Cosmological argument: Eduqas A* grade notes

Eduqas
Philosophy

For AO1 you need to know:

Inductive proofs & ‘a posteriori’
Aquinas’ 3 ways
The Kalam
Hume’s criticisms
Alternative scientific explanations e.g. the big bang theory

For AO2 you need to be able to debate:

Whether inductive arguments for God are persuasive
The extent to which the Kalam cosmological argument is convincing
The effectiveness of the cosmological argument for God’s existence
Whether cosmological arguments for God are persuasive in the 21st century
The effectiveness of the challenges to the cosmological argument
Whether scientific explanations are more persuasive than philosophical explanations for the universe’s existence

AO1: Inductive proofs & a posteriori Eduqas

Cosmological and design arguments are a posteriori, meaning they are based on experience.
E.g.:
Aquinas appeals to observation of motion, causation and contingency
Paley appeals to purpose and complexity in nature.
They are typically inductive, meaning their premises could be true while the conclusion is false.
The premises provide supporting evidence, but do not logically guarantee the conclusion.
Such arguments are associated with empiricism, the view that knowledge comes from experience.
As a result, inductive arguments are not certain: if successful, they show what we currently have most reason to believe given the available evidence.
They are also defeasible, meaning further evidence could overturn or shift the balance of probability.
Therefore, they can be challenged either by rejecting the premises or denying that the conclusion follows.
Such arguments can rely on explanatory principles such as Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (everything has an explanation) or Aquinas’ causal principle (whatever is caused has a cause).
These are supported a posteriori through consistent experience of causes and explanations, although Aquinas holds that once understood they are grasped as necessary truths.
However, the argument remains inductive because applying these principles to the universe as a whole and inferring God requires further assumptions.
Thus, an argument can contain necessary truths as premises and yet remain inductive.
There are also varieties of induction, such as analogical reasoning, which design arguments often rely on.
Since we cannot directly observe the cause of natural complexity, we infer it by comparison with human artefacts, whose causes we do know.
This inductively supports the conclusion that the world is likely the product of a designer.

AO1: Aquinas’ three ways (Long) Eduqas

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 Kalam cosmological argument from temporal causation

The Kalam cosmological argument focuses on the coming into being of the universe. This shows the argument explicitly involves temporal causation.
Temporal (‘per accidens’ / ‘in fieri’) causation is a horizontal sequence where effects are brought about at certain points in time.
The continued existence of the effect does not depend on the continued existence of the cause.
Each member of a temporal sequence has its own independent causal power to cause further effects.
The causal chain can continue to exist and generate more effects regardless of whether prior causes still exist.
E.g. a father can create a son independently of his own father, who can then independently create their own son.
W. L. Craig brought this argument to prominence in the late 20th century and named it ‘Kalam’ after Islamic philosophy, which first developed it in the 11th century.
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.
Further inferences are then made to show that the cause of the universe is God.
Craig argues that scientific explanation applies within the universe and so cannot explain its creation.
The alternative is a personal explanation, i.e. intentional creation by an intelligent mind.
This being must have the power to create a universe from nothing (ex nihilo), which means it is omnipotent.
It cannot be temporal or extended, since time and space did not exist until the universe existed. So it cannot be spatially or temporally bounded.
A timeless being is eternal, meaning it did not begin to exist, so it does not contradict P1 to say it has no cause.
These are qualities God would have, so the cause of the universe is God.
The first premise is justified by the causal principle, which Craig bases on the metaphysical principle that something cannot come from nothing.
The second premise is justified through a priori arguments against an infinite regress and through a posteriori support from modern cosmology, especially Big Bang theory, which suggests the universe had a beginning.

AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle

Cosmological arguments assume every event has a cause (the causal principle).
Hume argues this can be coherently denied, so isn’t analytically true.
An uncaused event is not an inconceivable contradiction.
Swinburne argues a causal principle could instead be synthetic a posteriori.
Since, every event we experience has a cause, the evidence justifies the causal principle as an empirical generalisation.
Hume objects:
This assumes conditions observed in the universe are evidence about its ultimate origin.
The only valid evidence for the universe having a cause would be observing its creation.
So, there seems no logical nor evidential basis for the causal principle.

Counter

Aquinas’ sustaining causation avoids Hume’s critique.
We observe ‘secondary causes’, which do not contain their own independent causal power.
So, they must depend on another cause that does contain causal power, and this chain of dependence ultimately requires a primary (first) cause.
A secondary cause with no cause is an inconceivable contradiction.
So a causal principle based on sustaining causation could be analytically true.

Evaluation:

However, there is no reason to believe sustaining causation exists.
It is based on the metaphysical assumption that motion/causation is not explained only by prior causes, but requires an ongoing primary causal support.
The issue is, modern physics sees no basis or need for this idea.
Guth’s inflation theory claims the universe has zero total energy, requiring no energy to be created. Krauss says this shows how a universe can come from nothing.
This shows Hume took the right position. The universe’s origin could be a radically strange event.
The causation we observe could have no ultimate explanation. So it needn’t have been caused by a God.

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 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.

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.