Topics Existence

Question Everything needs a cause, right, or it couldn't happen, right? But, if everything needs a cause, how could anything happen? Because the thing that would cause it to happen would also need a cause. So does that means the universe can't happen/could never get to now? Or is time a cause in and of itself? And "drags" things as time goes forward, like a replay in a video game? But then time would need a cause too, right?

Accepted:
June 20, 2013

Comments

Many quantum physicists say that lots of events occur without being caused to occur. But let's assume that they're wrong and that every event needs a cause. One way to answer your challenge is to allow for an infinite regress of contingent events: a series of events stretching back endlessly in which no member is logically or metaphysically required to happen. I don't see what's wrong, in principle, with an infinite regress of events. One might reject such a regress on the grounds that "time couldn't stretch back forever," but I see no good reason to say that it couldn't. But even if time couldn't stretch back forever, you can still squeeze infinitely many events into a finite time if they "telescope" so that the time between them decreases geometrically as you go back. We needn't treat time itself as a cause in any of this.

Indeed, if (as almost all philosophers have held) some events are contingent, and if every event has a sufficient explanation why it occurred rather than not, then an infinite regress of events is unavoidable: otherwise no events would be contingent. "Ah," one might reply, "but then what explains the existence of the entire infinite regress itself?" I don't think that question is well-posed once we grant that each event in the regress has a sufficient explanation. For further discussion of these issues, you might check out this recent paper of mine.

A classic, important question that philosophers have grappled with for a loooong time .... Look up "cosmological arguments" on wikipedia or via google, you'll find LOTS of discussion of this sort of issue. Especially important for centuries in discussions of religious matters -- Just a couple quick thoughts. One possibility is that an infinite regress is fine -- the universe has always existed, and everything that occurs has a cause, which earlier had a cause etc., to infinity. If you don't think that's possible you need to offer specific reasons why it isn't. One famous one is hinted at in what you say -- for example, as presented by St Thomas Aquinas (in preparation for refuting it) the objection is raised that an infinite regress IS impossible: for since an infinite journey can never be completed, there could NOT be an infinite amount of time (or sequence of events) prior to the current moment -- for that just would mean that the universe HAS completed an infinite journey (from the infinite past to now ...) .... However Aquinas offers a fascinating response to this particular argument you might look up -- I think he holds that reason cannot determine whether the past extends to infinity or not, or whether the cosmos had a 'first moment' -- that said, there are various other kinds of arguments to the same conclusion, suggesting (e.g.) that the universe could not be intelligible if it extended back to infinity, so there must have been a first moment ....

Then, once you've convinced yourself there must be a 'first moment' (or a 'first event' or 'First cause') -- you can grapple with the question of what this implies for the idea that 'everything has a cause' ... One common move is this: if the 'first cause' is quite different in nature from ordinary things, then perhaps it might count as 'self-caused' or 'self-explanatory' -- e.g. if the first cause is a 'necessary being' of some sort (as opposed to 'contingent being') then the fact that it exists needs no further explanation, its own nature (as a necessary being) explains its existence -- so everything DOES have a cause: most ordinary finite things are caused by other finite things, leading back to a First Cause which is 'self-caused' or 'self-explanatory' ....

That's too quick a sketch -- but look up 'cosmological arguments' for more, especially as found in Aristotle, Aquinas, and Descartes (for classical sources) -- and then you can work your way up to contemporary versions ....

good luck!

ap