Can something happen without anything else causing it?
Technically, yes.
Norton’s dome - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norton’s_dome
There are some good videos out there that can explain it a bit better than this
Are we looking at the physical universe, or are looking at psychology, or philosophy contexts?
All of them
That strongly depends on your reference frame. As in, what system are you looking at? Where are you drawing your box? If your box is around the entire universe, then yes, every action is a reaction stemming from the big bang, with very few notable exceptions pertaining to black holes that I wont go into.
However, if your reference frame is a hand and a ball, then the hand pushing the ball is an original action, the ball moving its reaction.
What if the ball was talking shit?
Or if the ball was thrown at them…
Don’t leave us hanging! Go into it!
In physics, we can’t really consider the universe to be deterministic at the quantum scale. We only think it must be when we try to look at particle interactions as a scaled down billards game.
The hand was guided by neurological impulse
Not if your chosen reference frame is a hand and a ball, as per the example
I mean aren’t you saying: “Something can happen without a cause if we just ignore the cause.”
I read ops question as about reality, not hypothetical universes that contain a hand that moves a without an arm or brain attached.
This isn’t the Addams Family.
I get the confusion, but a reference frame is a very important limitation for calculating what you need. Its not about whether the arm exists behind the hand, but whether its effects are important for the calculation.
For the sake of the hand pushing the ball, its not. Only the momentum of the hand and the inertia of the ball are important.
I understand very well, and also understand anyone with the capacity will understand the frame of reference doesn’t explain the phenomenon. It’s how we went from four corners to heliocentrism to galaxy, universe, and multiverse.
The neurological impulse is not part of the frame of reference, just the hand. That’s the point of a frame of reference.
It appears that every action is a reaction (or to use the more customary terminology, every action is an effect of some number of causes, and is in turn a cause for some number of effects).
However, it must either be the case that there was a first action, which would necessarily be an uncaused effect, or that time is either a loop or is infinite in extent, such that there is no beginning and thus no need for an uncaused effect.
And none of those possibilities is really intellectually satisfying, so it’s an open question (which doesn’t stop people from insisting on the nominal truth of one or another of them).
Thanks for putting so much effort in your answer. If you think about it, it’s kinda scuffed and you either end with existence is not possible or there was an action that was not caused by one. Just like you said.
This is the kind of paradox that leads us (I mean humans more generally) to look for some fundamental assumption we’re making about time that will turn out to be wrong. I assume that’s true although I wonder whether it’s literally impossible for us to even imagine how time “truly” works, let alone measure it.
What happened right before spacetime?!
Spacejam.
MJ dunked us into existence? Unorthodox belief!
And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
Edit: I guess it’s these two are kind-of the same thing
Though those aren’t really proven real: From that same Wikipedia article:
Although widely used, they are by no means a necessary feature of QFT, but rather are mathematical conveniences — as demonstrated by lattice field theory, which avoids using the concept altogether.[citation needed]
Getting back the the top question, if everything is a result of something, what started it all?
What is the salient meaning to something that has literally no connection with the past? Wouldn’t that be tantamount to a “proof of god” situation just expressed in different terms?
I am sitting still. Now I am reaching for garlic bread. Nothing acted upon me to prompt that. I am eating the garlic bread. Am I defying the very laws of physics? Yum yum.
The presence of delicious garlic bread prompted you to reach for it.
The network of neurons that has evolved to have specific taste preferences that allow us to eat food that isn’t bad for us caused him to eat it. The planning done by said network is what caused the bread to be there in the first place. We all know that we have to eat, and tend to be good at ensuring that we can eat whenever we feel like it.
It’s all pure physics and chemistry. When your stomach gets empty you feel hunger due to the stomach or related glands releasing mRNA that causes the brain to activate different circuits that cause you to seek food. Animals that don’t do this don’t live for very long.
🤷
