Q&A: The Principle of Causality in the Absence of Entities
The Principle of Causality in the Absence of Entities
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask: in the second notebook on the cosmological proof, the Rabbi wrote about the assumption of causality—that the entities around us require a cause.
But I wanted to ask: someone who accepts the principle of causality for existing things—why would he not also accept that things that do not exist require a cause for why they do not exist?
After all, in both cases the existence of the thing is not derived from the entity itself (we are not assuming that the entity is its own cause).
Wishing you a good year, and may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
Answer
This is a mistake. The principle of causality, by definition, speaks about the existence of entities or the occurrence of events. A cause is needed in order to explain why the thing came into being out of nothingness. The assumption is that without a cause there is nothingness, and therefore a cause is needed for it to come into being. If we did not assume that the default is nothingness, there would be no place for the principle of causality.
In a case where, for some reason, the default is that something will exist or occur, then a cause is needed to explain why it does not exist or does not occur. If an object is suspended in the air, a cause is needed to explain why it does not fall. If an egg is fertilized by sperm and no embryo is formed, a cause is needed to explain why it was not formed. But with respect to absolute nothingness, no cause is needed for it to remain nothingness.
A good year, and may you too be inscribed and sealed for a good year.
Discussion on Answer
Copenhagen, why do you assume the idea of causality with respect to objects in the first place? It is easy for me to understand this principle with respect to events and occurrences, but this claim regarding objects is not clear to me.
Gilad previously thought that this question could collapse the entire cosmological proof, but in my opinion the distinction is self-evident. When there is some brute fact—meaning, some contingent element in reality—the intellect immediately asks why, and the principle of causality is not satisfied unless it is shown that there is an entity capable of producing the result, and that the conditions exist that could bring it to produce it (which are not necessarily deterministic—see contingent creation, quantum mechanics, free will).
Nothingness is not considered some contingent element in reality, but rather the absence of such an element, and therefore the principle of causality does not even get started. You do not need anything with the ability to produce nothingness in order to get nothingness. Alternatively, one could say that nothingness is explained by the fact that there is nothing with the power to bring the possible object in question into existence that actually did so.