EDUQAS Philosophy 1 A

Inductive arguments – cosmological: Inductive proofs; the concept of ‘a posteriori’. Cosmological argument: St Thomas Aquinas’ first Three Ways - (motion or change; cause and effect; contingency and necessity). The Kalam cosmological argument with reference to William Lane Craig (rejection of actual infinities and concept of personal creator).

a posteriori

refers to knowledge or justification that is based on empirical evidence or experience

a priori

refers to knowledge or justification that is independent of empirical evidence or experience and is known or knowable through reason or intuition alone.

Aquinas’ 1st argument

the argument from motion, which states that everything in the universe is in motion and that this motion must have been caused by something else. This chain of causation cannot go on infinitely, so there must be a first cause, which is God.

Aquinas' 2nd argument

the argument from efficient causality. It states that everything in the world has a cause, and that cause must be something outside of itself. This chain of causality cannot go on infinitely, so there must be a first cause, which is God.

Aquinas' 3rd argument

the argument from contingency. It states that everything in the universe is contingent, meaning it relies on something else for its existence. However, this chain of contingency cannot go on infinitely, so there must be a necessary being that exists independently and is the cause of all contingent beings. This necessary being is what we call God.

Aquinas' 4th argument

the argument of gradation. It states that there are varying degrees of perfection in different things, and that there must be a standard of perfection against which all things are measured. This standard is God, who is the most perfect being.

Inductive argument

The conclusion is likely to be true based off of the true premises

Hume

For something to be impossible it must be self-contradictory . Infinite regress is not self-contradictory and therefore could be true

Craig

Infinity is impossible . half of infinity is still infinity so it’s absurd to think this would work with physical objects . therefore , infinite regress can not exist

Criticism of Craig

The infinite library is a flawed analogy because it involves an example of an infinite number of physical objects, but an infinite regress could be a finite number of physical objects existing over an infinite amount of time. Craig has at most shown the absurdity of physical infinities but not temporal ones, which is what the infinite regress involves.

Time argument against infinite regress

Time started at the big bang theory so there could not be an infinite amount of time before the present moment.

Physicists counter-argument against time argument

There are many different possibilities of how time works , we know very little about how time works and should not make assumptions about it, which the cosmological argument does.

The Kalam argument

P1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence. \n P2. The universe began to exist (an infinite regress is not possible). \n C1. So, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Craig’s argument for creation

This being that created the universe must be outside time and space since it created time and space. As a timeless, eternal being, God didn’t begin to exist so it’s then no contradiction in claiming that God doesn’t have a cause. These are qualities that God would have, so the cause of the universe is God.

The causal principle

the claim that every event or thing has a cause.

the causal principle is not true by definition

We can imagine something popping into the universe without a cause and the idea of an event doesn’t seem contradicted by the idea of no cause.

Hume’s conclusion on the causal principle

We cannot justifiably claim that the causal principle applies universally. We do not know whether **all** effects have a cause. All we know is that the effects we have observed have a cause. So the universe could exist without a cause

The fallacy of composition

It is a fallacy to assume that what is true of a thing’s part(s) must be true of the whole. It is possible for what’s true of the parts to not be true of the whole. If all you have knowledge of are properties of the parts of a thing, you cannot infer from that alone that the whole also has those properties.

Cosmological arguments and the fallacy of composition

Cosmological arguments rightly point out that the parts of the universe have a cause or are contingent. However, it commits the fallacy of composition to assume that therefore the universe itself as a whole is contingent or has a cause.

Russell’s conclusion

Due to the fallacy of composition, we have no basis for thinking that notions such as causation even apply to the universe. The universe could be necessary, in which case its explanation would be its necessary existence, or it could simply have no explanation.

Masked man fallacy

we can conceive of the impossible

steady state theory

the universe had always existed and that there is a continuous creation of matter which expands

oscillating universe theory

what we call our universe is just one of the cycles of big bangs and big crunches that has been oscillating forever.

Alan Guth’s inflation theory

The universe came from nothing because it actually is nothing. Gravity has negative energy, the total amount of which in the universe happens to exactly cancel out the positive energy of the matter in the universe, so the total energy of the universe is zero