The Failure of Logic in Causal Arguments

By: Piotr A. Bartnicki

There are multiple levels of abstraction in our quest for knowledge. On the first level, we have the known and the unknown. Yet we may hypothesize that, there exist unknown truths that exist at even higher levels. We may consider these, higher order metaphysical truths; the second order would be unknown unknowns, and the third unknown unknown unknowns, etc.

What shapes the universe? What determines the values of its various constants, its composition between dark and light matter, or its bounding shape in space-time? This an unknown at the first level of abstraction. Yet we can also ask, what shapes the shaper? What higher-order mechanism exists that determines how these universe-generating mechanisms are formed?

Naturally we develop from this a potentially infinite chain of causes, not strictly confined to our typical sense of space and time, but more broadly defined in a (potentially) infinite dimensional space, including anything which goes beyond our strictly physical understanding of ‘additional’ dimensions, in the same sense that time is not merely an additional axis on a Cartesian plane; not merely a new geometrical dimension of freedom.

We are led to a very interesting paradox, in which we must accept one of two seemingly impossible answers, at least to our struggling intuitive minds. One, that there exists a highest level of the unknown, above which there is no higher. Yet, does it not seem absurd when we ask: Why must this highest unknown be the truth, and not something else? For in what sense can any truth be ‘necessary’?

For any truth to be necessary, it is requisite that such a truth contain a pre-existing statement to the effect that ‘only this statement can be true, and not any others’; yet for such an intrinsic quality to actually take effect, such a statement must have existed as some metaphysical truth in the first place. We immediately see the contradiction in necessary truths: For them to be necessary, they must be true (that is, exist or be valid in some metaphysical form). But then their necessity is not guaranteed; it is in fact dependent on the pre-existence of such a statement.

Thus we see that necessary truths rely on a type of circular logic. It is in this sense that no truth can ever be said to be necessarily true, for its necessity would have to stem from itself, or a group of external collective statements, all of which rely on their own existence first and foremost before their circular, ‘self-reinforcing’ logic becomes valid. If no statement is necessary, then (necessarily), all statements are contingent on other pre-existing statements. This also implies that the existence of any necessary being, including particular ‘natural’ definitions of God, are impossible since they are self-contradictory concepts.

Where does this leave us? The alternate possibility is simply that there is no highest unknown. The existence of every unknown is dependent on a prior unknown; and that the chain of mechanisms determining these eventualities continues ad infinitum. Note that this does NOT imply that such a truth is necessary, in immediate contradiction to what we have already established. For it is still possible for this possibility to be false as well; only that in such a case, the unfortunate consequence would be a total emptiness in the span of all of reality, in this dimension and those of a higher form.

That is to say, that there could be a truth, which states that no truths concerning the generation of proceeding truths are valid, including those involving an infinite series of truths. One might well ask, in such a system, if there is no mechanism for statements to form; i.e. if they are neither necessary NOR contingent, is it even possible for any statement to exist? Logically, this would seem to be the case, for necessary and contingent truths form a mutually exclusive set of all possible truths. And if the truth lands in neither of these realms, then this is equivalent to it not existing at all.

But then this immediately contradicts the foregoing argument – for if it is not possible for a truth to be false, then it must be necessary. Yet it is impossible for any statement to be necessary.

This series of internal contradictions that this analysis generates (assuming such an analysis is sound), leaves us with the unavoidable conclusion that logic is fundamentally flawed with respect to our understandings of the genesis of all pre-universal structures and higher order metaphysical truths. As might have been expected, our minds are ill-equipped to deal with the true nature of reality underlying the generation of our universe, and that we need a new model to make further gains in this area.