The Cosmological Argument

The Gist

The "Cosmological Argument", like the Ontological Argument, is an argument that attempts to establish that God exists.

But, unlike the Ontological Argument, the Cosmological Argument is not wholly a priori.

Instead, the Cosmological Argument begins with the a posteriori claim that the universe exists.

The Cosmological Argument then argues that God must exist, in order to serve as the cause or explanation of the universe's existence.

To sum up, the "Cosmological Argument" is an argument:

There are actually a variety of different ways of arguing from this premise to the conclusion. As such, the "Cosmological Argument" comes in a few different forms. In class, we focused on two versions:

Causal Cosmological Argument

Cosmological Argument from Contingency

The Causal Cosmological Argument

The Causal version of the Cosmological Argument attempts to establish God's existence by showing that God must be the ultimate first cause of the universe. (For this reason, it is often referred to as the "First Cause" Argument.) In class, I quoted Edwards statement of the intuitive idea:

“[W]e find that the things around us come into being as the result of the activity of other things. These causes are themselves the results of the activity of other things. But such a causal series cannot ‘go back to infinity’. Hence there must be a first member which is not itself caused by any preceding member—an uncaused or ‘first cause’.”
-Edwards, p. 202

I reconstructed the argument as follows:

1. Many things have come into existence (Stuff exists.)
2. Principle of Determinism: Every event has a cause.
3. Everything that has come into existence has done so as the result of some series of causes [From 2]
4. No series of causes can “go back to infinity”
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C.  Therefore, there must be some “first cause”

Aquinas' Reductio

The most questionable premise of the Causal argument is premise 4. Why is an infinite succession of causes and effects unacceptable? One famous proponent of the Cosmological Argument in it's Causal form was St. Thomas Aquinas. In his words:

“It is not possible to go to infinity in a series of efficient causes.  For in all ordered efficient causes the first item is the cause of the intermediate one and the intermediate is the cause of the last (whether there is only one intermediate or more than one); now if the cause is removed, so is the effect.  Therefore if there has not been a first item among efficient causes there will not be a last or an intermediate.  But if one goes to infinity in a series of efficient causes, there will not be a first efficient cause, and so there will not be a last effect…”

In class, I reconstructed this as a reductio argument:

1. Assume, toward a contradiction, that the universe is the result of an infinite series of causes.
2. If a series of causes is infinite, then no first cause occured.
3. No first cause occured. [From 1,2]
4. If the first cause didn’t occur, then the present universe doesn’t exist.
5. The present universe doesn’t exist. [From 3,4]
6. The present universe does exist.
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C.Contradiction (5 & 6)! The universe cannot be the result of an infinite series of causes.

(Notice that premise 6 is the a posteriori claim, that all Cosmological Arguments rely on, that the universe exists.)

Main Objection to Aquinas' Reductio

Aquinas' reductio seems more than a little fishy. The main problem is with the move from premise 2 to premise 4. The argument seems to equivocate on the prase "the first cause didn't occur".
He starts with the claim (that is certainly true) that if the causal chain is infinite, then no "first cause" occured. But then he seems to think that the absence of a first cause means that some cause in the infinite chain didn't occur. That is, he seems to think that some cause in the chain is missing. (And once he thinks he's established that, the rest of the argument is simple. If we knock out one cause in the chain, the rest fall like dominoes. If one cause is missing, then so would all the events that were supposed to follow from it. So, ultimately, this would show that the present universe doesn't exist.)
But this rests on a misunderstanding. Though it's true that in an infinite chain there is no "first cause", this doesn't mean that any of the causes in that chain didn't occur. All that we're denying is that any of the causes in that chain have the special status of being a "first cause".

By denying the existence of a first necessary event, we are not leaving the rest of the universe without a cause. On the contrary, we have an infinite chain to appeal to.

Further Objections to the Causal Argument

There are a number of other ways that we might object to the Causal Cosmological Argument. In class, we mentioned the following possible objections:

Doesn't prove that the first cause is God.

Doesn't prove single first cause.

Doesn't prove presently existing God.

"Schopenhauer's Gibe": The argument treats the Principle of Determinism like "a hired cab which we dismiss when we have reached our destination."

Attempts to Fix the Causal Argument

In response to these objections, we looked at a number of attempts to salvage the Causal Argument.

The First-Cause-In-Esse Argument

Edwards describes one way philosophers have attempted to strengthen the Causal Argument. This attempt invokes a distinction between two different types of causes:

A cause in fieri is a factor which brought or helped to bring an effect into existence.

A cause in esse is a factor which ‘sustains’ or helps to sustain the effect ‘in being’.

Edwards illustrates this distinction with a helpful example. Imagine that Fred puts a book in Ed’s hand, and Ed holds it there. In this example:

Fred is the cause in fieri of the book’s position

Ed is the cause in esse of the book’s position

With this distinction at hand, the proponent of the Causal Argument may admit that to say that there is an infinite series of causes in fieri doesn’t lead to any absurd conclusions. But, they might continue, the Causal Argument is concerned only with causes in esse. The claim then would be that an infinite series of causes in esse is impossible. (So, the suggestion is to run the Causal Argument having specified that we’re talking about causes in esse.)

Problems with the First-Cause-In-Esse Argument

It only seems to answer one of the objections to the original argument.

Edwards claims that the principle of determinism seems reasonable when talking of causes in fieri, but seems less so when we think of causes in esse.

Chains, Trains & Hammered Nails

In arguing for the in esse version of the Causal Argument, a number of examples were given to support the claim that the causal series cannot be infinite:

Phillips: The goods train

Joyce: Carpenter hammering a nail

Joyce: Chain with no hook

In class, I tried to divorce these examples from the in esse argument and explore whether they can stand alone as motivation for premise 4 of the original causal argument. I left this as an open question given that:

Edwards claims that all of these examples miss the point. (Specifically, he thinks that each betrays a misunderstanding about infinity.)

Mackie (in the optional reading) seems to think there's something to these examples.

Does the Causal Chain Need a Cause?

In class, we looked at one final attempt to defend the Causal Argument. To motivate this final attempt, we looked at a passage from Father Copleston that Edwards quotes:

 “Every object has a…cause, if you insist on the infinity of the series. But the series of…causes is an insufficient explanation of the series…An infinite series of contingent beings will be, to my way of thinking, as unable to cause itself as one contingent being.” [emphasis mine]

In this quote (highlighted in yellow) it appears as if Copleston is claiming that the cause chain itself stands in need of a cause. (And, he thinks, the chain can't cause itself, so there must be some further cause.)

Recall, the Causal Argument rested on ruling out the possibility that the causal chain is infinite.  We saw that the argument that supposedly did that (Aquinas' Reductio) is a bit fishy.  A proponent of the Causal Argument might concede this point but still argue for the existence of a "First Cause" by way of the principle that every event has a cause. For even if the causal chain is infinite, it itself requires a cause.  This cause that lies outside the causal chain that comprises the universe is God.

Hume-Edward's Objection

This new version of the Causal Argument rests on the erroneous assumption that the causal series is something other than it's members. This is the assumption that once you "add up" all the events in the causal series, there is still a further "thing"--the series itself, which requires a cause. But that is a mistake. Edwards illustrates the mistake with his Eskimo Example. The idea is that once you've cited the cause for each Eskimo's presence on the street corner, you've given all the causal information there is to give. There isn't a further cause of the group's presence on the street corner.

The Argument from Contingency

This points the way to a new version of the Cosmological Argument. The proponents of the above argument might claim that when they asked for an explanation for the whole series (or the group of Eskimos) they weren't asking for a cause. Rather the idea is that a series, or any member of the series, is not explained or intelligible if all its members are contingent.

Thus, the Argument from Contingency rests on the idea that the universe is filled with contingent things, i.e. things which exist but which might not have existed and which therefore cry out for explanation.

1. Many contingent things have come into existence (Contingent stuff exists.)
2. Principle of Sufficient Reason: Nothing occurs without a sufficient reason why it is so and not otherwise.
3. For every contingent thing, there must be a sufficient reason why it has come into existence. [From 2]
4. No succession (whether finite or infinite) of contingent things will provide this sufficient reason.
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C. So, we must have recourse to a necessary being to explain the existence of all the contingent things in the universe.

As in the Causal Argument, we need an argument for premise 4: Why can't the chain of explanation just go on back infinitely, at each stage appealing to another contingent thing?

Argument for Premise 4

1. If we attempt to explain the existence of one contingent thing by citing other contingent things, we would only have a partial explanation.
2. The Principle of Sufficient Reason demands total or final explanations for any particular thing.
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C. No succession (whether finite or infinite) of contingent things can serve as a sufficient reason.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason demands an explanation for anything that exists, and with a contingent thing it is possible to “explain” it by appealing to its cause, which is another contingent thing. But the proponent of the argument reasons that if at each turn in the explanation you arrive at another contingent thing, then no real explanation has been provided. The explanation, in order to be “complete”, “total” and “ultimate” must terminate in some necessary being. The terminus, here, however, is not necessarily a terminus in time. Proponents of the argument concede, as we did for the Causal Argument a moment ago, that the chain of contingent beings could go back to infinity. In that case there must be an explanation for the whole series. So the necessary being could exist outside the causal chain, simultaneous with each member (and hence presently existing).

Objections to the Argument from Contingency

Kantian Objection

The conclusion of the Argument from Contingency is that a necessary being exists. But recall Kant's objection to the Ontological Argument regarding necessary existence.

Skepticism about the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Total Explanations

Another way that we might object to the Argument from Contingency is to question the way the argument characterizes explanation:

The argument rests on a misconception of what an explanation is and does. Normally we are satisfied when we have found the cause or set of causal factors.  These factors are the full and complete explanation, regardless of whether they are contingent. We neither require that the explanations keep on going forever or that they terminate in a necessary being. (Edwards uses the Eisenhower Example to show this.)

Now, a proponent of the Argument from Contingency might admit that normally our explanations do come to an end pretty quickly, but still claim that in principle they should go back, ultimately, to a necessary being.  That's the force of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, after all. But this too is objectionable:

What confidence do we really have that the Principle of Sufficient Reason will hold up that far? Why do we believe the Principle of Sufficient Reason anyway? As Mackie argues in the optional reading, the Principle is not known a priori. It is learned a posteriori from many observed instances of particular causal explanatory relations. As such, there is little ground for extending it back indefinitely beyond the normal bounds of our explanation-giving or (in some strange way no less) to the universe as a whole.

Finally, one last objection on this theme:

The Principle of Sufficient Reason yields the idea that there are "Total Explanations".  But that is an unargued for assumption.  Why think there are such explanations?  The universe doesn't have to meet our explanatory demands.

Schopenhauer's Gibe

As with the Causal Argument it might appear that the Argument from Contingency strill runs afoul of Schopenhauer's Gibe. In this case, it seems to use the Principle of Sufficient Reason only to dispense with it at the end of the argument. (In class, we treated this as an open question. Is the Cosmological Argument, in either the Causal or Contingency versions, guilty of the mistake that Shopenhauer points out?)