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First, I am not a philosopher, but rather an applied mathematician. However, the Cosmological Argument has always intrigued me. At times I feel that all attempts are necessarily hopeless, at other times I feel that a clever argument could actually get somewhere. Trying to read the literature on this is daunting: Continuous back and forth arguments and counter-arguments, and as a non-professional, finding time to keep up is difficult.

In any case, my hope is to simplify matters for myself to see how far we can even go with one assumption, and was hoping that somebody could check my logic.

Assumption 1: Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): For every entity X that exists, either X causes itself, or some other entity Y causes X.

Now, I am not schooled on the metaphysics of causality, but if we're using human intuition as a guide, I assume we can talk about this in a semi-acceptable way. Anyway, the argument is as follows:

Given that the universe exits, we begin by asking what caused the universe U. If the universe didn't cause itself, then something, call it external cause C1, causes the universe, and and we write C1<U to mean that C1 caused U. Then either C1 causes itself, or some external cause C2 exists and causes C1, in which we write C2<C1<U to mean that external cause C2 causes U.

Now, if there are a finite amount of external causes, at least one causes itself, as you cannot have a finite amount of entities, each with an antecedent, and not have a loop (such as Cn<C'<...<C''<Cn.)

Contrapositively, if no external cause causes itself (neither directly nor through a loop), you must have an inifinite chain of such causes (with no loops).

Hence, it seems that with only the PSR, we are left with three distinction options:

  1. The universe caused itself.
  2. There's an infinite chain of causes which did not cause themselves (either directly or through a loop).
  3. There exists at least one external cause (other than U) which caused itself (either directly or through a loop).

Making no other assumptions, this seems to be the choices we are given. Of course, proponents of the Cosmological Argument will have reasons to exclude possibilities 1 and 2. But am I on decently solid ground at least narrowing this down to these three choices, given that we buy the PSR? Thanks in advance!

Mark
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  • Re assumption 1: Why does this argument always assume there is a single cause for each event, like a line of falling dominoes? Surely a casual glance at the world shows this to be false. A million tiny little things have to happen for my parents to meet and make me and then I live my life and had breakfast this morning. It's more like a network or graph than a linear chain of causality. The linear causality model is a discrete sequence of events, like video frames. But there's no evidence that reality works that way. Perhaps causation is continuous and not discrete. Assumption 1 is unproven. – user4894 Apr 30 '21 at 21:25
  • What if I weaken "cause" to "plays a role in causing"? – Mark Apr 30 '21 at 21:34
  • I'm not sure. If each event has multiple causes, you end up with a network or a graph. The infinite regress argument probably still works and my objection fails. My other scenario is continuous causality. Like a differential equation. You can approximate it discretely, but fundamentally it is never a frame-by-frame. So if you know the state at time t0 you can determine the state at time t1, but you can never enumerate all the uncountably many intermediate states. In this case I don't think the argument can be salvaged. And consider the open interval (0,1). Every point has uncountably many ... – user4894 Apr 30 '21 at 22:13
  • (continued) predecessors, there is no first cause or first event, yet the entire chain of causality is bounded below. Perhaps God is more like a limit point in a topological space than the first natural number in Peano arithmetic. Continuous versus discrete. – user4894 Apr 30 '21 at 22:16
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    You do not need PSR, self-cause is not relevantly different from no cause, and it is not specific to causation and the cosmological argument. These three options (infinite chains, dead ends and loops) can be formulated as a theorem of graph theory, and a version of it (with justifications instead of causes) goes back to ancient times. It is known as [Agrippa's trilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma). For the cosmological argument specifically you need more even if 1 and 2 are ruled out, to rule out multiple dead ends in 3 and get to a single first cause. – Conifold Apr 30 '21 at 22:33
  • The main problem is, even if we admitted that the universe has a cause, nothing tells you that it's a god or that you can know anything about it, so the argument is rather pointless. – armand May 01 '21 at 11:15
  • @armand Of course most cosmological arguments try to eventually get to some "god". But say I'm just generally interested in the beginning of the universe and want to know what logical possibilities there are. – Mark May 01 '21 at 12:51
  • Most versions of the PSR distinguish between contingent existence and necessary existence, and say that necessarily-existing things (candidates include God but also might include things like the abstract objects of mathematical platonism) do not require a "cause", although they still may require a sufficient reason in the form of something like a mathematical proof. See [this section](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sufficient-reason/#Leib) of the SEP article on the PSR for some discussion. So, an option you left out is that the universe may itself exist necessarily--Spinoza believed this. – Hypnosifl May 01 '21 at 17:40
  • Much more sophisticated similar argument in modern philosophy and mathematical logic see math structuralism as modern Platonism or Cantor's transfinite ordinal->absolute infinity as first cause...Even Godel has a version. – Double Knot May 01 '21 at 22:25
  • @mark in that case beware that you can't apply your logical intuition to this period of time in the universe, you need the advanced tools of modern physics. Look at all the paradoxes of general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory... they show that under extreme circumstances our intuitions can't apply. – armand May 01 '21 at 23:28
  • @armand: Nothing in reality, including modern physics, contradicts classical FOL, so your last comment appears to be wrong or misleading. – user21820 Jun 05 '21 at 03:56
  • @Mark: Phil SE is the wrong place to ask such questions, as the answers you get frequently come from people who are completely unfamiliar with even FOL, and they do not care at all about logical correctness. If you want my answer to your question here, find me in [the logic chat-room](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/44058/logic). – user21820 Jun 05 '21 at 03:59
  • @user21820 it's more a problem of having correct premises – armand Jun 05 '21 at 06:08
  • @armand: That's not the point. You claim that we can't apply logical intuition to certain areas of physics. But that is apparently false, because classical logic is intuitive and seems to apply to all areas of physics. You further claim that there are 'paradoxes' in physics as backing for that claim. That is incorrect, because there are no paradoxes except due to erroneous beliefs. Since you have given no evidence that classical logic does not apply to all of reality, your comment is at best misleading. – user21820 Jun 05 '21 at 06:19
  • @user21820 we discovered thanks to relativity that speeds dont just add up, but are combined according to Lorentz transformations. That goes against our daily observations and is thereforey counter intuitive to us. You mention that there is "no paradoxes except due to erroneous belief" and this is exactly what i am referring to. We had erroneous beliefs about something as "obvious" as the addition of speeds, who knows what other erroneous beliefs we might have that prevents us from applying our intuitive premises to the universe before Planck time. – armand Jun 05 '21 at 06:48
  • @armand: Nobody disputes that we may have plenty of erroneous beliefs. But as I said **clearly**, your comment is misleading because it suggests that FOL might be erroneous, despite the utter absence of any reason to suggest so. – user21820 Jun 05 '21 at 07:54

2 Answers2

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The version of the Cosmological Argument you present is a caricature that no significant philosopher ever defended. This isn't your fault. The version you describe is basically the version that is presented in most modern books and classrooms; it is what most modern philosophy professors think is the cosmological argument, but it isn't a serious argument that anyone serious ever made.

If you think about it for a minute, you can probably see that this must be the case. The Cosmological Argument is a part of a tradition of two thousand years of some of the best academic minds in Europe and the area around the Mediterranean. The very idea that a product of that school of thinkers would have produce an argument so dumb that it can be shot down by freshman taking their first philosophy class--that's an absurd idea.

One of the problems is that the Cosmological Argument depends crucially on the metaphysical foundations of the argument, and few people today really study medieval metaphysics, so they don't even understand the words that are being used in the argument. For example, "cause" very often doesn't mean what it means in modern language. It might not even be something that happens temporally before the effect; it might mean something more like "that which sustains the existence of a thing" (it means different things in different versions of the argument).

Also, any criticism of the Cosmological Argument that begins with "he just assumes" is wrong. The medieval scholars didn't "just assume" anything. They argued for each point extensively, often for dozens or hundreds of pages. These things they supposedly "just assumed" were consequences of a very detailed metaphysical theory, and if you want to refute one of these points, you have to first understand their argument for the point--and you won't get that argument in a one-paragraph summary of the "the Cosmological Argument".

I don't know if it's worth discussing the Cosmological Argument today, but I'm certain that it's not worth discussing a version that no significant philosopher ever defended.

David Gudeman
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  • Thanks for your reply. I admit, I am not a significant philosopher. In the premise of my post, I simply wanted to carry out the exercise of narrowing down the logical possibilities as much as possible with the least amount of beginning assumptions possible, which I took to be the PSA. – Mark May 01 '21 at 12:54
  • *'The medieval scholars didn't "just assume" anything. They argued for each point extensively, often for dozens or hundreds of pages.'* Scholastic thinkers would argue for their points extensively given the premises of Aristotelian metaphysics, but they didn't really argue for the soundness of Aristotle's metaphysics of substantial forms, the four causes, etc. – Hypnosifl May 02 '21 at 01:15
  • (cont.) Robert Pasnau is a prominent scholar of Scholastic metaphysics (see [this revew](https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/metaphysical-themes-1274-1671/) of his book on it), see his comments at the bottom of p. 32 [here](https://spot.colorado.edu/%7Epasnau/inprint/fsm.pdf): 'Because substantial forms were not challenged within the Aristotelian tradition, they were not defended or explained in any detail until the Renaissance. No consensus ever developed about what substantial forms were, and not even the most articulate of Aristotelians, medieval or Renaissance, explained the theory very clearly.' – Hypnosifl May 02 '21 at 01:17
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The possibility that something causes itself should be excluded as a cause would need to exist first before it could cause anything. This would apply also to the notion of creation.

The idea that A causes B is essentially ordinary physical causality, which is irrelevant here.

Thus, the notion of cause should be further specified as A causes B to exist, i.e., "A created B", which I think is the relevant sense of cause. We also have to specify that anything that exists was caused to exist by one cause only.

Given this, the first alternative offered in the question is trivially excluded. Several possibilities remain:

  1. A finite chain of causes with no initial cause.
  2. An infinite chain of causes with no initial cause.
  3. A finite set of causes with one initial cause
  4. An infinite chain of causes with one initial cause.

All these alternatives are compatible with both the existence of some god and the non-existence of any god. Without going through all the possibilities, we can say that all alternatives are compatible with the notion that a god created our world. However, they are also all compatible with the notion that something else created God, and something not necessarily god-like. They are also compatible with no god at all.

The reason that people exclude some of these possibilities is that they admit of non explicit assumptions that make their conclusion necessary. There is no mystery in logic and if it is not logical, it is not worth discussing since you can then admit it without discussion.

For example, if we assume that it is possible for something to create itself but that only a god could do that, then the conclusion follows that the universe ultimately was created by some god. Nothing really worth discussing.

Personally, I don't see any logical reason to exclude the possibility that something could exist that was not created by something else. Indeed, this seems true of reality itself, which exists without possibly having been created (by something else).

We could always assume that reality is God, but then this is just making the discussion not worth having, since we are unable to justify excluding the possibility that reality is not a god.

Speakpigeon
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  • I find the exercise interesting because of the logical consequences. Even if we exclude god from the discussion, you hope to get down to two rather mind-blowing possibilities: either something created itself, or there is a literal infinite of causes with no end. I don't know which of those I find more incredible. But the point of my exercise was just to logically get to those possible conclusions. – Mark May 01 '21 at 12:57
  • Also, how does your first possibility remain? If we have a finite collection of causes, either at least one causes itself in a loop of causation, or there is an initial cause. Certainly if we have a causal loop containing say "cause A", then A has played a role in its own creation, and we can in some sense say that A has created itself. – Mark May 01 '21 at 14:03
  • @Mark "*something created itself*" Personally, I exclude that possibility. You need to exist if you are to create anything and so self-creation is a logical impossibility. However, and this comes to broadly the same idea, it is logically possible that something exists without having been created. It may be for example a non-devine reality or it may be a devine one, i.e. God, who at some point decides to create our universe. – Speakpigeon May 01 '21 at 16:56
  • @Mark "*there is a literal infinite of causes with no end*" Logically possible but all alternatives I mentioned are equally logically possible. – Speakpigeon May 01 '21 at 16:57
  • @Mark "*If we have a finite collection of causes, either at least one causes itself in a loop of causation, or there is an initial cause*" No, why? In a finite chain of causes with no initial cause, the first cause is not caused. It exists without having been caused, just like God presumably would but without necessarily being God or God-like. You could say it is a first cause but because it is itself uncaused, the whole chain of causes exists and is uncaused, so we can also say that there is no initial cause. – Speakpigeon May 01 '21 at 17:07
  • "The reason that people exclude some of these possibilities is that they admit of non explicit assumptions that make their conclusion necessary." Do you have a specific example of a significant philosopher arguing in favor of the cosmological argument and the non-explicit assumption he relied on? – David Gudeman May 01 '21 at 21:45
  • @DavidGudeman Sorry, I don't read much "significant" philosophers. As you seem to say yourself, one cannot understand what these people say unless you wasted your whole life working hard on it. I remember one specialist of Hegel who admitted he only recently understood what Hegel meant by "Absolute", after several decades of study, and it turned out to be trivial. Life is too short and I don't need philosophers to understand how the things I am interested in work. My remark stands. – Speakpigeon May 06 '21 at 17:08
  • @Speakpigeon, If you don't read them, you shouldn't presume to explain them to people. – David Gudeman May 08 '21 at 04:48
  • @DavidGudeman And I don't. I never pretended to. I explains my take on the notion the something cause something else to exist. Nobody needs philosophers to understand this notion. My answer does even mention any philosopher or anything that any philosopher may have said. You are simply reading my answer and fallaciously attributing some meaning to it without any basis in fact. Stick to the facts. – Speakpigeon May 08 '21 at 08:55
  • @SpeakPigeon, "The reason that people exclude some of these possibilities is that they admit of non explicit assumptions that make their conclusion necessary." Sounds like you are trying to explain the reasoning of those who made this argument. I can't think of any other way to interpret it. – David Gudeman May 10 '21 at 07:39
  • @DavidGudeman The reason that *people*. People. But you chose to read "philosophers" instead. – Speakpigeon May 10 '21 at 08:45