On Philipse's attempt to write off all deductive cosmological arguments (abstract)

A cosmological argument makes an inference from some broad empirical fact, such as that there are caused or contingent objects, or that there is something rather than nothing, to the existence of a First Cause or necessary being, which is God. We normally distinguish between deductive and inductive cosmological arguments. In a deductive cosmological argument the conclusion that God exists follows logically from premises, that is, if these premises are true then the proposition that God exists must also be true. In one kind of inductive cosmological arguments, namely arguments to the best explanation, it is argued that given the empirical fact in question the hypothesis that God exists is more likely true than any available alternative hypothesis. The development of deductive cosmological arguments has a long and rich history that goes back at least as far as Plato and continues from that time until today. Nevertheless, in his book God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason Herman Philipse arrives in no more than four pages to the sweeping conclusion that all known deductive versions of the cosmological argument are unsound, deeply problematic and/or fail to establish that there is at most one First Cause or necessary being, so that proponents of the cosmological argument have no choice but to prefer inductive versions to deductive ones (p. 226). In this article I argue that Philipse’s attempt to write off all deductive cosmological arguments fails. His strategy is to propose just a few allegedly convincing objections to two classical deductive cosmological arguments: (i) the argument from the impossibility of there being contingent entities that are the sufficient cause for the existence of a contingent entity, and (ii) the argument from the impossibility of there being an infinite causal regress. To repudiate (i) Philipse reasons that causes cannot else but refer to contingent entities. I argue that this does in fact not follow from the basic meaning of “cause”. Moreover, I argue that, even if we accept his assertion, it does nothing to refute (i) since it can be shown that (i) nevertheless entails the existence of a necessary and free being that contingently causes the state of affairs of there being one or more contingent entities, which is surely sufficient for an adequate deductive cosmological argument. To repudiate (ii) Philipse considers William Lane Craig’s a priori argument for the impossibility of a past infinite causal chain of events, and argues that Craig’s defense of the argument’s premises does not hold. I do agree that Craig’s defense as presented by Philipse is not adequate. Yet, I show how this defense can quite easily be improved in order to obtain good reasons to accept Craig’s premises. For this I appeal amongst others to Jose Benardete’s 1964 “Grim Reaper paradox”. In the final part of my article I point out that, even if we would accept that (i) and (ii) are untenable, it does not follow that all deductive cosmological arguments fail, since Philipse does not consider any of the other classical versions of the deductive cosmological argument, nor any of the significantly improved contemporary versions. I conclude that his swift criticisms do not undermine at all the epistemic credibility of deductive versions of the cosmological argument. Philipse has offered no good reason to write them all off. (Paper currently under construction)

Openbare verdediging proefschrift

Volgende week donderdag, op 20 september, zal ik mijn proefschrift, getiteld "A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards A Renewed Case for Theism", in het openbaar verdedigen. Een digitale versie van mijn proefschrift is beschikbaar op mijn website www.emanuelrutten.nl

Mijn promotoren zijn Prof. dr. René van Woudenberg van de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam en Prof. dr. Tim O'Connor van Indiana University. Dr. ir. Jeroen de Ridder, Universitair docent en NWO Veni onderzoeker aan de Vrije Universiteit, is mijn co-promotor.

De verdediging vindt plaats om 11:45 in de aula van het hoofdgebouw van de Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam en duurt ongeveer anderhalf uur. Aansluitend is er een receptie.

Iedereen is van harte welkom!

A renewed first cause argument (revised)

In the last few weeks I received helpful comments on my paper titled 'A Renewed Argument for the Existence of a First Cause'. This resulted in a revised version of my paper that is now again online available on my website.

In this paper I propose a renewed argument for the existence of a first cause, i.e. something uncaused from which all causal series eventually proceed. More specifically, I show that under some very general and sufficiently plausible conditions (regarding the nature of causation and mereological parthood) the existence of a first cause logically follows.

The paper starts with a discussion of the problems associated with two traditional paradigmatic first cause arguments, derived from Aquinas and Leibniz. It is shown that the proposed renewed argument does not face any of these problems.

The renewed argument does also not depend on the principle of sufficient reason, that is, it does not assume that there is an explanation of every truth. In fact, it does not depend on any of the weaker or restricted versions of this principle either, such as those proposed by Craig, Koons and Pruss.

Moreover, the argument does not rely on the much debated concepts of metaphysical or broadly logical possibility and necessity. It does not refer to these modal concepts at all.

A renewed first cause argument (preprint)

A preprint version of my academic paper titled 'A Renewed Argument for the Existence of a First Cause' is now online available on my website.

The article is intended for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Comments on the preprint are highly appreciated.