What came first?

The rooster

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Originally Posted by J_9

the rooster

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The chicken or the egg argument is designed to show the problem when dealing with first cause arguments. An easy way to look at this is to think about any science based text. For example, law, psychology or physics. No scientific based publications talks about first cause.

The other point is that the chicken or the egg argument is also characterized by circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is where your premises pre-empt your conclusion.

Based on cause and effect the best answer to, "which came first, the chicken or the egg? Answer, and earlier chicken.

Easy, the egg :)

I would answer chicken too... with the fact that it is the chicken which lays the egg...

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Originally Posted by TUT317

The chicken or the egg argument is designed to show the problem when dealing with first cause arguments. An easy way to look at this is to think about any science based text. For example, law, psychology or physics. No scientific based publications talks about first cause.

The other point is that the chicken or the egg argument is also characterized by circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is where your premises pre-empt your conclusion.

Based on cause and effect the best answer to, "which came first, the chicken or the egg? Answer, and earlier chicken.

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Ummm, my answer was a joke. :rolleyes:

Chicken or the egg?

Hume said that any observable sequence of events that we can think of which requires cause and effect needs no beginning. The reason is that any event can be conceived indefinitely, forwards or backwards.

That is why the chicken or the egg does such a good job of highlighting the problem of first cause arguments in the world of experience.

The egg.

Once you accept the theory of evolution, then the issue becomes one of deciding how to identify the type of egg. Do we classify the egg based upon the animal that laid it, or upon the animal that hatches from it? It seems a little more logical to call the egg a chicken egg if a chicken hatches from it. After all, if you had a collection of unknown eggs, the only way to know is to see what emerges from them. Putting it all together: at some point in evolutionary history, something that was almost a chicken laid a chicken egg. Thus,the egg came first :)