The Deep Problem with Infinite Chains
Reply to Question and Hidden Treasure
Someone asked me:
I’m wondering whether the problem with an infinite causal series is not merely that it lacks an initial member, but that it lacks an ultimate ground for the determinate state of every member. Each member derives its character from the member before it, and so on without beginning. But if every member is entirely derivative, what ultimately fixes why the series has this particular character rather than another?
A bird flying over Antarctica is there because of where it previously was, but if it has been flying forever, with no launching point, what ultimately explains why it is over Antarctica rather than Australia?
Is an infinite regress of purely derivative causes therefore ontologically indeterminate rather than merely determinate infinitely backward?
Reply
I think there is something to that. While I have come to think that infinite sequences are problematic whether or not they have a ground, the absence of a ground would seem to me to leave each member indeterminate in some sense.
There have been different ways to develop this seed idea. One classical approach is to note that an explanation of each member would not thereby explain the general condition under which all the members fall, such as contingent existence. For example, the question, “Why are there any chickens at all?” does not seem to be answered merely by extending the chain of chickens coming from chickens to infinity. A deeper explanation would reach beyond the chain itself.
p.s., A puzzle arises when we consider the most general condition, existence itself. For there cannot be any existing ground beyond all existence. Does this mean the general chain of all existing things is indeterminate, since it has no external ground? Pause to think about that.
My answer here is that. Wait, did you pause to think about the question? How can there be any explanation of why anything exists without appealing to something that exists? Isn’t that circular? Or if we say there is no explanation of why anything exists, then how do we avoid the above concern that this leaves it indeterminate that anything exists? There’s a puzzle here.
Where is the answer?
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Sometimes, it is useful to take some time to ponder a puzzle, like digging for a treasure.
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.If you stop at the first rocks, you might miss something deeper in.
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Hi.
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Why are you here?
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What are you looking for?
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Are you curious?
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This is Sheldon:
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Why does Sheldon exist?
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Why do you exist?
Why does the chain of causes that preceded you exist at all? Seriously, why?
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There is only one possible answer.
An infinite regress is not the answer. You know that.
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So what is it?
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How curious are you to know?
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“Existence is not a predicate” is a distraction for the academic mind. You know that’s not the solution. Send Kant away. He doesn’t speak for you.
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You found a treasure:
Fire fills the flames.
That’s treasure.
Here’s the interpretation:
Without the fire, there would be no flames. Even infinitely many flames on top of flames would not add up to an explanation of the flames. Flames require the fire.
What about the fire? Where does the fire come from? Why does the fire exist?
The fire of existence is a special fire: it does not admit of a condition for its existence. By the light of reason, no existence could explain (cause or be a condition for) existence itself. So existence is not explained—and cannot be explained (caused or determined)—by any prior condition.
Existence, then, is not like the flames of existence. The flames are indeterminate apart from that which determines them. But existence is already (necessarily) fully determinate apart from anything. For nothing can determine that which is already (necessarily) fully determinate.
So here is the insight: that which can be determined—the chickens, the turtles, the planets, no matter how many—can only be determined, ultimately, by that which cannot be determined. The foundation of existence is already fully determinate. There is no other way it could be.
Existence fills the flames.
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there is always more to see….
Brilliant and very creative article! I think this is the idea of St Thomas Aquinas’s _De Ente et Essentia_ argument, especially if you read it with Fr Barry Miller’s (with more analytical) rendering: that existence ultimately is the unlimited Pure Act but essence is the limitation — in your word, determination — which “bounds” existence into finite beings.
Fr Barry Miller also has an awesome rendering of why certain “explanatory series” cannot be infinite, and the one in the _De Ente_ argument is one of them.
"That which can be determined ... can only be determined, ultimately, by that which cannot be determined. The foundation of existence is already fully determinate. That is well and succinctly said. It is also obvious.
I would like to hear more on "Existence is not a predicate". I heard this first, many decades ago, from Anthony Flew in the Keele University Foundation Year Lectures. It did not convince me then, because in the sentence 'Things exist', 'exist' is clearly a predicate. No doubt there is more to it than this, starting with: existence is a predicate, but not like any other predicate.