Skip to main content

Is there anything absolutely necessary in the world (universe)?

We can conceive something necessary within a particular scenario, like when we define cause as a necessary relation between events which determines a temporal sequence of those events within a particular conceptual frame, but can we conceive consistently a necessary being in absolute terms? Necessary relations in relative terms are introduced by definition as exomorphic conditions of the system, and they work as definiens for other relations and objects. Such is the Lebenswelt intuition of cause, which simply expresses a composition of representations (o better, mappings in a neural space) according to a sequence. However, as an absolute determination, the old bronze chain of Ananke reappears as a transcendental object that grounds a full set of old hypostasis of the universal law.
Kant’s arguments for the fourth antinomy are equivalent to these:
A. There is something absolutely necessary in the world, both[1] as a part of it and as its cause.
1. Our experience of the world shows sequences of alterations or changes in it.
2. Those alterations are causal sequences, thus necessary relations.
3. Since without those alterations there would be no world (for the concept of world implies the concept of time sequence) those causal sequences as a whole are an absolutely necessary condition of the world.
4. Such absolutely necessary condition is in the world (without it there is no world at all), both as its cause and as part of it. It is obvious that the causal sequence is part of the world, for an element of a time sequence (the first one in this case) cannot be outside of time. Likewise, it is its cause.
A is correct.
B. There is nothing absolutely necessary in the world or outside the world as its cause.
1.Suppose that the world itself is a necessary being.
2a. There exists an absolutely necessary beginning of the series of alterations of the world. But by the first antinomy (Did the universe ever begin?) we have proven that it does not make any sense to say that the universe had a beginning (absolutely necessary or otherwise) or that it did not have one, thus 1 must be rejected.
2b. The series is without beginning. Nonsense by antinomy one.
3. The world cannot be a necessary being.
1’. Suppose that there is a necessary being outside the world.
2’. In order to act in the world it would have to be in the world and be a part of a time sequence. As we have seen in antinomy three (Could we be spontaneous?) a free action cannot be considered causal at all, for it cannot be inscribe in a sequence of necessary relations. In fact such antinomy shows the transcendental origin of the concept of cause, and all its problems.
3’. There is not a necessary being outside the world that could be its cause.
B is correct.

But A and B cannot be both correct.
The antinomy shows the transcendental (a priori) origin of the concept of necessary, a concept that has been extrapolated from its life scenario as a notion of restriction of an organism within a particular context, to an absolute metaphysical restriction for the whole universe, where it becomes not only fuzzy but contradictory with other intuitions.




[1] I have extended Kant’s disjunctive (...)entweder als ihr Teil oder ihre Ursache(...)  to (...) beide als ihr Teil oder ihre Ursache (...), for outside time causality is not causality at all. In fact, Kant reaches that conclusion in the second part of the argumentation of the antithesis.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limen et Continuum

  Existence is Encounter. Meeting at the limen. In the limen, the masks disappear, that is, the basic intuitions of identities, such as the identity that I feel and think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. The identity of the tree is a projection of mine: the unity of my process of perceiving the tree generates a mask in me, the ghost of a limited unity separated from everything else. The simplest form of intuitive understanding of masks and limen is given to us by numbers. Numbers intuitively express the liminal tension that is Existence. A little etymological note. Rythmos in Greek means flow. Arythmos (number) is what does not flow, what remains solidified. Numbers express the liminoid, and flow, rhythm, expresses the liminal. A rhythm becomes liminoid when we can trace patterns in it, that is, when we can construct masks of identities. Mathematics has spoken of flow using the Latin word “continuum”, the continuous. All modern science, since Leibni...

Ritual, Scientific Experiment and Truth

 Human rituals have their roots in animal behavior, and the animal pattern has its roots in the need for repetition of living organisms, in the cyclical structure of physiological actions. At the human level, ritual behavior involves a delimitation of space and time, as well as a different meaning of both with respect to the spaces and times of everyday experience. From the ritual ceremonies of cold societies, we observe the care and thoroughness of the shaman to determine with precision the spaces, times and elements that intervene in the rite. Sacred space delimits the world, not only as a place of action, but also the scope of meaning of the things contained in that space. It is a space loaded with meaning: there is an order in things. Time itself acquires its meaning in relation to this order of things, and cyclically closes the space in the “tempo” of the rite, a tempo that is a symbol of the tempo of the World. What is not in the rite or is not referable to the rite has no re...

What is Mythopoetics?

  The narrative grew in the process of being told, as myths always do. The Blog has become more labyrinthine over the years. It contains my Mythopoetics book and a few other things. For those who access these texts without knowing anything about Mythopoetics, I am going to post the introduction of the first part, so you can decide if you want to spend your precious time thinking about the identity narratives that we humans have developed over the years. throughout our eventful existence as a species. "Mythological narratives are the only intellectual activity that has been continuously practiced by human beings, a fact that makes them a unique tool for thinking synthetically our evolution as homo-sapiens. In this sense, they are the first valuation settings that humans have made about themselves and their environment, and as such, they have conditioned the ones that have come afterwards, both in form and content. Their communicative function places them at the basis o...