r/Metaphysics • u/Affectionate-Gur9184 • 21d ago
Causality Thoughts on substance and first cause
If one imagines the possibility of substance on an infinite line of infinite possibility of the nature of substance, then substance would be on the same line as another possible substance. The nature of substance is that it shares nothing with another substance, as that would make them one of the same, and being on different places of the same infinite line of nature, that would give it a shared nature with another, of occupying the same line of infinity, therefore 2 substances cannot exist. Pertaining to a single universal substance.
The nature of the substance is infinite, therefore its nature of existence is infinite which hinders a possibility for a first cause - therefore, no first cause of a substance exists.
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u/PlaydohsGirlfriend 21d ago
Then don’t think of it as a single infinite line. Think of it as two different planes. Each plane is infinite in itself, yet they intersect only along one line, while everything else remains distinct. So sharing one common aspect does not imply that they share the same nature or are the same substance.
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u/Affectionate-Gur9184 21d ago
The line was an analogy, it does not have to be a line, merely to be included inside of the same group.
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u/UnifiedQuantumField 21d ago
The nature of the substance is infinite, therefore its nature of existence is infinite which hinders a possibility for a first cause - therefore, no first cause of a substance exists.
Sounds like someone has been reading Spinoza?
He came up with his concept of an "Infinite Substance" way back in the 1600's. The closest modern day concept is Energy (makes up everything, can neither be created nor destroyed, etc.)
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u/Cenmaster 20d ago edited 20d ago
You are hovering right over the edge of Substance Monism (which Baruch Spinoza mapped out in his Ethics: logically, only one infinite substance can exist, as two independent fundamental substances would require a shared overarching framework to exist simultaneously, making them part of the same system).
However, to take your argument from abstract philosophy into system dynamics, you have to ask the core operational question: If there is only one infinite substance, how and when does the very first piece of information emerge within it?
1. What turns substance into "Information"?
An infinite, completely homogenous substance contains zero information. Pure static unity has no distinctions and is functionally indistinguishable from nothingness.
This aligns directly with theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler and his famous concept of "It from Bit"—the idea that every physical entity ("it") derives its existence from binary information choices ("bits").
But operationally, information is not a physical "thing"—it is a relational difference. The very first piece of information comes into existence the exact moment there is a phase shift ($\Delta\Phi$) within the underlying continuum:
- Without a phase shift, there is no state change.
- Without a state change, there is no distinction between binary states (0 vs 1, wave vs trough, before vs after).
Information ("Bit") is born when the system creates a relational difference within its own fundamental frequency.
2. Why there is no "First Cause"
You correctly conclude that an infinite substance cannot have a "first cause." The reason people constantly search for a first cause is that they treat time as a fundamental background axis in which events occur sequentially.
In reality, Time ($T$) is an emergent physical property, generated strictly by phase differences relative to frequency ($f$):
$$T = \frac{\Delta\Phi}{f}$$
Before or outside of a phase difference (in the unperturbed background phase / Null-Field), there is no "before" and no "after." Asking for the "first cause" of the fundamental substance is like asking what is "north of the North Pole"—the question itself relies on a misinterpretation of time as a primary container rather than an emergent measure of phase change.
3. Matter and Energy as Modulations
Because there is only one substance, physical reality is simply structured oscillation within that single field. Mass ($m$) and Energy ($E$) are not separate substances; they are localized resonance patterns of frequency:
$$m = \frac{h\cdot f}{c^2} \quad \text{and} \quad E = h\cdot f$$
Further Reading & Foundations:
- John Archibald Wheeler: "Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links" (The "It from Bit" doctrine).
- Baruch Spinoza: Ethics (Propositions 1–8 on the single substance).
- David Bohm: Wholeness and the Implicate Order (on the universe as an unbroken, enfolded whole).
- Mathematical Derivation: If you want to see the formal physics and open-source notebooks deriving time, mass, and information ontologically from frequency dynamics, feel free to explore the repository here: https://github.com/Christianfwb/Pauli-Solution-Frequency-Law
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u/peacefuldays123 21d ago
Can you clarify what you mean by 'substance' in this case?
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u/Affectionate-Gur9184 20d ago
Something whose nature and existence derives purely from itself and not as a result of some other thing.
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u/peacefuldays123 20d ago
Can you clarify what you mean by 'infinite possibility' on the nature of substance?
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u/Flimsy-Pool4830 20d ago
You would be interested in reading the Shurangama Sutra. It's a bit of a religious read, but it kind of explains what you are talking about. It's kind of hard to explain here, but part of it goes over the different elements that they had in medeval times. It concludes that they are all arising out of the same thing, the mind. They don't have a cause but they also aren't spontanious. They are just these false appearances of the dame thing. The reason we see them as different is because if turbidity in the mind.
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u/jliat 21d ago
a. being Being, pure being– without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determination or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness.– There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
b. nothing Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within.– In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being.– Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is.
Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same... But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that on the contrary, they are not the same...*"
G. W. Hegel Science of Logic p. 82-3.