Can an event without a cause take place?

Question

I am sure there must have been several philosophers in history who have investigated this question. However finding any specific and good research on that topic is not easy.

In our everyday life, most of us implicitly assume every event having a cause even if we do not or cannot know what the cause is. However, it seems there is no plausible case against events that have no cause at all. Or is there?

You're happy to have God as an example but not quantum mechanics? — Kenshin, Sep 10 '13 at 16:35
I don't think God is an event. We have to distinguish events from objects / substances. — Dante Alighieri, Sep 10 '13 at 19:15
@AsphirDom - There are many different nominations with many different viewpoints about what that word means. It depends from where you are coming from. — Saul, Sep 11 '13 at 06:53
@DanteAlighieri - True but a genesis of a god might be. Or if we take a step further and assume that god is a process (a continuous sequence of events) then Asphir's proposal is somewhat applicable also. — Saul, Sep 11 '13 at 07:01
@DanteAlighieri All objects must exist - an existence is an event, hence every object is an event intrinsically. I don't see big difference between object and event. Well, i see it a bit if i close one eye. — Asphir Dom, Sep 11 '13 at 11:50
@Chris Existence of God should be more obvious to anyone then number one. Should but not must. — Asphir Dom, Sep 11 '13 at 11:53
@AsphirDom - You appear to be using a different interpretation of an event as in philosophy it denotes something that is relatively short in duration. I agree that every object exists in some sense but considering existence to be an event is a bit of a strech. Rather, existence is a process - a sequence of events. However regarding your initial proposal, please do expand your idea into an answer, it would be interesting to read why you assert that existence or genesis of god is without a cause. — Saul, Sep 11 '13 at 13:16
@Trylks - I am not sure I understand the intention of your question in its entirety but an event without a cause has exactly zero factors limiting or favoring its appearance. There is no why, it would just take place whenever and whereever it would. The question is, are there any valid logical or philosophical arguments against such events? — Saul, Sep 12 '13 at 08:13
Is this different from "Is it possible for something to have no cause?"? Appears to be a duplicate... — stoicfury, Sep 13 '13 at 07:08

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '13 at 16:22

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Yes. In quantum mechanics, a photon may be in a superposition of horizontal and vertical polarization. Now if this photon is directed towards a filter that allows only vertical light to pass through, does the photon pass through or is the photon reflected?

The answer is the photon has a 50% chance of passing through and a 50% chance of being reflected. If the photon passes through, you may say, there must have been a cause for the photon to go through. However, it has been proven that there are no hidden variables that determine whether the photon passes through or not, but rather it is a completely random choice.

Therefore some events happen without a cause.

answered Sep 10 '13 at 16:22

Kenshin

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Very arguable answer. QM is less understood than the OP question. Especially hidden variables. – Asphir Dom Sep 10 '13 at 16:24
It is well established that there are no hidden variables in quantum mechanics. – Kenshin Sep 10 '13 at 16:25
So you are ABSOLUTELY sure there are no hidden variables? Will bet your house and all money on it? – Asphir Dom Sep 10 '13 at 16:26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem – Kenshin Sep 10 '13 at 16:29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test_experiments – Kenshin Sep 10 '13 at 16:29
Your assumption was that i don't know about it? :) There is also a book by Bell called "Speakable and unspeakable in QM" something like that. – Asphir Dom Sep 10 '13 at 16:31
Alright, well the mainstream view in physics is that the Bell experiments prove either hidden variable theory is false, or events are non-local. Again the mainstream view in physics is that hidden variable theory is false rather than events are non-local. Therefore, the mainstream view in physics is that events happen without a cause. Of course it's not certain, but it is the best we have so far. – Kenshin Sep 10 '13 at 16:39
There may be no hidden variables but a wrong model with wrong variable granularity. Consider a photon moving as a spiral (cilinder shaped, not cone shaped, as a spring, sorry for my English). If you see it vertically or horizontally it'll look like a wave. If it goes through a photon-narrow corridor (that is tall) it may keep only the movement in the direction that the corridor allows, until something changes its behaviour again. Depending on what part of the (spiral) movement the photon is, it may enter the corridor or bounce on the walls at the sides, maybe with a 50% likelihood. – Trylks Sep 10 '13 at 16:51
Quantum mechanics is a theory ( quite a good one at that it is good At making predictions). A theory is certainly not the same as reality , just a model. That said this does give a plausible framework where causality can fail. – Baby Dragon Sep 10 '13 at 22:35
The filter was the cause for the photon of having a 50/50 chance of being reflected or going through. Without the placement of the filter, the 50/50 event would not have happened. – Swami Vishwananda Sep 11 '13 at 15:56
@Swami, yes but if the photon does go through, what is the cause of it going through as opposed to being reflected? – Kenshin Sep 12 '13 at 06:03
Many-worlds QM doesn't have this causeless problem - it goes through in one world and doesn't go through in the other. – shieldfoss Sep 13 '13 at 08:33
So do I get it right that we can build an authentic hardware random number generator based on this? – Kolyunya Sep 13 '13 at 12:49
@Chris aren't photons like a wave? Maybe it depends on the moment of the oscillation where the photon finds the filter, if it is towards the middle it will go through, if it is on the sides it will bounce. I tried to say that, but my comment seems to be ignored. In any case, this doesn't prove that some events happen without a cause, but that there is no known cause. Is there any unknown cause? We don't know, but we continue researching on physics because we think so. – Trylks Sep 13 '13 at 12:53
@Trylks, if you look at my links given concerning the Bell experiments and understand them, you will see that no such theory can hold true. If you consider entangled particles it can be shown that the decision to go through or not is completely random, without a predetermined cause - such as your wave theory. Either this is so, or signals can travel faster than the speed of light, which most physicists reject and prefer to reject causality instead. – Kenshin Sep 15 '13 at 07:32
@Trylks, also your conception of light as a wave is not correct. Light is a wave in a mathematical sense as the wave function is the form of a sin and cosine complex wavefunction. E.g. psi = sin(wt) + i cos(wt). This means the real and complex components of psi oscilate as a wave, and two wavefunctions can interefere like a wave, but it does not mean that a photon moves in a wave shape through the air. – Kenshin Sep 15 '13 at 07:36
@Kolyunya, A TRUE random number generator has been built using principles of quantum mechanics such as the one described in my answer.http://photonics.anu.edu.au/qoptics/Research/qrng.php – Kenshin Sep 15 '13 at 07:37
Sorry @Chris but I wanted to be quite clear to avoid longer iterations on the same topic and as a result the answer is quite long, so it is somewhere else. Sorry again. PD: also, since I'm using an external service I decided I'd "mirror" it, here. – Trylks Sep 16 '13 at 18:16
@Trylks, I have now responded to your post. – Kenshin Sep 17 '13 at 04:22
@Chris thank you for your time and patience, I really appreciate that. I have to read more carefully the Bell experiments, I do not really understand how the accuracy of the model (no hidden variables) could be proved. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 12:17

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 13 '13 at 23:15

Hume showed that empirical reality can have no cause & effect. All that can be shown is that events happen together or do not. Now, of course this means that science is not possible.

This prompted Kant to rescue science by rescuing causality. He did this by bringing in consciousness. We structure experience so that it takes place in space & time, and hence we impose causality.

In Islamic Mu'tazilite theology Allah is causeless, since he is outside of time & space - so causality makes no sense. But then He is not an event.

There are events in nature that are fundamentally random so have no precisely determined cause. For example an atom of radium decays at random.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 11 '13 at 13:30

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If a thing is eternal or infinite then sure then it would make sense for it to not have a cause. How would a thing that is supposed to have existed forever have a cause?

If the thing in question has a beginning (finite in other words)like the universe for instance then claiming it has no cause opens up an entirely new can of worms but to the question of whether a thing can have no cause my answer would be yes, if it is eternal.

PS: Yes God in the west have generally been categorized as being eternal.

answered Sep 11 '13 at 13:30

Neil Meyer

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The question is about events, not things and the difference is that events are what happen to properties of things in time. The other objection I have is that I am not sure if something having a beginning means it is finite. For example, what about the set of non-negative integers? You cannot tell which non-negative integer is the final one as there is always a bigger one - that set begins with zero but yet it has no ending. How can you identify something as finite if it has no ending? – Saul Sep 11 '13 at 13:48

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 12 '13 at 18:18

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This is a very simple question if we consider possibility theory with the (new) definition of an event without a cause: an event with exactly zero factors limiting or favoring its appearance.

There are no factors influencing the possibility or necessity of the event, so they remain at zero, and thus the probability of the event remains at zero as well.

This is coherent with what we seem to observe. Random things could happen constantly but they don't seem to happen. Any event with a low probability should happen sooner or later given enough time. Why don't these things happen? Because the probability is zero, at least in the macro-world.

In the quantum-world things seem to be different, but the counterintuitiveness and the paradoxical nature of quantum physics leads to think that either ontologically the world is in a way we cannot understand or epistemologically we have not been able to understand how it really is. Which in short means that either the paradoxes are real or in our minds (due to a misleading framing).

The only event that is special in this sense is the creation of the Universe. Probability works in a different way here. We cannot speak about the half-life of nothingness to become a Universe because there is no time without a Universe. We cannot really ask how long did it take for the Universe to start existing.

answered Sep 12 '13 at 18:18

Trylks

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Are you sure that probability as such can be applied to events without a cause? I mean, it does not seem correct to assign a probability to an event that has lacks any factors influencing that measure. I am fine with having the probability undecidable but remaining at zero? How did it get there in the first place? – Saul Sep 12 '13 at 18:37
@Saul What is the probability of a unicorn falling over your head for no reason? What is the probability of a unicorn falling over your head because it's actually a plushy that a friend threw at you? Causes always add to the probability, thus, without any cause, the probability remains at zero. – Trylks Sep 12 '13 at 20:30
This question is neither about unicorns nor impossible events in general but about events without a cause. Or are you saying that events without a cause are in fact impossible? My objection is that it is logically inconsistent to apply concrete probabilites to an event without a cause, except undecidable, as any concrete probability arises from causes and from causes only. Does it not? – Saul Sep 13 '13 at 11:34
@Saul I'm not speaking about impossible events, but events without a cause, events without a cause should happen for no reason, that means they should have no reason to happen, and that's why they don't happen. – Trylks Sep 13 '13 at 12:44
You seem to be assuming that every event must have a reason to happen and that is exactly the assumption I am challenging here. I am interested in the argumentation behind the assertion that every event must happen for a reason. Are there any philosophical, logical or empirical arguments that can convince us it must be so and not otherwise? – Saul Sep 13 '13 at 13:25
@Saul events don't need a reason to happen, it's not a must, they could happen without a reason. The point is they simply don't happen to happen without a reason to happen. Events don't need a reason to happen, they are cool and fine not happening. Why would an event happen without a reason to happen? – Trylks Sep 13 '13 at 16:17
No. What I meant was that you seem to be assuming that every which occurs must have a cause and justify it along the lines of "it is so because I say so". I am neutral to either case and interested in arguments for both sides but what I am not neutral to is inconsistencies and insufficient justification. That is what I am doing here right now - I am asking clarifications for this particular answer but your suggestion that other cases are fuzzy at the moment too is not really useful. So, let's try again. This answer asserts that every event which occurs must have a cause. Why is that true? – Saul Sep 13 '13 at 17:43
@saul The difference is subtle but important, I'm not saying that every event that occurs must have a cause, I'm just saying that events that don't have a cause don't occur. Why would they? – Trylks Sep 13 '13 at 18:25
But what is that difference then? Please do demonstrate it as I do not see it. The statement "events that don't have a cause don't occur" is logically equivalent to "every event that occurs must have a cause". Why? Because according to classical logic and ZFC, that supposedly non-empty set of subtle differences between these two statements is in fact empty. There is no logical difference between them at all. Neither the probability nor the negation argument holds. – Saul Sep 14 '13 at 12:33
@Saul you are assuming the event, and then trying to deduce the necessity of the cause. If you assume the non-existence of the cause, then the event turns to be non-necessary and actually non-existent. You can see the difference using modal logic. – Trylks Sep 14 '13 at 20:34
To be honest, I still can't see it and you haven't demonstrated it either. If we assume modal logic is even applicable here, the question is exactly how does such an event turn out to be non-necessary and more importantly, why is a non-necessary event actually non-existent? In other words, where is the formal proof to back up these assertions? – Saul Sep 15 '13 at 12:18
@Saul I'm just trying to point out at a way in which you could formalize the (subtle) differences between what you say and what I say. I may be able to provide a formal proof for your question if you formalize the question, specially the notion of "event". In any case, I don't think this requires a formal proof, we all know the day after Tuesday is Wednesday, without any formal proof about that. – Trylks Sep 16 '13 at 18:19
@Saul, I read your early comment, "Is it possible to apply probability to events without a cause". The answer is a definite yes. For example taking a photon that is polarized at 45 degrees to the vertical it has 50% chance of going through a horizontal-vertical beam splitter and a 50% chance of being reflected. But if I were to have light polarized at 20 degrees to the vertical, then I can calculate the probability it will go through a horizontal filter to be greater than 45%, and I can actually calculate the number, even though whether it goes through or not is random. – Kenshin Sep 17 '13 at 04:25
The meaning of this probability is that if the probability of going through is 80%, then if I had 10000 photons, then approximately 8000 will go through, and 2000 won't. Of course the true results will be a normal distribution centered around this figures. – Kenshin Sep 17 '13 at 04:27
@Chris - I think the context of your example is too different. The movements of a photon are determined by the environment (the reference frame percentages apply to) but an event without a cause has no determinants as it has zero factors restricting or favoring it. That is the reason its probability is undecidable. – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 08:10
@Trylks - an event is what ever can happen and does happen to properties of objects or subjects in time. For a more in-depth discussion, see Events. The only reason I am asking for a proof here is because I do not understand your reasoning - to me it seems as if you picked a system of axioms that rule out such events and then presented it as evidence. There is no sense in that. – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 11:24
@Saul from there I read: "it is not even easy to give an uncontroversial characterization of events", so I'm gonna go with: "an event is a change in the properties of a thing". This change must happen in the first derivative (of that property wrt time) that is zero to be an event, otherwise it's just a process. If we agree on this, then you can see that there is some inertia to be broken, the probability of things not happening at every nanosecond is very high, basically one, and the probability of things not happening is zero or very close to zero, not indefinite (as we can see). I continue.. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 12:36
@Saul we can also consider meta-events, or the differences between some events and other events. Clearly most events happen due to some causes, can there be events that happen without a cause? There must be some difference with events that require a cause, otherwise those events would require a cause too. That difference counts as a cause, doesn't it? If there is a difference, that's a cause, no events can happen without a cause. If there is no difference, either all events require a cause or none requires a cause. We see many events requiring a cause, so the second is not possible. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 12:37
@Trylks - Sorry but .. what? Must happen in first derivative? Inertia to be broken? An event without a cause has exactly zero factors restricting it because otherwise it would have a cause and that would be a false premise. The fact that an event having a cause is different from an event without one does not prove the latter is impossible at all. Difference as such is a set of properties one object has and another object has not, nothing more. Are you seriously saying here that a proof means redefining common words arbitrarily and then presenting it as sound reasoning pertaining to a fact? – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 13:32
@Saul then there is no such a thing as an event without a cause because an event must occur on something, and the present state of that something influences the future possibilities of that something. For a zero influence of the present state of things into events those events should happen on nothing, and do nothing to produce a change in that nothing that remains as nothing. If you want to speak about events that involve some thing then we should consider the stability of that thing. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 14:01
@Trylks - Again, this question is about events that occur irrespective of the previous states of their object. Why cannot it occur if it influences future possibilities? The case here is about events without a cause but not without effects. An event is an observable change of a property and there is none without it. Even if that change appears for the smallest observable duration and means the subsequent destruction of the object then so be it, it is still an event. Stability is no criterion here as our universe is at every moment full of objects appearing, destructing and persisting. – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 15:47
@Saul "An event is an observable change of a property", so it will always be influenced by the likelihood and inclination of the current status of the property to remain unaltered, its inertia/immutability/stability/etc. Choose the term you like most. Therefore there are no "events that occur irrespective of the previous states of their object". Because states of things have an associated inertia/immutability/etc. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 16:00
@Trylks - We cannot investigate situations when the current status of the property remains unaltered because that is not an event. An effect of an event is not its cause. You are still barking at the wrong tree - probabilities, differences, inertias, stabilities etc are not applicable here. Your argument is stuck at the point where you misattribute the properties of a causal event to an event without a cause and then proceed to assert such a thing cannot work. It does not make any sense. – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 16:13
@Saul, what's the difference between the event and the effect of the event? You said: "An event is an observable change of a property". If you keep changing the definitions of the things at question then no answer will be possible. In any case this question is about: "events that occur irrespective of the previous states of their object", however such a thing is not possible, only events that don't occur are irrespective of the previous states of their object. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 16:30
@Trylks - I am simply demonstrating the consequences of applying the original premise to your arguments. To continue, effect of an event is what causes other events, and in that sense an event is the moment when its effects start causing other events. Are you by any chance a non-native English speaker and assuming that "without a cause" means it does not cause anything else? If yes, then don't. This question is about events that are totally spontaneous yet causing other events. Why are events irrespective of the previous states of their object impossible? – Saul Sep 17 '13 at 17:22
Try to avoid extended discussions in comments. You may find it easier to understand each others points and/or convince each other using chat. – stoicfury Sep 17 '13 at 20:03
@Saul "Why are events irrespective of the previous states of their object impossible?" - Because they relate with the state (by changing it?), and not all states are equal in this regard (due to inertia/stability/.../whatever, all in the broadest sense). E.g. the event of decaying, wrt stability, the event of discoloring wrt having a color, etc. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 21:16
@stoicfury sorry, I think we are done here. – Trylks Sep 17 '13 at 21:16
@Trylks - The word "state" means properties of an object at some moment and an event is what happens to properties in time, so in essence you just wrote "events relate to themselves by changing themselves". I appreciate your effort here but this discussion is getting too odd to be useful. Farewell. – Saul Sep 18 '13 at 14:38
@Saul I wrote (according to your definitions) that what happens to properties of an object in time relates to the way those properties are at some moment. Despite of that you read from my words: "events relate to themselves by changing themselves". I think you should read the whole discussion more carefully. Good luck. – Trylks Sep 18 '13 at 14:52
@Trylks - In this context, properties cannot be anything other than elementary and thus cannot have values, they are either present or missing. What happens to them at some moment is a synonym of how they are at that moment. "To" in the sense of "with". Looking at the discussion, it is obvious our definitions have way too many differences to sort them out with any reasonable effort. As I see it, this thread neither proved nor refuted the possibility of events without a cause but if history is of any indication, I am sure that is yet another point where we disagree :) – Saul Sep 18 '13 at 15:54

Can an event without a cause take place?

4 Answers4