11 Cosmlogical Arg

A Cosmological Argument The Argument from Contingency Two versions of the cosmological argument

We have looked at one version of the cosmological argument - the kalam argument, which tries to show that the universe must have a cause because it has a beginning in time. Now we turn to a rather different sort of cosmological argument - the argument from contingency. According to this argument, it doesn't matter how old the world is. Even if it has always existed, it still needs a cause that explains why it exists, even though it might so easily not have existed. (This argument is explained and defended in your reading by Richard Taylor).

The argument from contingency

1. Why should there ever have been anything at all?

Even if the world has always existed, we may still wonder why it has always existed. As we shall see, the argument from contingency revolves around this question.

2. The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)

This is the critical premise of Taylor's argument.It says that for every positive fact there is a causal explanation - a"sufficient reason" why it is so. If this is so, it won't do to say, "The world just does exist, and that is the end of the matter."There must be an sufficient cause or reason why the world exists.

3. Necessary existence and contingent existence

What does it mean to say that God has necessary existence? It means that God exists in virtue of his own nature - that he "contains the reason of his own existence." Consequently,there is no alternative to God's existence. God's existence is, always was, and always will be, necessary. In other words, God cannot fail to exist - his non-existence is absolutely impossible.

Contingent things, by contrast, do not contain the reason of their own existence. They could have failed to exist.Their existence is not necessary. (Note an important implication of these definitions: Everything must either be necessary or contingent.This will be important later on.)

Two things "necessary existence"doesn't mean :

a. God may also be necessary forthe existence of the world; but that isn't what is meant when it is said that his existence is necessary. What is meant is that God's existence is absolutely necessary in itself, without reference to anything else.

b. It also does not mean that God's existence is necessitated by anything apart from God's own nature. That is one of the things that is denied when it is said that he necessarily exists.

4. Outline of Taylor's argument

a. There is a world.

b. The world as a whole is contingent, and every part of the world is contingent.

Taylor defends this claim in two ways. First,he says that everything within the world comes into being and (eventually)ceases to be. It would be very "strange," he says, if a world composed of such things were a necessary being. In the second place, Taylor asks us to perform various thought experiments. The main thrust of these is that we can, without any obvious contradiction, conceive of the possibility of there never having been any world. From this, he asks us to conclude that the non-existence of the world is really possible.

c. There must be something that contains the sufficient reason of the existence of the world.

( This follows from the Principle of Sufficient Reason. )

d. There are only two possibilities: Either there is an infinite regress of contingent causes depending on other contingent casues for their existence, or there is a self-sufficient, necessary being on which all the others depend for their existence.

Taylor is thinking about the matter in somewhat the following way. The world must have a cause. This cause must be either necessary or contingent. If it is necessary, well and good - we have what we were looking for. But if it is contingent, then it too must have a cause,and the same questions apply. Is it necessary? Then we have the conclusion we want. Otherwise, we must press on. If we never arrive at a necessary being, then it seems that PSR forces us to conclude that there is an infinite series of contingent beings, depending on other contingent beings.

e. An infinite regress of contingent causes depending on other contingent causes for their existence is impossible.

For then, Taylor says, there would be no answer to the question why those contingent things should ever have existed. An adequate answer to that question requires a "first cause" that doesn't require anything else for its existence. In other words, it requires the existence of a necessary being. Thus we arrive at the conclusion we were looking for . . .

f. Therefore there is a necessary being on which the world depends for its existence, and this the tradition calls "God."

5. So what caused God?

Some of you will be wondering why God is a satisfactory stopping point. Why don't we need to go on to ask why God exists? Is God an exception to the PSR? The answer is that since God is a necessary being, he contains the reason of his own existence - he exists in virtue of his nature. So even though he is not caused by something else,God is not an exception to the PSR.

6. Why couldn't the causal series "loop back" to form a kind of circle?

The thought here is that the world might depend on something that depends on something else, and that eventually we arrive at something that depends on the world. Thus we avoid the twin alternatives of an infinite regress of contingent causes, on the one hand, or a necessary being, on the other.

Or do we? Suppose a contains the sufficient reason of b, b of c, and c of a. Then I think Taylor could argue that a contains the sufficient reason of a, b of b, and c of c. In other words, I think he could make a case for saying that all of them would be necessary beings. (The assumption is that if a contains everything required for the existence of b and b contains everything required for the existence of c, then a must contain everything required for the existence of c.)

7. Is an infinite regress of contingent beings impossible?

In one respect, I think Taylor mishandles his own argument. It is may be true that an infinite series of contingent causes could not contain the reason of its own existence, but this does not entitle us to conclude that there could not be an infinite series of contingent causes. Indeed, Taylor himself holds open the possibility that the world has always existed. Why, in that case, couldn't each state of the world depend on an earlier state?

As it turns out, however, this doesn't matter much to Taylor's argument, for we can reconstruct it in such a way that it does not depend on the dubious assumption that an infinite series of contingent causes is impossible.

8. Reconstruction of the argument

a. There are some contingent things.

b. Let the expression, "the world,"stand for the totality of all and only contingent things.

(There may, or may not be, and infinite number of these, and they may, or may not, form an infinite causal series. It doesn't matter to the argument.)

c. Every part of the world is contingent, and the world as a whole is contingent.

d. There must be something that contains the sufficient reason of the existence of the world.

(By the Principle of Sufficient Reason)

e. This something must be either (a) the world itself, or (b) a part of the world, or (c) something external to the world.

f. It can't be the world itself.

For then it would contain the sufficient reason of its own existence, in which case the world would be necessary, and not contingent.

g. For the same reason, it cannot be a part of the world.

h. It must therefore be external to the world.

i. But whatever is external to the world must be a necessary being.

Remember two things. (1) Everthing must be either necessary or contingent. (2) We defined "the world" as the totality of all and only contingent beings.

j. Therefore, there is a necessary being on which the world depends for its existence.

9. But is it God?

Well, that depends on what you mean by "God,"doesn't it? The argument gives us at least one important piece of what classical theism holds - it tells us that there is an independent, self-existent,necessary being on which the world depends for its existence. It's true,however, that it doesn't tell us very much about the nature of that being.It doesn't tell us, for example, how good or powerful or knowledgeable this being is. It's not even obvious, without further argument, that it must be personal in character.

10. Is the Principle of Sufficient Reason true?

Bertrand Russell thought that the behavior of subatomic particles constituted an important exception to the PSR. Here is a simple example of what he had in mind.

Why does a uranium atom disintegrate at a particular time? The physicists say that an alpha-particle "tunnels out"of its nucleus. Why does the alpha-particle break out of the nucleus at a particular time? Well, they say, the alpha-particle is constantly racing back and forth, that there is one chance in 10 ³²that it will break out at any particular time. That is all they can say about it. Most physicists go farther, and claim that that is all there is to say. If they are right, then there is no "sufficient reason" for the fact that the alpha-particle did what it did at that partcular time.

Russell also thought that the world as a whole might be an exception to the PSR. Even if everything within the world had a cause, it wouldn't follow that the world as a whole had a cause. (Here are some analogous cases. Every human being has a grandmother, but it doesn't follow that the human race has a grandmother. Every particular time is located in time, but it doesn't follow that time as a whole is located in time. Every position in space is spatially located, but it doesn't follow that space as a whole is located in space.)

11. How can we be sure that the necessary being we are looking for doesn't lie within the physical universe?

For example, some of you may want to say thatenergy is the necessary being we are looking for. What about that possibility?

There does seem to be a weakness in Taylor's argument at this point. How does he know that energy (or whatever) is contingent,and not necessarily existent? His main argument seems to be that we canconceive of its never having existed without any obvious contradiction.The trouble with this argument is that we can also consistently conceive of God's never having existed. By Taylor's logic, we ought to conclude that God is contingent.

The obvious response would be to say that God is necessary in virtue of some properties of his nature that are hidden from us. But if that is what Taylor says, we can reply by asking how he knows that energy (or whatever) is not necessary in virtue of some hidden properties.