Q&A: The First Cause
The First Cause
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi,
At the time I dug into this with you a bit, and because of a hint it seemed we had exhausted it. But I wanted to ask again, because it seems to me we were really just a moment before finishing.
As is known, the thing that breaks the regress has to be something with will that creates all of reality out of its free will, and it must not have a structure that dictates its will. But since will is not the entity itself, rather a kind of attribute and capacity that the object has, then even regarding the first cause one can ask why that object is this way rather than another.
I thought to answer this perhaps by the example of gas in a container that you use at the beginning of the booklet: gas has several possible places to be, so one can ask why the gas is in דווקא those places and not others. But when a single gas particle fills the entire “container” that is the size of the particle, then the question of sufficient reason—why it is this way and not another—is no longer clear. One could perhaps ask why the gas and the container exist at all, or why they are specifically those sizes, but those are somewhat different questions. (Although the Big Bang too, ostensibly, was also compressed into all of its space.)
Answer
Again, I will say that I do not understand this question. We reached the conclusion that there is a God. I did not say anything about Him, and certainly not about His structure. Now you claim that apparently He has some kind of structure, and then ask what the reason for that structure is—why it is this way rather than another. Is the structure special? Do you know anything about it? Is that which breaks the regress not its own reason? In short, I simply do not understand what you are trying to do.
Discussion on Answer
Will does not solve the problem and cannot solve it. As you wrote, will is a characteristic of the object, so how could that explain the object itself?
That object is its own cause, and therefore I am not looking for reasons for how it is built, especially since I do not know how it is built, or whether it is even something special that requires explanation.
That’s it. I’ve exhausted this.
It says, “In the beginning God created.” It does not say, “In the beginning God willed.”
Attributing will to God is only for the sake of explanation.
To say that God has will is just another anthropomorphism.
There were those who thought and believed (and there are still those who think and believe) that the “will” of human beings is something special and exalted, when in fact there is nothing unique about it.
They all made a mistake about something simple: understanding the psyche, psychology. They did not understand that will is ultimately just the final outcome of a lot of give-and-take among drives.
I liked the decisiveness, and especially the authoritative determination of where everyone else (besides you) went wrong. More power to you for having explained it all.
So the principle of sufficient reason—what exactly does it apply to, the objects or the attributes?
Seemingly, because we are talking about complexity, we are talking about attributes; but on the other hand, many times you mentioned that we assume that the things themselves are not a necessary existence, so it sounds like it applies to the objects.
On the other hand, we never have access to any object apart from ourselves. So it is strange that we would ask it for a sufficient reason.
The attributes of the objects.
Okay, so if so, it feels to me like there is some kind of jump here.
Because what ultimately answers the question whether a certain object requires a sufficient reason or not is not its attributes, but rather whether it itself is its own cause.
Unless we assume that an object that does not require a sufficient reason also has different attributes. Because otherwise, what is the difference between an object whose structure does not dictate the outcomes (free will), and an object whose structure does dictate the outcomes?
The only way to answer that, is to assume that we are assuming the world is not its own cause, so an object that would necessitate the outcomes would make the world non-contingent. But I do not recall the Rabbi taking that approach.
“They all” refers to those who thought and believed… not literally everyone. There are some who understood the mistake long before.
I agree that I do not know anything about Him, apart from the conclusion that according to your view I know that He has will. But since there must be an object “behind” the will (will is an attribute, not the essence), and of every object one can ask why it is this way rather than another, how does the will itself solve the problem as the thing that breaks the regress?
Because the whole question of sufficient reason seems to relate to the object and not to its attributes. Or not?