My claim is a bit different from yesterday. I agree that an infinite chain of factors does not fundamentally change the chain (like the parable of the letter r and the Pythagorean theorem).

But my claim here is that this is not a chain at all. Rather, it is one continuous factor! Something like God. Only what changes is the form of that factor.
Like prime matter—energy without form.

So it isnt a chain.

And about that I said yesterday, and repeated here, and I am repeating yet again:
That itself is the factor that is not a turtle and not a chain (youve gone back to the first option, of an entity not found in our experience).

David,
It seems to me there is also discussion in the notebooks of the possibility that the world itself is God.
The problem with that is that the matter cannot escape a division: either (a) the world is the sum of its parts, in which case it is not clear why each part needs an explanation but the sum does not, or (b) the world is more than the sum of its parts, in which case it turns out that it really has another part (say, a world-soul), one not found in our experience, and then one can simply say that that entity is the Creator.

I dont understand what is so complicated about understanding my claim.

Yesterday I was speaking only from the side of regress, and with that I completely agree. An infinite regress viewed concretely is indeed not an explanation, but an evasion.

Here I am speaking from the side of the causality argument. My claim is that the world does not need a cause because of the law of conservation of energy.
The worlds fundamental energy has always existed, only changing form.
And therefore the idea that the world is eternal here is only in a potential sense.
The Rabbi claims that the world is not capable of sustaining itself, and I do not understand why. True, if the world were not capable of sustaining itself, I would agree that an external factor is needed.

I already explained this in the notebook too. Ive exhausted the issue.

Could you give a page number? Because I went through the whole notebook…. It may be that the Rabbi means that causality comes from "pure understanding," as Kant says.

But what I mean here is that after the law of conservation of mass-energy,
The claim that everything we know in the world is created, and therefore the world as a whole is created, is an induction based on nonsense!!

Because even what we know as created is only removing and clothing a new form onto that same primordial energy. So everything in this world is not created (something from nothing), but only formed from something already existing.

—–
Maybe honorable Ishay (the linker) would be willing to explain the Rabbis words to me? For mutual linking 🙂 ?

David,
On the face of it, the intention is to the chapter on an eternal world. There are 3 arguments there. One is from the Big Bang, and indeed it falls with the Big Crunch theory (a theory which, as far as I know, is not supposed to explain empirical findings but to save atheism, meaning its not certain that this is any more of a scientific theory than creationism). But there are also two philosophical arguments there: a. Energy/matter existing for an infinite time is a concrete infinity. b. That energy, even if it does not require an explanation, still requires a sufficient reason.
If I understand correctly, then you are challenging argument b. You claim that one should look for causality only for the form of something, but not for its matter (to use Aristotelian terminology). I dont think there is discussion of this in the notebook. But I dont know why one should think there is a difference. Why would you refuse to accept that the cup has always been a cup, but agree to accept that the matter has always been matter?

The Rabbi himself argues in the notebook that a sufficient reason for a non-composite existent is weak, and it is not clear that there needs to be one.

A.
Why is this a concrete infinity? If that is indeed so, then I would indeed retract what I said, as I already wrote. (And that was the conversation with the Rabbi only on the plane of concrete infinity, and not on the plane of the principle of causality, which is what this thread is about… and that is why I opened a new discussion thread…..)
B.
Regarding the argument from sufficient reason,
1.
Usually one asks for a sufficient reason for an infinite concrete chain,
but indeed even if we assume that the cup is potential, I would not ask for a sufficient reason if its "reason" does not advance me beyond the initial thing.
For example, if the sufficient reason for the world is God, then God too needs a sufficient reason… what comes out of this is an infinite concrete chain of sufficient reasons, so we will have to stop. If so, why stop דווקא at God?
Here there are two possibilities:
If you assume that something that is not a necessary existent must have a sufficient reason, then you have to assume that God is a necessary existent and stop with Him.
But! If you assume that something that is not necessarily a necessary existent can exist without a sufficient reason, then we have no reason at all to invent a new entity for this. All the more so for prime matter, which is not special at all… unlike a cup.
And that is my view, and it seems from the notebook that the Rabbis view also tends in this direction. (P.S. someone who accepts the ontological proof can easily use sufficient reason, for example Leibniz.)
But that is not our way…..

A. Something that has already existed for an infinite amount of time is a concrete infinity, because it means that in actuality an infinite amount of time has already passed. Its not just that you can go back as far as you want in theory, but that in fact an infinite number of seconds (or years or whatever you like) have already passed. This is explained in the notebook.
B. I didnt understand exactly what you wrote. I dont ask for a sufficient reason if it advances me; first I need to decide whether there is a need or not, and only then look for a sufficient reason (and if it doesnt advance me, Ill keep looking). I didnt understand why God needs a sufficient reason, since the claim is precisely that God does not require a sufficient reason because gods are the kind of things that do not need a sufficient reason, and they are unlike the things in our experience that do require a reason (or a cause). In addition, your claim regarding prime matter would be good if the world really were an apparently accidental collection of particles, but since that is not the case it is hard to say that it does not require a sufficient reason. This is already getting close to the physico-theological proof, and it seems to me that this too is written in the notebook.

A. The whole reason one needs to argue that this is a concrete infinity is only because you accept that the world, in its basic material, needs a cause. To the extent that you challenge the claim that it needs a cause, it is completely not a concrete infinity! And that is my claim.

B. Indeed, prime matter has no cause for a cause, because we do not know of it as something that needs a cause. So it is not clear to me how correct this talk about sufficient reason is. The Rabbi also wrote that in the notebook.

In connection with the physico-theological proof…. I have other difficulties, and this is not the place to discuss them right now, because at the moment I am focusing only on the cosmological proof.

I would be happy if the Rabbi, may he live long and well, would comment on the matter.