Automaton

Every event or object can be grouped into two categories, contingent (could fail to exist) or necessary (could not fail to exist). That is, imagining the array of possible worlds, in some possible world(s), will contingent X not be, but in no possible worlds will necessary Y not be. Now, if something is necessary, it is necessary because it would be logically impossible for it to fail to exist. It needs no causal explanation for its existence. But if something is contingent, it requires a causal explanation. It cannot simply "brute fact" exist, because it could just as well not exist. So once we ask what caused a contingency, what must ask what, in turn, caused its cause. Working backwards in this fashion, there are two possibilities, the contingent causes go back infinitely, or the contingent causes end up with a necessary cause. The former (infinite causal regress) is impossible, and so is the latter, because a necessary cause must result in a necessity, because a necessary cause cannot fail to exist, and thus its effect cannot fail to exist either. So contingencies are impossible, and thus every event and object that exists does so because it is logically necessary for it do so. If it is logically necessary, there is no other way it can be, and therefore the state of affairs that is already determined.

tronvillain

Yes, this argument looks familiar. I see two potential objections:

1)It does not appear necessary for the principle of sufficient reason to hold. In this case, it does not follow from "It could just as well not exist." that "It cannot simply 'brute fact' exist." If we happen upon something without a causal explanation or an incomplete causal explanation, you may say "It could just as well not exist!" but I can reply with "But the brute fact is that is does!"

2)It is not clear that an infinite causal regress is impossible.

Philip Osborne

Assuming that you are correct in supposing an infinite regress of explanations is impossible (I think John Post has provided arguments for this, although "explanation" is different from "cause"), it seems your argument can work as an argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason. If we make the seemingly rational assumption that contingency exists, then by your argument we would be justified in rejecting the Principle of Sufficient Reason on the grounds that it would do away with contingency altogether.

AtlanticCitySlave

"Every event or object can be grouped into two categories, contingent (could fail to exist) or necessary (could not fail to exist)."

-How does one know this a priori?

Philip Osborne

"How does one know this a priori?"

It seems to be a simple application of Excluded middle.

Synaesthesia

I think the question about that definition of contingency is "How could contingent fact X not occur at time R? How could it be different? How do the necessary and the contingent interact?"

The logical system with which we are dealing with can't answer this sort of question.

As such, notions like "necessary existence" strike me as very strange because they tend to make some sweeping presuppositions about the degree and kind of correspondance between the unverse's structure and that of a simple notational logic system.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ July 23, 2002: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>

WJ

"How do the necessary and the contingent interact?"
The logical system with which we are dealing with can't answer this sort of question."

I think that's a great point, and tend to agree. it is my understanding that physicists struggle with this one quite a bit when attempting to answer the argument of first cause; was it chaotic and undetermined or was there necessity.
And if it was necessary (presumably by a creator), then how could determanancy arise from the necessary?

If a necessary Being, by its nature, exists outside of time, yet the world is contingent and determined, how is the paradox resolved?

The best way I can think of it or logically conclude that a necessary Being (by concept only)could exist thru logic would be the self-reference paradoxes. If any of you are familiar with them, which I know many of you you are, they are resolved by logical necessity. In other words, the long winded conclusion to 'there is at least one true proposition' is that, it just is. To say it is false would result in paradox.

IMO, we (the physicists, natural science, etc.)have to keep searching for the ultimate explaination [logical] for conscious existence. In the meantime, it seems there are some things that are simply 'brute facts' without an explaination. And that goes back to what Syn. said.