[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
[quote]forlife wrote:
Joab,
I was referring to the second premise, which defines a contingent
being as something that has a cause of or explanation for its
existence. By this definition, a necessary being cannot have a cause
of or explanation for its existence. You said the necessary being does
have an explanation for its existence…can you clarify?
On your second point, I wasn’t arguing for a contingent set of
contingents. My position was that it is a non-contingent set of
contingents.
Uncaused metaphysical series/sets/collections don’t depend on having
actual contingent components in order to exist. For example, take the
metaphysical collection we call a dozen. Let’s say I separate every
object in the universe, so that nothing was so proximally related to
any other 11 somethings that we could call it a dozen. There isn’t a
dozen of anything in the entire universe. And yet, the uncaused
metaphysical collection of 12 somethings that we call a dozen still
exists, despite there not being an actual dozen of anything at the
present time.[/quote]
The second premise is just using the PSR, contingent and necessary being is already clearly defined in the argument. The former being a being if it exists can not-exist and the later being a being if it exists cannot not-exist where one is the negation of the other.
PSR just states that things have a reason or explanation for the way things are either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause. If there is an explanation for every existing state of affairs then its obvious that all existing contingent state of affairs explanation for their existence is a cause external to them since contingent state of affairs don’t explain the reason for their existence in themselves since they could have not existed. A existing necessary being does on the other hand does have a reason for its existence in its own nature since stating that he could have not existed results in a contradiction.
If you want to deny the second premise you can just state that contingents beings have no explanation for their existence but you will have to pay the price tag for denying PSR which I have expounded twice before and certain other penalties for denying PSR which I haven’t gotten into.
You are going to have to make an argument for a non-contingent set of contingents where the non-contingent set is the cause of the contingent elements it contains. Otherwise it’s incoherent as square circularity. If the contingents members that make up the set fail to exist in no way is the set the cause or explanation of the contingent members. Additionally a set is identified with the contingent members it contains. If you have a set with an infinite members of contingents where the infinite members of contingents have failed to exist simultaneously your set of infinite contingents has ceased to exist as well, if you insist a set still exist it isn’t the same one you started with but rather a set with no members which is no set at all. Hopefully this demonstrates the set’s contingency on its members and why a set isn’t the cause or explanation for its members.
What you are now talking about are abstract objects or necessary truths such as 2+2=4 where it would be true even if there was nothing material existing. However abstract objects are causally impotent. The number two cannot bring two apples into existence just like a set cannot be the explanation or cause of its members. Additionally these abstract objects/necessary truths aren’t floating out in nowhere but are situated in the eternal mind of the necessary being the only kind of thing able to be the cause or explanation of contingent things instead of causally impotent things like abstract objects like squares. I find it funny that you have said you can imagine information always existing which I do not disagree with but information apart from a mind is just like an abstract object unable to do anything of its own but information being the product of a mind can actually achieve its purpose.[/quote]
Excellent response!
You make a good point about the universality of the PSR. The argument
doesn’t actually say a necessary being has no explanation for its
existence. Rather, it implies (but doesn’t specify) that the cause of
or explanation for the existence of a necessary being can be the
necessary being itself.
You’re correct that an impure series is contingent on its contingent
members, since it only exists where and when its contingent members
exist. I’m proposing a pure series, which in set theory is
non-spatiotemporal (i.e., it exists independent of space and time). It
exists regardless of whether or not its contingent members exist.
The jury is still out on the potential causality of abstract objects.
You’re correct that the most widely accepted version of the Way of
Negation is that abstract objects cannot cause. However, it gets
tricky because abstract objects can “participate in the causal order”,
and thus be necessary to the cause, without being the sole source of
the cause.
[quote]The causal relation, strictly speaking, is a relation among
events. If we say that the rock caused the window to break, what we
mean is that some event involving the rock caused the breaking. If the
rock itself is a cause, it is a cause in some derivative sense. But
this derivative sense has proved elusive. The rock’s hitting the
window is an event in which the rock “participates” in a certain way,
and it is because the rock participates in events in this way that we
credit the rock itself with causal efficacy. But what is it for an
object to participate in an event? Suppose John is thinking about the
Pythagorean Theorem and you ask him to say what’s on his mind. His
response is an event: the utterance of a sentence; and one of its
causes is the event of John’s thinking about the theorem. Does the
Pythagorean Theorem “participate” in this event? There is surely some
sense in which it does. The event consists in John’s coming to stand
in a certain relation to the theorem, just as the rock’s hitting the
window consists in the rock’s coming to stand in a certain relation to
the window. But we do not credit the Pythagorean Theorem with causal
efficacy simply because it participates in this sense in an event
which is a cause. The challenge is therefore to characterize the
distinctive manner of “participation in the causal order” which
distinguishes the concrete entities. This problem has received
relatively little attention. There is no reason to believe that it
cannot be solved. But in the absence of a solution, this standard
version of the Way of Negation must be reckoned
unsatisfactory.[/quote]
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abstract-objects/
In this sense, you can argue that the uncaused series is necessary for
the existence of its constitutent contingent members. Furthermore,
even if the contigent members were to not exist, the uncaused series
would still exist as a necessary abstract object.
That said, it seems clear that abstract objects cannot be the
sole cause of contingent members, and thus cannot sufficiently
explain their existence.
This requires me to challenge the cosmological argument itself,
specifically the fifth premise:
[quote]5. Contingent beings alone cannot provide an adequate causal
account or explanation for the existence of a contingent
being.[/quote]
There is an unstated assumption that informs this premise, which is
that there must be a first cause. If there was a first cause, all
contingent beings must ultimately derive from this first cause.
However, if there was no first cause, contingent beings can in fact
provide an adequate causal account for the existence of all other
contingent beings, since the number of contingent events is infinite.
I contend that an infinite series of contingent events obviates the
requirement for a necessary being to explain the existence of those
contingent events.
I just find it feels like hitting my head against a wall to discuss philosophy with you. I’m not as ignorant as you make me out to be; I just think we fundamentally disagree on some things. It’s all good, please don’t take it personally if I don’t discuss philosophy with you in the future. There are plenty of other topics to gnaw on.[/quote]