Cosmological Argument Research Articles

The Cosmological Argument by William L. Rowe

The Cosmological Argument by William L. Rowe

The Missing Premise in the Cosmological Argument

(i) state the traditional ontological argument without the implied premise; (2) state the traditional criticisms, showing how they miss the mark; (3) restate the ontological argument with the implied premise made clear; (4) offer a defence of the implied premise; (5) show how the ontological argument is still invalidated by another criticism; (6) argue that the only way to avoid this other criticism is to borrow another premise from the cosmological argument, and (7) that when these premises are borrowed the result is a valid form of the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.

Limits on masses and number of neutral weakly interacting particles

Limits on the masses and number of neutral weakly interacting particles are derived using cosmological arguments. No such particles with a mass between 120 eV and 3 GeV can exist within the usual big band model. Similar, but much more severe, restrictions follow for particles that interact only gravitationally. This seems of importance with respect to supersymmetric theories.

The Cosmological Argument and the Possibility of Infinite Temporal Regression

L'A expose le probleme a partir d'un syllogisme de Ghazali: 1. Il y a des phenomenes temporels dans le monde| 2. Ils sont causes par d'autres phenomenes temporels| 3. Les series de phenomenes temporels ne peuvent etre indefiniment repoussees dans le temps| 4. Donc les series doivent s'arreter a l'eternel. Puis il montre comment ce refus d'une regression temporelle infinie a alimente la controverse sur l'argument cosmologique chez al-Farabi, ibn Sina, Maimonide, Thomas d'Aquin.

"The Cosmological Argument," by William L. Rowe

"The Cosmological Argument," by William L. Rowe

REVIEWS

Books Reviewed in this Article: The Cosmological Argument. By William L. Rowe. The Cosmological Argument. By William L. Rowe. Kierkegaard's Pseudonymous Authorship. A Study of Time and the Self. By Mark C. Taylor. Marxism and the Theory of Praxis. By John Hoffman. Freud and Education. By Seymour Fox. Of Love and Lust. By Theodor Reik. The Bible in Order. Edited by Joseph Rhymer. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period. By Martin Hengel. Vol.I (Text). Ministerial Consciousness: a Biblical‐Spiritual Study. By Louis John Cameli. What about the New Testament? Essays in Honour of Christopher Evans. Edited by Morna Hooker and Colin Hickling. Interpretatio Syriaca. By Sten Hidal. Jerome, His Life, Writings, and Controversies. By J.N.D. Kelly. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature. By Joan M. Ferrante. The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. By Jane Chance Nitzsche. Pilgrimage: an Image of Mediaeval Religion. By Jonathan Sumption. John Duns Scotus: God and Creatures, the Quodlibetal Questions. Translated with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Felix Alluntis, O.F.M. and Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century: An Exchange of Learning. Edited by Th. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes. The Lost Paradise. An Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay 1607–1768. By Philip Caraman. The Tübingen School. By Horton Harris.

Contingency, in the Cosmological Argument

I can illustrate what seems to me your fallacy. Every man who exists has a mother, and it seems to me your argument is that therefore the human race must have a mother, but obviously the human race has not a mother. B. Russell

Some Arguments Concerning the Principle of Sufficient Reason and Cosmological Proofs

SOME ARGUMENTS CONCERNING THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON AND COSMOLOGICAL PROOFS "Laws like the principle of sufficient reason . . . are about the net and not about what the net describes." (Ludwig Wittgenstein) "What a pity science cannot resolve to keep people under discipline and to keep itself in check!" (Kierkegaard 's Vigilius Haufniensis) RCENT literature concerning cosmological proofs for the existence of God has stressed their employment of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). Though in the past many critics of theistic arguments have not only not recognized the operation of this principle but also have criticized theists for employing a version of the principle of causality explicitly rejected by many in the theistic tradition/ contemporary criticism has generally acknowledged the functioning of the PSR. This is not to .say, however, that the principle has not been found wanting. In fact, confining ourselves just to discussions of what we might call in a preliminary way its " truth," two types of criticism seem to have been advanced. The first type, developing a characterization used by James F. Ross, might be called "Humean" so as to stress its epistemological character as well as its similarity with standard empiricist procedures against the principleof causality. The other type, which might be called " theological," attempts to reveal the incompatibility of the PSR with the existence of 1 See W. Norris Clarke, S. J., "A Curious Blindspot in the Anglo-American Tradition of Anti-Theistic Argument," The Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 181-~00. ~58 SUFFICIENT REASON AND COSMOLOGICAL PROOFS fl59 a free creator God; the PSR must thus be repudiated by traditional theists themselves. Our first concern, in section I, will be a presentation of various " Humean" arguments as they have been developed by Professor Ross 2 and by Professor William L. Rowe.3 In section II we shall develop and discuss their criticisms of the PSR in an effort to come to a correct understanding of the meaning, status, and function of the principle. Our contention will be that both critics and defenders have not always been clear on these issues, especially on the difference between " Rationalist " and " Aristotelian " understandings of the PSR and cosmological argumentation. We shall argue that there are at least two ways the PSR oan be denied, that there is a different type of absurdity involved in each denial, and that the context and nature of the denials must be stressed by one who would successfully defend the principle. In view of the complex structure of the " theological " ·argumentation of both Ross and Rowe, and since much of what we would say in response would be a reiteration of what was developed earlier, we shall confine ourselves in section III to a presentation of what we consider the basic claims of this type of critique. Our analysis in section IV will stress the essential modesty of the " Aristotelian " PSR; instead of providing the basis for an overbearing rationalism, scientism, and determinism, this PSR seemingly functions to render philosophical theology a discipline which attains its goal in a simultaneous recognition of its essential incompleteness with regard to possible truths about the divine. 2 James F. Ross, Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis and New York: The BobbsMerrill Company, 1969). 3 In "The Cosmological Argument and the Principle of Sufficient Reason," Man and World, 1 (1968), pp. ~78-9~. In "The Cosmological Argument," No-Us, 5 (1971), pp. 49-61, Rowe presents a "theological" argument, but in the process clarifies his formulations of the PSR. (Our essay was written previously to the publication of Rowe's more detailed analyses in his The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)). 260 CHARLES J. KELLY I. The following four objections to the PSR havebeen advanced (the first two by James F. Ross, the third and fourth byWilliam L. Rowe): 1. Since the principle that everything has (must have) an explanation or sufficient reason is assumed without proof, how is it known to be true? Any attempt to establish it as true runs into the dilemma: a) If the PSR is known by induction its absolute universality cannot be established. It can only be a synthetic principle of doubtful truth, since a finite body of evidence is available which could...

A phenomenological profile of the Higgs boson

A discussion is given of the production, decay and observability of the scalar Higgs boson H expected in gauge theories of the weak and electromagnetic interactions such as the Weinberg-Salam model. After reviewing previous experimental limits on the mass of the Higgs boson, we give a speculative cosmological argument for a small mass. If its mass is similar to that of the pion, the Higgs boson may be visible in the reactions π −p → Hn or γp → Hp near threshold. If its mass is ≲300 MeV, the Higgs boson may be present in the decays of kaons with a branching ratio O(10 −7), or in the decays of one of the new particles: 3.7 → 3.1 + H with a branching ratio O(10 −4). If its mass is ⩽4 GeV, the Higgs boson may be visible in the reaction pp → H + X, H → μ + μ −. If the Higgs boson has a mass ⩽2 m μ , the decays H → e +e − and H → γγ dominate, and the lifetime is O(6 × 10 −4 to 2 × 10 −12) seconds. As thresholds for heavier particles (pions, strange particles, new particles) are crossed, decays into them become dominant, and the lifetime decreases rapidly to O(10 −20) sec for a Higgs boson of mass 10 GeV. Decay branching ratios in principle enable the quark masses to be determined.

The Cosmological Argument

I. Professor William L. Rowe begins an interesting paper on the Cosmological Argument by stating that his ‘purpose …is not to resurrect it’ but ‘to uncover, clarify, and examine some of the philosophical concepts and theses essential to the reasoning exhibited in the argument’. (49) However, in the concluding pages of his paper, Rowe is at some pains to show that his discussion does at least demonstrate that the Cosmological Argument is beyond the reach of criticisms levelled against it in the works of its classical critics, Hume and Kant and their modern-day counterparts. To quote his concluding remark: ‘Like most important philosophical arguments, it appears that the Cosmological Argument is neither as good as its supporters have claimed it to be nor as bad as its critics have believed.’ (61) Now I have long suspected that some such estimate of the Cosmological Argument was correct; however I do not think that Rowe's discussions in his paper establish his contention that the reports of the death of the Cosmological Argument have been premature. Nevertheless, Rowe's uncovering of the reasoning that lies behind the argument does have the merit of laying bare the precise point from which, as well as the direction in which, the defence of the argument should proceed if we are to truly make some headway on this hoary topic. In what follows, I will first try to show why I think Rowe's discussion fails to establish his conclusion and thereafter try to give the outline of a more successful strategy for arriving at the same conclusion.

Tillich's Tergiversations Toward the Power of Being

In a well-known essay on ‘The Two Types of the Philosophy of Religion’, Paul Tillich distinguishes between the ontological and the cosmological approaches in our philosophical understanding of God, and aligns himself with the former. The ontological approach may be historically associated with Augustine and Anselm's ontological argument, as contrasted with Thomas Aquinas and the cosmological argument, but the decisive difference from Tillich's perspective is whether God is treated as a being, an instance of being exemplifying the fundamental metaphysical categories, or beyond being, a radical and necessary exception to these principles. Championing the ontological approach, Tillich declares: ‘The being of God cannot be understood as the existence of a being alongside others or above others. If God is a being, he is subject to the categories of finitude, especially to space and substance. Even if he is called the “highest being” in the sense of the “most perfect” and the “most powerful” being, this situation is not changed. When applied to God, superlatives become diminutives’ (ST I, 235). In response, proponents of the cosmological approach may agree with Alfred North Whitehead: ‘God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.’

The First Way: A Rejoinder

THE FIRST WAY: A REJOINDER IN THE PRECEDING article Pro£essorJohnKing-Farlow has raised a number o£ intriguing questions relating to the prima via o£ St. Thomas Aquinas'---questions, indeed, that cannot be answered with any measure o£ completeness in a brief reply. The queries he raises, however, do present the opportunity to offer some further observations on the traditional understanding o£ the proof and on its validity in the light o£ modern science, and these will be the focus o£ this rejoinder . The prima via, it would seem, is a clear instance o£ a cosmological argument £or the existence o£ God. It starts from an observable aspect o£ the cosmos, i. e., the motion or movement or change that is sensibly observable in it, reasons a posteriori£rom this to an ultimate cause, and so concludes to the existence o£ a First Unmoved Mover who is incorporeal, immaterial , infinite in power, etc., and who in the sequel can be identified with the God o£ Revelation. Although in its later stages the proof makes use o£ metaphysical reasoning, its beginnings actually pertain to natural philosophy. (Indeed, as most Thomists hold, i£ the natural philosopher could not prove the existence o£ some type o£ being that really exists and is neither material nor in motion, there would be no need £or metaphysics as a discipline, since its subject matter would be essentially the same as that o£ natural philosophy.) The natural philosopher, moreover, abstracts from certain features o£ the physical world in elaborating his discipline; this abstractive process is found in all sciences, although some abstract in ways different £rom others, and their manner o£ abstracting can unfortunately have a restrictive influence on the types o£ arguments and proofs they are able to elaborate.1 1 For a succinct account of Thomistic teaching on abstraction and its relation 375 376 WILLIAM A. WALLACE On this understanding the prima via is only one of several possible cosmological arguments, all of which, precisely as cosmological , operate at the same " degree " of abstraction. Thus the secunda via, the tertia via, and the quinta via may be viewed as different proofs,2 complementary in some respects, following the same basic logic or methodology, each of equal abstractness, and yet each capable of independent formulation and justification.3 Moreover, insofar as these proofs focus attention successively on particular aspects of the cosmos, it is admittedly quite legitimate to say that each one " abstracts from " other aspects of the same cosmos. Such a use of the notion of "abstraction," however, is different from the way in which the abstractive process may be said to differentiate the sciences. King-Farlow calls attention to my frequent use of the terms " abstract " and " abstraction " and makes a play on these expressions in urging his own interpretation of the prima via-one essentially at variance with that given it in the Thomistic tradition. The difference between his use of " abstraction " and mine is that he gives the term the rather broad, precisive meaning just illustrated, whereas I use it in the technical Aristotelian-Thomistic way employed to differentiate the various sciences.4 to the classification of the sciences, see the articles by E. D. Simmons entitled "Abstraction " and "Sciences, Classification of" in the N(}W Catholic Encyclopedia, 16 vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill and Publishers Guild, Inc., 1967, 1974), Vol. 1, pp. 56-59, and Vol. 1~, pp. 1~~0-1~~4. 2 Here the quarta via is consciously omitted as being more metaphysical in character than the other four ways. 8 My affirmation of the partly complementary character of the proofs is shared by King-Farlow in his books Reason and Religion and Faith and the Life of Reason . He would stress, however, that the proofs are only collectively valid, whereas I am further claiming their individual validity. See notes 4 and 13, infra. • Correspondence with King-Farlow shows that we agree to disagr.ee on this matter of " abstractness " thus. A description D1 is a more abstract description of the world W than is description D2, when D1 covers fewer sets of predicates required for indicating the most important features of W. It is Aquinas's claim and mine...

The First Way in Physical and Moral Space

THE FIRST WAY IN PHYSICAL AND MORAL SPACE Introduction ST. THOMAS'S FIRST Way admits of fruitful study from many perspectives on its differently distinguishable stages. But it is only finitely divisible, even in intellectu, at least to any good purpose. However cheering one may find the light of reinterpretative reason, some perspectives and some such stages may remain most crucial of all for evaluating the lasting importance of the argument. Saint Thomas himself at Summa contra Gentiles I, 13, assures us that the crucial stages of his argument in the Summa Theologiae are two in number. These are, (I) the stage of showing whether every" change" 1 (kinesis, motus), in our experience of natural bodies is caused by something other than that which is " changed " ; (II) the stage of arguing that one cannot allow the chain of concurrent causes of " changes " to go on to infinity or else one can give no real explanation of any " change " at all. It does not seem unreasonable to concede a Comon Sense analogue of (I) . It is less momentous, but not very audacious, to say that no " change " in anything which we abserve seems causally quite independent of any sets of concurrent events. The " leap " from p1 to p2 of what is said to be an " essentially unpredictable " nuclear particle at t3 seems pretty plausibly to depend at least in good part on the position and velocity of a great many microscopic and macroscopic co-existent things in the universe and their concurrent behavior. This particle within the nucleus of that atom in my right hand might not 1 For a valuable discussion of "motus" and its technical meaning as "change" see Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), pp. 7-9. 349 350 JOHN KING-FARLOW be taking its particular leap now if an atomic war had just begun with an irradiating bang, or if the sun had just started radically disappointing Hume's expectations of solar consistency . The sceptic who cheerfully grants this to be eminently plausible may well suggest yet again that the very existence of Nature viewed as a complete, self-subsistent, law-governed physical system of " changes " would he quite as good a First Cause as any. In nearly two decades of scientifically erudite championship for Saint Thomas, Dr. William Wallace, 0. P., has argued that such a sceptical move betrays an ignorance of science and its history.2 Father Wallace protests that such talk of a "self-subsistent, law-governed, etc., physical system" abstracts away too many important characteristics of natural bodies. But his protest, I shall argue, may tum out to be, (scarcely less than the sceptic's move), an irrelevant response to a religious person who poses the question "Why?" as a religious question and to a Christian theist's attempt to reply as a theist. For the religious type of" Why?" questioning may tum out to engulf the sceptic with expressions of fresh wonderlike "Why is there then a complete, self-subsistent physical system in which this ' change ' occurs? " And it may tum out to engulf Wallace and his historical Newton with utterances of new bafflement like: " Why then is there a universe with this kind of ' change ' in it, and also with a higher intelligence maintaining its gravitational laws, and also with other scientifically describable regularities? " " How could this happen if the universe were controlled by an intelligent being? " This sort of question about the first stage will be taken up in a brief Part II, The First Way in Moral Space, which will bring this essay to a close. It may turn out that not only Newton's 2 See W. A. Wallace, 0. P., (i) "Newtonian Antinomies and the Prima Via," The Thomist XIX, 2, (1956), pp. 151-19~; (ii) "Saint Thomas, Galileo, and Einstein ," The Thomist XXIV, 1, (1961), pp. 1-22; (iii) "The Cosmological Argument ," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association XLVI, (1972), p. 43-57; (iv) Causality and Scientific Explanation, Volume I: Medieval and Early Classical Science, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 197~), THE FffiST WAY IN PHYSICAL AND MORAL SPACE 351 but even Aristotle's physics sometimes seems to result...

The cosmological argument and the causal principle

The cosmological argument and the causal principle

Kant's Refutation of the Cosmological Argument

T is well known that Kant offers a refutation of the cosmological argument for the existence of God on the grounds that this proof surreptitiously invokes the ontological argument, an argument which we will with Kant assume to be false. I shall show in this paper that this refutation, while it is frequently taken to be valid,' is in fact fallacious. I shall then offer an explanation as to why Kant thought he needed a refutation such as this at all. The cosmological argument for the existence of God is the proof from the contingency of the world (a contingentia mundi). According to Kant, the argument unfolds in two stages. The first stage is as follows:

Hick, Necessary Being, and the Cosmological Argument

The concepts of necessary being, or necessary existence, and contingent being, or contingent existence, continue to occupy a central position in philosophical appraisals of Christian theism. Some philosophers have been concerned of late to emphasize a crucial ambiguity in the terms ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent', an ambiguity which threatens seriously to bedevil assessment of the claim that God's existence is necessary and not contingent. An important consequence of getting clear on this point, it is suggested, is that certain brisk attempts to demolish the concept of a necessary being may be seen at least to be premature, leaving untouched,, as they do, an apparently viable sense in which God can be said to be a, indeed the, necessary being.This, substantially, is the position advocated by Professor J.H. Hick in recent discussions of this point. Hick maintains that it is of the greatest importance to distinguish two fundamentally different and contrasting notions of necessary being or necessary existence.

Ecosystems and Systematics

“The ecological emergency of our day has reopened the cosmological argument. … To imply that ecology is the matrix of a new systematics, as the Gothic image and the Elizabethan chain were in their time, may seem an extravagant conceit. But if ecological predictions of the immediate future are justified … we may have no choice about the contextual situation in which future deliberations in any area are to be pursued.”

The Five Ways. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence by Anthony Kenny, and: The Cosmological Argument. A Reassessment by Bruce R. Reichenbach

BOOK REVIEWS 721 The Five Ways. St. Thoma8 Aquina8' Proofs of God's Existence. By ANTHONY KENNY. Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion. General Editor, D. E. Phillips. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. Pp. 139. The Cosmological Argument. A Rea8sessment. By BRUCE R. REICHENBACH . Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 197~. Pp. 164. $8.75. With the renewal of interest in natural theology prompted by the publication of Flew and Mcintyre's Neu> Essays in Philosophical Theology (1955), attention has been directed once again to rational arguments for God's existence. The ontological argument was the first to benefit from this resurgence of interest, but in the two books under review cosmological argumentation and its various formulations come in for their share of attention. Kenny's work, which shows more the negative influence of Flew, stresses the difficulty involved in separating Aquinas's five ways from the medieval cosmology in which he sees them as imbedded. Reichenbach's work is more positive in spirit, the author's major concern being to reformulate St. Thomas's first three ways so as to meet the objections of Hume and Kant and contemporary critics in the analytical tradition. Both works merit a brief exposition and critique, if only because they consider much the same subject matter and yet come to contrary conclusions. After a brief introduction wherein he allows that " the criticisms of Kant are certainly still the most effective obstacle any rational theism has to meet" (p. 3), Kenny devotes a chapter each to the five proofs for God's existence offered by Aquinas in Summa Theologiae, I, q. ~.a. 3. In the case of each via he attempts a rather complete exegesis of the text, supplementing this with St. Thomas's arguments in parallel places and with elucidations supplied by commentators, mainly recent, including Roberto Masi, Joseph Owens, and Peter Geach. In each instance Kenny raises objections drawn from modern science and from Humean, Kantian, and more recent philosophies to show not only that the ipsa verba of St. Thomas are unacceptable to the modern mind but also that " scholastic modernizations " must share the same fate (cf. p. 4). With regards to the prima via Kenny experiences special difficulty with the principle "omne quod movetur ab alio movetur," and so sides with Suarez's evaluation of the proof that it is impotent " to prove that there is anything immaterial in reality, let alone that there is a first and uncreated substance " (p. 33) . The chapter has some interesting material on the chains of movers involved in inertial and gravitational motion, particularly when the author attempts to explain these in terms of Newtonian and Einsteinian mechanics, but unfortunately his discussion here comes to no conclusive results. Kenny's examination of the secunda via focuses on the principle of efficient causation, which he formulates in mathematical logic BOOK REVIEWS following Salamucha and others. His difficulty here is with essentially subordinated series of causes, which he sees as intelligible in terms of medieval astrology, as thus based on an "archaic fiction" (p. 44), and hence unacceptable in the light of modern science. The discussion of the tertia via, admittedly one of the most difficult proofs to make sense of, permits Kenny to range through contemporary discussions of possiblity, necessity, and contingency. His evaluation is that the proof concludes as well to the "everlasting existence of matter with a natural indestructibility" (p. 69) as it does to God's eternal existence. In analyzing the quarta via the author dwells at some length on Platonic Forms, predicates, and existence, using Geach as a foil for much of the discussion; his own conclusion, predictably, is that " the notion of lpsum Esse Subsistens, ... so far from being a profound metaphysical analysis of the divine nature, turns out to be the Platonic Idea of a predicate which is at best uninformative and at worst unintelligible" (p. 95). His critique of the quinta via, finally, allows Kenny to discourse on contemporary problems relating to teleological explanation and the philosophy of mind, again coming to the negative result that the argument from design has no more claim to validity than the other theistic arguments. Kenny's book is clear and well...

Falsifiability and the Cosmological Argument

Falsifiability and the Cosmological Argument

The Cosmological Argument: A Reappraisal

The Cosmological Argument: A Reappraisal