WJ

Hi Syn.!

You had said:

"Here we already have two case where a self-sufficient universe doesn’t even need to violate the letter of Hume’s Principle. Even within the confines of your argument, the universe can be self-sufficient."

But isn't the basic cosmological question refer to what caused or who created the [existing] laws of the universe to begin with? I think that is where Philip had introduced part of his theory about [logical] necessity.

Philip, pardon the redundancy, but did I get that right?

the apeman

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

Clutch

Philip, thanks again.
Yuck!

Premise (1) is ill-formed, or rather, is a lousy formalization given what you're trying to show. It says "If something causes a lump of coal to exist, then it is not necessary that a lump of coal exists." But the implicit variable of the indefinite description in the consequent is not bound by the same quantifier as the similar variable in the antecedent. In other words: taking your translation at face value, we don't even have that we're talking about the same lump of coal in the two cases. If lump of coal Larry is the necessary existent that caused the universe, then the fact that something contingently caused lump of coal Lucy is utterly irrelevant to Larry's necessity.

Moreover, your modus ponens inference is a wash. (6) just doesn't follow from from lines (3) and (5) -- not by MP, not by any known rule. Ideally you need to get rid of the propositional variables and make the causal relations explicit via predication; alternatively, you at least need to enter Ma as a premise, or rather, some suitably cleaned up version of it.

I'll try to clean this up before going any further, then. Suppose that Larry is the prospective universe-originating lump of coal.

A. If something caused Larry, then it's not necessary that Larry exists. (Theorem on causality)
B. Necessarily (A). (Necessitation)
C. If it's possible that something caused Larry, then it's possibly not necessary that Larry exists. (B, Theorem of S5)
D. If Larry exists necessarily, then necessarily Larry exists necessarily. (4-principle)
E. If it's possible that Larry does not exist necessarily, then Larry does not exist necessarily. (Contrapositive of (D))
F. It is possible that something caused Larry. (Theorem on lumps of coal.)
G. It's possibly not necessary that Larry exists. (C, F, modus ponens)
H. Larry does not exist necessarily. (E,G, modus ponens)

Okay by you? At least that's logically coherent. The problem, of course, is that (F) is entirely unmotivated! It's based on your stipulation that every lump of coal is contingent -- or, in the more fanciful terms of a deceased Thomistic pseudoscience, that a real essence of coal is that it might have been caused. As an answer to the challenge to prove the impossibility of a lump of coal's being the necessary first cause, this amounts to beginning with "It's a theorem that no lump of coal exists necessarily", and then extracting the rather unsurprising consequence that no lump of coal could be the necessary first cause.

Theft, honest toil, fill in the blanks.

I'll stop there.

Philip Osborne

I'd just like to thank everyone for their correspondence with me on this argument. I'd also like to apologize to Goliath if it seemed that my tone was in any way condescending or arrogant. That was not my intention, and if it sounded that way, I apologize. As it stands, I think the debate can be continued, but I said that my previous response would be my last rebuttal, and so I will stay true to that.

Have fun, and stay out of trouble!

Sincerely,

Philip Osborne

Synaesthesia

WJ,
If someone or something caused the laws of the universe as they are today, that thing could not have been caused in the sense that they caused the universe (barring regress for simplicity). So somewhere along the line the ‘laws’ of normal causation have to break down in one way or another.

The intent of this version of the Cosmological argument is the show that this breakdown must be outside the universe. The cosmological argument Philip is presenting just assumes that the point at which causation breaks down must lie outside the universe.

What people have been pointing out is that not only is that unecessary, there is compelling reason to suppose that it breaks down within the confines of the universe itself. No external cause can reasonably be infered from the Cosmological argument given.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

HRG

Just one remark:

This assumption is obviously correct because it follows from the definition of "cause": in a fully correlated pair of events, "cause" is the one which came earlier, "event" the one which happened later.

Regards,
HRG.

WJ

Thanks Syn!

I think the basic question then, of course, shall remain a mystery. Too, it is my understanding that Hume/steady-state has been shown to be false or at least less likely in that the universe 'apparently' did not always exist.

And so I thought Philip was demonstrating that out of necessity, we would be forced to return to the inference that there has to be a first cause from the big bang instead of the basic regress. Perhaps the real hang-up was whether the necessity itself acted both within time and outside of time, but am not sure. My intuition tells me that if that's part of the issue, it can, only because of issues/analogies relative to Being and consciousness/matter/cause/effect, if you know where I'm going.

Anyway, I tried to go there earlier with my question about the 'will' in order to make another comparison, but Philip went in another direction, which was free-will.

So much for the apriori! IMO, the case for EOG cannot be made thru one method alone, as you may agree it is quite comprehensive in concept, by its very nature.

the apeman