How is change possible?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Mind Over Matter, Nov 22, 2011.

  1. 420Joey SF's Incontestable Pimp Valued Senior Member

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    Well than how could something always have existed what is somethings source.
     
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  3. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Short: The impossible is not such when there are no regulatory, organizing, disorganizing, and restrictive powers to violate. Absence of everything should include absence of regulatory, organizing, disorganizing, and restrictive powers. No explanation needed for "something" arising other than the lack of principles if a (probably) mythological "nothing" was the case.

    Longer alternative:

    The question seems to suggest that a principle which requires a "thing" to be the effect of a prior cause is potent before "something" or "anything" exists. Accordingly, suggests a temporal order and direction is potent before "something" exists (past, present, future -->) which such cause and effect are subsumed under (or vice versa?).

    The next question then rears its head: If concepts, principles, laws, rules (whatever) that something usually seems to conform to were so effective or demanding before something even existed, then why would they not count as "something" themselves during this hypothesized state of "nothing"?

    If the response is that they are invented abstractions that exist in name only (or have no power either now or during this supposed "absence of everything"), then there is no requirement for something to have had a cause, a source of origin, a "before something", etc.

    If the response is that they do have an existential status and power, but only in a general or non-spatiotemporal sense (etc) rather than as concrete entities, then the supposed nothing is either not truly the absence of everything or is a contradictory, meaningless, unnecessary (etc) assumption.
     
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  5. Rav Valued Senior Member

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    The 'source' would be something too, so in the context of inquiring about how something got here your question is ill-conceived. If there is always a source then there was never nothing.
     
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  7. X-Man2 We're under no illusions. Registered Senior Member

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    Its said that because humans have a beginning (born) and ending (die) this is the reason mainly for not comprehending always or forever before.So since nothing has never existed that means something always or forever has.This confuses many.They reject it often.
     
  8. Hertz Hz Registered Senior Member

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    Change occurs when you walk into a shop, select your goods and hand your money over the counter to an assistant. Your change is handed back to you along with a little certificate to prove how much the items cost, and other such details as the time the goods were purchased and from where. On the little certificate is also the change that was given to you.
     
  9. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Change is possible because without its effects nothing is possible.
    We all "should" know nothing is impossible.

    Assuming the inverse, everything is possible.

    My mind cycles through these ideas daily in many ways.

    Once you understand infinity completely, the problems associated with this reality vanish into oblivion.
     
  10. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    Infinite regression threads seem contradictory, IMO.

    Humans, with a finite lifespan, have developed words to conceptualize infinity, with one theory being that the universe has always existed.

    Yet how can a finite entity wrap it's brain around forever, I wonder?

    We so want to determine a source, an origin, of the universe, when in fact we still cannot explain how our own species came about on this planet.

    Talk about trying to run before one can walk, lol...

    Change, happening to us and all around us, constantly, predictably unpredictable.

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  11. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    I think that would make a good theory or law.

    The law of Unpredicable predictability.

    States. "stuff changes all the time, but the change itself is constant.
     
  12. Ripley Valued Senior Member

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    But stuff doesn't change at all. I suppose one could say that things segue from a previous state to the next, but all from an intrinsic composition that has already been defined at its core—a design that remains designed. I think focusing on the process of change itself is superfluous.
     
  13. Mind Over Matter Registered Senior Member

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    1. Change is by definition the actualization of potential states

    2. Out of nothing comes nothing.

    3. Anything which begins to exist cannot be the source of its own reality.

    4. Anything which begins to change cannot be the source of its own change.

    5. Change exists.

    6. The universe by definition is the sum total of all changing things.

    7. Therefore every point in time is contingent in so far as it is the case that no particular point in time is the cause of its own actuality or change.

    8. Thus the universe cannot be the source of its own change because every part of it is an actualization of potentiality in some way shape or form, and therefore none of it can be said to be the sufficient cause of its change.

    Conclusion: Therefore there is a timeless reality at the root of all change, because no change can exist without an actual reality as its predetermining basis.

    Premise 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, are the main power points driving the conclusion.
     
  14. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Link please.

    Wrong.

    Er, wrong again.

    Bullshit.
     
  15. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    If I were you I would try arguing with someone smarter than this one here. Or atleast someone who has more to hide. Is less transparent.

    It is true the universe and all it's properties can not be ascribed to it's own cause. Atleast not fully. There is an infinite amount of changes not ascribed to the furthest reaches of what our knowledge itself can ascribe to the universe.

    Still this only means if we were to hold the universe in our hands we would not know how it works. There would be intrinsic parts slipping through our fingers.
     
  16. river

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    interactions between objects
     
  17. Techne Registered Senior Member

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    Why do you think he is wrong? Do you understand the difference between the scientific interpretation of nothing (empty space) and the logical and philosophical definition of "nothing". If he is using the scientific interpretation then yes, I agree that he is wrong. If he is using the logical and philosophical definition then he is logically spot on. I think he is using the philosophical and logical definition in a philosophical argument btw.

    Also, he just provided the standard Aristotelian view of how things change (potentiality to actuality). What is your definition of how things change?
     
  18. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Then he's simply wasting time isn't he?
    Since physical reality takes precedence over philosophical reality.
    It's hardly viable to claim that philosophically nothing exists due the philosophical impossibility of nothing arising from nothing if we're actually here.

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  19. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    if it always existed it never needs a source, otherwise your first thought is in error.

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  20. Robittybob1 Banned Banned

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    That could only happen if we are not really existing at all.

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  21. Techne Registered Senior Member

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    This is a philosophical statement and you need to at least explain a bit more. It may be trivially true or simply false or you are perhaps just setting up a false dichotomy. Who knows. But if it is even remotely objectively true, and this is the philosophical section, what are you doing here? I would think the physics section is perhaps better suited based on what you just said.

    It is simply a logical and philosophical truth used as a premise in a logical and philosophical argument in the philosophical section. I don't see a problem with that.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2011
  22. NietzscheHimself Banned Banned

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    Can you give evidence for this? Or are you just wasting time with logistics? ( logistics is a type of philosophy)

    IMO reality is reality. The adjectives you are using are two different ways of describing the same thing. That one can elaborate a point more easily is just due to the restrictions caused by lack of information in the other. Still if you had all the information one could easily be translated in to the verbiage used by the other.

    And since physics relies on matter to exist, it seems nothing can only be explained through (relativity) or philosophy which seems to have more to say about "nothing" since that is what all life becomes.

    Is it impossible for all reality to become nothing? To be sucked back into a singularity? I think not.
     
  23. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    For what?

    :roflmao:
    Try again.

    Yeah, but, as we have seen numerous times, your opinion isn't worth the electrons used to to hit the screen...

    I see. Physics relies on matter so therefore it's explained through philosophy.
    Run that by me again.

    Why?
    And WTF does this have to do with anything I wrote?
     

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