens occurs precisely the way it does because antecedent conditions required it - then you, as a subset of this deterministic universe, are yourself determined in every way. Your belief that you choose your actions is as determined as everything else. In fact, any belief or claim to knowledge is necessarily specious, because you actually had no choice in the matter. You were determined to make any such claims, and they have no necessary relation to real claims to knowledge.

Think of a computer that you programmed to ask questions, make investigations and add to its store of data. No actual consciousness is involved, just a program that lays out a set of procedures and parameters and lookups, and maybe you throw in some fuzzy logic and randomizations so that if it gets totally stuck, it can get itself unstuck eventually. And, you incorporate in this program, as data, the fact that the computer is conscious. Non-erasable.

So, if you ask the computer, "are you conscious?" It responds, "definitely, of course, undeniably." And if it asks itself that question, it always gets the same answer internally as well. Any contrary evidence or logic runs head on into the programming.

Now prove to me that you aren't that computer...

The fact that you "know" that you are conscious is not proof. The computer also "knows" that it is conscious. Right?

Thus, if you want to believe in free will and real knowledge, which requires a real ability to choose, test, deny, etc., then, by these sorts of lines of argument, you have to go outside of deterministic causality. And that brings you to transcendentalism, or spirituality, which is half way at least to a belief in God.

Of course, I did not hear from the Christians how the spiritual realm was supposed to defeat determinism. Hey guys, ceteris paribus, ok? Maybe they're saving that for next month. And, just to shoot down spurious arguments from the start, the idea of uncertainty, as in the Heisenburg Uncertainly Principle - as expressed recently in the silly movie "What the Bleep Do We Know..." - having some connection to free will simply makes no sense. Just because you can't, even in principle, predict something doesn't mean that you have free will. Free will, to have any useful content, requires that YOU are the determiner of your own actions, not anything outside of you. Introducing a throw of the dice doesn't get you any closer to that.

So, clearly the state of the universe at any given time is either precisely determined by the prior state, or fuzzily determined/undetermined. As far as free will is concerned the issue of which picture is accurate is irrelevant.

What is my own intellectual starting point, arguing for the defense? OK, I am an entity in the causal, deterministic universe. I am not a mathematical point, but an acting entity in my own right. I have just as much right to claim that I am the determiner of my fate as any tiniest subatomic particle.

To which the response of the transcendental advocate might be, "Oh, but you agree that if you could compute the exact positions and trajectories of all the subatomic particles of which your body is made, then you could predict exactly what you would do next, without ever introducing the concept of free will. Right? So is 'free will' just a convenient grouping to simplify descriptions? Or what is the distinction?"

Interesting questions. Hopefully I can answer them.

But not tonight... Stay tuned. Ok, so I've been checking out the apologetics site, especially the articles by G. Brady Lenardos, the host of these meetings, to which both Christians and especially Atheists are invited attend in order to test their beliefs. I highly recommend these meetings, BTW, and not because I have any inclination as yet to abandon my four decades of atheism. Rather, the general level of discourse is WAY above what one expects from Christians, or what typically gets from even erudite atheists, and thus forces one to really dig deep into one's beliefs. This is good. This is how one arrives at truth. I would even like these meetings to webcast and archived, they're that good.

I had totally sworn off trying to argue with Christians, in fact, as my experience has always been that I could easilly debunk the arguments of the brightest of them, leaving them grasping at "faith" in the end, after assuring me that they could defend their position purely from reason. "Faith," BTW, is when you believe something because you want it to be true, but you don't have the evidence to support it. Unfortunately, when someone reaches that position, of having exhausted all rational justification, and falls back on "faith" as though this word for belief without reason - let's agree to call it "booga-booga" for a moment, just to make the point - has some magic quality of its own, it is useless to attempt to proceed any further. They're going to believe what they want, whether Jesus, Satan, Allah, Baal, Buddha, or whatever, and I would end up frustrated as always, having met all their conditions and then been rejected (literally) for nothing - nothing but an emotional committment.

I was initially loath, in fact, to even present the arguments for non-theistic morality, as I've had many Christians reach the point where I've defeated all their logic, and then they come up with, "Oh, but if people didn't believe in God, why would they be good?" Oh, terminal disgust... Truth, truth, truth. If morality is a lie to trap the weak slave mentality types, then why on Earth would you want to commit to it, anyway? So, I refuse to even tell them the answer until and unless they agree that the issue is totally separate from a belief in divinity, ok? Which they refuse to do, as, once again, they are in the booga-booga mindset that says that it's ok to believe in something just because it would be nicer if it were true.

However, we resolved this issue at the Apologetics beforehand, and so I happily presented my case.

Gettin back on topic, I suggest that anyone who wants a good introduction to basic ontology - the study of being - check out Brady's take on it in his The Existence of God. I've been through this particular line of argumentation back in the early '70's, and Brady lays it out very nicely. Up to a point, anyway.

When you get to his "The universe has always existed" branch in the logic, howeverl, you may, if you've had some significant exposure to logical analysis, start feeling that there are some errors of category going on. I will attempt to pin that down on my next go at this, as I think that therein also lies the crux of the deterministic causality vs. free will argument. In particular, notice Brady's use of "traversed" in that portion of his argument.

Later...

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