The Cosmological Argument

The Cosmological Argument Today’s lesson will be successful if: You have revised the ideas surrounding the cosmological argument and the arguments from Hume, Russell and Kant

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Causation Argument from Motion Argument from Contingency Kant’s Criticism Russell’s Criticism Copleston’s Argument David Hume’s Criticisms 1-4 Copleston’s response Hume’s Criticisms 6/7 Hume’s Criticism 5 Problems with Hume’s Criticisms

The Cosmological Argumentadd some detail here Start by creating a mindmap on A3 paperoThomism – the life work of Aquinas Add some biographical detail here Is the argument apriorior aposteriori?

Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) • Philosophy can help us come to a better understanding of Theology – the study of God. • Questioned: is it obvious that there is a God? No, as such a concept is beyond all direct human experience. • Questioned: can it be made obvious? Yes – through evidence of creation. • Aquinas therefore devised his ‘Five Ways,’ five a posteriori proofs for the existence of God based on our empirical experience of the universe. The Cosmological argument is based on the first three of Aquinas’ Five Ways

The Cosmological Argument Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Aquinas Argument from Motion

Argument from Motion • Everything in the world is moving or changing • Nothing can move or change by itself • There cannot be an infinite regress of things changing other things • Therefore there must be a Prime Mover (or changer) • This is called God

The Cosmological Argument Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation

Argument from Causation • Everything in the world has a cause • Nothing is the cause of itself • There cannot be an infinite regress of causes • Therefore there has to be a first cause to start the chain of causes • This first cause we call God

The Cosmological Argument Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency

Argument from Contingency • Everything in the world is contingent (can either exist or not exist) • If things can not exist, there must have been a time when they did not exist • If everything in the world can not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed • Things exist now so there must be something on which we all depend which brought us into existence • This necessary being we call God

Necessary & Contingent • Subtly different from his other arguments. The contingent existence of the world rely on the existence of a necessary being. • Remember the Ontological Argument? De dicto means ‘of words’ – so this ‘necessity’ is a necessity based on how words are used. E.g. ‘Spinsters are female’ is necessarily true because of the way the word spinster is used. It is the logical necessity found a priori. • De re means ‘of things’ – so this ‘necessity’ is a necessity based on the nature of a thing – God is held to be de re necessary because God’s nature is to exist, God cannot not exist. The suggestion by Aquinas is that the nature of contingent things is such that they require a necessary being to explain their existence – notice that this is argument a posteriori as it is dependent on experience of contingent things BEFORE coming to the conclusion that God is necessary in nature (this is the essence of Copleston’s argument). This type of necessity is referred to as a factual necessity.

Necessary & Contingent • De re means ‘of things’ – so this ‘necessity’ is a necessity based on the nature of a thing – God is held to be de re necessary because God’s nature is to exist, God cannot not exist. • Aquinas suggests that the nature of contingent things means that they require a necessary being to explain their existence – notice that this is argument a posteriori as it is dependent on experience of contingent things BEFORE coming to the conclusion that God is necessary in nature (this is the essence of Copleston’s argument). This type of necessity is referred to as a factual necessity.

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument

Copleston’s Argument – Radio Debate 1947 • There are things in this world that are contingent – they might not have existed e.g. we would not exist without our parents • All things in the world are like this – everything depends on something else for it’s existence • Therefore there must be a cause of everything in the universe that exists outside of it • This cause must be a necessary being – one which contains the reason for it’s existence inside itself • This necessary being is God

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism

Russell’s Criticisms • Russell refused to accept that a necessary being cannot not exist. Regress of causal events cannot have caused the universe. “what I am saying is that the concept of cause is not applicable to the total”Just because each human has a mother does not mean the entire human race has a mother. • He reduced the universe to a mere, brute fact, of which it’s existence does not demand an explanation.“I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.” • Russell saw the argument for a cause of the universe as having little meaning or significance.

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Add some detail…..Thomism – the life work of Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism Compleston’s response

Copleston came back to say…. • Copleston’sresponse to Russell’s refusal to accept the importance of the issue was to claim: • “If one refused to sit at the chess board and make a move, one cannot, of course, be checkmated.” Who won the debate?

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism Kant’s Criticism Compleston’s response

Kant’s Criticism • IMMANUEL KANT Immanuel Kant, in ‘Critique of Pure Reason,’ opposed the theory that a chain of cause-effect events can be set in motion from outside the realm of the physical universe. The cause-effect relationship is observed within the confines of the spatio-temporal world, and therefore any cause must be in the world too.

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism Kant’s Criticism Compleston’s response David Hume’s Criticisms 1-4

Hume’s Criticism’s – Number 1 Fallacy of Composition • Just because one ‘effect’ in a chain has a ‘cause’ it does not follow that a whole series of cause and effect has a single cause. This is sometimes referred to as the fallacy of composition. • It is one thing to say that every human being has a mother, but that one cannot move from this to say that there is a mother for the whole human race. (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) • Or Just because it is logically necessary for a husband to have a wife, it does not mean that every man must be married. • “But this does not prove, that every being must be preceded by a cause; no more than it follows, because every husband must have a wife, that therefore every man must be marry'd. The true state of the question is, whether every object, which begins to exist, must owe its existence to a cause: and this I assert neither to be intuitively nor demonstratively certain…” (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1: Of the Understanding, Part 3: Of knowledge of probability, Section 3) • This last quote indicates another of Hume’s arguments, which is about the question of whether every ‘thing’ needs to be explained in terms of a cause. It challenges the essential principle of the cosmological argument that ‘nothing can come from nothing’.

Hume’s Criticism 2– Why can’t the universe be eternal? • Can’t there be an infinite chain of cause and effect? • He suggests that it is entirely possible for us to think of something beginning to exist without any cause. “The true state of the question is, whether every object, which begins to exist, must owe its existence to a cause: and this I assert neither to be intuitively nor demonstratively certain…”

Hume’s Criticism 3 – The universe (if it has a cause) must have a finite cause • Like causes resemble like effects. The most that can be said from seeing a finite universe is that it must have had a finite cause. • Hume asks why we should believe that this should be an infinite God who caused finite things.

Hume’s Criticism 4 – You don’t need to be God the greatest possible being to create the Universe. • Hume challenges notion that no cause can produce or give rise to perfections or excellences that it does not itself possess by stating “any thing may produce any thing” • “Creation, annihilation, motion, reason, volition; all these may arise from one another, or from any other object we can imagine.” (A Treatise of Human Nature) • This idea challenges the notion of the movement of potentiality to actuality found in Aquinas’ first way. Aquinas suggests that only something in a state of actuality can ‘move’ something from its potentiality.

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism Kant’s Criticism David Hume’s Criticisms 1-4 Compleston’s response Hume’s Criticism 5

Hume’s Criticism 5 – there is no being whose non existence implies contradiction • By this he means the term ‘necessary being’ does not make sense a posteriori.The words 'necessary being' have no consistent meaning. Any being claimed to exist may or may not exist. Hume stated this by saying that ‘All existential propositions are synthetic’. • “…there is an evident absurdity in pretending to demonstrate a matter of fact, or to prove it by arguments a priori. Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary is a contradiction. Nothing, that is directly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction.

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Motion Argument from Causation Argument from Contingency Copleston’s Argument Russell’s Criticism Kant’s Criticism Compleston’s response David Hume’s Criticisms 1-4 Hume’s Criticisms 6/7 Hume’s Criticism 5

Hume’s Criticism 6 – The Universe is a Brute Fact • It is a mistake to conceive of the cosmological question of the universe’s origin in terms of cause and effect because this takes us beyond the scope of human ideas and understanding. • For human beings, therefore, given our epistemological limits, the existence of this world must be treated as a basic brute fact that is incapable (for us) of further explanation.

Hume’s Criticism 7 – cause and effect re-examined • There is no evidence of the link between cause and effect. Causation is simply perceived and so is only a psychological link which humans make. • Just because we see one billiard ball move when another one hits it, it does not mean that the first billiard ball caused the movement of the second. • This is a form of extreme scepticism highlighting the limitations of our human experience. Philosophically, cause and effect cannot be demonstrated. Any claim we make about cause and effect can only ever be an invention of our minds. This challenge would mean that Aquinas’ arguments from cause and effect are severely threatened as they fail to get off the ground because we cannot know for certain that causation is a reality.

Hume’s Criticism 7 – cause and effect re-examined • We have no good reason to expect the sun to rise in the morning. Just because it always has, doesn’t mean it always will!

The Cosmological Argument Aquinas Argument from Causation Argument from Motion Argument from Contingency Kant’s Criticism Russell’s Criticism Copleston’s Argument David Hume’s Criticisms 1-4 Copleston’s response Hume’s Criticisms 6/7 Hume’s Criticism 5 Problems with Hume’s Criticisms

The Cosmological Argument