Q&A: The Principle of Causality – a Personal View
The Principle of Causality – a Personal View
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I am inclined to accept the view that the concept of causality—cause-and-effect relations—
comes from experience conveyed to us by the senses, and is not something we are born with / does not come from reason.
And therefore,
I do not see any fundamental problem in accepting the answer to the question of divine foreknowledge and free choice. (So long as it remains “up there” and does not descend into this world—the world of the principle of causality.)
Does this outlook create a contradiction in my agreeing with the validity of the cosmological argument (and the other proofs) regarding the creator’s necessity?
After all, on the one hand I reject the principle of causality, and on the other hand I want to apply it to the creator’s existence.
Isn’t that a contradiction?
—
P.S.
I thought of distinguishing between the process of thought up to the creator and the process of thought in the shadow of the creator.
But I would still be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on the matter 🙂
Answer
I didn’t understand any of this. What is the view you are adopting? How is it connected to foreknowledge and free choice? And what does all this have to do with the cosmological argument?
Discussion on Answer
A strange and unclear question. First, you are of course mistaken in your understanding of the principle of causality. But now you are asking: if indeed the principle of causality does not exist (as in your mistaken understanding), and is merely a bad habit of ours, can I infer conclusions from it? Do you mean conclusions with objective validity? No. Subjective validity? There is no such thing. By the way, I too do not really exist, and according to your approach that is also true for you with respect to me (who am I?).
All this I wrote only in passing, because I do not usually provide service to people who are mistaken and help them correctly infer mistaken conclusions from their mistaken premises. In short, all this is nonsense.
Thank you for the quick reply!
First,
I do not think that the principle of causality that we have adopted is a bad habit or anything like that. It truly describes what happens in our world. And I am not skeptical about my own existence.
Rather, one cannot infer the law of causality from our universe to other universes and assume that the same laws prevail there.
Just as no one would think that in another universe the same laws of nature must hold.
Why is that not correct?
As David Hume showed, the principle of causality is an assumption of reason and is not learned from experience. I elaborated on this in several of my books (Two Carts, Truth and Unstable, Logic of Time in the Talmud, and others)
My view is that the principle of causality is an acquired product of our experience in this world,
and not a product of pure understanding and straight reason.
(That is, reason is subjective rather than objective toward reality.)
And therefore I also do not see any problem in accepting that the Holy One’s foreknowledge does not affect our actions in the world.
After all, we ask: how can the two principles of Jewish faith—”foreknowledge” and “freedom of choice”—both exist?
Does not one principle push aside the other and overthrow it?
Rather, I think that since the entire source of the principle of causality is only a mental picture formed by our thoughts as a result of experience,
and this concept has no foundation in other worlds outside our own cognition, the question falls away on its own.
And from here I ask:
does this understanding of mine create a contradiction in my agreeing with the validity of the cosmological argument (and the other proofs) regarding the creator’s “necessity”?
After all, they too depend on the principle of causality.