The Cosmological Argument(s)

Does the cosmos need a foundation?

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“Contingent” sentence

A contingent sentence, in logic, is one that is not necessarily true, and not necessarily false.

Fred is either tall or not tall is logically necessary

Fred is both tall and short is necessarily false

Fred is tall is logically contingent.

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“Fact”

• A fact is an actual state of affairs.

• Every true sentence (e.g. “the earth orbits the sun”) is true by virtue of corresponding to a fact.

• A “contingent fact” is therefore a state of affairs that obtains, but might not have done.

• E.g. “Stephen Harper was PM in 2014” is a contingent fact. “2 + 2 = 4” is a necessary fact.

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Contingent objects

• Is the fact that Stephen Harper exists a contingent fact or a necessary one?

• It’s contingent, as his existence required many events that could easily not have occurred.

• An object whose existence is contingent can be a called a “contingent object”.

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Principles concerning contingency

• Bruce Reichenbach appeals to a “Principle of Causation” involving contingent facts and objects:

– Whatever exists contingently cannot have its existence from itself, but is dependent on something else for its existence. (p. 152)

• I.e. every contingent object requires a cause in order to exist. Is this true?

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• It doesn’t seem obvious. The notion of “cause” is not part of logic, and has no accepted analysis. So the “Principle of Causation” cannot be derived logically.

• Let’s drop the notion of contingency for now, and look at an argument for the existence of a “first cause” – an entity that requires no cause in order to exist.

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First Cause Argument

• Physical objects, in our experience, are all brought into existence (i.e. caused) by something else.

• E.g. I was caused by my parents. Artifacts are caused by their makers. Stars arose due to huge gas clouds collapsing under gravity.

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• Everything we know about requires a cause in order to exist.

• Perhaps then we should accept the following Causal Principle?

Everything requires a cause in order to exist

• The cosmological argument tries to show that this Principle is false, since it contradicts itself.

• Hence some entity (i.e God) exists without a cause.

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A “first cause”, or “unmoved mover”

• If it’s false that “Everything requires a cause in order to exist”, then what follows?

• At least one object (a “first cause”) does not require a cause in order to exist.

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Why God?

• Even if we conclude that a first cause exists, why call it “God”? In particular:

• Why should there only be one such object?

• Why should the object be living and personal?

• Why should it be morally good?

• Why should it be omnipotent, omniscient? (Etc.)

• (More about these problems later.)

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The contradiction

• Does the Principle Everything requires a cause in order to exist entail a contradiction? How?

• Let us try to construct a possible world in which it is true.

• What will be the causal structure of such a world?

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Closed Causal Loop

Is this possible?

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Infinite Regress of Causes

• An infinite regress of causes is a situation where every object or event has a prior cause, which in turn has a prior cause, etc. to infinity. There is no start to this sequence. (Like the negative integers.)

• Is this really possible?

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“What caused the whole system?”

• In the case of a closed causal loop, you’ll see that there is no cause of the loop itself. Hence, according to the Causal Principle, such a loop cannot exist.

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“What caused the whole system?”

• Similarly, for the infinite regress of causes. There is no cause of the whole collection, so the whole collection cannot exist.

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House in the Sky analogy

• This “what caused the whole system” reasoning is used to explain why you cannot build a house in the sky.

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House in the Sky with circular support

“The roof is supported by the walls. The walls rest upon the foundation. And the foundation hangs from chains secured to the roof.” 17

House in the Sky with infinite regress

• The foundation slab is made of layers sandwiched together. The top layer is ½ m thick, the next ¼ m, then 1/8 m, 1/16 m, 1/32 m, etc. to infinity. There is no bottom layer, and the total slab thickness is 1 m.

• Each layer is supported by the one just below it.

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Why won’t they stay in the sky?

• One way to see that they will plummet to the ground is to consider the forces exerted on the whole house.

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E.g. Copleston’s version of the cosmological argument

1. Physical objects and events require causes in order to exist.

2. The cause of an object or event must be external to that object or event. (An object cannot cause itself.)

3. The world, defined as the totality of all physical objects and events, is itself a physical object.

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4. The world itself requires a cause in order to exist. (From 1 and 3)

5. The cause of the world must be external to the world. (From 2)

6. The cause of the world must be a non-physical object. (From 3, 5)

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David Hume disagrees

“Also: in such a chain or series of items, each part is caused by the part that preceded it, and causes the one that follows. So where is the difficulty? But the whole needs a cause! you say. I answer that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one organic body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind and has no influence on the nature of things. If I showed you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I would think it very unreasonable if you then asked me what was the cause of the whole twenty. The cause of the whole is sufficiently explained by explaining the cause of the parts.” (Dialogue, p.36)

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• One might respond to Hume by saying that, in the ordinary cases that we experience, a cause for each part of a system automatically entails a cause for the whole.

• But this isn’t true of causal loops and infinite regresses. That’s why they’re so unusual. The causation is self-contained.

• Also, one can reply that physicists treat composite systems (e.g. atoms, molecules, galaxies, the cosmos) as physically real, and subject to the usual physical laws.

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Bertrand Russell Disagrees

• Russell argues that the inference:

Every part of the cosmos requires a cause

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The cosmos requires a cause

is a fallacy, the “fallacy of composition”. E.g. since every human has a mother, therefore the human race has a mother. Is it a fallacy?

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C.f. evidential support

• “Every statement, to be worthy of belief, requires evidential support”.

• Can you have circular support?

• Can you have an infinite regress of support?

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• In logic, the whole set of statements requires support as well.

Dawkins on the Cosmological Argument

• “All three of these arguments rely upon the idea of a

regress and invoke God to terminate it. They make

the entirely unwarranted assumption that God himself

is immune to the regress.”

(Dawkins, The God Delusion p. 101)

• Is this is good criticism?

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Why God?

• Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, …”

• “It is by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator to the regresses of Aquinas.”

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J. L. Mackie

• Mackie considers various versions of the Cosmological Argument, including the “first cause argument” – roughly the one we have looked at.

• In the discussion of this argument (pp. 172-174) he refers to “al Farabi’s principle”:

“a series of contingent beings which would produce one another cannot proceed to infinity or move in a circle”

And says “… this principle is at least highly plausible”.

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• Thus, Mackie concludes, it is reasonable (though not certain) to infer that some object must exist without a cause.

• “But the greatest weakness of this otherwise attractive

argument is that some reason is required for making

God the one sole exception to the supposed need for

something else to depend on: why should God, rather

than anything else, be taken as the only satisfactory

termination of the regress?”

(Mackie, p. 174)

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So, what would a “first cause” be like?

• Theists are often quick to identify a “first cause” (special object that requires no cause in order to exist) as God. But what arguments can be given for this?

• One of the main arguments is that a first cause would have to be a necessary being, and this is one characteristic (at least) of God.

• (N.B. If every contingent being requires a cause, as Reichenbach claims, then an uncaused being must have necessary existence.)

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A “necessary being”?

• A necessary being is one that has to exist, i.e. could not have not existed. It exists “in every possible world”.

• No physical object seems to be a necessary being.

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Different kinds of necessity

• Logical necessity, e.g. “2+2 = 4”. (A logical consequence of the empty set.)

• Physical necessity, e.g. “stars are spherical” (It follows from the laws of physics.)

• Metaphysical necessity, e.g. “the Morning Star is the Evening Star.” (True in every possible world.)

• Epistemic (knowledge) necessity, e.g. “I exist”. (Believed in every epistemic state.)

In which sense does a first cause exist “necessarily”?

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Logical necessity

• In general, logical necessity is a relation between two sentences – also called logical consequence.

• “Q is necessary for P” means the same as “Q is a logical consequence of P”, or “P logically entails Q”.

• Logically necessary sentences are those that can be inferred from no premises at all.

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God’s existence is logically necessary?

• If God’s existence is logically necessary, then a sufficiently smart and rational person can just see that God exists, in the same way that a smart person can see that some mathematical theorem is true.

• Many philosophers are very sceptical of the idea that any object could exist by logical necessity. E.g. Kant (Critique of Pure Reason)

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• A necessary being is one whose existence can be inferred from nothing, or just from basic logical principles.

• This seems like a very tall order!

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• So Reichenbach says that a ‘necessary’ being, in the context of the cosmological argument, is not a logically necessary being. Rather:

“Necessity is understood in the sense of ontological

or factual necessity. A necessary being is one that if it

exists, it cannot not-exist; as self-sufficient and self-

sustaining, its inability to not-exist flows from its

nature.”

(p. 158)

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• Any ‘necessary being’ in this sense might not have existed.

• Is a “factually necessary being” just an indestructible one, that cannot cease to exist once it has started?

• Questions:– Why call this “necessity”? It’s no such thing!

– How is a “necessary” being, in this sense, self explanatory?

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Explanation

• To explain something involves inferring its existence and properties from something else.

• E.g. A causal explanation of an event requires inferring the event from a description of its causes.

• So, if God is logically necessary, then God’s existence and nature can be inferred from no premises, and God would require no explanation (or be self-explanatory?)

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Philosophers abuse “necessity”

• E.g. some philosophers say that all facts about the past are “necessary” in the sense that nothing we do now can render them non-actual. They are “fixed”, in a sense.

• But this is just causal independence. It isn’t any kind of necessity.

• Some philosophers define an ontologically necessarily being as one that isn’t dependent on anything else. (I.e. ‘necessary’ is defined as uncaused.)

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Something needed for logic itself?

• There are various legitimate senses of “necessary”, listed above, but they are all related to logical consequence in some way.

• The only way I can see something existing by logical necessity is if that object is needed for logic itself. In that case, as soon as one starts to reason logically, one must accept the existence of that being.

• (Similar to Descartes’ “I exist”, which is epistemicallynecessary.)

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• Is there a good argument for the claim that an uncaused being would also be logically necessary?

• Perhaps such an argument can be based on the need for explanation? An uncaused being would be completely inexplicable, unless it was also logically necessary?

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Bruce Reichenbach (pp. 151-9)

• Reichenbach’s version of the Cosmological Argument is based on explanation rather than causation.

• And instead of invoking an uncaused object (“first cause”) to cause ordinary objects that require causes, Reichenbach invokes a “necessary” object to explain “contingent” objects.

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• We have seen that ordinary physical objects are “contingent”, i.e. they might not have existed.

• How do we explain the existence of a contingent object?– We infer it from its causes.

• How then could we explain the existence of an uncaused object (“first cause”?)– We’d have to infer it from nothing (i.e. using pure

logic).

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Does everything have an explanation?

• Quantum mechanics suggests that many events, while caused, are not determined by their causes. Such events cannot be (fully) explained. (But they have partial explanations.)

Mackie:

“… it may be intellectually satisfying to believe that there is, objectively, an explanation for everything together … But we have no right to assume that the universe will comply with our intellectual preferences”

(p. 172)

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Why is there something rather than nothing?

• If the first cause must be a necessary being then there is an ultimate explanation for “why there is something rather than nothing”.

• But perhaps there simply is no explanation here?

(What if scientists were in the habit of saying this?)

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What is logic?

• Logic is what logicians study!

• Logicians study propositions, and relations between propositions (e.g. logical consequence).

• What are propositions?

• What is logical consequence?

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Propositions

• Intuitively, propositions are belief contents. A belief is always a belief that such-and-such is the case. The “such-and-such” is a proposition.

• Questions

– Can propositions be defined in an impersonal way, without reference to belief?

– For example, some philosophers define a proposition as a sentence, or as a set of possible worlds.

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Logical Consequence

• Logical consequence is the relation expressed by mathematicians (and the rest of us) when they say “... it follows that …”

• E.g. “Given that x + 6 = 8, it follows that x = 2”

“Given that either Fred or Mary ate my sandwich, and that Mary did not, it follows that Fred did.”

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What is logical consequence?

• There is no generally accepted answer to this question. Some theories are:

1. Logical consequence is a formal relation (one of pattern or structure) between sentences, e.g.

a. Logical consequence means that there’s a formal proof of the conclusion from the premise.

b. Logical consequence is the absence of a mathematical interpretation of the formal language which makes the premises true and the conclusion false.

2. Logical consequence is mental relation, the possibility of a rational inference from the premise to the conclusion.

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Theistic View of Logical Consequence

• Many theists regard logical consequence as mental (option #2) and see logic as “the architecture of God’s mind”.

• On this view, the existence of logic itself requires the existence of a perfectly rational intellect.

• This view was probably first developed by the Jewish philosopher Philo, who had a strong influence on Christian writers, including the author of John’s Gospel (“In the beginning was the Logos”), Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas.

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Plato

• This is similar to Plato’s view.

“… in the world of knowledge the idea [Form] of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world [i.e. parent of the sun], and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual …”

• (Christian philosophers in the Middle Ages interpreted Plato’s Forms as God’s concepts, and the Form of the Good to be God himself.)

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• In order for human thoughts to have meaning, it seems that there must be objective structures in the world (i.e. states of affairs) that correspond to human belief-contents (propositions).

• In other words, reality itself needs to have a rational structure? (This view is called rationalism)

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E.g. Thomas Aquinas:

“Even if there were no human intellects, there could be truths because of their relation to the divine intellect. But if, per impossible, there were no intellects at all, but things continued to exist, then there would be no such reality as truth.”

(De Veritate Q. 1, Article II, Reply).

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Must a first cause have any divine properties?

1. A first cause is (by definition) “uncreated”, i.e. uncaused, not dependent on anything else.

2. Since physical objects require causes, a first cause must be non-physical, and quite different in nature from physical objects.

3. A first cause must be logically necessary. (Assuming that there are ultimate explanations.)

4. Given 3, a first cause must be a perfectly rational being.

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“To return to the infinite regress and the futility of invoking

God to terminate it, it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say,

a 'big bang singularity', or some other physical concept as yet

unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and at worst

perniciously misleading.”

“It is by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator

to the regresses of Aquinas.”

Dawkins, p. 102

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