Originally posted by lucifershammer
I'm going to pull together points from your previous two posts.
v: it seems to me you are making a variation of the cosmological argument.
I am using part of a cosmological argument. I'm not sure which, but I think it is a variation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.
v: [i]Causality applies within the universe—an aspect of its supernatural - even if he gives it another name) but refuses to admit it.
[/i]I have several arguments, presented here in descending order, roughly according to how I would weight them—or, think of them as “gates”: if you can’t get through the first one, the others don’t matter (except from the point of view of intellectual exercise).
In the following, I am using the universe in it’s ordinary the “all of all of all of it,” without regard to “multiverses,” etc.
I. Eskimo Argument *
Simply—there is
not “everything that makes up the universe”**
plus “the universe-itself.” (This may be akin to Wittgenstein’s point about always seeking a substance for every substantive we use, and thus becoming bewitched by our language.)
It is an error to speak in such a way of the “U-itself” as an entity: necessary or contingent.
Edwards’ Eskimos (adapted):
Suppose I see a group of 5 Eskimos sitting in the park in Nashville, Tennessee. I want to have an explanation for how they came to be here. Investigation yields the following:
E1: Moved south to escape the extreme cold of the polar climate, which she no longer enjoyed.
E2: Is E1’s husband, loves her, and didn’t want to stay behind without her.
E3: Is the infant child of E1 and E2; had no choice.
E4: Saw an advertisement on satellite TV for a job as a computer programmer in Nashville, was unemployed, and decided to take the chance.
E5: Is a private detective hired by E4’s former spouse to follow E4.
Let’s assume that the following explanations are sufficient to explain the behavior of each of the Eskimos (or, that if they are not sufficient, there is no logical bar on getting enough further information to meet the test of a sufficient explanation). Now you ask: “Yes, but what explains why the
group of Eskimos came to Nashville?”
But—once we have explained the behavior of all the individuals (and their relationships with each other within U),
there is nothing left to explain.
This argument, I think, refutes your "despite the fact that it is identifiable as an effect (because of its contingency)." Your position rests on the mistake of assuming a "thing" that you can sensibly talk about, simply because you have a noun. If there are universal properties
within U, that does not mean there is a "U-itself" which somehow bestows those properties.
* Named here for the version presented by Paul Edwards in
Critiques of God.
** Objects, concepts, forces, fields, causal-complexes...etc., etc., etc.
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II. No View from Elsewhere
Even if it did make sense for us to speak of U as an entity itself (in need of some explanation itself), how is it possible for us to view/analyze/consider U-as-whole, when
we are in U and part of it? Our view and our thinking, our ability to experience and reason, how we experience and reason, are conditioned by our being not only
in, but
of U. We have no access to a view from elsewhere—whether we call that elsewhere transcendent, or supernatural, or the “view from nowhere.”
We are in fact barred from examining the U-as-a-whole (or as an “itself” ). We are barred from examining U-as-a-whole (or as an “itself” ) in any way that is unconditioned by our place in U. We cannot even reasonably ask the questions, except as the course of our very inquiring is so conditioned.
That is why I suggested that, by creating a supernatural—or extra-U—category, you are creating a pretense: that you can now view U-as-a-whole from some outside “position.” That you can, at least in your imagination, step outside in order to see whether, for example, U
is contingent. I am arguing that the possibility of such a stance is a mirage.
Note: I do not take “possible worlds” as anything more than a tool for analysis, analogous to a thought experiment. That is, I do not take the view that other possible worlds are in any way actual worlds (e.g., even as thoughts in God’s mind). They are simply other ways it might be, but isn’t.
[ASIDE: I would suggest that even our ability to imagine some “unconditioned being” is always bound by our own conditionality—if we could truly imagine such a being, we ourselves would be unconditioned. Note, I am not saying imagining some other type of conditions in some other “possible world,” nor some U-conditions that are more complex than any we know—I am speaking of the notion of an unconditioned being. I think, again, we bewitch ourselves with language...]
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III. Possibility that “U-itself” is Necessary
Arguing from Hume (and Simon Blackburn in
Think): If there is no bar on proposing an extra-U necessary being, there is no bar on proposing that U has the properties, that are outside (transcendental to) our intellectual access, that make up such a “necessary being”—U itself.
This is generally, I think, used against the causal version of the cosmological argument, but I present it here anyway. To quote from Blackburn:
“For it must be ‘unknown, inconceivable qualities’ that make anything a ‘necessary existent.’ And for all we know, such unknown inconceivable qualities may attach to the ordinary physical universe, rather than to any immaterial thing or person or deity lying behind it.” [This portion is aimed at the causal variant; the following, from the same section in Blackburn, is aimed more toward your variant.]
“There are versions of the cosmological argument that are not concerned with the first cause, in time. Rather, they consider the ongoing order of the universe: the uniformity of nature. It can seem an amazing fact that laws of nature keep on holding, that the frame of nature does not fall apart. One can think that these facts must be ‘dependent’ and require a necessary sustaining cause (like Atlas propping up the world). But once more, there is either a regress, or a simple fiat that something has ‘unknown inconceivable properties’ that make it self-sufficient. This would be something whose ongoing uniformity requires no explanation outside itself. And that might as well be the world as a whole as anything else.”
Note: I do not think this argument necessarily, as you state it, puts the non-supernaturalist on a par with the supernaturalist—but close enough that it is not my favorite. It really, to my mind, simply says that if there are things we cannot know, we can speculate about them in different ways—and that it is not irrational to place our fiat at U, rather than some extra-U being.
IV. The Cosmo Argument Rests on the Onto Argument
Simply, the cosmological argument implicitly assumes aspects of the ontological argument that are themselves refutable. The following site presents an outline of Kant’s argument—
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Mode/ModeDeLo.htm
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EDIT: I have made several corrections to this, so if you're reading it before seeing this, please reread--sorry!
09 Aug '06 16:04
But Marge....
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