As an atheist, Sartre denied that man is born with certain values, that man is born with universal ethics. As such, man must define freedom through his own actions. Freedom, in a classical definition, is to be without restraint. Sartre attempted to expand that definition by asserting that man was a prisoner of his own freedom, and that freedom was the only source of values. In short, man decides his values as he discovers his freedom.
As such, it matters not what side of a battle man sides with, so long as man acts with “good faith”, chooses the good of an action. Man, being his own source of freedom, establishes his own values. To deny introspection, to not choose to act for the good, leaves man in anxiety and acting in “bad faith”. Man must not act as others act, in a universal good, because that would remove introspection, would render the decision bad. Being born without a hierarchal system of values, man continually builds his own. As such, man is able to destroy the hierarchy with each choice and establish a new one. Man, realizing that he is the source of values, the fount of freedom, will only choose to adhere to his freedom. Man then, with a god removed, is his own judge.
Sartre was emphasizing that freedom is subjective, in that, man and man alone is capable of understanding his own freedom. Sartre believed that most men hide from their freedom, in denial of it, and adopt the deterministic values of society and/or theology. Attribution to external sources is utter denial of inherent freedom. Things influence things, but man, as an actor, is not a thing. Man is responsible for himself. To act differently makes man inauthentic, and man renounces his humanity.
To further extend freedom, no man has rights, as rights are external things. Rights are determinism. A ruler has the right to rule because the citizens deny their freedom in a Nietzscheian slave-morality as they accept passively the values set before them. Rights
have no ability to guide one’s action, to determine conduct. Man, being aware of his freedom, creates his own values, his own hierarchies. As such, even a revolutionary, one who battles for the freedom of all, denies his own freedom, as a revolution carries its own values and rules of conduct, ethics.
Sartre has established that man being free determines his own values, and as such, those values are mercurial, changing with each situation. A man who must choose between family and country can not rely on established values, but must determine his own action. Man must act for the good. How each man determines the good is man’s freedom. Freedom then is an active form, is not in stasis. Man who resists freedom is in a continual form of anxiety, as he must determine
to act for the good, to create his own values with each situation.
20 December 2009
15 November 2009
Epistemology and Analogical of the Teleological Argument
The epistemological and analogical methods of the teleological argument are attempts at proofs for the existence of a god. Epistemology (knowledge) relies on the Platonic idea that knowledge is composed of truths and beliefs. It is the beliefs part that makes a proof for god difficult, if not impossible. Analogical arguments rely upon building logical proofs that combine humans with natural entities, cosmos. A common objection to this method is that humans are not like natural entities.
An argument from belief is deux visage in nature. Belief generally can not be provable as probable. To counter this argumental style, one could assume that the belief portion would be the easiest to target. Because of this, it is upon the believer to prove that one's beliefs constitute fact, as in:
I believe in X.
There must be at least one X.
Therefore, X is true.
The believer could use the tactic that belief is not something that can be measured by scientific principles. This is a quite defensible position. Semantical arguments, Wittgenstein's language games, sever a need to justify belief by the standards of science. The basic argument is that belief is written in the language of a divine being, and science is an artificial creation by man. As such, they are not cohesive nor interchangeable. Belief becomes a function of a purely religious realm.
In reality, disproving that “at least one” is key. The reason for this, is that for every argument made against belief, the believer can counter. Also, because belief is not tangible, it is a theoretical possibility. More simply, if someone believes that god is a rock, and states that there must be at least one rock that is god, the disproof of god being a rock is impossible. But one could show through a preponderance of evidence that no known rock is god. Following Ockham's Razor, because no known rock is god, then it would go to reason that there is no rock that is god. And even so, the argument can quickly turn circular. The believer might then simply counter that while every known rock is not god, one has not found the god rock. While Ockham works for science, it does not necessarily work for belief. And again the argument swings back to language games.
For analogical arguments, a logic proof is established. It systematically develops from the regularity of the universe, to its relations to humans, the to necessity for a god. For example:
The universe is ordered by laws.
Man is ordered by laws.
Laws are not spontaneous.
Neither the universe nor man created these laws.
Therefore, a creator established the laws.
Another version of the argument is to claim that:
The universe is ordered and like a machine.
Man is ordered and like a machine.
A machine can not create itself.
Therefore, a creator made both man and the universe.
This method of argument uses both induction and scientific fact to support itself. As one is unlikely to disprove scientific fact, the inductive process must be found fallible. While it is both true that man and the universe is bound by laws and have machine-like qualities, it is not necessarily true that those laws and qualities are the same. But even so, variability in law or quality does not disprove the theory. Given that:
A is non-B
C is non-B
are both perfectly logical. It is the conclusion that can be fallible. To state that A and C are non-B, requires extra steps to prove so, because while neither is non-B, there is no necessitation that A and C are the same. Doing so, is a false analogy and possibly tokenism. Does either system of argument have merit? The epistemological argument appears to be the most fallible of the two, in that, arguing from belief and trying to incorporate it as fact is improbable and most likely, impossible. If belief was an acceptable argument style, then anything would be possible. One could claim that they believe that they are god and as such then, would not be disproved. There are simply too many inherent flaws in the epistemological method.
As for the analogical argument, establishing a valid logical proof is also difficult. It is the transition from observable, scientific fact to supernatural necessity that is questionable at best. To make the leap that one can go from the observable to the unobservable is comparing disparate things. An orange is not an acorn. It seems also, that the analogical argument is better window dressing on the epistemological argument. But what it can not avoid is belief. Something that is unobservable requires an element of belief. And yes, belief has been responsible for amazing scientific discoveries, but those discoveries did not stem solely from belief.
An argument from belief is deux visage in nature. Belief generally can not be provable as probable. To counter this argumental style, one could assume that the belief portion would be the easiest to target. Because of this, it is upon the believer to prove that one's beliefs constitute fact, as in:
I believe in X.
There must be at least one X.
Therefore, X is true.
The believer could use the tactic that belief is not something that can be measured by scientific principles. This is a quite defensible position. Semantical arguments, Wittgenstein's language games, sever a need to justify belief by the standards of science. The basic argument is that belief is written in the language of a divine being, and science is an artificial creation by man. As such, they are not cohesive nor interchangeable. Belief becomes a function of a purely religious realm.
In reality, disproving that “at least one” is key. The reason for this, is that for every argument made against belief, the believer can counter. Also, because belief is not tangible, it is a theoretical possibility. More simply, if someone believes that god is a rock, and states that there must be at least one rock that is god, the disproof of god being a rock is impossible. But one could show through a preponderance of evidence that no known rock is god. Following Ockham's Razor, because no known rock is god, then it would go to reason that there is no rock that is god. And even so, the argument can quickly turn circular. The believer might then simply counter that while every known rock is not god, one has not found the god rock. While Ockham works for science, it does not necessarily work for belief. And again the argument swings back to language games.
For analogical arguments, a logic proof is established. It systematically develops from the regularity of the universe, to its relations to humans, the to necessity for a god. For example:
The universe is ordered by laws.
Man is ordered by laws.
Laws are not spontaneous.
Neither the universe nor man created these laws.
Therefore, a creator established the laws.
Another version of the argument is to claim that:
The universe is ordered and like a machine.
Man is ordered and like a machine.
A machine can not create itself.
Therefore, a creator made both man and the universe.
This method of argument uses both induction and scientific fact to support itself. As one is unlikely to disprove scientific fact, the inductive process must be found fallible. While it is both true that man and the universe is bound by laws and have machine-like qualities, it is not necessarily true that those laws and qualities are the same. But even so, variability in law or quality does not disprove the theory. Given that:
A is non-B
C is non-B
are both perfectly logical. It is the conclusion that can be fallible. To state that A and C are non-B, requires extra steps to prove so, because while neither is non-B, there is no necessitation that A and C are the same. Doing so, is a false analogy and possibly tokenism. Does either system of argument have merit? The epistemological argument appears to be the most fallible of the two, in that, arguing from belief and trying to incorporate it as fact is improbable and most likely, impossible. If belief was an acceptable argument style, then anything would be possible. One could claim that they believe that they are god and as such then, would not be disproved. There are simply too many inherent flaws in the epistemological method.
As for the analogical argument, establishing a valid logical proof is also difficult. It is the transition from observable, scientific fact to supernatural necessity that is questionable at best. To make the leap that one can go from the observable to the unobservable is comparing disparate things. An orange is not an acorn. It seems also, that the analogical argument is better window dressing on the epistemological argument. But what it can not avoid is belief. Something that is unobservable requires an element of belief. And yes, belief has been responsible for amazing scientific discoveries, but those discoveries did not stem solely from belief.
01 October 2009
Heidegger’s Pursuit of Nothing
Heidegger, high priest of neologisms, has presented the question of metaphysics by presenting the idea of the Nothing. One could blame translational problems on the difficulty of understanding exactly what Heidegger was trying to say, or one could simply blame Heidegger for creating words to aid in hindering the understanding of the Nothing. Perhaps Heidegger is intentionally oblique or perhaps one has to be mad to understand him. Heidegger asks the seemingly simple question of what exactly is the Nothing, and then proceeds to explain what it is not. Heidegger may have assumed apperception from his devotees, but for generations that have followed, the Nothing has been something that has eluded explanation. Or does it? Perhaps the Nothing is truly that: nothing.
Heidegger spent the beginning of his essay eliminating science and logic as defenses against metaphysics. This purposeful removal forces the reader into an uncomfortable arena, an arena where one is stripped of science and must rely upon reason and intuition. One has lost the right to ask how and forced to ask Why? The why of science is the why that means to what extent or for what purpose or how. But this why is not that Why that Heidegger has prompted for. By eliminating science and logic, he returns to an older Why. Heidegger’s why is the unanswerable Why, the Why that is the Nothing, the zenith of metaphysics. When one ponders the unanswerable one does not truly seek to explain the question, but to understand something else. How does one define a god? Or better yet: Why god? A theologian would presumably have hundreds of answers, yet not the answer, and that is what the Nothing is; it is the answer than can not be answered, yet has all answers.
Science, in Heidegger’s view, had reduced man to calculations. For example as Max Born wrote:
Modern physics has achieved its greatest successes by applying the methodological principle that concepts which refer to distinctions beyond possible experience have no physical meaning and ought to be eliminated. (Max Born, "Continuity, Determinism, and Reality", (Danish Academy of Science, Mathematics and Physics, Section 30, No. 2, 1955), p. 4 .)
It is this assumption of science that Heidegger rejected in his elaboration of the Nothing. He wanted one to question that which has no physical meaning. As Heidegger wrote:
If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wishes to know nothing of the nothing.
Ultimately this is the scientifically rigorous conception of the nothing. We know it, the nothing, in that we wish to know nothing about it.
Science is impotent then, to describe the Nothing, as the Nothing is nothing to it. To remove the Nothing from calculations, the Nothing is removed from “is”. So how then to
approach the Nothing? Heidegger opens the window to the Nothing through Anxiety. Not the general anxiety that is fear or trepidation, but the great Anxiety, the Anxiety that eludes
explanation. “We can not say what it is before which one feels ill at ease.” It is in this Anxiety that one eludes the totality of Beings and slips into the revelation of the Nothing.
This Anxiety then is the involuntary removal of the Self from beings, the curling of the mind away from logic towards questions without answers. Heidegger also states that one
can not pursue Anxiety and thus can not pursue the Nothing because “pursuit” is beingcentric. Anxiety is and the Nothing is, but neither can be grasped through conscious
deliberate intention. They are both a destination without traveling.
So what then of the Nothing? “In our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that ‘is’ such and such; we posit it as a being. But that is exactly what it is distinguished from.” To turn a Heideggerian phrase: the Nothing is something that is nothing because nothing can not be something yet can be Nothing. It is this interpretation of the Nothing that Heidegger states in the mist of his exposition. The Nothing is the quality of abandonment of preconceived notions, of logical puzzles. The Nothing denies the “is” of something.
Denying or defining the Nothing means to lose Philosophy itself. “The nothing what else can it be for science but an outrage and a phantasm?” Man’s quest to explain everything is the quest to eliminate the Nothing, to eliminate metaphysical questions, which in turn causes Philosophy, the pure essence of the Nothing, to become philosophy,
the science-driven pursuit of knowledge. Adhering to science, Man loses his own essence. Losing the essence of Man is like the losing of childhood wonder. An old saying goes: “your childhood is over the moment you realize that you are going to die.” This is where logic and science intrude. And this is where the Nothing is lost.
But the Nothing can not be truly lost for it is always there. Heidegger seems to prompt for one to unlearn what one has learned, which is a Taoist and Buddhist ideal. To unlearn one abandons accepted fact and explores the unexplainable, not to explain it but to question it, to ask the Why. The question of the unexplainable is not rooted in the explanation but the journey to it. A journey is not pursuit because to undertake a journey one never needs to travel to a destination. A pursuit is an action that has a conceived end. It is the journey that is the Nothing; it is Philosophy itself. Philosophy, the Nothing, then is the question of the Why?
“Unyielding antagonism and stinging rebuke have a more abysmal source than the measured negation of thought.” The measure negation of thought is the Why and the Why is the abandonment of measured logic. To a scientist the why of why is the sky blue is answerable because of the refraction of light in semi-spherical water vapor. The Why of why is the sky blue to a child, full of wonderment and without scientific rigor, has no answer and all answers and is the Nothing. The journey of childhood is ensconced in the Why. All things to a child are encountered for the first time and this encountering is wrapped in the Why. Children are rarely satisfied with the adult answers to their questions, always prompting for further
explanations. This is the Nothing.
A friend’s child once asked if all veterinarians are vegetarians? Certainly they are not and this is the essence of the Why. Logic would answer that it is improbable and unfeasible to assume that all veterinarians should be vegetarians because such a thing is dis-logical. But in the Why, the Nothing, the question is not the asked one but the one that is implied which is: Why is it that not all veterinarians are vegetarians? The answers are not important; the question itself is.
Music is the journey of the Why. Music can be explained in terms of mathematics and physics. The Mozart Effect is a known phenomenon. And because it is a phenomenon science has despaired to explain it. But in the Nothing there is no need for the explanation but for the experience of it. Music is or the Mozart Effect is. This is the Why and not the why.
Heidegger wrote “Metaphysics is inquiry beyond or over beings which aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our grasp.” The essence then of beings, the essence of metaphysics itself, is then the Nothing, the Why. Grasping the ungraspable is the pursuit of science and not the journey of the Nothing. The existence of the ungraspable and the Why of it is the Nothing. This is Philosophy.
Lao-tzu in the Tao te Ching, which predates Heidegger by over two thousand years, wrote of the Nothing as “it is hidden but always present.” How can something hidden be present? The asking of this question is the Why as it has no answer outside of science and this is the essence of the Nothing that Heidegger reveals. Without science there is the Why and the Nothing, which are questions without answers. “The nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings.” The core, the Being, of beings then is the Nothing. It is a Hegelian essence. A being without Being is the why and not the Why.
Science can not explain the essence of a being just as it can not explain free will. It can define, but the definition is not an explanation. Searle and Dennett have argued for decades over the concept of free will, both seeking for a resolve to the question. Their disagreement itself is the Why, is the Nothing revealed. Free will, consciousness, is the Being of beings and therefore Nothing. So where does this leave us in the journey of the Nothing? This essay itself, much like Heidegger’s, is a disjointed spiral of confusion and both reveal the Nothing. Attempting to explain the Nothing is the asking of the Why but answering neither. The Nothing truly needs no answer because it is nothing. Heidegger has established an almost Zen exercise by positing the Nothing. He has used the Nothing to further his goal.
Heidegger’s point to be taken then, is that one needs to return to pure thought and reason, to suspend logic and science and the why question and to instead pursue the Nothing and the Why and by doing so restore life back into Philosophy. If one stops asking the Why then what is the point of existence? Heidegger concluded his essay with the Nothing compelled to ask: “Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?” If Philosophy remains as philosophy and the Why becomes why, then beings lose Being, reason is succumbed by logic, and the Nothing becomes something. The point of existence then is to exist without ever asking again: “Why?”
Heidegger spent the beginning of his essay eliminating science and logic as defenses against metaphysics. This purposeful removal forces the reader into an uncomfortable arena, an arena where one is stripped of science and must rely upon reason and intuition. One has lost the right to ask how and forced to ask Why? The why of science is the why that means to what extent or for what purpose or how. But this why is not that Why that Heidegger has prompted for. By eliminating science and logic, he returns to an older Why. Heidegger’s why is the unanswerable Why, the Why that is the Nothing, the zenith of metaphysics. When one ponders the unanswerable one does not truly seek to explain the question, but to understand something else. How does one define a god? Or better yet: Why god? A theologian would presumably have hundreds of answers, yet not the answer, and that is what the Nothing is; it is the answer than can not be answered, yet has all answers.
Science, in Heidegger’s view, had reduced man to calculations. For example as Max Born wrote:
Modern physics has achieved its greatest successes by applying the methodological principle that concepts which refer to distinctions beyond possible experience have no physical meaning and ought to be eliminated. (Max Born, "Continuity, Determinism, and Reality", (Danish Academy of Science, Mathematics and Physics, Section 30, No. 2, 1955), p. 4 .)
It is this assumption of science that Heidegger rejected in his elaboration of the Nothing. He wanted one to question that which has no physical meaning. As Heidegger wrote:
If science is right, then only one thing is sure: science wishes to know nothing of the nothing.
Ultimately this is the scientifically rigorous conception of the nothing. We know it, the nothing, in that we wish to know nothing about it.
Science is impotent then, to describe the Nothing, as the Nothing is nothing to it. To remove the Nothing from calculations, the Nothing is removed from “is”. So how then to
approach the Nothing? Heidegger opens the window to the Nothing through Anxiety. Not the general anxiety that is fear or trepidation, but the great Anxiety, the Anxiety that eludes
explanation. “We can not say what it is before which one feels ill at ease.” It is in this Anxiety that one eludes the totality of Beings and slips into the revelation of the Nothing.
This Anxiety then is the involuntary removal of the Self from beings, the curling of the mind away from logic towards questions without answers. Heidegger also states that one
can not pursue Anxiety and thus can not pursue the Nothing because “pursuit” is beingcentric. Anxiety is and the Nothing is, but neither can be grasped through conscious
deliberate intention. They are both a destination without traveling.
So what then of the Nothing? “In our asking we posit the nothing in advance as something that ‘is’ such and such; we posit it as a being. But that is exactly what it is distinguished from.” To turn a Heideggerian phrase: the Nothing is something that is nothing because nothing can not be something yet can be Nothing. It is this interpretation of the Nothing that Heidegger states in the mist of his exposition. The Nothing is the quality of abandonment of preconceived notions, of logical puzzles. The Nothing denies the “is” of something.
Denying or defining the Nothing means to lose Philosophy itself. “The nothing what else can it be for science but an outrage and a phantasm?” Man’s quest to explain everything is the quest to eliminate the Nothing, to eliminate metaphysical questions, which in turn causes Philosophy, the pure essence of the Nothing, to become philosophy,
the science-driven pursuit of knowledge. Adhering to science, Man loses his own essence. Losing the essence of Man is like the losing of childhood wonder. An old saying goes: “your childhood is over the moment you realize that you are going to die.” This is where logic and science intrude. And this is where the Nothing is lost.
But the Nothing can not be truly lost for it is always there. Heidegger seems to prompt for one to unlearn what one has learned, which is a Taoist and Buddhist ideal. To unlearn one abandons accepted fact and explores the unexplainable, not to explain it but to question it, to ask the Why. The question of the unexplainable is not rooted in the explanation but the journey to it. A journey is not pursuit because to undertake a journey one never needs to travel to a destination. A pursuit is an action that has a conceived end. It is the journey that is the Nothing; it is Philosophy itself. Philosophy, the Nothing, then is the question of the Why?
“Unyielding antagonism and stinging rebuke have a more abysmal source than the measured negation of thought.” The measure negation of thought is the Why and the Why is the abandonment of measured logic. To a scientist the why of why is the sky blue is answerable because of the refraction of light in semi-spherical water vapor. The Why of why is the sky blue to a child, full of wonderment and without scientific rigor, has no answer and all answers and is the Nothing. The journey of childhood is ensconced in the Why. All things to a child are encountered for the first time and this encountering is wrapped in the Why. Children are rarely satisfied with the adult answers to their questions, always prompting for further
explanations. This is the Nothing.
A friend’s child once asked if all veterinarians are vegetarians? Certainly they are not and this is the essence of the Why. Logic would answer that it is improbable and unfeasible to assume that all veterinarians should be vegetarians because such a thing is dis-logical. But in the Why, the Nothing, the question is not the asked one but the one that is implied which is: Why is it that not all veterinarians are vegetarians? The answers are not important; the question itself is.
Music is the journey of the Why. Music can be explained in terms of mathematics and physics. The Mozart Effect is a known phenomenon. And because it is a phenomenon science has despaired to explain it. But in the Nothing there is no need for the explanation but for the experience of it. Music is or the Mozart Effect is. This is the Why and not the why.
Heidegger wrote “Metaphysics is inquiry beyond or over beings which aims to recover them as such and as a whole for our grasp.” The essence then of beings, the essence of metaphysics itself, is then the Nothing, the Why. Grasping the ungraspable is the pursuit of science and not the journey of the Nothing. The existence of the ungraspable and the Why of it is the Nothing. This is Philosophy.
Lao-tzu in the Tao te Ching, which predates Heidegger by over two thousand years, wrote of the Nothing as “it is hidden but always present.” How can something hidden be present? The asking of this question is the Why as it has no answer outside of science and this is the essence of the Nothing that Heidegger reveals. Without science there is the Why and the Nothing, which are questions without answers. “The nothing does not remain the indeterminate opposite of beings but reveals itself as belonging to the Being of beings.” The core, the Being, of beings then is the Nothing. It is a Hegelian essence. A being without Being is the why and not the Why.
Science can not explain the essence of a being just as it can not explain free will. It can define, but the definition is not an explanation. Searle and Dennett have argued for decades over the concept of free will, both seeking for a resolve to the question. Their disagreement itself is the Why, is the Nothing revealed. Free will, consciousness, is the Being of beings and therefore Nothing. So where does this leave us in the journey of the Nothing? This essay itself, much like Heidegger’s, is a disjointed spiral of confusion and both reveal the Nothing. Attempting to explain the Nothing is the asking of the Why but answering neither. The Nothing truly needs no answer because it is nothing. Heidegger has established an almost Zen exercise by positing the Nothing. He has used the Nothing to further his goal.
Heidegger’s point to be taken then, is that one needs to return to pure thought and reason, to suspend logic and science and the why question and to instead pursue the Nothing and the Why and by doing so restore life back into Philosophy. If one stops asking the Why then what is the point of existence? Heidegger concluded his essay with the Nothing compelled to ask: “Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?” If Philosophy remains as philosophy and the Why becomes why, then beings lose Being, reason is succumbed by logic, and the Nothing becomes something. The point of existence then is to exist without ever asking again: “Why?”
15 September 2009
Horkheimer’s Illusionary Script
To understand Horkheimer’s “The End of Reason”, one has need to understand the historical timeline the paper was written during. In 1937, four years prior, Horkheimer published the essay “Traditional and Critical Theory”, an essay which defined critical theory as a revolutionary form of Marxist theory, which called for the radical transformation in social theory and practice. It was not until eight years after “The End of Reason” that Horkheimer softened his stance on transformation by limiting it to educational systems, adopting Gramsci’s hegemony, which has since been expanded upon by Ivan Illich.
As the United States in 1941 was anti-communist and anti-fascist, and Horkheimer ensconced at Columbia University in New York City, his views had need to be carefully couched, have felicific calculus applied. It is because of this to truly understand “The End of Reason”, one has to apply Wittgenstein methods to it, to determine the different “language games”, to use Ockham’s Razor to obtain clarity. It is clear that Horkheimer was objecting to the global collectivism of society, the historical materialism, Smyth’s technocracy. What is not immediately clear though is the meaning of his final sentence which concludes with: “…there is nothing left but barbarism or freedom.(p48)” Freedom and barbarism have multitudinous definitions. Freedom is commonly accepted as liberty, an ideal, and barbarism as anathematic: cruel and savage. But, more obscure, meanings for the words, meanings a highly educated person like Horkheimer would know, change the entire reading of his essay and give it life as a call to fulfill critical theory, a destruction of the monist dystopia of Science.
To Horkheimer, reason equated to the Spinozian belief that man could find liberation through knowledge. This is the freedom he wrote of in common interpretations of this essay, the apodictic reading. Reason, not sullied by Science, could buttress man from the assailment of the machine of science, the grinding of the human gear. For in Horkheimer’s view, man had been hebetated, had become a slave to the reason of machine and its dominance. The path for freedom for the vulgus was through reason.
Barbarism was man’s other option, according to Horkheimer, a barbarism driven by bellipotent Science, driven to subsume reason and obliterate it. This option Horkheimer railed against, for man would truly then be a part, a gear, in a machine. The vox populi would cease and man would become the mechanolater, the worshipper of machines. It would be the realization of Abelard’s warning that man without reason must be content with authority. Man would cease to be, man.
But, given the historical timeline of this essay, Horkheimer was a first phase critical theorist, a man who supported radical transformation to achieve the Marxist ideals of a society progressing from capitalism to socialism to a classless society, a man who could not voice those views openly for fear of imprisonment or death. As such, Horkheimer had need to obscure his true intent through this essay, obscured in such a way that only others who held his views could truly understand, his own camarilla, secret political society. Horkheimer went to length describing the rise of the Nazis, while detailing how reason had become epitonic. The ingurgitation of reason by Science, the enslavement, was an almost Götterdämerung against man.
For Horkheimer, the Kafkaesque nightmare must be vanquished, must be subverted, for only then could change occur, could man begin the Marxist utopia. It is because of this that one has need to utilize alternate meanings for the words freedom and barbarism. Freedom also means facility, a transvaluation of freedom for servitude. Man could find freedom by accepting his imprisonment as a cog, as a prisoner does once he accepts he will never leave his prison. “It induces the individual to subordinate himself to society… (p29)” Freedom means then to be boundless of reason, to do as Duncan’s queen in MacBeth and “die every day she lived.” To be facile to Horkheimer truly meant the death, oblivion of man as an individual by the machine. Heidegger’s Sein zum Tode, an anonymous face in an anonymous crowd. Man in context then would be but a disposable part of the machine, the machine Gestalt to man, the sum greater than the parts.
In the Roman Empire, barbarism was the action of the uncivilized, the uneducated, the un-Roman. To this end Horkheimer urges man, to strive against society, the technocracy, to accept reason as a paramour, an illicit lover. Reason alone could affricate, grate against, the machine of society, to “strip the gears” of production, to bring the machine to a halt. Horkheimer assailed Aristotle as the progenitor of empirical science, the same man who in Ethics wrote: “when devoid of virtue, man is the most unscrupulous and savage of animals.” This is the dualism of Horkheimer’s words. Man as a barbarian, a bantling, no longer anonymous, could seize control of the machine, Science, and regain his position as man. Horkheimer, no Luddite, could have foreseen man gaining control of the machine through reason, the machine then serving man.
Evidentiary to Horkheimer’s true intent is his allusions to individuals who stood against the Church, individuals who rose from the crowd, and who paid for their beliefs. Horkheimer espouses Roger Bacon and Siger of Brabant, both imprisoned for heresy against the Church, the latter murdered. These were men who railed against the machine of their time, who embraced reason and rejected collectivism, and who were resolute to accept the consequences of their actions. Horkheimer writes of Duns Scotus, who challenged the Church, its capitalism, and suffered eternal ignominy as from him the word dunce has arisen. Horkheimer refers also to Romeo and Juliet who “died in conflict with society… (p43)” Romeo and Juliet, the jusqu’ au
botists, radicals, through felo de se, self-murder, an apologia, rejected their unreasonable society. These examples were not idly selected by Horkheimer, were not an afterthought. Horkheimer chose these as examples of hope against the technocracy because “morality has survived insofar as men are conscious that the reality to which they yield is not the right one. (p36)”
Horkheimer’s interpretation of the Reformation, and of Luther, as a training of man to subordination is curious, peculiar. Luther, with hammer and nail, crucified the despotic capitalistic oligarchy of the Church. Horkheimer had previously quoted Voltaire’s belief that the proletariat could be enlightened to reason only by apostles, and Luther was an apostle. Luther had used reason as a weapon a gainst the collectivism of the Church, as a means to his own end. Perhaps one could deduce that Horkheimer referred to Luther recanting of his beliefs, his subordination to that which he fought against, his acceptance of freedom as facility, as “the idea of
reason, even in its nominalistic and purified form, has always justified sacrifice. (p33)”
But then, it could be argued that Luther through reason, had sacrificed his ideals, a “sacrificium intellectus. (p40)” To Horkheimer, “reason could recognize and denounce the forms of injustice
and thus emancipate itself from them. (p47)” Reason then, in a society that abhorred it, condemned it, could become the Urgrund, the primary principle, the apotropaic weapon. Reason could be the salvation of man, could free man from being a piece of the machine. As Dostoyevsky wrote in Notes from Underground (MacAndrew, A.R., 1961, New York: Signet Classic, p114-5):
But even if man was nothing but a piano key, even if this could be demonstrated to him mathematically- even then, he wouldn’t come to his senses but would pull some trick out of sheer ingratitude, just to make his point. And if he didn’t have them on hand, he would devise the means of destruction, chaos, and all kinds of suffering to get his way. For instance he’d swear loud enough for the whole world to hear- swearing is man’s prerogative, setting him apart from the other animals- and maybe his swearing alone would get him what he wanted, that is, it’d prove to him that he’s a man and not a piano key.
Reason would require an anti-Heidegger man, the one freed from the anonymous crowd, freed from the machine, the one who would deny death and act as immortal, the barbarian. Maine de Biran believed that man could achieve freedom through source of will. Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mori nihil. After death there is nothing, not even death. Sartre argued that how man dies is eternal, regardless of how man has lived. Reason, recognizing the injustice of the technocracy, the devolution of man as a Baalist of the machine of Science, would be the tool to true freedom, liberty. As Bob Marley wrote in “Redemption Song”: “emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
none but ourselves can free our mind.” Emancipation of reason would lead man to actual freedom.
“The terror which pushes reason is at the same time the last means of stopping it, so close has truth come. (p48)” The terror, the sublimation of humanitas, had begun to draw man nigh. Horkheimer here suggested that terror had need to beget terror, for a man with reason to respond in kind to the terror of the machine, to use the very foundation the machine had been built upon to undermine it. Further in “Redemption Song” Marley wrote: “how long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look.” In this case, the prophet is reason, it is the apostle to man, the barbarian, outcast from the technocracy, desirous to slay facility, Voltaire’s apostle to the proletariat.
This is the message Horkheimer has concealed in this essay, that man must free himself from the machine, from Science, that man is not a piano key, and man must become man again, to regain the humanitas denied him by the machine, through reason. Man is on the precipice, the edge of permanent oblivion, servitude to the machine of Science, a machine that seeks to explain away the necessity of man. No longer should man accept the status quo, the anonymous oblivion of the
collective, no longer equate freedom with facility, but to battle facility outside of society, as a barbarian, freed from the machine in an a fortiori war, as the machine holds power only through the slave of man, for as yet, it is not autonomous. Man can strike then and become master, slave lord, of the machine. Man would then realize the Rastafarian “I and I”, which denotes “we” as a true collection of individuals, and no longer be anonymous, no longer be a cog. Horkheimer did not intend a Trotskyian ideal, a permanent revolution, but a revolution of reason, an end to the
totalitarianism of Science and the establishment of socialism, where the machine becomes tool and serves man.
When Horkheimer wrote “…there is nothing left but barbarism or freedom (p48)”, he was not referring to just the common definitions of those words, of liberty and savagery, but also of facility and uncivilized. The keys to understanding his true meaning lay within the confines of his essay, buried there because Horkheimer had need to be non-pellucid, vague, had feared his own freedom in the context of his era, the pre-McCarthian United States. He wrote of the rise of Fascism to illustrate the solecism of the machine of Science, the error in calculation that man would accept slavehood. Through his detail of Fascism he exposed the underbelly of the machine.
He purposely chose to illustrate those who battled against the totality of religion, those who sacrificed in the name of their ideals against the Church in an ideological struggle of methodologies. Horkheimer wrote a call for a revolution of reason, of humanitas armed with reason, against the machine, its weaknesses exposed, for man to use and embrace barbarism, to be uncivilized, to not be an anonymous piece of a machine, to attain Fichte’s how the world should be, how it should be altered through reason, true freedom, liberty.
As the United States in 1941 was anti-communist and anti-fascist, and Horkheimer ensconced at Columbia University in New York City, his views had need to be carefully couched, have felicific calculus applied. It is because of this to truly understand “The End of Reason”, one has to apply Wittgenstein methods to it, to determine the different “language games”, to use Ockham’s Razor to obtain clarity. It is clear that Horkheimer was objecting to the global collectivism of society, the historical materialism, Smyth’s technocracy. What is not immediately clear though is the meaning of his final sentence which concludes with: “…there is nothing left but barbarism or freedom.(p48)” Freedom and barbarism have multitudinous definitions. Freedom is commonly accepted as liberty, an ideal, and barbarism as anathematic: cruel and savage. But, more obscure, meanings for the words, meanings a highly educated person like Horkheimer would know, change the entire reading of his essay and give it life as a call to fulfill critical theory, a destruction of the monist dystopia of Science.
To Horkheimer, reason equated to the Spinozian belief that man could find liberation through knowledge. This is the freedom he wrote of in common interpretations of this essay, the apodictic reading. Reason, not sullied by Science, could buttress man from the assailment of the machine of science, the grinding of the human gear. For in Horkheimer’s view, man had been hebetated, had become a slave to the reason of machine and its dominance. The path for freedom for the vulgus was through reason.
Barbarism was man’s other option, according to Horkheimer, a barbarism driven by bellipotent Science, driven to subsume reason and obliterate it. This option Horkheimer railed against, for man would truly then be a part, a gear, in a machine. The vox populi would cease and man would become the mechanolater, the worshipper of machines. It would be the realization of Abelard’s warning that man without reason must be content with authority. Man would cease to be, man.
But, given the historical timeline of this essay, Horkheimer was a first phase critical theorist, a man who supported radical transformation to achieve the Marxist ideals of a society progressing from capitalism to socialism to a classless society, a man who could not voice those views openly for fear of imprisonment or death. As such, Horkheimer had need to obscure his true intent through this essay, obscured in such a way that only others who held his views could truly understand, his own camarilla, secret political society. Horkheimer went to length describing the rise of the Nazis, while detailing how reason had become epitonic. The ingurgitation of reason by Science, the enslavement, was an almost Götterdämerung against man.
For Horkheimer, the Kafkaesque nightmare must be vanquished, must be subverted, for only then could change occur, could man begin the Marxist utopia. It is because of this that one has need to utilize alternate meanings for the words freedom and barbarism. Freedom also means facility, a transvaluation of freedom for servitude. Man could find freedom by accepting his imprisonment as a cog, as a prisoner does once he accepts he will never leave his prison. “It induces the individual to subordinate himself to society… (p29)” Freedom means then to be boundless of reason, to do as Duncan’s queen in MacBeth and “die every day she lived.” To be facile to Horkheimer truly meant the death, oblivion of man as an individual by the machine. Heidegger’s Sein zum Tode, an anonymous face in an anonymous crowd. Man in context then would be but a disposable part of the machine, the machine Gestalt to man, the sum greater than the parts.
In the Roman Empire, barbarism was the action of the uncivilized, the uneducated, the un-Roman. To this end Horkheimer urges man, to strive against society, the technocracy, to accept reason as a paramour, an illicit lover. Reason alone could affricate, grate against, the machine of society, to “strip the gears” of production, to bring the machine to a halt. Horkheimer assailed Aristotle as the progenitor of empirical science, the same man who in Ethics wrote: “when devoid of virtue, man is the most unscrupulous and savage of animals.” This is the dualism of Horkheimer’s words. Man as a barbarian, a bantling, no longer anonymous, could seize control of the machine, Science, and regain his position as man. Horkheimer, no Luddite, could have foreseen man gaining control of the machine through reason, the machine then serving man.
Evidentiary to Horkheimer’s true intent is his allusions to individuals who stood against the Church, individuals who rose from the crowd, and who paid for their beliefs. Horkheimer espouses Roger Bacon and Siger of Brabant, both imprisoned for heresy against the Church, the latter murdered. These were men who railed against the machine of their time, who embraced reason and rejected collectivism, and who were resolute to accept the consequences of their actions. Horkheimer writes of Duns Scotus, who challenged the Church, its capitalism, and suffered eternal ignominy as from him the word dunce has arisen. Horkheimer refers also to Romeo and Juliet who “died in conflict with society… (p43)” Romeo and Juliet, the jusqu’ au
botists, radicals, through felo de se, self-murder, an apologia, rejected their unreasonable society. These examples were not idly selected by Horkheimer, were not an afterthought. Horkheimer chose these as examples of hope against the technocracy because “morality has survived insofar as men are conscious that the reality to which they yield is not the right one. (p36)”
Horkheimer’s interpretation of the Reformation, and of Luther, as a training of man to subordination is curious, peculiar. Luther, with hammer and nail, crucified the despotic capitalistic oligarchy of the Church. Horkheimer had previously quoted Voltaire’s belief that the proletariat could be enlightened to reason only by apostles, and Luther was an apostle. Luther had used reason as a weapon a gainst the collectivism of the Church, as a means to his own end. Perhaps one could deduce that Horkheimer referred to Luther recanting of his beliefs, his subordination to that which he fought against, his acceptance of freedom as facility, as “the idea of
reason, even in its nominalistic and purified form, has always justified sacrifice. (p33)”
But then, it could be argued that Luther through reason, had sacrificed his ideals, a “sacrificium intellectus. (p40)” To Horkheimer, “reason could recognize and denounce the forms of injustice
and thus emancipate itself from them. (p47)” Reason then, in a society that abhorred it, condemned it, could become the Urgrund, the primary principle, the apotropaic weapon. Reason could be the salvation of man, could free man from being a piece of the machine. As Dostoyevsky wrote in Notes from Underground (MacAndrew, A.R., 1961, New York: Signet Classic, p114-5):
But even if man was nothing but a piano key, even if this could be demonstrated to him mathematically- even then, he wouldn’t come to his senses but would pull some trick out of sheer ingratitude, just to make his point. And if he didn’t have them on hand, he would devise the means of destruction, chaos, and all kinds of suffering to get his way. For instance he’d swear loud enough for the whole world to hear- swearing is man’s prerogative, setting him apart from the other animals- and maybe his swearing alone would get him what he wanted, that is, it’d prove to him that he’s a man and not a piano key.
Reason would require an anti-Heidegger man, the one freed from the anonymous crowd, freed from the machine, the one who would deny death and act as immortal, the barbarian. Maine de Biran believed that man could achieve freedom through source of will. Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mori nihil. After death there is nothing, not even death. Sartre argued that how man dies is eternal, regardless of how man has lived. Reason, recognizing the injustice of the technocracy, the devolution of man as a Baalist of the machine of Science, would be the tool to true freedom, liberty. As Bob Marley wrote in “Redemption Song”: “emancipate yourself from mental slavery,
none but ourselves can free our mind.” Emancipation of reason would lead man to actual freedom.
“The terror which pushes reason is at the same time the last means of stopping it, so close has truth come. (p48)” The terror, the sublimation of humanitas, had begun to draw man nigh. Horkheimer here suggested that terror had need to beget terror, for a man with reason to respond in kind to the terror of the machine, to use the very foundation the machine had been built upon to undermine it. Further in “Redemption Song” Marley wrote: “how long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look.” In this case, the prophet is reason, it is the apostle to man, the barbarian, outcast from the technocracy, desirous to slay facility, Voltaire’s apostle to the proletariat.
This is the message Horkheimer has concealed in this essay, that man must free himself from the machine, from Science, that man is not a piano key, and man must become man again, to regain the humanitas denied him by the machine, through reason. Man is on the precipice, the edge of permanent oblivion, servitude to the machine of Science, a machine that seeks to explain away the necessity of man. No longer should man accept the status quo, the anonymous oblivion of the
collective, no longer equate freedom with facility, but to battle facility outside of society, as a barbarian, freed from the machine in an a fortiori war, as the machine holds power only through the slave of man, for as yet, it is not autonomous. Man can strike then and become master, slave lord, of the machine. Man would then realize the Rastafarian “I and I”, which denotes “we” as a true collection of individuals, and no longer be anonymous, no longer be a cog. Horkheimer did not intend a Trotskyian ideal, a permanent revolution, but a revolution of reason, an end to the
totalitarianism of Science and the establishment of socialism, where the machine becomes tool and serves man.
When Horkheimer wrote “…there is nothing left but barbarism or freedom (p48)”, he was not referring to just the common definitions of those words, of liberty and savagery, but also of facility and uncivilized. The keys to understanding his true meaning lay within the confines of his essay, buried there because Horkheimer had need to be non-pellucid, vague, had feared his own freedom in the context of his era, the pre-McCarthian United States. He wrote of the rise of Fascism to illustrate the solecism of the machine of Science, the error in calculation that man would accept slavehood. Through his detail of Fascism he exposed the underbelly of the machine.
He purposely chose to illustrate those who battled against the totality of religion, those who sacrificed in the name of their ideals against the Church in an ideological struggle of methodologies. Horkheimer wrote a call for a revolution of reason, of humanitas armed with reason, against the machine, its weaknesses exposed, for man to use and embrace barbarism, to be uncivilized, to not be an anonymous piece of a machine, to attain Fichte’s how the world should be, how it should be altered through reason, true freedom, liberty.
28 August 2009
Cosmological Fallacy
The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.
---Friedrich Nietzsche
At the latter end of the 1200's, John Duns Scotus put forth his idea of the first efficient
cause (Opera Omnia. Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950-). It was an attempt to logically prove the existence of god. His argument, composed of seven steps, is as follows:
Step two requires that no effect is can be caused by nothing. In effect, something must be the cause. Since something must be caused by something, cause and effect is circular. This is widely supported by physics, particularly quantum physics. Many philosophers have attempted to side-step this (notably Davidson, Haack, and Gasking) by creating a pseudo cause and effect that is dependent upon human manipulation. For this pseudo situation to be true, it would follow that a god is a manipulation of man and exists solely because of man. Nietzsche and Sartre both made that claim. This is antithetical to the theist view of a god.
Step three involves there being a terminal point for causes. Since each effect follows a cause, Scotus is requiring time to be linear. There is no other possibility. While this is a viable possibility, there are problems with it. There are fields of physics dedicated to proving that linear time either does not exist or runs concurrent with non-linear time at various intersections.
Even Anselm recognized that linear time was a problem to any theory of a god:
By contrast, if something is in no way constrained by confinement in a place or time, no law of places or times forces it into a multiplicity of parts or prevents it from being present as a whole all at once in several places or times (Monologia,22).
That a circle of causes is impossible (step three), according to Scotus, violates the second and fourth step. If an effect can not be produced by nothing at all , then it goes to logic that every produced effect is dependent upon a prior effect, and that each that follows is also dependent on the prior, without terminus. This is itself a circle. From Buddhism this point is made clear. The Buddhists believe that when one looks at a stream, one sees both the end and the beginning of the stream; it is the end of the source of the stream and the beginning of a new source.
Given the possibility of the fourth step being true, that an effect must be caused by a prior one, as it does follow from two, the fifth step potentially violates 1, 2, and 4. For the fifth step, that an infinite regress is not possible, to be logical and true, it would require that time be absolutely linear, with a definite beginning and end. This would be an establishment of a primary cause, and as such makes the first two steps either illogical or false. An effect that can not cause itself (α), and one that must be caused (β), can not be dependent upon linear time (~γ), a primary. But if time is linear (γ), then α and/or β is not possible.
If α is not true, then an effect can be the cause of itself. But, if this is so, then it follows that any effect can be the cause of itself, and is not limited to a god. In this, if a god is the cause of itself, and with α being false, self-causation of effect is granted. Because this law would need to be an universal one, in order not to violate multiple rules of physics, it would also follow that a tomato could be the cause of itself. A human could be the cause of a human. Darwinian evolution would be an anomaly.
Also, if β is not true, then an effect can be caused by nothing. This would allow for a god to be created without causation. That in itself violates many laws of physics and would require a nothing to not only have a definite property, but be uncaused. And if a nothing has property, then it can not logically be “nothing”; it is something. What follows then is that nothing is something and is the cause of an effect. If this nothing is something, then it is the primary point of causation (β therefore α) and time must be linear (if β and α therefore γ). But as has been shown, α and/or β must not be true for γ to be true ( ~α and/or ~β therefore γ).
There is much debate as to whether time is linear. It has been conjectured that time exists in a manner that we do not readily understand, and that our theory of time is limited to being linear by necessity. Einstein was certainly not the first nor the last to hypothesize the possibility of time travel. For this to be conceivable, time can not be linear. To travel back in time, say ten years, requires that time runs parallel, because if it did not, and we were able to travel backwards, we would most likely de-age ten years. To do otherwise would violate all knowledge we have of physics. Because we would be traveling between two points along a line, and since we can not exist in tangent with another of ourselves at that same point, we must regress. But if time is parallel or circular, we could achieve travel and exist with ourselves simultaneously at the same point in time. Non-linear time proves Scotus's fifth step to be illogical and false.
With the possibility of non-linear time, and with the above by Anselm, it is theoretically possible that the multiverse theory is plausible. The multiverse theory proposes that our universe is not unique and that there are at least one other universe coexisting with ours. This calls into question most of our current understanding of physics. Also the existence of a god becomes more feasible.
This possibility can then uphold many of Scotus's steps and could ratify Anselm as well. The problem of linear time would be solved as both linear and non-linear could exist together, and that in our universe it would be entirely possible to have a first cause that arose from nothing, which would be a crossing between multiverses. More clearly, since Scotus has put forth that an infinite regression is not possible, and that an effect can not cause itself or be produced by nothing at all, if a god existed in another universe and crossed into our own, that god would arise from nothing and yet not cause itself. This would give support Anselm's idea entirely. But to support Scotus fully, his first efficient cause would need to be amended as such:
While Scotus went to great pains to formulate a logical representation for the existence of a god, to the satisfaction of theists, he went wide of the mark. Granted it is not feasible to assume that he would have the knowledge, or even the insight to it, of what we now possess. He worked with what was available to him in his time and while his first cause is flawed, it can be repaired and can still be possible. At our current level of understanding of the universe we can not unequivacably dismiss his theory. In fact, as our base of knowledge grows, it does make his first cause more probable.
---Friedrich Nietzsche
At the latter end of the 1200's, John Duns Scotus put forth his idea of the first efficient
cause (Opera Omnia. Civitas Vaticana: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1950-). It was an attempt to logically prove the existence of god. His argument, composed of seven steps, is as follows:
(1) No effect can produce itself.
(2) No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
(3) A circle of causes is impossible.
(4) Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
(5) There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
(6) It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is an
essentially ordered series.
(7) Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 4, 5, and 6)
These seven steps, in effect, refuted while achieving nearly the same end, instead of improved upon, the argument of Anselm in his Monologia. Scotus's final step, that there is a god, is dependant upon each of the prior steps proving to be a logical possibility. Interestingly, steps 1, 2, and 6 are basic tenets of quantum physics (History and Root of the Principles of the Conservation of Energy. E. Mach. Open Court Pub. Co., IL., 1872). Steps 3-5 are the most difficult to support, and are most likely illogical and untrue.(2) No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
(3) A circle of causes is impossible.
(4) Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
(5) There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
(6) It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is an
essentially ordered series.
(7) Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 4, 5, and 6)
Step two requires that no effect is can be caused by nothing. In effect, something must be the cause. Since something must be caused by something, cause and effect is circular. This is widely supported by physics, particularly quantum physics. Many philosophers have attempted to side-step this (notably Davidson, Haack, and Gasking) by creating a pseudo cause and effect that is dependent upon human manipulation. For this pseudo situation to be true, it would follow that a god is a manipulation of man and exists solely because of man. Nietzsche and Sartre both made that claim. This is antithetical to the theist view of a god.
Step three involves there being a terminal point for causes. Since each effect follows a cause, Scotus is requiring time to be linear. There is no other possibility. While this is a viable possibility, there are problems with it. There are fields of physics dedicated to proving that linear time either does not exist or runs concurrent with non-linear time at various intersections.
Even Anselm recognized that linear time was a problem to any theory of a god:
By contrast, if something is in no way constrained by confinement in a place or time, no law of places or times forces it into a multiplicity of parts or prevents it from being present as a whole all at once in several places or times (Monologia,22).
That a circle of causes is impossible (step three), according to Scotus, violates the second and fourth step. If an effect can not be produced by nothing at all , then it goes to logic that every produced effect is dependent upon a prior effect, and that each that follows is also dependent on the prior, without terminus. This is itself a circle. From Buddhism this point is made clear. The Buddhists believe that when one looks at a stream, one sees both the end and the beginning of the stream; it is the end of the source of the stream and the beginning of a new source.
Given the possibility of the fourth step being true, that an effect must be caused by a prior one, as it does follow from two, the fifth step potentially violates 1, 2, and 4. For the fifth step, that an infinite regress is not possible, to be logical and true, it would require that time be absolutely linear, with a definite beginning and end. This would be an establishment of a primary cause, and as such makes the first two steps either illogical or false. An effect that can not cause itself (α), and one that must be caused (β), can not be dependent upon linear time (~γ), a primary. But if time is linear (γ), then α and/or β is not possible.
If α is not true, then an effect can be the cause of itself. But, if this is so, then it follows that any effect can be the cause of itself, and is not limited to a god. In this, if a god is the cause of itself, and with α being false, self-causation of effect is granted. Because this law would need to be an universal one, in order not to violate multiple rules of physics, it would also follow that a tomato could be the cause of itself. A human could be the cause of a human. Darwinian evolution would be an anomaly.
Also, if β is not true, then an effect can be caused by nothing. This would allow for a god to be created without causation. That in itself violates many laws of physics and would require a nothing to not only have a definite property, but be uncaused. And if a nothing has property, then it can not logically be “nothing”; it is something. What follows then is that nothing is something and is the cause of an effect. If this nothing is something, then it is the primary point of causation (β therefore α) and time must be linear (if β and α therefore γ). But as has been shown, α and/or β must not be true for γ to be true ( ~α and/or ~β therefore γ).
There is much debate as to whether time is linear. It has been conjectured that time exists in a manner that we do not readily understand, and that our theory of time is limited to being linear by necessity. Einstein was certainly not the first nor the last to hypothesize the possibility of time travel. For this to be conceivable, time can not be linear. To travel back in time, say ten years, requires that time runs parallel, because if it did not, and we were able to travel backwards, we would most likely de-age ten years. To do otherwise would violate all knowledge we have of physics. Because we would be traveling between two points along a line, and since we can not exist in tangent with another of ourselves at that same point, we must regress. But if time is parallel or circular, we could achieve travel and exist with ourselves simultaneously at the same point in time. Non-linear time proves Scotus's fifth step to be illogical and false.
With the possibility of non-linear time, and with the above by Anselm, it is theoretically possible that the multiverse theory is plausible. The multiverse theory proposes that our universe is not unique and that there are at least one other universe coexisting with ours. This calls into question most of our current understanding of physics. Also the existence of a god becomes more feasible.
This possibility can then uphold many of Scotus's steps and could ratify Anselm as well. The problem of linear time would be solved as both linear and non-linear could exist together, and that in our universe it would be entirely possible to have a first cause that arose from nothing, which would be a crossing between multiverses. More clearly, since Scotus has put forth that an infinite regression is not possible, and that an effect can not cause itself or be produced by nothing at all, if a god existed in another universe and crossed into our own, that god would arise from nothing and yet not cause itself. This would give support Anselm's idea entirely. But to support Scotus fully, his first efficient cause would need to be amended as such:
1. No effect can produce itself.
2. No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
3. There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
a. Only if time is linear
b. If time is non-linear than an infinite regress of causes is possible.
c. The infinite regress requires that there be at least 1 other universe, a multiverse.
d. Because of the multiverse, regression can cross between time and place.
e. This amends #2 as the multiverse is a form of nothing in that it exists outside of our time and
place.
4. Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
5. It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is an essentially
ordered series.
6. Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 3, 4, and 5)
But even with these modifications the final step is logical, but does not necessarily equal that the first agent is a god. The first agent could simply be another being that has crossed the boundaries of the multiverse.2. No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
3. There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
a. Only if time is linear
b. If time is non-linear than an infinite regress of causes is possible.
c. The infinite regress requires that there be at least 1 other universe, a multiverse.
d. Because of the multiverse, regression can cross between time and place.
e. This amends #2 as the multiverse is a form of nothing in that it exists outside of our time and
place.
4. Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
5. It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is an essentially
ordered series.
6. Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 3, 4, and 5)
While Scotus went to great pains to formulate a logical representation for the existence of a god, to the satisfaction of theists, he went wide of the mark. Granted it is not feasible to assume that he would have the knowledge, or even the insight to it, of what we now possess. He worked with what was available to him in his time and while his first cause is flawed, it can be repaired and can still be possible. At our current level of understanding of the universe we can not unequivacably dismiss his theory. In fact, as our base of knowledge grows, it does make his first cause more probable.
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