What does it mean that an explanation has to be presented in full? In the context of a chain of causes, what would an acceptable explanation theoretically look like? Presenting the “character” of each of the causes in the chain?

In addition, what exactly is the question that regress does not provide an answer/explanation for?

You are currently running three threads on this topic. I’ll end the discussion here too. An explanation has to explain. That’s all. If you want to discuss it, bring up an example and then we can discuss it. And do that in only one of the threads.

Got it, I’ll continue the discussion only in this thread. I didn’t completely understand what kind of example you want, but I’d really appreciate it if you could answer the questions I asked in this thread..
1) How, theoretically, can an infinite chain of causes be explained in full? I didn’t understand what it means that an explanation has to be fully attained.
2) You said that infinite regress does not constitute an explanation. For which question does it not constitute an explanation?

I know I’m being a pain, and I really do appreciate your willingness to respond. This topic is really important to me, and I wouldn’t bother you for nothing.

If the topic is important to you, then please do me the courtesy of posting here an example of an explanation based on infinite regress for something in the real world. Then we can discuss it.

I’m speaking, of course, about infinite regress in the context of the cosmological argument and the cause of the universe, if that counts as an example.

No, that is really not an example. Formulate and present the explanation explicitly here. What do you want to explain, and how are you explaining it?

I’m not even sure what the question is that we’re looking to explain, but I’ll try.
Let’s say the question is, “Why does the universe exist?”
Now there are two possibilities:
1) The universe has a cause (God) that created it.
2) The universe has a cause, and that cause also has a cause, and so on..

I’m willing to accept that neither possibility constitutes an explanation, but I don’t understand why one has an advantage over the other.

Or alternatively, to say that both are acceptable as an explanation.. To claim that there is one cause or infinitely many causes is an explanation / description of reality, even if partial…

Notice how important it is to formulate your claim explicitly. Now you already understand that infinite regress is not an explanation. So that is the first important methodological lesson we’ve gained here.
Now you are making a new claim: that even an ordinary explanation is not an explanation.
And I wonder: why is that? You didn’t justify it. Are you unwilling to accept anything as an explanation? When I say that a body falls to the earth because the force of gravity pulls it, is that not an explanation?

I’m trying to understand what counts as an explanation, not necessarily to argue that an ordinary explanation is not an explanation. For that matter, if we say that an acceptable explanation is one that describes some regularity in which X leads to Y (I caught a cold because I was exposed to cold, for example) — why is a first cause accepted as an explanation? A first cause, by definition, merely says that “there is a cause.”

You keep expecting me to formulate the questions and then answer them. I’m done.

Okay. Let’s leave aside the regress for a moment (and the definition of explanation) and focus on the first cause as an explanation.

I’ll do as you suggested and try to say what I’m explaining and how I’m explaining it..
What am I trying to explain: Why does the world exist?
How am I trying to explain it: There is a cause for it, a cause that does not depend on anything.

But in practice it seems that I haven’t really explained anything.. I claimed that there is an explanation, but I didn’t say what it is. Why is that considered an explanation?

That depends on what kind of explanation you are looking for. If you are looking for clarification, then it really doesn’t do the job (certainly not fully). But if you are only drawing a conclusion, then this is indeed a conclusion that follows from the argument. Of course it has to be completed:

A thing like the world requires a cause.
There is a world.
Therefore: it has a cause.
[To avoid falling into regress, one adds that the cause is not something like the world, and therefore it itself does not require a cause. That finishes it.]

Exactly like if you see footprints in the sand and conclude that someone passed by here. Even if you can’t say anything about him (other than that these are his footprints), you have drawn a correct conclusion. You have no clarification of what happened here. Therefore, whether you call it an explanation or not is a semantic question. But the argument is sound.

I see. Seemingly, infinite regress too is a conclusion that follows directly from the principle of causality, isn’t it? In fact, that is the natural conclusion as long as I haven’t decided to qualify the principle of causality.. One could even say that this is a potential infinity in order to avoid the discussion regarding concrete infinity, and claim that this is the conclusion we arrived at.

That is:
Everything has a cause
There are things (the world)
Conclusion — there is a potentially infinite chain of causes, as many causes as we want.

Go back to the notebook, or to The First Existential, and there you’ll see the precise formulation. In short, it is not true that everything has a cause. Things of the kind that are in our experience have a cause. An infinite chain is a fallacy, and therefore it is clear that there is something at the beginning of the chain that has no cause. I think we’ve exhausted this. Read there.

That is, we qualify the principle of causality so that only things of the kind that are in our experience have a cause, because a concrete infinite chain is a fallacy.

But is there a reason to qualify the principle of causality if I use a potential chain of causes / am not convinced that concrete infinity is an outright fallacy? (Only that it leads to oddities..)

If you think that 1+2=4, then 1+3=5.
That’s it. I’m done.