We are here debating the Kalam Cosmological Argument from a deistic rather than theistic perspective. Carlo Alvaro is taking the affirmative; Richard Carrier the negative. See our initial entry for all the details, including an index to all entries yet published.
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Dr. Alvaro misunderstands my point. His argument succeeds only if both premises are always true—in all possible conditions. Otherwise, Proposition 3 is not deductively the case. Which means P3 is not true when there are any logically possible conditions in which Premises 1 or 2 are not true. And there are. Therefore they are false. Not because they are never true, but because they assert an “always” condition, and that is false.
You cannot escape by saying that Premise 1 or 2 is true, say, 60% of the time. Because then Proposition 3 does not necessarily follow. And that’s the end of the Kalam. Alvaro needs to instead prove that it is, say, 60% likely that P1 and P2 are always true. But he hasn’t. All he has is that there are conditions when they are true, leaving untouched conditions when they are not. They are therefore not “always true.”
I. Scientific and Mathematical Facts Trump Philosophy
Alvaro has no scientific evidence to trump math or science here. And science has conclusively proved that past eternal conditions are both logically and physically possible, correlating with all current observations and mathematical models. There are no logical contradictions. There are no physical contradictions. Therefore it is the case that Premise 2 is not “always” true and is therefore false.
There are also logically possible physical models wherein Premise 1 is false. Because P1 is not logically necessary, by Alvaro’s own assertion it has to come into being by something else. But any condition prior to the contingent production of P1 will by definition not be governed by P1. Therefore P1 cannot be true. Because P1 asserts an “always” condition. So I am not saying there are no conditions governed by P1. I am saying it cannot be the case that P1 is “always” true.
Consider:
- Clowns own lizards.
- Joey is a clown.
- Therefore Joey owns a lizard.
Proposition 3 only follows if Premises 1 and 2 are always true. If some clowns don’t own lizards, or Joey sometimes isn’t a clown (but, say, an accountant), Premise 3 cannot follow. It cannot be argued that it’s 60% likely Joey is a clown and that all clowns own lizards, therefore Joey owns a lizard. Because if there is any nonzero probability that these things are false, then P3 is false.
If Alvaro wants to attempt instead an inductive rather than a deductive Kalam, to argue that Premise 3 is true to some probability, I’m happy to study it. But he has only produced a deductive syllogism. And a deductive syllogism requires its premises to always be true. Premises that are sometimes false entail the conclusion is sometimes false. And that means the reason for existence could be something else. We should then look to the evidence for what that is. Which points away from gods.[1]
II. Miscellaneous Errors
Alvaro’s misunderstandings include:
- “It is not possible to prove the truth of the premises with 100% certainty.”
This confuses epistemic with objective probability. What I just argued does not follow from epistemic probability. There could be, say, a 60% epistemic probability that Premise 1 is always true, and maybe an inductive Kalam could then proceed. But what I am saying is that there is a ~100% probability that P1 or P2 is sometimes false. In other words, that it is objectively false, not that it fails to be certain.
- “I was surprised to hear this because science has zero evidence that any object … can come, or ever came, into existence without a material or an efficient cause.”
I am surprised Alvaro would confuse evidence of current conditions with evidence for all possible conditions. P1 needs to always be true, not just true only when a universe exists. Because P1 is not necessarily true, something has to produce it for it to ever be true anywhere. Therefore, there are conditions in which it is false—-particularly all conditions before P1 has been contingently produced. Science has established this is physically and logically possible, with published cosmological models.
Alvaro seems to be confusing contingent conditions with modal facts. That P1 is a property of our universe is a contingent condition. But that it cannot always be true (as in, true in all possible conditions) is a modal fact.[2] To get a different result, Dr. Alvaro must prove, with a valid and sound syllogism, that P1 is (probably) logically necessarily true, and therefore (probably) always true. He has not.
- “Therefore, strict logical possibility does not logically entail metaphysical possibility.”
I aver this distinction is bogus. Anything logically possible is physically possible, and therefore metaphysically possible. I am aware notable philosophers have tried to argue otherwise, but they are wrong. There is no such thing as a logical possibility that is metaphysically impossible. Because all coherent propositions are descriptions of logically possible physical states.[3]
- “Dr. Carrier claims that the big bang theory does not prove that time, space, and energy came into being a finite time ago. But this is exactly what the theory says.”
This is false. Alvaro must be reading physics books from thirty years ago. Current physics has abandoned this conclusion regarding the Big Bang.[4]
- “In short, “nothing” is not a state but rather the absence of time, space, matter, energy, potentiality, and so on. And from nothing, nothing comes.”
I did not propose such a nothing-state. I proposed a virtual nothing-state.[5]
- “Dr. Carrier writes “Even your fingernail consists of an actual infinity of geometric points.” And how does he know this?”
Because calculus has been formally proved. Which entails it is logically impossible for any area to not be divided into an actual infinity of geometric points. Ergo, all areas are an actual infinity of geometric points.[6]
- “In set theory, an actually infinite set contains a discrete number of members. Conversely, no physical object can contain, or can be divided into, an actually infinite number of parts.”
This statement is nonsensical and contrary to established mathematics.[again: 6]
- “if the universe were past-eternal, then it would be impossible for the present to be instantiated because it is impossible to traverse an actually infinite number of events.”
This is identical to saying “an infinite stairway lacks a single step” which is self-contradictory. If an infinite stairway/timeline exists, then infinite steps/presents exist, and we can find ourselves at any one of them. This is a logically necessary fact.
III. Conclusion
At worst, Alvaro’s Kalam has no true premises. Both premises can sometimes be false, therefore they cannot establish the conclusion. And at best, Alvaro’s Kalam only proves the trivial conclusion that some ultimate fact produced or explains everything else, which is simply another description of atheist cosmology.[7]
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Endnotes
[1] See Bayesian Counter-Apologetics: Ten Arguments for God Destroyed, some of which still pertains even to deism; likewise The Argument from Specified Complexity against Supernaturalism, and Naturalism Is Not an Axiom of the Sciences but a Conclusion of Them, and Why A Neo-Aristotelian Naturalism Is Probably True, and, again, What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?
[2] See, again, Note 4 in my last entry.
[3] See The Ontology of Logic and All Godless Universes Are Mathematical.
[4] See, again, Note 2 and Note 5 in my last entry.
[5] See, again, Note 3 in my last entry.
[6] See, for example, Proof of Infinite Geometric Series Formula at Khan Academy. See also the Wikipedia entries for “Fundamental Theorem of Calculus” and “infinitesimal” and this example and these examples.
[7] See, for example, The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit and Koons Cosmology vs. The Problem with Nothing (esp. “In the past-eternal case”) and relevant chapters (particularly regarding the arguments of Peter van Inwagen and Robert Nozick) in The Puzzle of Existence.
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Dr. Carrier wrote:
On that note I was condering is you could address the specific example that Dr. Alvaro used to try and make his point. He stated the following:
When I read that I understood the point that he was trying to make. But I’m curious from your statement where/how this fails (given this specific example). I’m thinking that maybe it fails from a logical possibility to start with due to someone not have or using all of the possible relevent data to start with. In other words the whatever factors are taken into consideration to deem the action (someone throwing a baseball to the moon) should have been factored into the logical possibility to start with. If that had been done they would’ve determined that even with Randy Johnson in his prime throwing the ball, because of the force of gravity, factors concerning objects leaving and then entering our earth atmosphere and nothing to guide the trajectory of the ball along the way, that it is actually logically impossible, given all of the established factors that we are work with (and science requires that they all be established up front to make a proper assessment).
Analogous to this discussion might be how you discuss the difference in probabilities with respect to prior and post probabilities. Except in that instance you’re acknowleding that prior probabilities are understood not to always hold up in the end, because it is understood that you haven’t yet done all of your homework.
Am I going at this the right way? Is this the reason that you would object to his specific example as well or are you thinking out this a completely different way (objecting it for a completely different reason)?
Alvaro’s example is of physical impossibility, not metaphysical impossibility. That’s my point. There are only two kinds of impossibility: logical and physical. There is not a third kind.
The significance of this is that all physical impossibilities that are not logical impossibilities can become physical possibilities by simply changing the physics in any logically possible way.
Thus, it would be physically possible for me to throw a ball to the moon if I was superman, or if the gravitational force were much weaker, or an anti-gravity force extended from my hand, etc.
Since physical impossibilities are contingent, they do not exist when no contingent things exist. Hence, before the laws of physics existed, it could not be said whether I will be able to throw a ball to the moon, because we do not know yet what laws of physics will obtain when I and the moon and balls exist. Moreover, none of those things exist then either.
Since it is logically possible for his law of physics (P1) to not exist, and indeed logically necessary that it does not exist before all contingent laws of physics exist, his P1 does not hold for the condition in question (the initiation of the laws of physics, i.e. the initiation of reality).
Evidence that it holds now only is evidence of the laws of physics that came to exist here. It is not evidence that those laws of physics always hold. Hence his example of throwing a ball to the moon fails to establish his point. We could have ended up with a different set of laws of physics by which I could throw balls to the moon. Therefore he cannot say that those laws of physics necessarily always exist in all possible worlds. And if he cannot say that, then P1 is false, and his kalam argument is unsound.
What he needs to do is prove his P1 logically necessary. Proving it physically necessary does not accomplish that, because that only proves what the result was (what physics this local part of reality follows), not what the cause was (when no contingent laws of physics exist; then a contingent P1 does not exist, and so his argument fails).
This is the point that proponents of the Kalam never seem to get—atheists are perfectly willing to entertain the idea that something “caused” the Big Bang. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if a sizable majority of atheists agreed with the proposition “our universe probably came into being as a casual result of some prior condition”. After all, nothing about atheism entails a belief that the universe began from nothing and for no causal reason (although it doesn’t entail the opposite of that, either). So even if Alvaro’s Kalam was hypothetically demonstrated to be sound, in no way would it suggest, much less necessitate, an intentional agent as the cause of the Big Bang. For the Kalam to be an argument in favor of a god, Alvaro has to do at least two things: (1) demonstrate a necessary connection between the Big Bang and an intentional agent, and (2) that this intentional agent is necessarily exempt from P1. Alvaro hasn’t even started on this task, at least not in this debate, which so far makes it useless as an argument in favor of theism.
Your observation is apt.
This is similar to the Ontological Whatsit argument: ontological arguments just quibble over whether the fundamental ground of all being is sentient or not; they do not actually accomplish anything significant. We all agree there is some ontological ground of all being. So proving there is one is vacuous. What theists (and deists) need is proof that it thinks. And they never produce that. Alvaro has yet to even try to produce that.
This is thus the same outcome: proving there was a necessary being or brute fact at the start of it all (assuming there even was a start of it all) is vacuous, because we all agree there was a necessary being or brute fact at the start of it all (if there was a start of it all). The only difference between a theist (or a deist) and an atheist is whether that necessary being or brute fact thinks or not. And I have yet to see even an attempt to prove it did here. That the premises are also false is simply an add-on to that. The real failure here is the absence of any demonstration of a deity.
I love discussing these topics but it seems debates on them always evolve into picking up each others misunderstandings, because we can never truly understand these things completely. We focus in on the things we think can win the debate, usually the other persons mistakes. I hope Dr Alvaro focuses on developing his argument more in the next response rather than just refuting your refutation. This could be such an interesting discussion but not if it’s just arguing about how you both misunderstand what the other is talking about. Now time for me to click around till I work out what a virtual nothing state means 😉
Part of the value of sincere debates like this is that closing those gaps of misunderstanding is progress, and this format facilitates that.
And we do need to get past that before we get to any argument pertaining to a deity (which Dr. Alvaro still has not presented).
As to what a virtual nothing state is, and how it differs from Alvaro’s “absolute nothing,” see the link I provided. It explains.
On the first clause: Why then is there a distinction between valid and sound reasoning? All unicorns have one horn, virgins can ride unicorns, therefore virgins can hold onto the horn when they ride. Although this seems logically possible, somehow I can’t bring myself to say it seems physically possible. Valid logic without referents but mathematical symbols is of long standing but is everything mathematical physically possible?
On the second clause: Isn’t there a necessary distinction between the simple description of phenomena, which as the word phenomenon implies, is about the appearances of things, against the proposition of principles beyond the appearances yet underlying them? Whether you call it ontological or metaphysical, aren’t you implicitly requiring those principles to be universal to all phenomena of the category (not just instances,) and a unique set, as well as non-contradictory (i.e., coherent.) Occam’s razor seems to count here, reading as a requirement that metaphysics or ontology where there are multiple indistinguishable principles are not even explanations. I suppose in a way it’s the Platonists’ problem of which universals are sufficient to generate the material world, regardless of how ephemeral or even illusory you deem that.
There seems to be an overlooked ambiguity in the discussion, namely, that much of modern science is held to prove anti-realism (the last I looked, admittedly.) Most working scientists appear to have a crude practical materialism simply grafted onto this anti-realism. I suppose this is incoherent philosophically. But then this may be why so many philosophers of science despise the philosophical incompetence of mere scientists. Or the disdain for philosophy held by so many scientists. Consider the widespread contempt for Krauss’ fraudulent “explanations” of the universe from nothing. (Personally I’m not sure this is entirely charitable but this does appear to me to be an accurate generalization of the proper philosophical attitude.)
On the general role of science of the beginning of the universe, I’m inclined to think we should accept material causes as a principle of sufficient reason. But I suppose the antique phrasing gives that game away.
Lastly on the general subject of antiquity, it’s not clear to me that the latest journal results in physics are as cumulative as scholarship in the historical sciences. Lay people are really at a disadvantage in discerning whether the latest ideas (not thirty years old) are the contemporary equivalent of, say, the phlogiston theory. That was once science, even if it turned out to be wrong. It’s experimental results and conformity to experience that serve as the equivalent test of soundness versus validity, no?
Because those are the two requirements of a completed truth condition. A syllogistic argument can be valid and the conclusion still false because the premises are false. A completed argument (called a “sound” argument) therefore has to be more than merely valid: the premises also have to be demonstrated to be true, in order for the conclusion to have been demonstrated to be true.
One can indeed build contrafactual arguments, also known as hypotheticals, which state what would be the case if something else were the case than actually is the case (or is known to be the case). But those only produce hypothetical conclusions (possibilities, rather than probabilities). Which won’t suit Dr. Alvaro’s purposes here.
The argument you just stated is not valid. The premises state nothing about an ability to hold onto the horn (you are thus depending on hidden premises).
I also do not understand what you are referring to when you say you cannot imagine the physical possibility of unicorns, virgins, and riders of horses holding onto things on their head. All of those things are not even imaginary. Every single one actually exists (or did: we have the bones of Siberian unicorns to prove it, and in fact they existed when humans existed, so a virgin human woman could in principle have actually ridden one).
You will have to explicate this more. I don’t follow what you are talking about or referring to here.
When I say all logical possibilities are physically possible, I mean that all one has to do is one-to-one instantiate the logically possible physics into actual physics. Let’s pick a better example than unicorns: fire-breathing dragons. Dragons existed (we call them dinosaurs). But they certainly did not breathe fire and it is hard to imagine how, on our universe’s physics, any could have.
But “fire-breathing dragon” implicates the corresponding physics. If you say “fire breathing dragons are logically possible” you would not be making a true statement if you meant “fire breathing dragons are logically possible when and where local physics makes them physically impossible” as that is a contradiction. The only way for “fire breathing dragons are logically possible” to be true is if the physics ports with them, so to instantiate them, making them physically possible, you also have to instantiate the required physics.
Hence, “fire breathing dragons are logically possible” means “if we suitably changed the laws of physics to make them physically possible, fire-breathing dragons would be physically possible,” which is now a tautology, illustrating the logical validity of what I’m saying.
“Metaphysical” impossibility is an attempt to produce an incoherent third kind of impossibility. But there isn’t any. Things are either logically impossible or physically impossible or not impossible at all; and everything that is physically impossible but logically possible is also physically possible when the physics are changed as that logical possibility requires.
In the vocabulary of the logical positivists: there is no metaphysics; just various kinds of physics.
Their statement is overreaching only because there could be logically necessary facts about all possible worlds that would then constitute metaphysical facts, but those would not be subject to any different kind of possibility. They are still just logically necessary physical facts, not some extra third additional thing.
As an example, it is logically impossible to exist and to never exist and exist nowhere; therefore a physical spacetime is a logically necessary condition of existence. Spacetime is therefore a logically necessary physical fact of all possible worlds (since the absence of spacetime entails the absence of a world).
It then follows that geometric facts obtain in all possible worlds, which will limit what possible physics can be instantiated in any world. And so on.
So it is theoretically possible to prove P1 to be a logically necessary fact like these. I have simply never seen such a proof. Alvaro has not presented one. And the evidence suggest he can’t (e.g. it is logically necessarily the case that P1 will not exist when contingent physics has yet to arise, and therefore there are logically possible worlds or states of worlds not governed by P1).
On the principle of sufficient reason: it is possible for a kind of nothing-state to provide the sufficient reason for all of observed reality (hence the Lincoln-Wasser model and my discussion of it in nothing as a field-state). So Alvaro’s P1 can be false and the PSR still true.
I’m not sure what you mean, but the relevance of the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorem having been proved false (by Hawking and Penrose themselves) is that Alvaro’s statement that the Big Bang entails a beginning to all time, space, and energy was believed to be true thirty years ago (it is simply a restatement of the original Hawking-Penrose singularity theorem), but is now known to be false.
Since gravity breaks down at a small scale, singularities in the sense Alvaro means are physically impossible, and countless logically and physically possible models of pre-Big-Bang time-space-energy states exist in the literature that are still held to be viable. So no scientist today would say the Big Bang entails a beginning to all time, space, and energy. They would all, to every man and woman of them, explain if asked that that is no longer a consequence of the theory and thus we cannot say that entailment exists, and indeed most cosmological theories now deny it.
Ironically, traditional singularities entail an actual infinity, e.g. infinite density, which Alvaro’s P2 denies, so by relying on traditional singularity theory he is contradicting himself. But that’s moot since he’s simply wrong about the science here. He needs P2 to be logically necessarily the case; but current science establishes that it is not even physically necessarily the case, or even more likely to be the case than not.
Not sure there is a real need or desire to “explicate” but perhaps. Not being a professional, I cannot be as lapidary and precise as all the journals and books of philosophy are. My apologies.
Let me begin by noting again, I still do not understand why Dr. Alvaro needs to have an agent (or efficient cause) at all. As he notes, this agent (called the “Prime Mover” in the Doc Smith SF novels of my youth) is not God in any ordinary person’s sense. Calling it “God” just seems confusing. Whether you call the before, a notion something like north of the North Pole, a nothing, or a nothing-state, or perhaps merely logical chaos that comes to nothing because it is incoherent, it’s still not clear to me there must be an agent moving on the face on these roiling waters, even One whose Logos is Logic. Again, we can posit something unknowable, a noumenon, but to be truly unknowable it can’t have effects or cause changes, so what does that matter, save as a kind of excuse? Moving on…
The hidden premise in the unicorn example is not the ability of the rider to hold onto the horn. A hidden premise would be some secret force that would prevent the virgin from simply reaching up to hold the horn. I suppose that formally I should have said, virgins can ride unicorns, a riding a unicorn is on the back of the unicorn within arms’ reach of the horn, therefore the virgin can take hold of the unicorn’s one horn as she is riding. But the objection that all premises must be explicitly stated is an enormous burden of proof to impose, bordering on an enormity against reason. If you really could state all premises explicitly, you can in principle code them all numerically, and all reasoning would be calculation. But I don’t think such a mathematical reasoning can prove all propositions. The power of such logical/mathematical coherence to provide unassailable knowledge has been contested as I understand it.
The unhidden yet invisible premise was the traditional premise. that unicorns are magical creatures who can’t be tamed and ridden by ordinary men, but they will acknowledge the purity of virgins and of their own free will let the woman ride them. This kind of unicorn is indeed just as physically impossible as a fire-breathing dragon. No doubt I misunderstand how logic, the grammar of reason, works. It seems to me that you can have good grammar (or syntax) while yet the sentence makes no sense in the real world. And the apparent claim that if it’s logical, grammatical, syntactically correct, then it must be possible, semantically meaningful, seems uncertain to me.
As you object, “everything that is physically impossible but logically possible is also physically possible when the physics are changed as that logical possibility requires.” I get lost here, I don’t see how the proviso about changing physics isn’t a genuine hidden premise? And for that matter I’m lost as to how you could change the laws of nature, aka the physics, in such manner as to impel the existence of a creature that can sense virginity and be compelled to pay tribute to virginity, as a necessary attribute of the genus and species “unicorn,” at the same time pretty much everything else follows the mundane metaphysics of materialism (however widely despised by many philosophers these drab and unstylish notions seem to prevail in dreary routine.) This seems to me to be a sensible interpretation of the notion of metaphysical impossibility.
It seems to me to say that the logically possible is physically possible, even adding that only if the physics is changed, adds an undefined hypothetical, this oddly specific non-materialist virgin adoring unicorn exception to the prevailing rules where we usually just get rhinoceroses. But I’m not a philosopher, not even a bad philosopher, so I haven’t learned yet to accept undefined hypotheticals like physics instantiating an exception. I don’t think they are really ideas. (I imagine occasionally something like this is part of what Descartes meant by the “clear and distinct” ideas.) So if that’s what’s meant by metaphysically impossible, then, like grammatically sound sentences that still don’t make any sense, it seems to me there is such a thing. What I wrote about Occam’s razor etc. was basically other reasons for rejecting these undefined hypotheticals. But I suppose there’s no point in arguing that, as you don’t agree you have to actually imagine—whether literally create an image or metaphorically create one with enough detail to be distinct and clear. To me, that’s why you tell us the logically possible is the physically possible.
If physically possible, then it is logically possible=if it not logically possible, then it is not physically possible. This seems to me to be sound reasoning depending upon the correctness of the logic, for the original and the equivalent. One thing is, this seems to me to be more of a proof there is a valid logic, a correctly grammatical discourse on the subject, but does not provide the actual discourse. It’s roughly the same as one of the mathematical theorems showing there is or is not a solution/s, but doesn’t actually provide the solution. The physically possibility may be merely contingent or empirical, but whatever it is, it is actually experienced, even if you unlike me feel such justification is inferior to logical necessity. Phrasing the logical possibility—merely existent but undefined by my lights—as the “if” implies the logic, the grammar of reason is the grammarye that makes the world. Why shouldn’t Dr. Alvaro find a Demiurge? Rephrasing the contrapositive I think helps re-frame. When we do this the fact that a categorical valid proof there is a coherent discourse is not the dialogue itself, stands out.
For a moment, consider the inverse? If it is not physically possible, then it is not logically possible. But, if the “logically possible is also physically possible when the physics are changed as that logical possibility requires…” then how can you, using this criterion of logically possible, make this deduction? The problem as I see it, is that the justification of physical possibility depends on brute empirical facts, mere contingencies, not logical necessities. And adding in changes in physical possibilities mixes two different kinds of truth conditions. So I find the inverse unconvincing. Well, the inverse of a proposition is not necessarily logically valid, as I understand it.
The contrapositive of the inverse, if it is not logically possible, then it is not physically possible, the same proposition merely reframed after all, must also have its truth conditions confused, even if it sounds more agreeable. And, even if it sounds so much like the same proposition as the original claim all logical possibilities are physical possibilities. There is an implicit claim that speculative reason can deduce the universe, contra incompleteness theorems—harking back to Doc Smith, the “Visualization of the Cosmic All.” Against that, there is the extremist, or maybe merely Kantian?, position that mere reason cannot grasp the unknowable at all, which is to say, our limited intellects cannot devise a coherent or logical picture at all. The big rebuttal to that, how can something inherently incoherent present itself as so coherent most of the time (or, logical foundations are not a valid epistemology) doesn’t seem to be universally accepted.
No doubt this is all simplistic, but my mirror on the wall, says nothing about my looks, merely “KISS.”
As to the last part, my caution about relying on my misunderstanding of the second hand latest journal results, is not cured, sorry. The latest journal results also suggest we live in an anti-DeSitter space with “us” being holographic projections? Except that observations suggest this is a DeSitter space? In the sense of being unable at this point to find measurable inferences of anything prior to the Big Bang, at this point it is still the beginning of all spacetime and mass/energy. As for the notion gravity breaks down when scales are small enough, I’m so far behind I don’t know how it was proved spacetime is quantized.
“As an example, it is logically impossible to exist and to never exist and exist nowhere; therefore a physical spacetime is a logically necessary condition of existence. Spacetime is therefore a logically necessary physical fact of all possible worlds (since the absence of spacetime entails the absence of a world).” And I’m so far behind I do not understand how this denies the multiverse of all the virtual universes, much less how this demonstrates that our universe is the real one. I don’t even know how the multiverse has any real universe, barring Divine privilege. Obviously I don’t understand how spacetime is a logically necessary consequence because I don’t know how the unreal, or virtual, can be said to exist. (I think you referred to uncertainty as merely epistemic, but that’s not the universal view, is it?)
I concur.
Oh no. Both are hidden premises.
Mind you, I agree with your point. It’s just that we are discussing formal syllogisms. In formal syllogisms, nothing can be assumed that is not stated. So we cannot assume an ability to grab a horn or a disability to: being not stated, it is not a premise, and therefore the conclusion is formally invalid (it does not follow from what was stated).
That does not mean the conclusion is false: invalidity just means the conclusion is not established by the premises that were stated; different or more premises might get you there.
This is one of many defects of the entire procedure of deductive logic. Hence I tend to be suspicious of all deductive logic (see Why Syllogisms Usually Suck).
Empirical claims can only really be established by inductive logic—where assumed premises do not have to be explicitly stated, e.g. the term b, background knowledge, in a Bayesian argument, includes all physical facts like how things on a horse’s head can be grabbed by riders who have their hands and the use of them, etc.
So I agree with you: formal deductive logic seems all but useless in its restrictions. In my experience it usually only is a device for masking equivocation fallacies and painting up assumptions (often dubious ones at that) to “look like” logically necessary truths.
This is also why it is easy to catch deductive syllogisms not working. Which is their one virtue.
At any event, I did not choose this as the mode of argument. All I can do is evaluate what I am presented. I’ve suggested an inductive approach to Alvaro several times now. He seems uninterested.
You must be confusing a formal syllogism for a premise. I did not present a formal syllogism regarding dragons. I merely stated a premise about dragons, and in particular, about the semantic meaning of propositions about dragons.
To get you back on track, I’ll present a syllogism about fire-breathing dragons, just as an example:
Notice how everything stated is in the conclusion; and nothing is in the conclusion that was not stated. Limiting the model that way is literally the point of deductive argumentation: it is not inherently very substantive (it just extracts the meaning from the sentences just presented); but it does force you to state every assumption, so that the conclusion is always true when the premises are true. Beyond that, this way of arguing anything is hopelessly limited and all but useless in matters of empirical questions of fact.
All unknowns and contrafactuals are hypotheticals.
Modal logic is not concerned with what is the case, but with what could be the case. And statements about what is impossible are statements in modal logic.
In modal logic, you can say things like “It is impossible for a sphere to be a cube,” without having to test the proposition, because the impossibility derives from the unrealizability of the thing described (e.g. you cannot create a thing with six distinct sides that at the same time has no distinct sides; you cannot create a thing whose entire surface is equidistant from the center and at the same time whose entire surface is not equidistant from the center; etc.).
Likewise, you can say things like “It is possible for the Earth to be the back of a giant space turtle,” without the Earth having to be the back of a giant space turtle. It is a hypothetical. It could even be false (as obviously it is, in our case). But could we change things so that our planet had always been or then became the back of a giant space turtle?
The answer is yes. Because no logical contradiction obtains, so all you have to do is port everything “the Earth is the back of a giant space turtle” means onto Earth; and thus what is logically possible is physically possible.
Whatever you have to change to get that physical outcome could, in principle, be changed, precisely because there is no contradiction entailed, so you just move every component of the proposition, one-to-one, from thought to physical reality. That humans today could not do this is irrelevant. That’s not the kind of possibility we are concerned with here.
And when we are talking about conditions unconstrained by any observation (e.g. if we did not know all we know about the actual shape and ontology of Earth; or indeed, none of those things had even come about yet), sky’s the limit.
So, it is possible that everything started, but started by pure random spontaneous initiation, and nothing else. So, just as Earth could have been (but is not) the back of a giant space turtle, all of existence could have been (whether it was or not) the product of pure random spontaneous initiation.
Therefore, we cannot say that was impossible. And therefore we cannot get Alvaro’s P1, which requires (indeed, literally states) that that is impossible.
So, we are not here talking about physical possibility as in “what can happen locally around us now due to the happenstance contingent physics that ended up working around us now” but physical possibility as in “what could have happened before any of that happenstance contingent physics came to be.”
(We could also talk about “what could yet happen,” e.g. if we go to live inside simulated universes, the laws of physics can be entirely different; and thus it is even physically possible for humans to live on a replica of Earth that is the back of a giant space-turtle: just built a simverse in which they digitally do. But the debate we are having is about the state of reality in the past, and how that could have come about, not the future, and how that could come about.)
I think you’ve become confused between two different concepts of physically possible. You are thinking of “that which current physics here and now allows.” I am talking about “what could physically be different than is now the case.” This is the meaning of “possible worlds” in philosophy; maybe in politics “possible worlds” would be limited to worlds realizable with existing physics, but in metaphysics, “possible worlds” means all possible worlds, no matter whether we here and now have the means to make them.
That which is physically impossible is only so because of physics; so you can make the impossible possible again by changing the physics. That is what logically possible means as distinct from what you are calling physically possible. Logically possible means all possible physics. Hence I am talking about all possible physics. You are using physically possible to refer to only one possible physics—the one we happen, by chance, to live in, right now. But that obviously isn’t relevant to the time when our physics hadn’t been caused to exist yet.
Those are made of spacetime. So they are not located nowhere and never. They are located all across the time and space they occupy (which is, locally, everywhere and all the time; the opposite of never and nowhere).
As to physically possible multiverses (and I mean on our actual physics), there are abundant models in the scientific literature. See Six Arguments That a Multiverse Is More Probable Than a God.
And in those, all universes are co-located (e.g. it is theoretically possible to trace a spacetime line from our universe to every other; it’s just that we cannot traverse that line because (1) that would require going backwards in time, which is impossible, and (2) that would require surviving disintegration at the quantum singularity, which is also impossible—but these things are only impossible because of contingent physics; so if we could change the physics, we could make those things possible again).
It does concern me that defenses of the Kalam seem to always boil down to a sort of basic intuition pump. This is actually fine in most cases, as most things in our experience do follow some intuitive principles. But in cosmology? In quantum mechanics? In mathematics?
Our human intuitions just provide so little in those areas (often even counter-productive). I don’t want to hold this against philosophy in general, or even Dr. Alvaro. But philosophy NEEDS to be scientifically informed to get anywhere. Just as science needs philosophy to make rational decisions and apply ethics.
I agree. The Kalam over-relies on a human capacity—intuition, imagination—that we already know is going to be maximally unreliable in exactly this case (scenarios wholly outside any possible human experience).
P1 is always true.
The necessary is that whose non-existence is logically impossible. Therefore, the necessary always exists and never begins to exist.
The impossible is that whose existence is logically impossible. Therefore, the impossible never exists and never begins to exist.
Between these two poles is the possible, which is that which is not logically included or excluded from existence. It is obvious, then, that if the merely possible comes to exist, it will not be due to its own notion (that is, by logical necessity), but by the action of another (that is, by a causal relation in which the possible is the effect).
Now, what changes is neither impossible nor necessary. For, if something changes, it has come to be from one state of affairs to the other, so it is not impossible, because it came into existence. At the same time, it ceases to exist in part, in the sense that one state of affairs gives rise to another, so it is also not necessary, because it failed to exist in part. Consequently, what changes has a cause.
The previous conclusion becomes the initial premise of a new syllogism:
1) What changes has a cause, that is, owes its being to another being.
2) The universe changes both quantitatively and qualitatively, as it increases in time and extension and changes the relations between its parts.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause, that is, owes its being to another being.
Since the universe is the sum of everything material, temporal, and extensive, its cause can only be conceived as immaterial, timeless, and unextended. The above is proven as follows:
The universe is the aggregate of all material things and their causal relationships. If the cause of the universe is material, then the cause of the universe is part of the universe and it is its own cause, which would make it necessary. But we have seen that what changes is not necessary, and the universe changes; hence it is not necessary. It follows that the first cause of all material things cannot be material. It is unavoidable, then, that the first cause not be a material cause, but an efficient, formal, and final cause of the universe. Now, such is the first principle or God.
If the universe has a cause and it is an immaterial being, there cannot be an infinite regress in causes. On the contrary, the succession of causes must stop at said immaterial being, which cannot be caused by a material being, since every material being is part of the universe, which is an effect and not a cause, nor by another immaterial being, bearing in mind that there can be no real division and therefore causality in what completely lacks matter, extension, and movement.
I have refuted this argument already. It literally cannot always be true.
Except the first thing (if there is one) won’t have changed from anything and therefore P1 is false: at least one thing did not have a cause and does not owe its being to another being. And that one thing could be a piece (the first piece) of the universe itself. There remains no demonstration that it couldn’t.
So I do not believe Alvaro will want to adopt your revision. Your P1 refutes his P1.
Which says nothing about the universe having a first cause. It could be an infinity of causes all the way.
So I do not believe Alvaro will want to adopt your revision. Indeed, your P2 doesn’t affirm his P2 at all.
When you say:
You are completely overlooking that God, by definition and by His absolute nature, neither changes nor begins to exist. Therefore, P1 (“Everything that begins to exist does so by virtue of something else”) does not apply to God, because God does not begin to exist.
You also wrote:
Ignoring the explanation that follows my argument, namely, that if the cause of the universe is material, it must be part of the universe, which is the aggregate of all that is material. Now, if the cause of the universe is part of the universe, then the universe is its own cause, which would imply that it has being in its own notion and is a necessary being. However, as we have already excluded this possibility (since the universe changes and, therefore, is neither impossible nor necessary), we must conclude that the cause of the universe is not part of the universe and, consequently, is not material. A non-material cause is outside of space and time, which entails that it lacks spatial or temporal division. Without division, there is no multiplicity. Therefore, in no way can you assert that there will be an infinity of non-material causes.
To the contrary, my point is that you are overlooking that the universe itself, if it began, did not come to be from anything else because its first state cannot have. That first moment did not change from any prior state—it literally could not have, because there was no prior state to change from. Hence your P1 does not establish that this cannot be the case. To the contrary, it effectively asserts that it must be the case. Therefore there is no way to get to God from P1.
Remember, the Kalam needs to get to a conclusion that excludes anything as the first cause but “a god.” Alvaro hasn’t even tried to produce such an argument. And your argument can’t do it either. Merely asserting that that which didn’t change has no cause is asserting the first moment of the universe has no cause—and therefore needs no god to explain it.
It’s just all the worse that we cannot establish that there was a first state of the universe. There was of ours, but ours could be caused by another preceding universe. There has never been any logical or empirical demonstration that it cannot have. And your argument doesn’t get there either.
That’s a completely unintelligible statement.
Infinite sets are logically possible. Infinite sets can be realized physically by a one-one-one substitution of their theoretical elements with corresponding physical elements. Therefore infinite sets are physically possible. No rigmarole about division or whatnot makes any difference to this fact.
For the first state of the universe to bypass P1 in the way I have presented the argument, it must be immutable, since if it were mutable, I have shown that it would be neither impossible nor necessary, which would imply that it owes its being to another, hence not being the first state of the universe. However, the hypothesis of an immutable and uncaused initial state leads to two difficulties, the first of which I already referred to in a previous message:
1) By definition, everything that is a cause of itself is a necessary being. Thus, if a part of the universe is the cause of the universe, then the universe is a cause of itself or, in equivalent terms, is a necessary being. Nonetheless, we have already seen that what is mutable is not necessary, and the universe is mutable. Therefore, the universe is not necessary and, for the same reason, is not a cause of itself. Note that by using the term “universe” I am referring to the sum of all states of affairs that have existed, exist, and will exist, not to a specific configuration of reality.
2) You cannot argue that what is part of the universe is immutable. It is so that everything material is in a proximate or distant reciprocal relationship, without gaps by which a state of affairs in the universe is completely independent of another. For this reason, if something is material, it will be mutable by the mere fact of being immersed in the same order as the rest of the matter. In other words, causality is bidirectional: the cause produces a change in the effect and, if such cause is finite, is likewise changed by the effect. You could only avoid this consequence if you completely isolated the cause from its effect, but then it would not be the cause of its effect! For this reason, God can create the universe “ex nihilo” through an infinite power, that is, without any effort or instrument, but we cannot say the same for a material being, which necessarily will be moved in some way when causing what you call the universe.
No premise you have presented says or entails anything “must be immutable.” Or any of these other blind assertions you are making.
I have already pointed this out.
You are ignoring everything I say and just restating the same nonsense I have refuted.
You never present any formally valid syllogism, nor any sound argument. I do not believe you know how to.
And for that reason, I am going back to ignoring you for good.