In this post, I continue the task of giving the contingency argument its due. To that end, I briefly discuss three criticisms of the deductive argument from contingency that don’t seem to work. Here I’m just summarizing William Rowe’s points from his Philosophy of Religion (Belmont, Ca: Wadsworth, 1978), pp. 16-30.
1. Dependence and the fallacy of composition:
1.1 The argument fallaciously assumes that because each member of the collection of beings within the universe is dependent, that therefore the whole collection of such beings is itself dependent. But this doesn’t follow.
1.2 Reply: It would be fallacious to assume this, but the defender of the cosmological argument need not assume it for the argument to work. Rather, since the existence of the collection of dependent beings is a positive fact, then it follows from PSR alone – i.e., without the need to rely on an inference from dependence of the parts to dependence of the whole -- that there must be a sufficient reason for why the collection exists.
2. Causation and the fallacy of composition:
2.1 The argument fallaciously assumes that because each member of the collection of dependent beings has a cause, that therefore the whole collection of dependent beings has a cause. But this doesn’t follow.
2.2 Reply: It would be fallacious to assume this, but the defender of the cosmological argument need not assume it for the argument to work. Rather, since the existence of the collection of dependent beings is a positive fact, then it follows from PSR alone – i.e., without the need to rely on an inference from the need for a cause of the parts to a need from a cause of the whole -- that there must be a sufficient reason for why the collection exists.
3. Nothing’s left to explain
3.1 The defender of the cosmological argument fails to see that once the existence of each member of a collection of dependent beings is explained, the existence of the whole collection is thereby explained.
3.2 Reply: It’s not true that explaining why each member of *any* collection of dependent beings exists entails an explanation for why the whole collection exists – why there are dependent beings at all. True, there are cases *of certain sorts* in which explaining the former entails explaining the latter. For example, if a necessary being were the direct cause of each dependent being in the universe, then it would be true that explaining why each dependent being exists would thereby entail an explanation for why the whole collection exists, and why there are dependent beings at all. However, there are cases in which it wouldn’t; just take the necessary being out the previous case, and imagine each dependent being as caused by one of the others. In such a case, explaining why each dependent being exists wouldn’t explain why there are dependent beings at all.
1 comment:
Hi Interlocutor,
It looks as though you've beat me to the punch on some points I wanted to make (which may be for the better, given how well you've made them!).
Rowe does a great job, I think, of showing that the argument hinges on the epistemic status of PSR: *if* the strong form of PSR mentioned in my previous post is true, *then* the argument goes through. This is the point I was trying to emphasize in my post above. But, as you nicely demonstrate, we have no good reason to think that it *is* true.
You do an excellent job of making most of the points I plan to make in my next post, but I'll add a few more.
I sympathize with your concern of letting proponents of the argument off the hook too easily, but I'm happy to let them do so, if they are so inclined. My only concern is with what the arguments do and don't show, when all is fairly and honestly said and done.
All the best,
exapologist
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