preceding cause; there is no such thing as a "causeless cause," at least, not that we are capable of experiencing. The universe is nothing more than a connected series of events, those connections being the cause and effect relationship we observe.
Classically, it is then asked, "what is the ultimate cause? What happened before anything in the universe happened?"
I'd have to answer the first question by saying the ultimate cause is nothing we can experience; it is beyond our understanding, and even beyond our possible understanding. The second question is meaningless; "before" requires time, and time is an aspect of our universe, only--there is no "before anything in the universe happened." This is part of why the ultimate cause is beyond even what we can possibly understand.
Therefore, with the ultimate cause being a special case, we must examine the causes that are within our realm of understanding, and every one of them must have its own preceding cause.
So how do I get from the premise that causes must have causes to the conclusion that at least some cause of the causes I'm examining must be measureable?
If I am examing a cause (or effect--the terms are somewhat interchangeable, after all), then it must be part of the universe I can observe. As mentioned above, that universe is only a series of connected events. I know I can measure at least some things in that universe. Since everything is connected by these cause-and-effect relationships, and since causes that are measureable will have measureable effects, then the causes even of things I cannot observe directly, such as your experiences, will have effects I can measure directly, even if those effects aren't the specific thing that I'm trying to investigate. |
