Kalam Arguments and Causal Principles
In Craig's (1979, 2009) and Loke's (2017, 2021 forthcoming) formulations of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, the causal principle (CP) established is...
CP = Whatever begins to exist has a cause (for its existence).
Both Craig and Loke (along with many other supporters of the Kalam Argument) argue that it is irrational to deny this principle. The question I have is, (1) Can this causal principle be rationally denied? and (2) What would the benefits/costs be of rejecting this principle?
CP = Whatever begins to exist has a cause (for its existence).
Both Craig and Loke (along with many other supporters of the Kalam Argument) argue that it is irrational to deny this principle. The question I have is, (1) Can this causal principle be rationally denied? and (2) What would the benefits/costs be of rejecting this principle?
Comments (36)
From Alex J O'Connor:
"We should assess the first premise: ‘Everything that begins to exist has a cause.’ This phrase, in all its unassuming simplicity, has the potential to strike its reader as a truism, but it pays to ask yourself an important and relevant question: when have you ever actually known something to begin to exist? Have you ever seen something begin to exist, or even heard of such a thing? You may be inclined to answer that this happens all the time. Just this morning my coffee began to exist — only, it didn’t really begin to exist at all, rather it was the product of a rearrangement of preexisting matter.
Keep in mind that if the kalãm seeks to draw a parallel between things within the universe beginning to exist and the universe itself beginning to exist, they must ‘begin to exist’ in the same fashion. To reiterate, for philosophical relevance the kalãm argument must deal with things that begin to exist from nothing. Since this was obviously not the case with my coffee, it is an inappropriate comparison. What, then, within the universe, has truly begun to exist (from nothing) at a particular point in the past?
Nothing. The answer is nothing. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, and thus nothing in physical existence ever ‘began to exist’ in the sense we are interested in. Not my coffee, nor my computer, nor my father, nor the Burj Khalifa. Even something as seemingly abstract as an idea cannot begin to exist from nothing, since ideas are ultimately nothing more than signals in the brain, and hence physical in nature. It is this realisation that allows us to dispel the first premise as founded on an equivocation fallacy, since the concept of ‘beginning to exist’ is being used, it seems, inconsistently.
Nonetheless, it might be said, this variety of matter and energy constantly rearranging itself must itself, collectively, have an origin. This is of course plausible, but this origin would consist in the very beginning of the universe itself, when all matter simultaneously began to exist. That is to say, no matter has ever begun to exist except when the universe itself came into being. The only thing that ever actually began to exist from nothing, then, is the universe itself, and even this can be confidently asserted only because of our previously granting an entire premise of the kalãm.
Consider the implications of this. If the only thing that ever began to exist (in the relevant sense) is the universe, then the first premise, ‘Everything that begins to exist has a cause’ becomes ‘The universe has a cause’, since the universe is everything that begins to exist, being the only thing that began to exist. It should be immediately apparent that this premise is identical to the conclusion, and thus the kalãm can also be rendered as follows:
Premise one: The universe has a cause;
Premise two: The universe began to exist;
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.
As is clear, the second premise is in fact irrelevant, and the argument is now transparently circular. It says nothing whatsoever, since the first premise states the same as the conclusion, and therefore is not a functional syllogism, but a mere claim. It is a claim which, to be at all convincing, will require far more to support it than this unimpressive yet ubiquitous attempt."
1. Did you begin to exist?
2. If chairs/tables are simply rearrangements of pre-existing matter, did the chair/table always exist, exist only at some time or never exist? If they always existed, a problem of this would be that you would be committed to the view that everything which has been made by the arrangement of the matter of the universe exists now. If you accept that the chairs/tables exist only at some time, then what would be the cause for them only existing now and not 100 years ago? If you opt to say, as I predict you might, that chairs/tables never exist at any point, when you say that 'the chair/table is a rearrangement of pre-existing matter', what does the term 'chair' or 'table' refer to? A cost of this argument would be that it would make nouns such as these meaningless under my view.
1. Any arrangement of mereological simples into a specific structure has a cause.
2. The universe is an arrangement of mereological simples into a specific structure.
3. The universe has a cause.
I've heard this claim many times in many contexts, but it doesn't make sense to me. I can understand a claim that it is wrong to deny causation, but not why it would be considered irrational.
Quoting Ghost Light
Response to Question 1 - I'm not sure of this argument, but I'm going to try it out. Causation is a metaphysical concept. It can be really useful in some situations, especially simple physical ones like the typical cliche example of billiard balls. The idea of causation may be important when I am trying to predict the future behavior of a relatively simple system based on existing conditions. Something like causation may also be important in situations where we need to identify human responsibility for an action. On the other hand, in systems with many components and many inputs and outputs, it is probably not useful to try to identify specific causes for specific states of the system.
Response to Question 2 - In complex systems, assuming that all system behaviors require causes will probably not help understand future system behavior. It will probably lead to unrealistically simplistic approaches.
My response to this is I don't see any reason to accept that it is not useful to try and identify the causes of certain states of a large scale system. The metaphysical principle would still hold that if there is a state of this system that exists and has not existed forever (i.e. began to exist) then it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a cause for why the state began to exist as it does. It seems less reasonable to say that the state of the system could become that way with no cause.
My response to this is it is irrelevant to the Kalam causal principle whether it will help predict / understand the future system behaviour because the principle is about things in all three tenses (past, present and future). The principle could be true metaphysically even though it will not help us to understand the future system behaviour. Even here I would reject that it would not help us do this. If we accept that whatever begins to exist has a cause, then it gives us a good reason to understand that things in systems do what they do for a reason and when new things occur and states begin to exist, there will be a cause for them. It will help us to understand the causal nexus of the system better.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts.
We must think outside the confines of linear time -- that's where answers lie.
I have no significant views on this matter which is why I sent Alex O'Conner's angle.
Personally, I don't care if the universe (whatever that actually is) had a cause or not as it doesn't lead me anywhere.
Humans trying to make sense of existence/being is always going to end in loose ends or additional confusions.
Quoting Ghost Light
Is the universe an arrangement of mereological simples? Given our knowledge of the universe is limited and/or speculative I couldn't possible say. I'm not sure we can ascribe causality to anything we understand so poorly. And surely, no matter how many examples of things having causes we find, this doesn't mean everything has a cause.
My response is that the principle is more specific that everything has a cause; it says that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Kalam defends could reply by saying that it seems to be a essential feature of things which are caused which is that they begin to exist, and conversely that an essential feature of things which begin to exist is that they are caused to begin to exist.
Yep, I understood that.
Quoting Ghost Light
Yes, and if the premises are correct the argument is valid.
But there's so much missing from this to get us to William Lane Craig.
Doesn't big bang cosmology and the ever-expanding universe somewhat undercut this?
Quoting T Clark
Aren't the natural sciences largely engaged in trying to identify causal relationships? A trite example suddenly comes to mind, the 1960's television scientist, Julius Sumner Miller. His show was called 'Why is it so?' and typically used simple experiments to demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships. Pray tell, how was that show metaphysical?
One Platonic theme I refect on, is the fact that numbers and logical laws don't begin to exist, or cease from existing. The law of identity, the furniture of basic arithmetic, and so on, are true in all possible worlds. This does not apply to any kinds of phenomenal entities. Even atoms come into existence, through stellar explosions, for example. Every kind of phenomenal object likewise comes into and goes out of existence and is composed of parts. So I think there's a valid disfinction between the compounded or made or phenomenal, and the uncompounded or unmade (which is the domain of necessary truths). I think that says something important which is nowadays mostly disputed or denied.
Which suggests another way of parsing the cosmological argument in terms of the dependence of the phenomenal on the necessary.
Nominalists will heavily disagree with the first claim that numbers don't begin to exist and don't cease from existing. Even if Platonism is true, I don't see how the second sentence follow from the first. Nominalists and modal anti-realists would disagree with your second statement as well.
I think it is irrational to claim that this principle is true, as it seems to me to be sustained only by habit as Hume would say.
Item 7 on the T Clark list of philosophical principles - If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. I have no problem with your statement, but, since it has no practical use, it doesn't really mean anything. Who cares if something is caused or not if I can't trace the chain of causation?
Quoting Ghost Light
I don't see it that way.
Quoting Ghost Light
As I said, In my view, a metaphysical principle that has no real world use is meaningless.
Quoting Ghost Light
What is a "causal nexus?"
Quoting Ghost Light
I have not fully convinced myself that the idea of cause is useless yet. I'm trying out these ideas to see what I really believe. So, these are just my thoughts too.
Quoting Wayfarer
The best science done in the last 100 years indicate that the universe came into existence around 14 billion years ago - that beginning derisively labeled The Big Bang but the theory that goes with that name is now more or less the official stand of cosmologists.
As per the big bang model, we have a singularity (infinite mass & 0 volume) at time zero. There's no before this time as the infinite gravity of the singularity would mean that time would stop flowing which simply means there was no time; time, after all must flow to exist, right? ( :chin: ). Since there was no time before the big bang, causality breaks down since the standard definition of a cause includes that it temporally precede the effect, here the big bang singularity. The big bang singularity couldn't be caused for this reason.
That's my best shot at answering the OP's question.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep! :up: The rationale being, to my reckoning, knowledge of how stuff works and using that to one's advantage. Scientists, those who have a media presence that is, make a big deal out of how science has spawned a vast array of very useful objects, microscopes to telscopes.
As I noted, the idea of causation may be applicable in some very simple systems. That doesn't necessarily mean it is useful in more complex cases or necessary in any situation. My thoughts here are works in progress.
Quoting Wayfarer
I like this metaphor.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am focusing my thinking primarily on physical causes, so I haven't really thought through the kinds of issues you are discussing here.
I would disagree here on the science of the big bang. Quantum gravity and emergent space time could easily mean that time can apply in a slightly different sense before the big bang and mean that the big bang initial state had a cause. I don't think any cosmologists today hold to a naive view of the big bang singularity anymore, most opt for emergent spacetime from quantum states at a more fundemantal levels, emergent universe models based on the asymptotic state models or cyclic universe.
I think it's fair to call many of my philosophical ideas pragmatic.
As I've said many times before, people generally choose their metaphysical systems. The standard I apply is usefulness rather than truth. In my, and some other's, views metaphysical principles are not true or false.
I may be perfectly rational to either accept or deny the metaphysical value of the idea of causation.
That's what I've found myself doing more and more as I get older.
Cripes! - my wording was all over the shop. Not sure what I was trying to say. Except that some physicists, Sean Carroll (being one) have stated that there was likely to be something before the big bang which may have had its own physics on a smaller scale that post PB. I don't think we can say there was ever nothing, assuming we can even define what nothing is.
Lawrence Krauss wrote a book, a Universe from Nothing, but David Albert, a philosopher of physics, said Krauss doesn't know what nothing means (apologies for the double entrendre).
Beyond my ken I'm afraid. Thanks though! G'day!
I suspect you mean in all possible worlds we can imagine. Otherwise, how could one possibly know this? How can one describe a "possible world"?
Quoting T Clark
Click on my icon. :cool:
There is a realm of possibility. I didn’t invent the saying ‘true in all possible worlds.’
I see you are an expert in complex dynamical systems. The sense in which I was using "complex systems" was more mundane than that. Even without taking chaos into consideration, when you get beyond a very simple system, assigning cause may be impossible.
I didn't know Possible Worlds was a philosophical concept going back to Leibniz ("Best of all possible worlds"). I see how alternative histories would be one kind. Thanks.
Quoting T Clark
Not really. I've dabbled in a specific type of CDS for fifty years, but it's not a popular area of investigation.
A special case of the principle of sufficient reason.
So, the thrust is to derive something that does not fall under the premise, something immutable or atemporal.
This, in turn, implies inert, lifeless (perhaps even kind of boring).
The closest that comes to mind is abstracts, but, either way, nothing resembling mind (experiencing, thinking, etc).
Those wishing to promote a sentient being (outside the premise), would then entertain special pleading, or have to take a path analogous to a multiverse type thing (unparsimonious, "orthogonal temporality"?).
, in modal logic, a possible world is just a self-consistent whole.
This expression thereof can make reasoning easier.
I would deny that it's irrational to reject this principle, which is to say that it's not logically impossible to have an infinite number of overlapping contingent causal explanations in both directions of time. It doesn't necessarily follow that there has to be a first cause. It may be reasonable to assume a metaphysical first cause, but it's certainly not irrational to to deny a first cause. Moreover, as has already been pointed out, even if you accept a first cause, this doesn't necessarily get you to God. One could argue that the first cause is something other than a God. We just don't know what that first cause could be, or who it could be.
For my money, I would bet on an intelligence behind the universe, but that doesn't mean it's God. Moreover, if there is a God, I don't see that that God is defined in terms of some religious ideology or dogma.
Good heavens, I should have kept my distance from this topic! :gasp:
Let us say the universe is full of infinitely regressive causality. It's existed infinitely versus having a finite starting point. This universe is the sum of everything. All possible worlds, universes, God's etc. We cannot introduce anything outside of this, it's everything that exists.
One question springs to mind. Why does that universe exist as is? Surely we can imagine things existing differently. But there is nothing outside of this infinite universe. Any outside cause you want to introduce is merged within the set, and we arrive at the same question again.
The answer is simple. This universe is the way it is, because it is. There is no outside reason. It exists, because it does. It is an uncaused universe not bound to any rules outside of itself. Since this is concluded with an infinite universe, and the same conclusion happens with a finite universe, we can only conclude that the reason for any universe existing boils down to the fact that it exists. The origin of any universes existence, is uncaused. This is the only logical conclusion we can arrive at.