Kachana

<a href="http://www.discovery.org/viewDB/index.php3?program=CRSC&command=view&id=143" target="_blank">Here's</a> an article by someone called Robert C Koons defending the cosmological argument.

He appears to claim that he can prove through modal logic that the Cosmos has a cause, and that this cause is neccessary, but it may as well be written in machine code as far as my understanding goes.



Is he dazzling us with brilliance or baffling us with bullshit?

Vorkosigan

It's the usual collection of unwarranted assumptions, false dichotomies (see his discussion of Axiom 8, which he discusses extensively because he knows how weak it is). In any case, there's no empirical demonstration that the universe is contigent on any other process or entity, so no need to worry further about it. Cosmological arguments assume the answer in the premises; they can't help it.

Vorkosigan

case

Of course, there's that nasty little secret of logic: it doesn't always give an accurate description of reality. If it did, quantum mechanics would be out the window.

Synaesthesia

case,

In defense of the logical coherence of QM, I think the paradoxes arise only because we try to understand it in terms of our prior intuitive conception of physical structures. I think an analogous mistake was made by zeno when he tried to logically assess spacial relations in terms of mistaken premises about it.

That being said, I of course agree that the value of logical consistency are not as important as explanatory power and parsimony.

case

Good point.