Karma, Axiom Of Causality & Reincarnation

TheMadFool

The Axiom of Causality (William Whewell) states that:

1. Nothing takes place without a cause

2. The magnitude of the effect is proportional to the magnitude of the cause

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

The bottom line is that everything has a cause.

The Buddhist doctrine of Karma states that the circumstances one finds in life are an effect of our past actions and, it follows, since some of our circumstances clearly do not have anything in the form of a cause in this life, that we must've had a past life in which we did something to explain some circumstances that we experience in our current lives.

For instance, young children, persons who couldn't possibly have done anything good/bad in this life because they simply couldn't have had sufficient time, sometimes endure extreme suffering and other times are the beneficiaries of boundless fortune. In such instances, in line with the Axiom of causality and the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, they couldn't have generated the good/bad karma, or in western philosophical terms, couldn't have done anything that could be identified as a cause, in this life, for the circumstances they find themselves in. It must be that the good/bad karma or the cause lies elsewhere and that elsewhere can't be anything other than a past life. Ergo, the inevitability of Buddhism's belief in birth-death-rebirth - the so-called cycle of samsara. It explains what in philosophy of religion is termed the problem of evil. To make the long story short the evil, the better word is suffering, is simply the effects of past bad karma, either those immoral acts we committed in this life or those moral transgressions we were guitly of in past lives.

Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason is a broader formulation of the Axiom of Causality and implies the same thing. It appears that within a central tenet of western philosophy, Buddhist thought exists in incipent form, just waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

In summary, the Axiom of Causality logically implies:

1. The doctrine of Karma (you reap what you sow)

2. That some, if not all, of us have lived a past life as someone else (reincarnation)

There are some difficulties with such a theory; for instance, does the nature of the effect have to be of the same kind as the cause? Do moral actions (causes) lead to moral effects, herein meant as taking the form of joy and pain as determined by the circumstances of one's birth? The key assumption seems to be that if one causes pain or suffering, one experiences, as effects, pain or suffering in exchange [every action has an equal and opposite reaction].

All in all, Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was a genius of the highest order to have built his entire philosophy (or religion) on an assumption that few would dare to deny and most would accept without hesitation, the assumption that's known as the Axiom of Causality.

EnPassant

2. The magnitude of the effect is proportional to the magnitude of the *effect* — TheMadFool

Shouldn't that be 'cause'?
Corruption moves away from the good which is love, life and being. Corruption moves towards hatred, death and non being. This is despair, hell. Call this karma if you will...

TheMadFool

↪EnPassant

Thanks for picking up my error.

Richard Bronson

I believe your Axiom of Causality is seriously flawed. Let's unpack it and see why.

1. Nothing takes place without a cause.
This is not true. According to science, there are events which do not have sufficient causes. Some events are undetermined. If you were to run our world backwards to some prior point in time (but after it's initial state) and then let it run forward again, you would eventually evolve a world which would differ from our present one. That's because the world will always be reaching forks where it could go in multiple different directions. And we cannot predict in advance, even in principle, which direction it will take.

2. The magnitude of the effect is proportional to the magnitude of the cause.
This is also not true. The very notion of an explosion (an exothermic process) is a process which produces a net energy gain. The heat of a match is much less than the heat of the dynamite explosion it triggers.

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
This is true in reference to physical/chemical processes. But it is a fundamental category error to extend this notion into the domain of ethical reasoning. Newtonian mechanics says nothing about karma. Neither are the philosophical reasons in favor of karma persuasive.

Kenosha Kid

In summary, the Axiom of Causality logically implies:

1. The doctrine of Karma (you reap what you sow) — TheMadFool

As I'm sure you know, that was not a derivation. What's been drawn is an analogy. In defining their religion, the Buddhists have incorporated a kind of causality, specific in its relation of human causes to effects, but vague in the mechanics. To that extent, Buddhism is consistent with the axiom of causality by design. But that does not mean that causality implies karma, any more than the fact that the Big Bang implies a creationist God because the universe was created.

The axiom of causality as written does not limit the eventual effects of human actions even to other humans, and does not limit the numbers of causes and effects to be equal, or their kinds. It is not even evident that karma could even obey those axioms. For instance, everything I do may come back to haunt me (or a future incarnation of me), but what 'magnitude' would that leave for other effects, for instance the breeze generated in the air if I punch a person, or that person's demise? Surely all of the magnitude would be gobbled up by the equal and opposite reaction of future me being punched in karmic retaliation?

elphidium55

@KenoshaKid states:

What's been drawn is an analogy. In defining their religion, the Buddhists have incorporated a kind of causality, specific in its relation of human causes to effects, but vague in the mechanics.

What then is the analogy? Perhaps you could spell it out because I'm not seeing it.

Are you saying that karma is analogous to human cause and effect? But human cause and effect is often morally ambiguous. In this world, sometimes the morally evil prosper while the righteous suffer.

Or are you saying that karma is analogous with some notion we have of poetic justice. But poetic justice is not an objective state of affairs but a desire. Poetic judgement is rendered when we see someone get what we but believe they deserve.

It seems to me that karma is like hell -- it's a kind of delayed but infallible punishment invented to satisfy our need for moral order.

Benj96

2. The magnitude of the effect is proportional to the magnitude of the cause.
This is also not true. The very notion of an explosion (an exothermic process) is a process which produces a net energy gain. The heat of a match is much less than the heat of the dynamite explosion it triggers. — Richard Bronson

My question would be where do you draw the line between cause and effect and thus their equivalent energetic magnitudes. I would say you could equally argue the case of "an ignited dynamite stick with virtually all of its chemical potential energy still remaining" as being the cause of a chain reaction which leads to all of the chemical energy being released as an explosion (effect) regardless if what ignited it.

An ignited dynamite stick is the cause of an exploded dynamite stick just as an ignited matchstick put to a dynamite stick is the cause of ignition, intention of the pyrotechnician is the cause if the matchstick igniting, production of the matchstick is the cause of the matchstick existing, a tree is the cause if the wood used, an ecosystem the cause of a tree, the universe the cause of the ecosystem.

So why not say the universe is the cause of the dynamite stick explosion? Its equally correct. Why must the cause be the closest to an event in order to be granted the title "cause"? If that were the case, the last atom of dynamite to release the final portion of energy contributing to an explosion caused the explosion of X magnitude not the dynamite stick.

As you can see the series of events can be chopped or bound together into any duration. The end if an event or beginning of another is arbitrary and at most limited to how we use words in language to define things as something tangible and finite with a beginning and end. Really though, all things are overlapping, tamransient and blend into one another

elphidium55

So why not say the universe is the cause of the dynamite stick explosion, indeed?

Assume we have the following causal chain:

1. big bang occurred->
2. earth formed ->
3. evolution of multi-cellular organisms ->
4. evolution of trees ->
5. invention of matches ->
6. applying this particular lighted match to this particular dynamite stick
==> "boom!"

Given this chain, we can say that the explosion was brought about by any one of these six cause. But only #6, the lighted match, was the explosion's immediate cause.

Combining this chain with your statement that cause and effect are proportional in magnitude, we now have the following entailments:

The magnitude of the dynamite explosion was proportional to the magnitude of ...
the big bang,
the earth being formed,
the evolution of multi-cellular organisms,
the evolution of trees,
the invention of matches,
the lighted match.

By this logic, the assertion that "the magnitude of an effect is proportional to the magnitude of one of it's causes" has now gone from incorrect to incoherent.

Furthermore, this line of reasoning is just a distraction from the real issue at hand, which is:
what is the analogy between karma and human cause and effect?

Kenosha Kid

What then is the analogy? Perhaps you could spell it out because I'm not seeing it. — elphidium55

I didn't see your post earlier, sorry. Apparently @ing someone doesn't notify them.

Sure, it is analogous insofar as the the causality of karma is like the axiom of causality, having something like equal and opposite reaction (what I do to the world, the world does back to me), without actually being derived from it.

The precise mechanics of a causal chain require more than than the three propositions listed. The second amounts to the conservation of energy. The third is underdefined. If you add conservation of other physical properties, you get physics. If you add something else, perhaps some postponeable conservation of personal harm, you could get something like karma. But it has to be added to the list, it can't be derived from it.

TheMadFool

But that does not mean that causality implies karma, any more than the fact that the Big Bang implies a creationist God because the universe was created. — Kenosha Kid

The notion of karma is fundamentally causal in character but in the moral dimension. It basically claims our moral actions have moral consequences and this system operates in a hedonistic setting with pain and pleasure performing the function of karmic currency in which form moral debts are paid off.

To add, causality is like an overarching principle and all other theories based on causality, like the Buddhist doctrine of karma, must, as of necessity, be a subset, an offshoot, of causality.

The axiom of causality as written does not limit the eventual effects of human actions even to other humans, and does not limit the numbers of causes and effects to be equal, or their kinds. It is not even evident that karma could even obey those axioms. For instance, everything I do may come back to haunt me (or a future incarnation of me), but what 'magnitude' would that leave for other effects, for instance the breeze generated in the air if I punch a person, or that person's demise? Surely all of the magnitude would be gobbled up by the equal and opposite reaction of future me being punched in karmic retaliation? — Kenosha Kid

Karma is moral causality. Any other form causality may assume is irrelevant. I may use the swift flowing river to drown you by pushing you over a bridge and all that counts for the law of karma is my evil intentions and the subsequent push that throws you off the bridge. The river's water may be the actual thing that kills you but it's not an agency and is, ergo, not something to which moral responsibility can be assigned.

Kenosha Kid

The notion of karma is fundamentally causal in character but in the moral dimension. It basically claims our moral actions have moral consequences and this system operates in a hedonistic setting with pain and pleasure performing the function of karmic currency in which form moral debts are paid off.

To add, causality is like an overarching principle and all other theories based on causality, like the Buddhist doctrine of karma, must, as of necessity, be a subset, an offshoot, of causality. — TheMadFool

This is all fine, pending a sensible moral dimension. But if you have a set X that contains (x1, x2, x3, ...}, X does not logically imply x1. Nor does the axiom of causality logically imply karma. That was the point I quoted and took issue with, the sense that karma had been proven with the axiom of causality. It has not. First, the element of the set needs defining properly. Then whatever needs adding to the axiom to derive that element needs defining. Then you have a logical implication.

TheMadFool

Nor does the axiom of causality logically imply karma. That was the point I quoted and took issue with, the sense that karma had been proven with the axiom of causality. — Kenosha Kid

Indeed, causality by itself is not sufficient to prove the existence of karma - a morally-determined causal web. To infer karma we need to demonstrate that the moral aspect of our actions have causal power which is no easy task.

Nevertheless, karma, as a theory, is not completely unreasonable as I will attempt to show below.

It's common knowledge that people pay you back in kind - one good turn deserves another, you reap what you sow, what goes around comes around, and other similar expressions are clear pointers to the fact that people behave under what is essentially a karmic principle. To put is succinctly, in the world of the living, moral actions have moral consequences.

Next comes finding oneself experiencing a rewarding or harrowing time at the hands of people but with no clear history of one having done anything to deserve either. The question, "to what do I owe this fortune/misfortune?" draws a blank. This condition of being undeserved of happiness or suffering, as the case may be, coupled with the fact that in the real world people return favors and retaliate to offenses (establishing the reality of karma) leads to the possibilty of past lives - these past lives serving to explain what one thinks is gratuitous joy/suffering.

Kenosha Kid

Next comes finding oneself experiencing a rewarding or harrowing time at the hands of people but with no clear history of one having done anything to deserve either. The question, "to what do I owe this fortune/misfortune?" draws a blank. This condition of being undeserved of happiness or suffering, as the case may be, coupled with the fact that in the real world people return favors and retaliate to offenses (establishing the reality of karma) leads to the possibilty of past lives - these past lives serving to explain what one thinks is gratuitous joy/suffering. — TheMadFool

I understood, but again you're using inexact phrasing. If the karmic principle could be proven true, that is, without recourse to past lives, it would provide evidence for past lives. The possibility of past lives must be established on its own. But I think for your purposes this suffices?

So the first thing I want to know when I hear of a universal (albeit anthropocentric) law like this is: what are its mechanisms? Putting aside the past lives for the moment, if I punch a little girl in the head today and run away laughing, which I am not wont to do because of my own morality plus the very real ramifications I would suffer both from society and from the law, by what mechanism does the universe punish me later?

This isn't just asking for detail for the sake of it. If there is, for a moral action, an equal and opposite moral reaction, what is conserved by this and how? Can you construct a scale along this moral dimension so that we can say, Punching a little girl in the head + Getting kicked in the balls by a donkey + Coming home to find my house burgled = 0?

TheMadFool

you're using inexact phrasing. — Kenosha Kid

What do you mean by "inexact phrasing"? What I've said isn't actually so ambiguous and so vague to be catastrophic to the discussion.

what are its mechanisms? — Kenosha Kid

My intention is not to expound a comprehensive theory of karma that would involve a detailed account of mechanisms and all. As far as I'm concerned all that matters is that karma is not totally unreasonable an idea for it's based on 1) causality, something that's universally accepted and 2) moral actions do have moral consequences as the presence of the expression, " you reap what you sow" in English and identical expressions extant in other cultures clearly indicates.

This isn't just asking for detail for the sake of it. If there is, for a moral action, an equal and opposite moral reaction, what is conserved by this and how? Can you construct a scale along this moral dimension so that we can say, Punching a little girl in the head + Getting kicked in the balls by a donkey + Coming home to find my house burgled = 0? — Kenosha Kid

Well, as I said, the idea is not to get a closeup view with discernible fine details of the doctrine of karma but to look at it from a distance and appreciate, hopefully marvel at, how karma is a good, if not perfect, fit in re the axiom of causality.

Kenosha Kid

Well, as I said, the idea is not to get a closeup view with discernible fine details of the doctrine of karma but to look at it from a distance and appreciate, hopefully marvel at, how karma is a good, if not perfect, fit in re the axiom of causality. — TheMadFool

Yeah, I'm not really asking for an answer so much as pointing out what would be required for karma to be a possible fit for an axiomatic causality. Things like "action + reaction = 0" and "magnitude of cause = magnitude of effect" need karmic definitions. Without this, there's no basis to say it is a good fit. That is what I meant by this being an analogy.

TheMadFool

Yeah, I'm not really asking for an answer so much as pointing out what would be required for karma to be a possible fit for an axiomatic causality. Things like "action + reaction = 0" and "magnitude of cause = magnitude of effect" need karmic definitions. Without this, there's no basis to say it is a good fit. That is what I meant by this being an analogy. — Kenosha Kid

I guess a lot depends on one's criteria of what counts as a good/bad/perfect fit. Perhaps if you consider the fact that if everything has a cause then our experiences in the moral dimension should also have a cause, you'll get an idea of how one particular kind of causality, one based on morality - can belong to the much larger set of all causal relations.

You mentioned analogy. Why do you think karma and causality are analogous to each other? Do you see similarities or are you confusing a type (causality) for a token (moral causality - karma)?

Gnostic Christian Bishop

TheMadFool — TheMadFool

My wife and I argued karma the other day, and low and behold, I convinced her that karma is a form of victim blaming.

To even suggest to a rape victim, that she deserved what she got because of some past life action on her part, is quite cruel, and that is why I call karma victim blaming and I discard the notion of karma.

We do reap what we sow, so there is a reaction to our actions, but only in this life as we cannot show that there is any other life after death.

Further, if you think of the rapist, you would have to see him as getting his just reward for suffering his own rape in some previous life.

I think the whole karma thing is screwed up.

Regards
DL

TheMadFool

My wife and I argued karma the other day, and low and behold, I convinced her that karma is a form of victim blaming.

To even suggest to a rape victim, that she deserved what she got because of some past life action on her part, is quite cruel, and that is why I call karma victim blaming and I discard the notion of karma.

We do reap what we sow, so there is a reaction to our actions, but only in this life as we cannot show that there is any other life after death.

Further, if you think of the rapist, you would have to see him as getting his just reward for suffering his own rape in some previous life.

I think the whole karma thing is screwed up.

Regards — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Karma takes the form of inexplicable suffering or happiness, such events identifiable by the complete absence of, or irrelevance of, agency (people capable of making free choices) in them. The moment agency is involved, karma no longer applies [as an effect (victim blaming ruled out) but does so as a cause (the victimizer accumulates bad karma)] and victimizers, agencies, are morally responsible for their actions [what they do to their victims.]

Harry Hindu

The notion of karma is fundamentally causal in character but in the moral dimension. It basically claims our moral actions have moral consequences and this system operates in a hedonistic setting with pain and pleasure performing the function of karmic currency in which form moral debts are paid off. — TheMadFool

This implies some kind of (natural) selective process that objectively judges our actions and puts our minds into other bodies. This also implies that our minds are seperate from our brains/bodies, or that we have souls that can be placed into different bodies.

Morality is not objective. The causes of any one of us suffering more than others has nothing to do with what we did in a prior life. It has to do with the circumstances and environment in which we were born and live. Think of it as being born at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Being that I am half Hindu, I see karma as consequences of our actions, which could include the reactions of others. Humans are a highly intelligent social species. People that you have wronged can remember that and tell others about your behavior. Your reputation precedes you, and can lead to you being rejected by your social group.

TheMadFool

This implies some kind of (natural) selective process that objectively judges our actions — Harry Hindu

You could say the same thing about all causality in general.

The causes of any one of us suffering more than others has nothing to do with what we did in a prior life — Harry Hindu

How are you so sure?

It has to do with the circumstances and environment in which we were born and live. Think of it as being born at the wrong place at the wrong time. — Harry Hindu

Think of it in terms of causality. What causes these "circumstances and environment"?

Being that I am half Hindu, I see karma as consequences of our actions, which could include the reactions of others. Humans are a highly intelligent social species. People that you have wronged can remember that and tell others about your behavior. Your reputation precedes you, and can lead to you being rejected by your social group. — Harry Hindu

Yes, consequences, causation - take that and extrapolate the idea to cover the moral sphere. What happens?

Gnostic Christian Bishop

TheMadFool — TheMadFool

We can know about the same for karma as we can for the gods.

Nothing we can confirm.

Regards
DL

Kenosha Kid

Perhaps if you consider the fact that if everything has a cause then our experiences in the moral dimension should also have a cause, you'll get an idea of how one particular kind of causality, one based on morality - can belong to the much larger set of all causal relations. — TheMadFool

I have that idea, the analogy is fit for that purpose. What I want to know is the sorts of things preserved to ensure causality in the moral dimension, i.e. the particulars of this instance of the axiom of causality.

I gave one possible example of what I mean: personal harm. If the sum total of harm I receive over all of my lifetimes is 112 H, then it is expected I caused 112 H of harm across those lifetimes. Without something conserved, those laws are meaningless, because they are conservation laws. That is why it is only analogous to the axiom as presented.

interim

"everything has a cause"

Ok, but what is a "thing"? Many of these people assumed they know what they are talking about, but they didn't. Only Kant understood that there is a difference between our own faculty of mind that sees "things", and something else, beyond our "idea", he called thing in itself, and is unknowable. Of course, this sounds unnecessary complicated for simple people. But this is the only way to explain how a world of causality can ever be, what started it, if you need a preceding action to infinitum. Yes, we have big bang theory, but what was before that? Nothingness? Void? Well, it's something beyond our capacity for reason, but it doesn't mean there was nothing in existence. Existence can't have a beginning, and obviously even in the void, something existed, without need for causality. We can only imagine why it exploded and created this universe. But one thing is for sure - there was no cause, since it preceded any cause.

With that said, Karma is very overrated concept in the eastern philosophies, since it deals with physicality and the illusion of life they claim to dispel. But like anything turned into a mass religion, it needs some "rules", some sort of "moral ground" so the society can function. However logically speaking, Karma itself affects your current life, and is destroyed after the destruction of the corporeal body. However, what's left is the mental direction, which has nothing to do with morals or judgment. And actually this was proven by the few real researchers that investigated children memories of their past life. IMO, there are 3 very different layers we exist in. One is this Karma/Causality - I call it the dumb level. It can be explained with these simple rules you said, "Eye for an eye", right. Higher is pure mental level, which can be very complicated. It's like "turn the other cheek". Many do not get this idea, but in it's core this is just to reverse the rule and think. The real mental level is vast, causality is like... 0.000001% of the possibilities. And even beyond that is yet another level, we can't even comprehend. It's the void, or pure being / nothing as Hegel calls it. Nothing means just - without any concept about "things".

Banno

Nothing but wishful thinking, for reasons that others have set out. Justice is not an inherent attribute of the universe. If you want justice you will have to do the work of making it happen. — TheMadFool

TheMadFool

Nothing we can confirm. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

The argument I made was deductive, with the Axiom of Causality as a premise. I didn't make an empirical claim and even if I did confirmation doesn't establish truths of empirical claims, their value lying only as a tool for disproof.

I have that idea, the analogy is fit for that purpose. What I want to know is the sorts of things preserved to ensure causality in the moral dimension, i.e. the particulars of this instance of the axiom of causality.

I gave one possible example of what I mean: personal harm. If the sum total of harm I receive over all of my lifetimes is 112 H, then it is expected I caused 112 H of harm across those lifetimes. Without something conserved, those laws are meaningless, because they are conservation laws. That is why it is only analogous to the axiom as presented. — Kenosha Kid

Well, moral calculus has been around for long enough, don't you think? I believe the Egyptians thought that postmortem our hearts were weighed against the feather of truth and depending on how the scales behaved one would either join the gods in the sky or not. What I'm suggesting is that all moral calculuses that are around or were around weren't pulled out of thin air; they all drew from how we, humans, saw the issue and the basic motif of justice (for good & bad deeds) were projected onto what is probably an imaginary but nevertheless infallible authority, to wit god.

What do you mean by something has to be "conserved"?

↪Banno

:ok:

Karma, Axiom Of Causality & Reincarnation

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