Clutch

No. No more than Joe is a positive fact. By Koons's own (unmotivated, idiosyncratic, unfecund) definition, the CPF called q is not a "positive fact". "q exists" is the relevant "positive fact". Silent Dave has already hit this one outta the park. Axiom 2 is just the fallacy of composition that almost always characterizes the Cosmological Argument, with the composition poorly hidden within the content of q. All I would add to his observations is this: notice that nothing rules out q's being an infinite conjunction. Which makes even more obvious the fraught move from our normal experience within the universe, to the existence of the universe tout court. There is simply no reason to believe that "Axiom 2" aspires to axiomatic status, and to the extent that it's a homely truth, no reason to believe that it applies to such unhomely concatenations as q.

As others have pointed out, it does no such thing. If it worked, it would still have nothing to do with theism. Assume that necessarily some first cause exists: now show that it's not a necessarily existent lump of coal.

Welcome to II! A swing and a miss, though.

Goliath

Philip Osborne,

In that case, "q" (as per the above nomenclature) is not well-defined. It has been shown that the concept of "the set of all sets" is not well-defined. In fact, the collection of all sets is something more general than a set, called a category. If you'd like, I can either explain why there is no set of all sets, or point you to some references.

It would mean that q is not well-defined.

Ummmm....well, then you're going to have to redefine "aggregate" then, since your set-notion of summing facts would still imply that q is not well-defined.

By the way, when I say that q is not well-defined, I mean that it makes no sense to talk about q as a fact. In fact, it makes no sense to talk about q at all.

A finite sum of positive facts would seem to be a contingent fact. However, does this work for infinite collections of facts?

I'm quite unconvinced that such a "singular" CPF would be well-defined. You would need to prove that.

You need to prove this (see above).

Ah, ok.

Ok. Just so that I'm 100% clear on this, by a fact, you mean a propositional statement that is true, correct?

Sincerely,

Goliath

Liquidrage

Why does anyone think a First Cause arguement or the existence or lack thereof of a deity/creator can be formulated with a semantical truth table.

I guess it doesn't hurt to try but to me it seems the wrong tool for the job.

Synaesthesia

The essential idea behind all cosmological arguments, with varying degrees of technicality and convolution, are two fundamental axioms:

1. The universe requires a cause in the normal sense of term.
2. A certain external cause of the universe does not require a cause in the normal sense of the term.

Philip’s definition of God as not being a positive fact is just an arbitrary means of exempting ‘external’ things from the “rule” of causation upon which the argument depends.

The cosmological argument is an attempt to show that an external cause is the only possibility. It in fact merely assumes in the course of the argument that the universe is a “positive fact” requiring an external explanation.

Not only are there other possibilities, there are positive reasons for preferring them. As such, the cosmological argument both fails in it’s intent and is a compelling demonstration of how pure logic can lead to logical confusion.

The atheistic Cosmological principle:
1A. At some point normal causation cannot explain the existence of the universe and must break down.

Note that we have made no commitment as to whether there is an internal or external explanation of the universe - only that at some point normal causation has to break down at some point.

Since no additional ontological commitment is required, the atheistic cosmological principle is preferable on grounds of parsimony. I would note that it is compatible with the existence of god, but it is also compatible with self-causation (which is logically POSSIBLE) and other sorts of causal breakdowns.

Philp writes:
This is exactly my point. You invent an external cause and arbitrarily assume that it doesn’t face the very same causal problem which you arbitrarily (and wrongly) assume the universe does. This is not logically contradictory but it is arbitrary, and simply complicates our ontology without providing any sort of justification for doing so.

The wavefunction describes the behavior of all matter. As such, to even accurately characterize the workings of the causal universe, we are forced to abandon causation! Clearly this demonstrates that normal causation is not required within the universe, hence creating a God that isn’t subject to causation is unnecessary.

As I point out above, positive facts and situations do not necessarily have causes in the commonsense meaning of the world. As such by default we are already required to assume that some events cannot be adequately characterized by causation.

Your defeasible causal principle is faced with the problems posed by the arbitrary notion of ‘positive fact’. Many state of affairs, facts, are acausal and so characterizing the universe as being composed of positive facts is physically wrong - a poor platform upon which the throne of god should sit.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia

When dealing with complicated a priori logical arguments, it’s “easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.”

One thing I love about these logical debates is their core of simplicity. The only idea here is that “universe requires a cause, God does not” is simply split up and distributed over a number of premises.

Like the ontological argument, the additional complication adds the pursuasive power of endless analysis of what is logically correct (or incorrect), and simply confuses the issue.

The ontological, Transcendant and cosmological arguments all follow the principle of the Sitius Cybernetics Corporation:

“...this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.”


God bless Douglas Adams.

Philip Osborne

"No. No more than Joe is a positive fact. By Koons's own (unmotivated, idiosyncratic, unfecund) definition, the CPF called q is not a "positive...."

This seems a small terminological error. Anyway, the proof for Corollary 1 establishes that "There is a conjunctive positive fact in our world," which is analagous to saying "q exists." The argument could proceed just as easily by using "q exists" as the relevant fact which is caused. In fact, it does proceed this way, although my writing may have been misleading.

"Silent Dave has already hit this one outta the park. Axiom 2 is just the fallacy of composition that almost always...."

I have provided argument to suggest that our evidence for the causal principle applies to aggregates as much as it does to individuals, which was in response to HRG's objection that the set of K is not going to share the characteristics of each member of the set. You have not addressed this argument. Whether or not the conjunction is infinite is strictly irrelevant to the argument. Each conjunct is a member of the CPF, and so cannot be a cause of the CPF, by Axiom 3.

"Assume that necessarily some first cause exists: now show that it's not a necessarily existent lump of coal."

Although I may not be able to show the first cause to be a personal, intelligent being, one thing seems for sure; the First Cause cannot merely be any arbitrary feature of our world. One cannot arbitrarily predicate non-contingency of a lump of coal and expect it to still intelligibly be a lump of coal. Lumps of coal simply are contingent; they are contingent upon fossilized plants, their constituent molecules, etc. A basic rule of conceptualization is that the properties of a thing should not contradict each other. A necessary lump of coal violates this rule, and so is not possibly exemplified.

"A finite sum of positive facts would seem to be a contingent fact. However, does this work for infinite collections of facts?"

It is basic to mereology (the formal study of part/whole relationships) that a whole necessitates all of its parts. Suppose there is an infinite collection of contingent facts. If this collection is necessary, then all of its parts are necessary. But this contradicts our hypothesis that these parts are not necessary.

"I'm quite unconvinced that such a "singular" CPF would be well-defined. You would need to prove that."

The set of all individual positive facts in the actual world is such that if any two or more such facts were placed together in an aggregate, there would be no truth-functional repititions. That is, if there is a member p, there are no members (p & p) or (p v p); these would be replaced by plain old p. Also, if there is a member p and a member q, there are no seperate members (p & q) or (p v q); these would be replaced by p and q. For any possible combination of positive facts, if such repititions do occur, then the fact in which the repitition arises is not an individual positive fact.

"Facts" are not propositions; they are the things that make propositions true. For instance, the proposition "Smith is eating dinner" is made true by the fact that Smith is eating dinner. The difference is that facts stand in causal relations to each other, whereas propositions do not.

"The cosmological argument is an attempt to show that an external cause is the only possibility. It in fact merely assumes...."

I do not assume that the "universe" is a positive fact; I prove that the aggregate of all positive facts is itself a positive fact. Whether or not this aggregate (which I called "q") is identical with the physical universe is another question, but it seems plausible to me that in some sense, it is.

"This is exactly my point. You invent an external cause and arbitrarily assume that it doesn’t face the very same causal problem which you arbitrarily (and wrongly) assume the universe does. This is not logically contradictory but it is arbitrary, and simply complicates our ontology without providing any sort of justification for doing so."

Actually, this is not a correct characterization at all. My argument does not need to assume that contingent facts which are not positive do not have causes. As I've said before, the cause of q may itself be contingent, so long as it reports the contingent action of a necessary being. On the Libertarian theory of free will, anyway, actions can be free and uncaused, so this might give us some reason for accepting Libertarian free will as it applies to a necessary being. On the other hand, the cause of q may itself be caused. And that cause may in turn have a cause, ad infinitum. So what? At the stage of the argument in which I establish the cause of q, I have already established the existence of a necessary being (assuming the argument is correct up to that point), which is the desired conclusion of the argument. There may be an infinite regress of causes of the cause of q; this does not undermine the conclusion that a necessary being exists which causes q. This is not to say that the necessary being's existence is caused, but the act it performs which causes q can be contingent and caused without damage to the argument.

"The wavefunction describes the behavior of all matter. As such, to even accurately characterize the workings of the...."

I'm not terribly familiar with quantum mechanics. If you would elaborate on the sense of "causation" that you are using, and how the wave function undermines such causation, I might better be able to understand this objection.

Sincerely,

Philip

Clutch

Philip, thanks for your remarks. To borrow a phrase from Russell, this has all the benefits of theft over honest toil.

Sorry, Philip, but this sort of scholastic, "Inconceivable because I say so" argument doesn't carry much weight -- if none at all counts as not much. Whatever the first cause is -- assuming your argument is sound, which we have seen is false -- it is necessary. That is the conclusion of your argument. If that cause was (by molecular individuation, not causal history) a lump of coal, then your argument issues in the surprising conclusion that at least one lump of coal exists necessarily. There's nothing in the idea that you can say, "Oh, no -- that's not the sort of cause I was hoping for, so it can't be *that*..."

I am indeed aware that you attempted some backfilling to shore up "Axiom" 2. I saw nothing that defused the familiar problem of the compositional fallacy.

Synaesthesia

Hey Philip,
Oh, Gosh, that really does change things. For your argument to be valid, it tacitly depends upon the assumption that causation does not break down until we get to this external cause. If you do not assume this, my response is much simpler: The argument is formally invalid.

Your argument is entierly consistent with the atheistic cosmological principle; Some facts about the universe could be described as positive whereas some (like the beginning of the universe) cannot be, in a normal sense, positive. None of this is inconsistent with the absence of any sort of external causal agency or god and so your conclusion does not follow.

In short, the only argument for a external causal explanation of the universe you actually give is that you think that it’s more plausible. The rest is Sirius Cybernetic-style window dressing.

Here again is the tacit assumption that the universe is a positive fact (by your definition). We argree that there is reason to suppose that there is a set of descriptions (ie. positive) which cannot be used to account for existence. You have given no argument, however, which gives us any reason to believe that something that might account for existence would necessarily have to be outside the universe. You informally assume that it does, which I suspect is the source of the fallacy.

If you embrace that assumption, the argument is valid but decidedly dubious and question-begging. If you reject that assumption, the argument is formally invalid and we are left with a vague statement about plausibility.

On the level of minimalism, QM does not have any actual causal mechanism. Nonlocality, for example, can’t be described as being faster-than-light influence, but it does somehow happen. The point of mentioning it, specifically in relation to the very beginnings of the universe, is that notions like the breakdown of the temporal linearity of causation (it’s logically possible, for example, for the universe to cause itself with no outside influence!), the idea of one event being contingent upon another can become meaningless within the universe.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

Synaesthesia

btw, I nominate Philip for the most coherent Christian philosopher on this BB.

His argument may be flawed, but in that he's in the company of some of the greatest philosophers. It can hardly be held against the obvious depth and flow of his understanding.

Goliath

Philip Osborne,

Wrong! q is not well-defined. q makes about as much sense as a square circle (which is to say none at all).

And since q is not well-defined, your argument fails.

Could you please explain why?

Unproven assertion.

Unless, of course, said lump of coal is a first cause.

I had asked:

You replied with:

This does not address my question.

Unproven assertion.

I had said:

To which you replied:

This does not in any way, shape, or form address whether or not such a singular CPF would be well-defined.

Ok, understood.

As I have pointed out before, said aggregate is not well-defined. There is no such thing as the set of all sets!

Sincerely,

Goliath