Re: The set of necessary FISONs (axiomless natural deduction)

On 2/6/2025 1:29 AM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

On 02/05/2025 10:19 PM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

On 02/05/2025 10:25 AM, Jim Burns wrote:

On 2/5/2025 8:25 AM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

On 02/04/2025 08:26 PM, Ross Finlayson wrote:

What it's all about is
"The Principle of Sufficient Reason".

>
⎛ The principle of sufficient reason states that
⎝ everything must have a reason or a cause.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_sufficient_reason
>
What causes everything to have a cause?
Does that have a cause? Is the cause itself?

Hm.
Have you heard of "first principles" and "final cause"?

They sound like they're things without a cause.
If not everything has a cause,
why (if I understand you) are only these things without a cause?
I mentioned Judea Pearl's work.
If I recall correctly,
when he sets up his formalism for causal relations,
he explicitly says not quantum mechanics.
I can see why,
experiment shows that quantum mechanics breaks local realism.
We may have some future version of causation
in which that's not a problem,
but he has enough on his plate for right now.
It seems fair to me to say that
quantum mechanics is uncaused.
Statistics for radioactive decay, for example, are very firm,
but which individual atom decays next?
The impression I have is that
there is no way _even in principle_ to know that.
My vague notion of the First Cause
is that it is a deistic version of God.
But radioactive decay displays none of the properties
one would want for a deistic God
-- including that it is NOT remote from humanity.
But, apparently, it is uncaused.
I think we need a better idea of what 'cause' means.