Master_Ghost_Knight
New Member
leroy said:I already provided a definition 3 times
The efficient cause is what did that. If a ball broke a window, then the ball is the efficient cause of the window breaking. Every change is caused by an efficient cause. If your eye sees, then it sees because light from the object strikes your eyes and causes you to see what is there. Efficient causes answer the what did that question, but do not answer how it was done.
That is not a definition its a tautology. Since you failed to make things clear, I'm just going to provide an interpretation of your "definition" for you, based on the highlight in bold:
In the statement "A causes B" the efficient cause is "A".
Well... wasn't that helpful?
Why is it then that you don't say that the broken window caused the ball?
Why is it that you don't say that anything causes everything else?
What is it exactly that you mean by "the ball caused the broken window"?
And what exactly do you mean by efficient cause without a material cause? In case you haven't notice, an "A" must exist. Do you suppose that there could be such a thing as an imaterial A that exists and it can cause things? Or do you suppose that an non-existent A (that exists) causes B? How is this not absurd to you?
It is utterly frustrating having a conversation with you. I just demonstrated mathematically the absurd implications of your statement, and you completely ignored it. You failed to address any of it, you just forgot about them, moved along, forgot that they existed, and continued to spew the same miss-informed nonsense.leroy said:If we assume that the glass was broken in the exact moment where the hammer touched the glass, then the cause and the effect would be simultaneous.
...
If you take a snapshot of the universe at any given state, the glass is either broken or it isn't. If it isn't then the point is moot as the glass is not broken. If single snapshot of the Universe (a state) comes into existence and you see that the glass is broken and the hammer is pressing against the shards, you don't have an hammer breaking the window as much as you have a broken window and a hammer pressing against the shards. It wouldn't make any more sense to say that the hammer caused the broken window as to say that the broken window caused the hammer.
It is also impossible according to the laws of physics as no information can travel faster than the speed of light, so no effect can propagate outside the light cone and the glass is not the hammer. For the glass to break, the once coherent glass molecules must move relative to one another and cover a distance sufficient enough to break the bonds, and this process is not instantaneous, since you need:
1. A moment where the hammer is moving towards the glass with an X amount of kinetic energy
2. A moment where the kinetic energy of the hammer is transferred unevenly onto the glass. i.e. Where the glass has the kinetic energy and the hammer doesn't.
3. A moment where the previously stationary glass molecules start to accelerate away from each other at unequal magnitudes.
4. A moment where the glass molecules acquire a non-zero speed.
5. A moment where atomic bounds are sufficiently far enough from their previous neighbor in order to break.
Lets take Kants example, about the heat and a fire. Heat does not propagate instantaneously, the heat you may feel right now does not come from fire that exists right now, but from fire past which is now gone that released the heat. If the universe had just came into existence and you were to find that you instantly fell the heat and there is a fire ranging, the heat was not caused by the fire, but rather the heat and the fire just exist independent from one another.
Take any example you can possibly think of, and you will find out that the case is always the same every time.
There is no such thing has effects that are simultaneous to its cause, such a thing is incoherent! It just sounds like something that might be sensible, to humans that don't understand what is going on, but it utterly falls apart at any type of close scrutiny.
Its not a false dilema, its an important point in the relation of causation that you are simply not getting.leroy said:You are presenting a false dilemma,
Bingo!leroy said:the glass was not broken before the hammer touched the glass.
Number 1 is the incoherent one. While number 2 must necessarily be the case, despite your objections.leroy said:I agree that this is a controversial point and that there is peer reviewed literature on both sides, but if our alternatives are.
1 Accept simultaneous causation as possible
2 Accept that the universe came in to existence “a causally”
I would go for the first, since the second is demonstrably incoherent while the first has never been proven to be incoherent.