Cosmological argument: Edexcel A* grade notes

Edexcel
Philosophy

AO1: The Kalam cosmological argument from temporal causation

  • The Kalam cosmological argument focuses on the coming into being of the universe and involves temporal causation. 
  • Temporal (‘per accidens’ / ‘in fieri’) causation is a sequence where effects are brought about at points in time, but their continued existence does not depend on the continued existence of their cause. 
  • Each member of the sequence has its own causal power to produce further effects. 
  • E.g.,, a father can create a son, who can then independently create another son.

  • W. L. Craig brought this argument to prominence in the late 20th century, naming it ‘Kalam’ after Islamic philosophy which first developed it.

  • P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
  • P2. The universe began to exist.
  • C1. So, the universe has a cause of its existence.

  • Craig argues scientific explanations apply only within the universe and so cannot explain its creation. 
  • The alternative is a personal explanation, meaning intentional creation by an intelligent mind.

  • This cause must be able to create the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), so it is omnipotent. 
  • It cannot be temporal or spatial, since time and space began with the universe. 
  • A timeless being is eternal and did not begin to exist, so does not require a cause. 
  • These are qualities of God, so the cause of the universe is God.

  • The first premise is based on the principle that something cannot come from nothing. The second is supported by arguments against an infinite regress and by Big Bang theory.

AO1: Aquinas’ three ways

  • Aquinas’ 1st way from motion
  • By motion Aquinas means any kind of change, understood as the actualisation of a potential to change.
  • P1. We observe motion (the actualization of a potential)
  • P2. The things we observe cannot move themselves.
  • C1. So, all things in motion must have been moved by something else which is actual.
  • P3. If there were no first mover, there would be no motion now.
  • C2. Therefore, the motion we observe derives from a primary mover which is itself unmoved (pure actuality). That thing we call God.

  • Aquinas’ 2nd way from atemporal causation
  • P1. We observe efficient causation.
  • P2. Nothing can cause itself.
  • P3. There is a logical order to sustaining causes: the first primary cause, then intermediate causes, then an ultimate effect.
  • P4. If A is the efficient cause of B, then if A doesn’t exist neither does B.
  • C1. So, the causation we observe now must derive from a primary cause which is itself uncaused. That thing we call God.

  • Sustaining causation
  • Aquinas’ first and second ways involve Aristotelian sustaining (per se / in esse) causation.
  • God’s existence is inferred as the explanation of the existence and continuation of motion and causation.
  • The things we observe are ‘secondary’ causes: their causal power is derivative, not self-sufficient (they cannot move/cause themselves).
  • They inherit their causal power from other secondary causes, but they cannot have generated it either.
  • So, it must originate in something that can: a ‘primary cause’.

  • By ‘first’ cause Aquinas therefore does not mean temporally first in time. 
  • He means ‘primary’, in the ontological sense that all other motion and causation depend on its continued sustaining causal activity.
  • He illustrates: a hand pushing a stick which is pushing a stone.
  • They all move simultaneously, but the hand is still the ‘first’ cause as it originates and sustains the causal power in the series, granting it to the secondary causes.
  • That’s what Aquinas means when he says if there is no first primary cause, there would be none of the causation or motion we observe now.

  • Aquinas’ 3rd way (contingency)
  • P1. We observe that there are contingent beings (things that can possibly not exist).
  • P2. If it is possible for something to not exist, then there is some time in which it doesn’t exist.
  • C1. If everything were contingent, then at one time nothing existed.
  • P3. If nothing once existed, nothing could begin to exist, so nothing would exist now.
  • C2. So, there must be something that is not contingent, “having of itself its own necessity … That thing we call God.”

AO1: The status as a proof of the cosmological argument Edexcel AQArs 

  • Cosmological arguments are a posteriori, meaning based on experience.
  • E.g., Aquinas’ ways are based on observation of motion, causation and contingency in the world.
  • They are typically inductive, meaning their premises could be true yet their conclusion false.
  • Their premises provide supporting evidence, but do not logically guarantee the conclusion.
  • Such arguments are typically made by empiricists, who hold that knowledge comes from experience.
  • Inductive proofs therefore cannot establish conclusions with certainty.
  • If successful, they show what we currently have most reason to believe based on the available evidence.
  • They are ‘defeasible’, meaning further evidence could overturn or shift the balance of probability.
  • So, they can be contested by rejecting the premises or denying the conclusion follows.

  • Cosmological arguments often depend on an explanatory principle such as:
  • Leibniz’ Principle of Sufficient Reason: that everything has an explanation for its existence, even if we cannot know it.
  • Aquinas’ causal principle: that whatever is caused requires a cause.
  • Aquinas supports such principles a posteriori, since in experience we observe that things have causes or explanations, although he holds that once grasped they are understood as necessary.
  • Nonetheless, the argument remains inductive despite containing a supposedly necessary premise. 
  • This is because the principle does not straightforwardly apply to a whole series of causes, and it does not by itself establish the existence of God.
  • Therefore, the move from the causal principle or PSR to God is not an analytic deduction, but involves further assumptions.
  • So the conclusion is not logically entailed, but probabilistically supported, making the argument inductive.

AO1: Strength & weakness of the cosmological argument AO2 summary

  • The fallacy of composition
  • Weakness: The fallacy of composition attacks the assumption that the universe as a whole requires an explanation just because its parts do.
  • Strength: Cosmological arguments start with what we observe and don’t even mention the universe as a whole, which avoids fallacious part to whole reasoning.

  • The im/possibility of an infinite regress
  • Strength: An infinite regress may lead to paradoxes regarding infinite library examples and traversing an infinite to get to the current moment.
  • Weakness: Scientific models and the lack of empirical evidence undermine claims that an infinite regress is impossible, weakening philosophical arguments against it.

  • The brute fact
  • Weakness: The possibility of brute facts suggests that not everything requires an explanation, challenging the principle of sufficient reason.
  • Strength: The consistent practice of seeking explanations in science and philosophy supports the idea that reality is intelligible and may have an ultimate explanation.

  • The Im/possibility of a necessary being
  • Weakness: The concept of a necessary being is criticised as logically incoherent, since anything that can be conceived to exist can also be conceived not to exist.
  • Strength: Cosmological arguments reference God’s necessity as metaphysical rather than logical, avoiding the ontological argument’s issue of thinking existence is a predicate.

AO2: The fallacy of composition

  • X being true of a thing’s parts doesn’t mean it’s true of the whole.
  • Russell: E.g., Just because every human has a mother, doesn’t mean the human race has a mother.
  • Parts of the universe have a cause, mover or contingent status.
  • But that doesn’t mean the whole universe has such an explanation.

Counter

  • Copleston counters: cosmological arguments don’t claim the whole has a cause because its parts do.
  • Edward Feser points out Aquinas doesn’t reference the whole universe, only things we observe.
  • Observed things require an explanation, so the series of contingent things requires an explanation.
  • Copleston: a series must either be necessary or have an external explanation. 
  • A series of contingent objects, even if regressing infinitely, cannot be necessary. 
  • So, it still needs an external explanation.
  • As Aristotle put it, we can still ask why an infinite series exists.

Evaluation

  • However, this commits the ‘reification’ fallacy: mistaking an abstract concept for a concrete thing. 
  • A series is not a ‘thing’ needing its own explanation.
  • Hume illustrates a collection of contingent beings (20 particles).
  • Explaining each particle explains the whole collection. 
  • Thinking the whole has its own further explanation is absurd.
  • This is because a collection is not a concrete thing over and above its parts. 
  • Likewise, a series is not a thing but a mental collection of events, nothing over and above its parts.
  • So, only its parts need explanation.
  • In an infinite series, each part is fully explained by prior parts.
  • This fully explains the series.
  • Copleston’s insistence that the series must have its own explanation mistakes a series for a concrete thing like its parts.

AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being

  • Hume argues that our imagination is only constrained by necessity when it comes to logical truths, e.g., we ‘have to’ think 1+1=2.
  • The idea of a necessary being is inconceivable.
  • This is because whatever we can imagine existing, we can imagine not existing.
  • So, we can have no idea of a being whose non-existence implies an inconceivable contradiction.
  • Russell concludes necessity is a property of propositions, not beings.
  • So, the proposition “God exists” cannot be necessary.

Counter

  • However, Copleston responds that this critique only targets the ontological argument.
  • Anselm argued God’s non-existence was an inconceivable contradiction.
  • But Cosmological arguments only argue that a necessary being is the metaphysically necessary explanation of reality.
  • If a contingent world exists, then a necessary being must exist as its sufficient explanation.
  • So, cosmological arguments rely on God’s existence being metaphysically necessary, not logically necessary.
  • Copleston accuses Russell of reducing metaphysics to logic, treating questions about being as if they were merely about language or propositions.

Evaluation

  • However, Hume advances an argument that undermines even these modern defences.
  • Even if we grant coherence to the idea of a metaphysically necessary being, it does not follow that this being must be God.
  • For all we know, the necessary being could simply be the universe itself, or some fundamental form of matter.
  • Hume’s point anticipates modern proposals in cosmology, such as the possibility of a non-spatio-temporal quantum field that generates universes, as suggested by inflationary theory.
  • Naturalistic explanations could therefore play the very role that Copleston assigns to a necessary being.
  • Cosmological arguments cannot give us a reason to believe the necessary being must be any sort of God.

AO2: The Brute fact

  • Russell points out that in quantum mechanics, events can be uncaused.
  • Copleston objects that only some interpretations say that.
  • Russell presses that uncaused events are scientifically conceivable. 
  • So, we can doubt reality must be caused.
  • The world is “just there, and that’s all” (brute fact).
  • This breaks Copleston’s dilemma that a series must either contingently depend on something else or contain its own necessary explanation.
  • The third option is a brute fact, which has no explanation.

Counter

  • Copleston objects we cannot ‘rule out’ an ultimate explanation.
  • Science and philosophy function by looking for causes or reasons.
  • In practice, science tacitly assumes everything has an explanation.
  • He interprets quantum indeterminacy (e.g., the exact motion of water molecules) as showing limits in what we can know, not in reality.
  • There’s still an explanation, even if our knowledge of it is limited to probabilities.
  • Uncaused quantum events still need a physical system, so Russell overgeneralises when treating it as a model for the universe’s origin.
  • Copleston concludes the universe needs an ultimate explanation, even if there is quantum indeterminacy within it.

Evaluation

  • However, most physicists today reject this epistemological interpretation, concluding quantum uncertainty is objective and that some events are uncaused.
  • Copleston’s argument that we can’t generalise from quantum indeterminacy to the universe having no cause is weak.
  • If causeless events are possible, the universe could be causeless, even if in a different way.
  • We are not ‘ruling out’ a cause, just showing that it’s possible there isn’t one.
  • This challenges the principle of sufficient reason as just an assumption.
  • It may be true, but it also may be false for anything Copleston has shown.
  • God is therefore only one possibility alongside the brute fact.
  • We are not rationally compelled to accept God as the required explanation of reality.

AO2: The im/possibility of an infinite regress

  • Aquinas and Leibniz didn’t think an infinite regress could be disproven, so designed their arguments to be compatible with it.
  • They argue an infinite series of causation or contingency still requires explanation in a primary cause or necessary being.
  • Craig argues an actual infinite is metaphysically impossible though, which would strengthen the argument.
  • E.g., a library with an infinite number of books, half of which are green.
  • Half infinity is still infinity, so the green books are paradoxically both less than and equal to the total.
  • He also argues an infinite cannot be traversed, so we could not have reached the present if infinitely many moments had passed.

Counter

  • Hume argues there is no contradiction in an infinite regress.
  • Some theoretical models support this.
  • Cyclic models (e.g. ‘big crunch’) propose infinite cycles without a single infinite timeline.
  • This could avoid Craig’s issues about infinities existing, or needing traversing.
  • Inflation theory posits a quantum field generating universes.
  • This field could be necessary or a brute fact, and even outside of spacetime, making temporal causation inapplicable.
  • The notion of an ‘infinite regress’ may then not apply, since there is no temporal sequence.
  • So reality could have no beginning, while avoiding Craig’s paradoxes.

Evaluation:

  • Hume takes the right stance on the relationship between philosophy and science.
  • Scientific theories avoiding Craig’s paradoxes shows the weakness of philosophical speculation about physical concepts.
  • Einstein’s joke that time is ‘what clocks measure’ highlights how little we understand it scientifically.
  • The ‘time’ Craig analyses might bear little resemblance to the actual phenomenon.
  • Scientific developments have overturned past metaphysical intuitions (e.g. non-Euclidean space, quantum mechanics).
  • So Hume’s intuition stands: without empirical grounds, philosophical reasoning alone cannot establish that an infinite regress is impossible.