OCR ↗︎
Philosophy ↗︎
Question preparation ↓

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.”

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 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.

Question preparation

Revision paragraphs:

AO1: Aquinas’ three ways
AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle
AO2: The fallacy of composition
AO2: The im/possibility of an infinite regress
AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being
AO2: The Brute fact

Question types:

Questions could focus on:

• Aquinas’ 1st way (motion)
• Aquinas’ 2nd way (causation)
• Aquinas’ 3rd way (contingency)
• All three ways together
• Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument

How the criticisms function:

• The fallacy of composition and infinite regress issues attack all of the 3 ways. 
• The critique of a necessary being only attacks the 3rd way.
• The critique of the causal principle best attacks the 1st and 2nd ways (since the 3rd way is more about dependence relations rather than causal relations).

“the cosmo argument jumps without justification/explanation to the idea of a transcendent creator” – Discuss [40]

• This is just asking whether the cosmological argument really manages to prove God, or whether it’s jumping to that explanation when there could be other explanations for the evidence it points to.
• AO1: Aquinas’ three ways
• Then, alternatives to the God explanation are:
• AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle
  • suggests the universe has no cause.
• AO2: The fallacy of composition
  • suggests the universe has no cause/mover/contingent status because it may not be like its parts.
• AO2: The im/possibility of an infinite regress
  • a creator appears unnecessary if an infinite regress is possible.
• AO2: The Brute fact
  • suggests the universe actually needs no explanation .

‘Hume’s criticisms of the cosmological argument succeed’ – Discuss [40]

• AO1: Aquinas’ three ways – short (not the focus of the question).
• And any of the following:
• AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle
• AO2: The fallacy of composition
• AO2: The im/possibility of an infinite regress
• AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being

Is Aquinas’ 3rd way more convincing than his first two ways? [40]

• • AO1: Aquinas’ three ways
  • AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being
    • Shows that the third way fails due to its reliance on the concept of a necessary being.
  • AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle
    • Shows the first two ways fail due to their reliance on the universe having a cause.
  • So, both arguments fail in different ways. 
  • AO2: The fallacy of composition
• They both then also fail because they commit the fallacy of composition – in assuming that the whole universe must have a cause or mover or must be contingent.
• So, none of the ways are more convincing than the others.

Weirdly worded questions:

Whether a priori or a posteriori is the more successful type of argument [40]
Or: Whether God’s existence best justified a posteriori / a priori [40]

• This question requires that you judge whether the ontological argument (a priori) is better or worse than a posteriori arguments (teleo/cosmo).
• You must do the ontological argument, and then at least one of teleo or cosmo – or both.
• You will then have judged whether: 
• They all succeed (So ontological better – because it tries to prove God’s existence for deductively certain – whereas cosmo/teleo are inductive arguments trying to show the evidence supports belief – but doesn’t prove it for certain). 
• One type fails and the other succeeds (so the other type is more successful/convincing).
• They all fail (equally unsuccessful/unconvincing).

I’d choose these:

• AO1: Anselm (short), AO2: Kant (either of Kant’s critiques will do)
  • Kant is more of an upgraded critique than Gaunilo to be frank so an essay which leaves our Gaunilo feels more comprehensive than one which leaves out Kant.
• AO2: Design arguments after Darwin
  • This is a nice one for this purpose because it covers a variety of design arguments and how they interact with the evolution issue, and then more contemporary issues.
• AO1: Aquinas’ 3rd way (short), AO2: The fallacy of composition
  • Fallacy of composition targets all versions of the cosmological argument and touches on infinite regress issues and the universe needing no cause – so it’s the best for capturing the overall issues.
• Or: AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being
  • This critique of a necessary being works very well because it attempts to attack both cosmological and ontological – but Copleston replies that it only undermines the ontological argument, not the cosmological, making the cosmological seem stronger. However in the end I evaluate that Hume succeeds, showing all varieties of argument to equally fail (though you could evaluate differently if desired).

• This question would be answered best if you could highlight how the criticisms of each especially target their a priori or a posteriori nature. 
• E.g., Kant shows the difficulty of proving existence through definition – which attacks a priori demonstrations of existence.
• E.g., most criticisms of the design and cosmological arguments exploit its inductive a posteriori nature – by showing the evidence they point to could be explained by alternative conclusions (evolution, or the universe having no cause, or some scientific cause like necessary matter).

Do cosmological arguments contains logical fallacies [40] 

• A very broad definition of a logical fallacy is a mistake in reasoning. 
• The more standard definition of a fallacy is a particular type of mistake, which are then called formal or informal fallacies.
• Without getting into that though, it would be simplest to treat this as a question about whether the criticisms highlight flaws in the reasoning of the argument. Not just providing evidence against it:
• AO1: Aquinas’ three ways
• Then: all of Hume’s critiques aim to show that cosmological arguments make logical errors of varying types:
• AO2: Hume’s critique of the causal principle
• Assuming the causal principle is true.
• AO2: The fallacy of composition
• Assuming that what’s true of the parts is true of the whole (composition fallacy) or that an abstract entity like a series must have a cause (reification fallacy).
• AO2: The im/possibility of an infinite regress
• Assuming an infinite regress is impossible.
• AO2: The Im/possibility of a necessary being
• Assuming the idea of a necessary being is logically coherent.