3.3.2 - Problems for cosmological arguments

The Problem For Cosmological Arguments

Cosmological arguments begin from a very ordinary pressure: things exist, change, begin, depend on other things, or seem unable to explain themselves. The arguments then ask whether this dependent reality points beyond itself to a first cause, sustaining cause, or necessary being.

The problem is that this move is ambitious. It does not merely ask why one event happened after another. It asks whether the whole causal or contingent order needs an explanation beyond itself. The AQA issues in this lesson press exactly there:

Can cosmological arguments justify a necessary first cause,
or do they overextend causal and explanatory reasoning?

Four terms need careful use.

This is an objection lesson, so the positive cosmological arguments are only reconstructed enough to make the objections accurate. Detailed teaching of Kalam, Aquinas, Descartes and Leibniz belongs in the preceding cosmological-arguments lesson.

The Target In Outline

Different cosmological arguments have different forms. Kalam focuses on temporal beginning. Aquinas's first and second ways use motion and causal dependence. Aquinas's third way and Leibniz's argument use contingency. Descartes argues from his own continuing existence. The objections in this lesson are most naturally aimed at the shared structure:

Claim at issue: dependent or caused reality needs an ultimate explanation.

1. P1: Some things exist and are caused, dependent, or contingent.
2. P2: Whatever begins to exist, is caused, or is contingent requires a cause, reason, or explanation.
3. P3: A chain of caused or contingent things cannot provide a complete explanation if it never reaches something non-dependent.
4. Therefore, C1: There must be an uncaused, non-contingent, or necessary ground of the chain.
5. Therefore, C2: This ground is God, or at least points toward God.

Hidden assumptions:
- The causal or explanatory principle applies to the totality of dependent things, not only to individual items within it.
- An infinite chain would still leave something unexplained.
- A necessary being is a coherent kind of being.
- The first cause or necessary ground can be identified with God.

Inference type: Usually presented as deductive if the causal principle, anti-regress premise, and necessary-being concept are granted. Some modern versions are more modestly abductive: God is offered as the best explanation of contingent reality.

Main pressure point: the move from local dependence within the world to an ultimate explanation of the world or series as a whole.

Leibniz's version makes the target especially clear. In the Monadology, sections 32-39, he uses the principle of sufficient reason: every fact or truth has a sufficient reason why it is so rather than otherwise. A series of contingent explanations, however detailed or infinite, does not contain its ultimate reason within itself. Leibniz therefore locates the final reason in a necessary substance, God.

That makes the evaluation sharper. A critic does not need to deny that ordinary things have causes. The critic can ask whether the argument is entitled to demand a complete explanation of the whole series, whether an infinite series is really impossible, and whether a necessary being is intelligible.

Infinite Series

The infinite-series objection asks whether the chain of causes or contingent beings really needs a first member. An infinite series is not merely a very long series. It is a series with no beginning. If past causes or dependent beings stretch back without a first member, then a cosmological argument that depends on reaching a first cause is in trouble.

The objection can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: A cosmological argument must stop at a first cause or necessary being.

1. P1: A first-cause argument needs the causal or dependent series to terminate in a first member.
2. P2: It is possible that the causal or dependent series is infinite and has no first member.
3. P3: If an infinite series is possible, the argument cannot prove that there must be a first cause.
4. Therefore, C: The cosmological argument does not establish a necessary first cause.

Target: the anti-regress premise, especially P3 of the target argument.
Inference type: Undercutting objection. It does not prove there is an infinite series; it denies that the cosmological argument has ruled one out.
Main pressure point: whether "no first member" is genuinely explanatory or merely postpones explanation forever.

An infinite temporal history directly presses arguments that require a first event, such as Kalam. It does not by itself establish that an essentially ordered chain of present causal dependence could function without a first source, as Aquinas denies. Keep the kind of series aligned with the target.

Hume's Dialogues Part IX gives a powerful version of the point. If an eternal succession exists, each member can be explained by an earlier member. The critic then asks why a further cause of the whole series is needed. Hume's discussion suggests that asking for a cause of the whole may add a demand that is not forced by explaining each member.

The strongest reply distinguishes temporal order from explanatory dependence. A defender can concede that there might be no first event in time, while still arguing that an infinite series of contingent things is not self-explanatory. If every member has borrowed existence, then adding infinitely many borrowers does not create an owner of existence. Leibniz's point is not simply that time must begin. It is that the sufficient reason for contingent reality cannot be found inside contingent reality, however far back the chain goes.

The residual issue is whether that reply assumes the principle it is meant to prove. If the critic denies that the whole infinite series needs a further reason, the defender must justify the demand for complete explanation. If the defender cannot do that, the infinite-series objection leaves the cosmological argument weaker as a proof.

Hume On The Causal Principle

Hume's objection to the causal principle targets a central premise: the claim that every beginning, event, contingent being, or fact must have a cause or sufficient reason. Cosmological arguments often need this principle to be strong and unrestricted. Hume presses two connected worries.

First, the causal principle is not a relation of ideas. A relation of ideas is knowable by reason alone, and its denial is contradictory, like denying that a triangle has three sides. But there is no contradiction in conceiving something existing without any cause. If the denial is not contradictory, the causal principle cannot be demonstrated a priori.

Second, causal reasoning is learned from experience. We observe patterns within the world: one kind of event is regularly followed by another. But the origin, totality, or existence of the universe is not one more familiar case in a class of observed world-origins. Hume's Enquiry XI and Dialogues repeatedly warn against taking rules learned from ordinary experience and extending them to a unique, remote object where no close analogy is available.

The objection can be reconstructed like this:

Claim at issue: Every contingent being or beginning must have a cause or sufficient reason.

1. P1: If a causal principle is demonstrably certain, denying it must involve a contradiction.
2. P2: We can conceive of something existing or beginning without any cause, without contradiction.
3. P3: Experience shows regular causal patterns only within the world, not a rule governing the existence of the world as a whole.
4. Therefore, C: The causal principle is not established with the certainty required by many cosmological arguments.

Target: P2 of the target argument, and the hidden assumption that local causal reasoning applies beyond experience.
Inference type: Epistemological objection. It challenges how the premise is known.
Main pressure point: whether the defender can justify an unrestricted causal or explanatory principle.

A defender can reply that Hume makes the principle too weak. Science and ordinary inquiry presuppose that events are intelligible and open to explanation. The cosmological argument may not need the claim that every imaginable event has a cause; it may need only a more careful principle, such as "whatever begins to exist has a cause" or "contingent facts require explanation". A Leibnizian can also say the principle of sufficient reason is not an empirical habit but a rational demand: without it, brute facts become acceptable too quickly.

The residual issue is the strength of the conclusion. Empirical or fallible support for the causal principle weakens a claim to certain proof; it does not itself change a valid deduction into an induction. A defender may instead formulate an abductive argument, offering God as the best explanation of contingent reality. If the principle is treated as rationally necessary, Hume will ask why denying it is contradictory. Either way, the defender must be clear about what kind of support the causal principle has.

Russell And Composition

Russell's fallacy of composition objection attacks the step from facts about individual things to a fact about the whole universe or series. A fallacy of composition occurs when someone assumes that because each part has a property, the whole must have that property too. Each brick in a wall may be small, but the wall need not be small. Each person may have a mother, but it does not follow that humanity as a whole has one mother.

Applied to cosmological arguments, the worry is this:

1. Each thing within the universe may have a cause or explanation.
2. The cosmological argument infers that the universe as a whole has a cause or explanation.
3. But that inference may move illegitimately from parts to whole.
4. Therefore, the cosmological argument may commit the fallacy of composition.

The reconstruction is:

Claim at issue: The universe or whole series needs a cause because its members do.

1. P1: The fact that each member of a collection has property F does not by itself show that the collection as a whole has F.
2. P2: Cosmological arguments often move from each dependent or caused thing having a cause or explanation to the whole universe or series having a cause or explanation.
3. P3: That move needs an additional argument showing that cause, dependence, or contingency transfers from parts to whole.
4. Therefore, C: Unless that additional argument is supplied, the cosmological argument commits or risks a fallacy of composition.

Target: the inference from individual caused or contingent things to the totality.
Inference type: Logical objection to an inference pattern.
Main pressure point: whether the universe is a further thing needing explanation, or only the collection of things.