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pjeby comments on Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism - Less Wrong
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But the question itself only arises from the nature of human mental models, which have to contain "why's". The universe itself doesn't have things labeled "causes" and "effects"; these are labels that human brains attach.
Or to put it more pointedly - the universe doesn't need a why. That's just something (some) humans want.
Focusing on names, and on the contingency of the names we give things, or whether we even notice them for long enough to give them a name, is a great way to shrug off "metaphysical" problems like this.
P.J. Eby, are you really saying there's no such thing as cause and effect? That the smashing of the glass on the floor has nothing to do with the dropping of it the moment before?
Judea Pearl's perspective on this question is that causality is best viewed as an intervention originating from outside the system in question, and not as a mode of behavior within that system. In this view, causality is related to counterfactual queries we might ask about the system, e.g., if an intervention had forced situation X, would Y have occurred? Because the intervening agent always stands outside the system, causality is always relative to where we draw the boundary around the system, and thus is not a property of reality.
"Smashing", "glass", and "floor" also only exist as labels, because reality only has one level.
(See also Timeless Physics for why "cause and effect" aren't what we think they are, either.)
That territory has only one level (a thesis of reductionism) means that it doesn't compute in terms of high-level concepts, but the high-level concepts still refer to the real clusters of configurations of territory.
We know that "the glass smashed on the floor" is a high-level interpretation, a genuinely complicated cluster in thingspace. In the vast majority of cases we encounter, it's a pretty useful and well-delineated cluster, which is why it all adds up to normality. So too with cause and effect in timeless physics.
You're drifting off topic. My original post in this thread was saying that "the universe doesn't need a why". Are you actually disagreeing with that conclusion?
(Heck, I can't even tell if you're disagreeing with what I just said.)
I do agree that the universe as a whole may not have what we would consider a "why"; however, I think it's quite ridiculous to argue for that conclusion by attempting to discard talk of causality within the universe.