Don't overcomplicate Causal Finitism

In this video, I present an alternative way of modelling arguments from causal finitism.

0:00 - Surveying the present debate
2:51 - Alternative route

[HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

I love this topic, and I approve of your first three minutes surveying it :) Good job :)
A second problem from recombination theories maybe worth mentioning is the one where it gets you straight to an infinite past being possible, by recombining lots of time segments.

[jonathandoe]

Yes, I do read the title cards! And also, that turtlecorn was adorable. Thank you for addressing these topics that many in the YT-sphere don't. It's a real blessing. Take care!

[HeyHeyHarmonicaLuke]

Interesting approach. First I'm thinking about paralleling what you said at ~5:30 with my own general principle against the theist. Perhaps we can say that conceptions of God so frequently turn out to produce contradictions, as you were saying for infinite causal chains. For example if God exists we get the classical question about a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it. Perhaps he could make an unstoppable force hit an immovable object, send people back in time to kill their grandfather or become their own grandfather, etc. Theodicy is a field because reconciling conceptions of God with the existence of suffering is so difficult.
What do you reckon?

The parallel picks up again at 6:40, where I could likewise say that 'all the worldviews which allow for the possibility of [God] take a hit in their probability, due to the general principle derived from all those paradoxes we looked at.'

[mistermkultra]

God : Kalam argument and causal finitism are inevitable !!!

[MajestyofReason]

Nice video!

Suppose we accept that general principle, and suppose that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability. We mustn't forget, though, the whole panoply of hits to the probability of worldviews *not* allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains in virtue of that very denial. E.g., they'll arguably be led into necessarily discrete views of time and space, spaces necessarily finite in extent, pasts necessarily finite in extent, will have to take a stance about hotly contested empirical questions in physics about the nature of fields and whatnot [as Pruss points out in his book], etc. It's not clear which probability hit is worse. And so even granting that worldviews allowing for the possibility of infinite causal chains take a corresponding hit to their probability in virtue of that, this doesn't imply that worldviews *not* allowing for such are thereby probabilistically superior. [I know you didn't deny this latter claim; but it needs to be kept in mind, since things aren't as simple as some viewers of the video might take away [e.g., they might mistakenly think 'nice! the probability of causal finitist worldviews has gone up considerably!'].] (Footnote: note that I am not here granting that general principle (and nor am I here denying it); I am supposing it arguendo.)

[mistermkultra]

Discover your truth face on Capturing Christianity livestream was epic !!!

[mindfix]

Here is a syllogism. Feedback welcome:

A. Suppose physical reality consists of an ordered sequence of moments (A-Theory of Time)
B. In order for a given moment to happen, the sequence of all prior moments must finish up first. (like how in order to eat a sandwich, making the sandwich must first finish)
C. If physical reality has always existed, then any sequence of prior moments is never-ending and hence never finishes up
D. Therefore, if physical reality has always existed, then no moment could happen. (B & C -> D)

[esauponce]

7:18 Thanks for the clarification. I would have missed that otherwise. Lol.

Great video!

[HyperFocusMarshmallow]

The critics of causal-finitist aren’t necessarily causal-infinitists, they are just who thinks it’s silly to rule out infinite chains in general from these arguments.

Some of them might even prefer finite theories on other grounds. I might lean that way, I’m honestly not entirely sure. But I do think infinite causal theories are plausibly coherent and might plausibly be real.

[rsvp]

I think the simplest way I saw it explained was that an infinite number of causal events (over an infinite amount of time) cannot have occurred, otherwise we'd have never arrived at the present. It's like saying you reached zero after counting down from infinity. When would you have started? How long did it take? Why didn't you finish yesterday instead of today? It becomes absurd. Potential or conceptual infinity is fun to toss around, but actual infinity is impossible.

[hansonmanfred]

Allow me to over-contemplate causal finitism:

I believe most of the paradoxes supporting causal finitism can be resolved by developing a more structured view of events and causes. In most of the versions of these paradoxes that I am familiar with (my familiarity being admittedly limited), the events occupy discrete points on the continuous line of time (eg. the instantaneous moment that the grim reaper kills you). However, events are not typically instantaneous. When two billiard balls collide, there is a small time frame wherein the balls compress into each other, then expand out from each other. In light of this, we might propose that all events (or at least those that hold causal power), must occupy a finite amount of time. A mathematical formalism for this would be to demand that events with causal powers occupy open subsets of the line of time (or, more interestingly, the continuous space of states, but let us focus on what is considered in these arguments for causal finitism).

Consider the grim reaper paradox. There is certainly a range of time wherein you are "being killed" by a particular reaper. For simplicity, let us assume that this time spans the instant that his sieve makes contact with your throat to the instant it exits the back of your neck. However quickly the reapers performs this action, there is no way (under the configuration suggested in the argument) for the earlier reapers to complete the process before the next begins. Thus, there cannot be a sense in which one reaper alone is responsible for your death.

It may still intuitively seem as though there should be a first reaper to begin the strike. This can also be dismissed using a separate principle. Consider two positively charged particles approaching a negatively charged particle, one further away from the negatively charged particle. Does the closer particle push on the negatively charged particle before the further one? Certainly not. Instead, both push on the negatively charged particle at the same time, the closer having a greater force then the further. Likewise, the effect on the sieves on your throat must be such that all of the reaper's sieves have some impact (though trivially small), with those closer having a greater cutting power.

All of this is to demonstrate that I do not believe the arguments for causal finitism work even to lower the probability of causal infinitude. Rather, they seem to create confusion by naively applying structure of point events with a countable cardinality to a continuous metaphysical structure.

[plasmaballin]

This is an interesting argument, but it would need a lot more than one or two examples to be convincing. After all, to reject causal infinitism on the basis of this argument, we would have to conclude not just that any given causal chain is likely to be hiding some contradiction, but that it is likely that every infinite causal change hides some contradiction (note the difference in where the quantifier is placed - the latter is a much stronger claim than the former). At this point, I still think it is extremely implausible that any of the more innocuous infinite causal chains (like "A1 was caused by A2 one second earlier, which was caused by A3 one second before that, and so on") lead to contradictions, let alone all of them. In fact, I think that to reject the logical possibility of a chain like that would also require you to reject the logical possibility of arithmetic itself, since that chain I just described is just an ordered list of events with the same ordering as the natural numbers (just replaced the transitive closure of the "was caused by, one second earlier" relation with <, and you get the standard ordering of the naturals).

[RickPayton-rd]

I appreciate your well thought out arguments.
I feel it's important to understand that Mathematicians have "tamed" infinity a long time ago. For them it's just another tool for understanding.
I find it quite possible that philosophical musings on the infinite just founder from different points of view.

[MaverickChristian]

Alternatively one can use something like the Eternal Society Argument. (I talk about that on my own channel in Vlog Episode 17.)

[realmless]

Me who didn't read the title card: the answer to your question is no.

[j.gstudios]

Do I understand the video at all? Nope not even close
Do I like apologetics? Yep yes I do
Therefore I stay and nod my head in ignorance 😂

[Nickesponja]

Two comments:

1) I don't see how your principle can be called "general". There are literally infinitely many causal chains resulting in contradictions and infinitely many not resulting in contradictions. That you've heard of more of them resulting in contradictions is pretty much irrelevant when there are literally infinitely many of both. You need a quantitative assessment of how many result in contradictions for your principle to be called "general".

2) How is that a contradiction at 6:10? Say the chain is at the interval (1, 2]. When the black ball reaches 1, nothing happens (there's no other ball at 1 the way you constructed the chain). At any point after reaching 1, the color of the ball is undefined, because the limit as n goes to infinity of (-1)^n doesn't exist. The ball can't be said to be black and white at the same time.

[Nithin_sp]

Great one, A² ❤️ Now, can you tweak EAAN?

[gabri]

Nah, we don't really need the infinite causal chain to be logical, we can just say "the infinite causal chain works in mysterious ways"

[petery]

What's your take on endless future paradoxes? How would you resolve it without destroying Orthodox Christianity or discarding Casual Finitism?