Theism is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the incredible and is intellectually regressive. God explains literally nothing bc literally every version is literally indistinguishable from fiction. There is no reason why there is something rather than nothing, and no reason is needed.
I'm sorry, but just like God (in your understanding), you're not really explaining anything either (understand that I am saying this in good humor). Why is every version of theism indistinguishable from fiction? Theists reason from contingent reality to a fundamental reality. Hardly fiction, unless you give a coherent answer for why that's unnecessary. But your only reason is that there is no reason needed. I need a reason for that claim! :)
Continuing on that point, why is it that there is no explanation needed for why there is something rather than nothing? If your reason has no further explanation, then you are asserting a limit arbitrarily. The question then is: why is the limit placed here rather than somewhere else? I could just as easily say the same thing about God (although I think it is incorrect to subject God to this calim): He exists just because He exists, and there is no reason why, and no reason is needed. This does not per se violate the principle of parsimony, since it is just as simple to assert that there is no God (simpliciter) as it is to asser that there is a God (simpliciter). Further, with asserting that there is a God, the natural world itself could be explained under simpler terms. Hope this sheds some light.
Even if we think that each single thing in existence must have an explanation in a thing that is not a part of it, this simply does not entail that the existence of everything, taken as a whole, must have one, — unless, of course, we add the assumption that the totality of existing things is itself a thing in existence (i.e. an object in the domain of our theory), and thus also in need of explanation. But to me, at least, this assumption — let us call it the "ontological assumption" — doesn't seem at all obvious; and it is clearly a central one to at least some of the points you are making. As a matter of fact, I'd argue that, without the ontological assumption, both PN and premise 1 in the argument for the existence of nothing wouldn't even be well-formed formulas: for, without it, "the totality of existence" (or any synonymous expression) should not be allowed to occupy the logical place of a term in a formula; it would be at best an expression of a different logical type, and at worse a meta-theoretical one. Like many other similar examples in the history of philosophy, this is a seemingly innocent linguistic move that slickly pushes some serious ontological commitments into the theory.
Notice that I'm not arguing that the ontological assumption is false; nor, for that matter, am I suggesting that a case for theism can't be built in other terms without it. (My impression is that your reasons for the overall superiority of an onto-epistemological theory with a single explanatory fixpoint — God — are, all things considered, quite independent of the motivation provided by the purported rational need to explain the existence of… existence.) Given, however, that the totality of existence would have to be a thing so unlike others (it wouldn't be a thing AMONG other things, for one!), I honestly feel that the ontological assumption remains in dire need of support. (Maybe some metaphysician has already conclusively argued for it, but I personally know of no such argument. I guess some versions of mereological universalism entail the ontological assumption, but these bring a lot of other metaphysical problems of their own and, in any event, I suppose you may not be willing to commit to all that.)
Perhaps I am simply ignorant of the subject, but I have never quite understood why the movement from every individual thing needing an explanation of its existence to the whole needing an explanation of its existence is problematic. I understand that this can seem to commit the Fallacy of Composition. But I don't think that it does in this particular instance. Here's my issue: the whole seems to simply be the purely conceptual/logical understanding of every particular. That is, what we call the whole isn't an actually existing entity, but is the term we use to capture the reality of every existing thing. If this is the case, then the whole would seem to have the properties of the part, simply because the whole is simply the logical concept of every part being together. Since there is no real whole (it is merely conceptual), there is no real property other than the properties of the part. For example, let's say we make a pile of individual bricks. If each individual brick is bricky, then why is it a problem to call the pile bricky? I find that the unvierse is of the same or similar kind--I wouldn't call it a substantially existent thing itself, since our concept of the universe as a substantial whole seems to be exactly that: a pure concept. Perhaps this is a poor example, but I hope it identifies what my point is.
In consequence, I don't see how one would need what you call the "ontological assumption" to maintain that the universe as a whole demands an explanation for its existence. Since the "part" (the individual entities) is the only really existent thing--and the whole is merely conceptual--then the problems intrinsic to the part are the only real problem. In other words, I entirely agree that your "ontological assumption" is in dire need of support. But I think that the "ontological assumption" is entirely unnecessary to justify the reasoning present in the article. But perhaps I also just committed to the Fallacy of Composition unwittingly! I hope to hear your thoughts.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that by "the whole" you mean simply each and every existing thing, taken severally, — and not a further thing of the same sort.
I'm fine with using "the whole" in that sense, but the problem now is that your two principle PE and PN are no longer contradictory, since you can now make each and every contingent existing thing, taken severally, have a contingent source outside of itself, provided there is more than one contingent existing thing.
How so? — If there are finitely many contingent things, have an explanatory cycle — a circular explanation — at the top of the explanatory chain; if there are infinitely many things, just let the explanatory chain go on indefinitely.
Now, I'm not claiming these could be satisfying explanatory chains. They just aren't logically ruled out by your two principles under that reading of "the whole". Under the reading I've taken as correct at first, they are indeed contradictory (but then we need the seemingly controversial "ontological assumption" as I've called it). So, in any case, we need additional assumptions to make the argument go through.
I take it that you are perhaps implicitly assuming that circular or infinite explanatory chains are bad and thus ruled out by the very concept of explanation, as theists usually do. That may be so, but must confess I myself don't find it in the least abhorrent the notion that a bunch of contingent things could be "jointly sustaining each other in existence", with absolutely no particular ground to hold them. It is certainly not illogical. Maybe they, being individually contingent, can't indeed exist by themselves alone, but can "as a whole".
Contingency is not a property like being bricky. It is more like being unable to keep a roof over our heads. An individual brick indeed can't do it, but lots of bricks suitably placed one above the other can.
So, you see, that's why I think the "ontological assumption" is strictly necessary to bridge the gap in your argument and similar ones. Or else some stronger argument to the effect of ruling out circular or infinitely explanatory chains in this context.
Yes, I believe that you have understood me correctly. I would also tend to agree with you with what follows from that claim.
I don't claim to represent the theist view (since, I must admit, I am leagues behind the likes of Rasmussen, Koons, Pruss, etc.), but I would tend to assent to your argument that some further claims may be necessary for the argument to hold.
I would personally tend to think that PE and PN are contradictory even if the ontological assumption is incorrect, at least as I understood Rasmussen's argument (but again, this is for him to explain, not myself). But I definitely see your point that this particular understanding of PE (and PN) comes with certain assumptions behind it. For now, I concede your point.
In your proposition of contingent things "jointly sustaining each other in existence," are you asserting something along the lines of this: A causes B, which causes C, which causes A [ A --> B --> C --> A ]? Until I am corrected, I'll take this as the position. I am unsure if that even holds logically, but I do not think it holds on metaphysical terms, at least. Let me make a shorter causal circle to help explain my (likely poor) attempt at a kind of answer:
A --> B --> A
If we say that A causes the existence of B, then the existence of A is taken for granted. If we point to B as the cause of A, then we take the existence of B for granted. You then could point to A again, but this clearly leads to one big circle of reasoning. That is, it seems to me that there is some assumption of existence already in place when assuming anything is causing the existence of anything, which this position still involves. That means that an explanation of existence has failed to take place. It is claimed that they explain each other, but there are assumptions which come along with this which are not answered.
It seems you have two options: (1) A or B must precede the other to be the cause of the existence of the other, which then prescinds the possibility of the latter being the cause of the former. (2) The other option as I see it is that they are, in some sense "co-eternal," that is, neither precedes the other. But that also seems absurd to me, since it then seems there can be no real *circular* causation or any causation at all. Since there must be some sense of preceding at least causally, even if not temporally. But then the other would have to precede the other in order to be a cause of the other. That means that A is both causally prior and causally posterior to B, which seems to be logically contradictory, since it seems that A both is and is not at the same time and the same respect.
As I see it, by my own quite limited lights, although "lights" may not be the right term here :), you may get out of this pickle by appealing to brute fact. That is, you don't need A to precede B qua A being the cause of B's existence, or you don't need to identify a ground of existence for this causal circle at all. But that also avoids any kind of explanation as I see it.
I have a hunch that I misrepresented your position, so please correct me if I did.
My point wasn't exactly to identify "brickiness" as a similar type of quality as contingency, but simply to illustrate that, provided we take the meaning of "whole" as I did, then the "whole" contains that same properties as each part. So, the whole would also be contingent. But I definitely acknowledge that the example suffers from certain limitations.
In that sense, I would deny that an aggregate of only contingent entities could lead to a sufficient explanation of the existence of those entities, but I do think that your two objections would be definite objections to my position. I attempted to address one, the problem of infinite regress is quite another! But others have addressed these much better than I have ...
There is a lot I could have explained but didn't, so forgive me for some holes.
Yes, that's precisely what I mean. Slightly more formally, let —> stand for the relation of explanat(with the arrow pointing from what explains to what is explained). Then, as you can easily see for yourself, both situations depicted bellow,
… —> A3 —> A2 —> A1
and
A1 —> … —> An —> A1, with n > 1
(with the ellipsis in the first symbolizing an infinite chain, and the ellipsis in the second symbolizing an arbitrary the possiblity missing links between A1 and An in the explanatorily chain) are situations in which each element in the chain is explained by some element other than itself.
Now suppose that every contingent B that is to be explained is either: one of the elements in a chain of strictly contingent things like some of the ones depicted above; or there is a chain C of strictly contingent things like some of the ones depicted above and a sequence B1, …, Bn of contingent things such that
- Bn —> B;
- for each k from 1 to n - 1, Bk —> Bk +1;
- Cm —> B1 for some element Cm of the chain C.
Then (as you can easily check for yourself if you "do the math"), every contingent thing is explained by some contingent thing other than itself.
(Notice that in all this I am assuming that the relation of explanation is transitive; i.e. that if A —> B and B —> C, then A —> C. I think we share this assumption, anyway.)
So, you see, for your argument that the two principles are jointly untenable to go through, you need to exclude from the outset causal explanatory chains with that kind of structure. (Formally: you need the causal explanatory relation to be what is called "well-founded".)
Now, as I see it, you are arguing that causal explanation excludes non-well-founded explanatory chains due to the additional assumption that causes must be prior to their effect. But then I ask of you: "prior" in what sense? Obviously enough, you can't say "In the explanatory sense" here, because that would be simply restating what is to be explained. There must be something particular to causal explanations that rules out non-well-foundedness.
(There are some contexts in which non-well-founded explanations are perfectly acceptable. Here's an example from thermodynamics. If I ask of you why the volume of the gas has increased, you may answer that it is because the pressure has increased while the temperature remained constant; and, if I ask you why the pressure has increased, you may answer that it is because the volume has increased while the temperature remained constant. Granted, you may want to point out that there's a deeper explanation to be given in terms of the states of the gas molecules. But my point is that there are reasonable explanatory schemes, for certain levels of description of physical reality, which only track counterfactual co-dependencies among variables and therefore admit non-well-founded explanations.)
Just for the sake of the argument, I will suppose you are assuming that causes must be temporally prior to their effects. That may be so (although quantum physics strongly suggests it is false; but physics mostly talk of causality between events, not things, and there may be some room for dispute over the counterexample there.) Even if so, temporal priority by itself doesn't rule out the possibility of infinite causal chains (and thus of infinite causal explanatory chains); for that you need the additional assumption that time has had a begging.
However (pace many famous — and flawed — arguments for the existence of God), I'd argue that doesn't really matter for theism, unless it concedes that God exists IN time. For, otherwise, in claiming that God causes the whole, one is implicitly admting that an atemporal thing can cause temporal things, and thus also forcefully that the cause need not be temporally prior to the effect (since God is not temporally prior to anything: God is ATEMPORAL — meaning God iis not even COMPARABLE to anything by the relation of temporal order; God is simply neither prior to, nor posterior to, nor simultaneous with anything anything at all.) So, as I see it, at least traditional theism needs to also argue for the additional assumption that temporal existence has had a begging (and I mean temporal existence: which may be — and almost certainly is — far larger than our observable physical universe); or else provide some alternative reason why non-well-founded causal explanatory chains with only contingent elements (and particularly infinite causal chains) are ruled out.
Notice that I'm not claiming those arguments can't work. I'm just pointing out that, from a logical point of view, there's quite a lot going on "behind the scenes", so to speak. I'm just trying to bring out that to the fore.
Sorry for the many typing mistakes you'll probably find here, but I've said too much and I'm too lazy to check it all 😅
Fair enough! Your formulation of your argument makes sense. I understand that each part has an explanation (e.g. A1 --> A2, and A3 --> A1). I am simply quite skeptical that this translates well into metaphysics, especially since they are a cause in the same respect/of the same mode, i.e. existence.
I do agree with you on what my assumptions are, however. I think you have correctly diagnosed what's going on, and that I'm "arguing that causal explanation excludes non-well-founded explanatory chains due to the additional assumption that causes must be prior to their effect." I tried (but didn't do the best job) of trying to mean prior not only in the temporal sense but in a simultaneous/non-temporal way, but maybe this is just sidestepping the issue you raised. At the very least, my argument doesn't hinge on that.
I see your point with your example from thermodynamics, but I am unsure if that is a fair example. Perhaps I actually failed to see your point. But I think in some sense that there is somewhat of a category mistake. How science explains the world and how philosophy explains the world can be fundamentally different, first of all. To put it simplistically, science concerns the "what", whereas philosophy ultimately wants to solve the "why". I think non-well-founded explanations can be fine with the former way, but fundamentally incomplete with the latter. I do think that it is fair to take issue with this characterization of mine, but something in me becomes frustrated when "philosophy" claims that we do not need to address a *sufficient* explanation of why. But this again comes from my position on PSR (which by no means is uncontroversial).
Building on the potential "category mistake," I think that the above argument is dealing with mathematical relationships and proportional correspondence, which, if you are simply trying to explain physical phenomena mathematically, this is perfectly adequate. But I don't think that this transfers very cleanly over to explaining how anything exists at all. I think it begs the question, which physics also does (and, I should add, *should* do if it wants to be precise as it is). But I do not think that this *should* be done in the discipline of philosophy. To summarize, I think that there is a good argument for there well-groundedness being necessary in specficially ontological explanations. I would see Pruss (or potentially someone like Koons or Swinburne) for an argument that's actually good, lol. But you're probably already familiar with arguments much better than mine.
If I am tracking the discussion correctly, it seems PSR is coming into play. My argument for sure hinges on a very particular form of PSR, which if rejected poses problems to my argument. There's no avoiding that, as I see it.
I also agree with you that temporal priority doesn't necessarily rule out an infinite (explanatory) causal chain. I still have conflicted feelings by arguments of the sort, but I'm not necessarily convinced by certain "Kalam" arguments, especially.
I'm not sure if I quite grasped your last argument (my bad)---I think I am missing a little context. But I personally don't think that theism really needs the assumption of a causal explanation being temporally prior. In some ways, I find openness non-temporal causality more in line with some forms of theism than strict adherence to temporal causation as solely explanatory. That's why I don't find Kalam arguments to be the most convincing, especially when it's directed at non-theists. Many theists (including Aquinas) didn't and don't have a logical problem with an eternal universe, i.e. the physical cosmos in some sense being simultaneous with God's existence. Aquinas even points to necessary beings being compatible with other necessary beings---it's simply that there is one necessary being which is necessary simpliciter and not due to another necessary being. They just think that it contradicts Scripture.
I want to commend you on your ability to draw out the underlying principles at work in discussions like this. As I see it, there is no avoiding it--and if we fail to do the work that you're doing, it seems that there will be endless talking past each other, which is no fun, and which is far too common. I think that most of the work and disagreement among philosophers ultimately concerns fundamental principles even more than the validity of arguments. For, if you reject one of the underlying assumptions, you do not have to affirm the conclusion even if the argument is valid. To be frank, I think there are a lot of assumptions which come with theism (and atheism). I don't think that's a problem, it just shows well what the stakes are. If you're going to take God, then you're going to be taking many other things along with you. I just happen to find it incredibly reasonable and quite fulfilling on the side! :)
Personally, I'm very skeptical of there being any substantive difference between explanations in science and metaphysics (and, in fact, I lean heavily towards Quinean epistemic naturalism, taking philosophy to be continuous with science). But that's beside the point here, because I agree with you that metaphysics should strive towards explanatory closure in ways that particular sciences need not (and perhaps should not, as you've already pointed out).
That said, I don't think this duty of metaphysics gives us any ground to believe that explanatory closure is possible, even in principle (and most likely it is not possible in practice). So, although I share with you the intuition that there should be an ultimate explanation for existence, I'm constantly worried that this might be just epistemic wishful thinking, as I myself, at least, can find no decisive reason to believe that explanatory closure in metaphysics is possible. For me, faith in the possibility of explanatory closure is just a somewhat Kantian practical imperative of metaphysical inquiry, not a theoretical ground for it.
Now, I agree with you that my example from thermodynamics is somewhat unfair, in the sense that volume and pressure are co-dependent variables in a broadly phenomenological framework; in other words, they are just two distinct aspects of the same underlying ontological reality (the state of the gas), and not two really distinct things. The "because" in that explanation is phenomenological, not ontological.
That said, Spinoza might point out that the same is (trivially) true of God and nature, since they just ARE one and the same thing. Of course, Spinoza is a necessitist, so for him there aren't even contingent things to be explained in the first place. But my point here is that there is at least one metaphysical system according to which an explanation of that same circular sort — "God exists because of nature, and nature exists because of God" — would be tenable. As a matter of fact, that's the ONLY adequate explanation that CAN be given for the existence of nature within that system. (Also, notice that nature is the only analogue to your "totality of contingent things" you will find in Spinoza.)
So, as you can see, completely ruling out circular causal explanations in metaphysics would by no means be a small feat (as it would immediately refute Spinoza's theological account, for one). That's why I think your stance about explanations in metaphysics requires robust reasons. Again, I myself instinctively tend to believe that ultimate explanations in metaphysics shouldn't be of the aspectual kind, as they are in Spinoza; but, as I've also said, for now at least, this is just epistemic optimism from my part, as I have no compelling reasons to back that instinct.
Theism is attempting to explain the impossible in terms of the incredible and is intellectually regressive. God explains literally nothing bc literally every version is literally indistinguishable from fiction. There is no reason why there is something rather than nothing, and no reason is needed.
I'm sorry, but just like God (in your understanding), you're not really explaining anything either (understand that I am saying this in good humor). Why is every version of theism indistinguishable from fiction? Theists reason from contingent reality to a fundamental reality. Hardly fiction, unless you give a coherent answer for why that's unnecessary. But your only reason is that there is no reason needed. I need a reason for that claim! :)
Continuing on that point, why is it that there is no explanation needed for why there is something rather than nothing? If your reason has no further explanation, then you are asserting a limit arbitrarily. The question then is: why is the limit placed here rather than somewhere else? I could just as easily say the same thing about God (although I think it is incorrect to subject God to this calim): He exists just because He exists, and there is no reason why, and no reason is needed. This does not per se violate the principle of parsimony, since it is just as simple to assert that there is no God (simpliciter) as it is to asser that there is a God (simpliciter). Further, with asserting that there is a God, the natural world itself could be explained under simpler terms. Hope this sheds some light.
Where I said "calim" I meant "article." My computer is old and started flipping out (and I failed to notice it).
Even if we think that each single thing in existence must have an explanation in a thing that is not a part of it, this simply does not entail that the existence of everything, taken as a whole, must have one, — unless, of course, we add the assumption that the totality of existing things is itself a thing in existence (i.e. an object in the domain of our theory), and thus also in need of explanation. But to me, at least, this assumption — let us call it the "ontological assumption" — doesn't seem at all obvious; and it is clearly a central one to at least some of the points you are making. As a matter of fact, I'd argue that, without the ontological assumption, both PN and premise 1 in the argument for the existence of nothing wouldn't even be well-formed formulas: for, without it, "the totality of existence" (or any synonymous expression) should not be allowed to occupy the logical place of a term in a formula; it would be at best an expression of a different logical type, and at worse a meta-theoretical one. Like many other similar examples in the history of philosophy, this is a seemingly innocent linguistic move that slickly pushes some serious ontological commitments into the theory.
Notice that I'm not arguing that the ontological assumption is false; nor, for that matter, am I suggesting that a case for theism can't be built in other terms without it. (My impression is that your reasons for the overall superiority of an onto-epistemological theory with a single explanatory fixpoint — God — are, all things considered, quite independent of the motivation provided by the purported rational need to explain the existence of… existence.) Given, however, that the totality of existence would have to be a thing so unlike others (it wouldn't be a thing AMONG other things, for one!), I honestly feel that the ontological assumption remains in dire need of support. (Maybe some metaphysician has already conclusively argued for it, but I personally know of no such argument. I guess some versions of mereological universalism entail the ontological assumption, but these bring a lot of other metaphysical problems of their own and, in any event, I suppose you may not be willing to commit to all that.)
Perhaps I am simply ignorant of the subject, but I have never quite understood why the movement from every individual thing needing an explanation of its existence to the whole needing an explanation of its existence is problematic. I understand that this can seem to commit the Fallacy of Composition. But I don't think that it does in this particular instance. Here's my issue: the whole seems to simply be the purely conceptual/logical understanding of every particular. That is, what we call the whole isn't an actually existing entity, but is the term we use to capture the reality of every existing thing. If this is the case, then the whole would seem to have the properties of the part, simply because the whole is simply the logical concept of every part being together. Since there is no real whole (it is merely conceptual), there is no real property other than the properties of the part. For example, let's say we make a pile of individual bricks. If each individual brick is bricky, then why is it a problem to call the pile bricky? I find that the unvierse is of the same or similar kind--I wouldn't call it a substantially existent thing itself, since our concept of the universe as a substantial whole seems to be exactly that: a pure concept. Perhaps this is a poor example, but I hope it identifies what my point is.
In consequence, I don't see how one would need what you call the "ontological assumption" to maintain that the universe as a whole demands an explanation for its existence. Since the "part" (the individual entities) is the only really existent thing--and the whole is merely conceptual--then the problems intrinsic to the part are the only real problem. In other words, I entirely agree that your "ontological assumption" is in dire need of support. But I think that the "ontological assumption" is entirely unnecessary to justify the reasoning present in the article. But perhaps I also just committed to the Fallacy of Composition unwittingly! I hope to hear your thoughts.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that by "the whole" you mean simply each and every existing thing, taken severally, — and not a further thing of the same sort.
I'm fine with using "the whole" in that sense, but the problem now is that your two principle PE and PN are no longer contradictory, since you can now make each and every contingent existing thing, taken severally, have a contingent source outside of itself, provided there is more than one contingent existing thing.
How so? — If there are finitely many contingent things, have an explanatory cycle — a circular explanation — at the top of the explanatory chain; if there are infinitely many things, just let the explanatory chain go on indefinitely.
Now, I'm not claiming these could be satisfying explanatory chains. They just aren't logically ruled out by your two principles under that reading of "the whole". Under the reading I've taken as correct at first, they are indeed contradictory (but then we need the seemingly controversial "ontological assumption" as I've called it). So, in any case, we need additional assumptions to make the argument go through.
I take it that you are perhaps implicitly assuming that circular or infinite explanatory chains are bad and thus ruled out by the very concept of explanation, as theists usually do. That may be so, but must confess I myself don't find it in the least abhorrent the notion that a bunch of contingent things could be "jointly sustaining each other in existence", with absolutely no particular ground to hold them. It is certainly not illogical. Maybe they, being individually contingent, can't indeed exist by themselves alone, but can "as a whole".
Contingency is not a property like being bricky. It is more like being unable to keep a roof over our heads. An individual brick indeed can't do it, but lots of bricks suitably placed one above the other can.
So, you see, that's why I think the "ontological assumption" is strictly necessary to bridge the gap in your argument and similar ones. Or else some stronger argument to the effect of ruling out circular or infinitely explanatory chains in this context.
Yes, I believe that you have understood me correctly. I would also tend to agree with you with what follows from that claim.
I don't claim to represent the theist view (since, I must admit, I am leagues behind the likes of Rasmussen, Koons, Pruss, etc.), but I would tend to assent to your argument that some further claims may be necessary for the argument to hold.
I would personally tend to think that PE and PN are contradictory even if the ontological assumption is incorrect, at least as I understood Rasmussen's argument (but again, this is for him to explain, not myself). But I definitely see your point that this particular understanding of PE (and PN) comes with certain assumptions behind it. For now, I concede your point.
In your proposition of contingent things "jointly sustaining each other in existence," are you asserting something along the lines of this: A causes B, which causes C, which causes A [ A --> B --> C --> A ]? Until I am corrected, I'll take this as the position. I am unsure if that even holds logically, but I do not think it holds on metaphysical terms, at least. Let me make a shorter causal circle to help explain my (likely poor) attempt at a kind of answer:
A --> B --> A
If we say that A causes the existence of B, then the existence of A is taken for granted. If we point to B as the cause of A, then we take the existence of B for granted. You then could point to A again, but this clearly leads to one big circle of reasoning. That is, it seems to me that there is some assumption of existence already in place when assuming anything is causing the existence of anything, which this position still involves. That means that an explanation of existence has failed to take place. It is claimed that they explain each other, but there are assumptions which come along with this which are not answered.
It seems you have two options: (1) A or B must precede the other to be the cause of the existence of the other, which then prescinds the possibility of the latter being the cause of the former. (2) The other option as I see it is that they are, in some sense "co-eternal," that is, neither precedes the other. But that also seems absurd to me, since it then seems there can be no real *circular* causation or any causation at all. Since there must be some sense of preceding at least causally, even if not temporally. But then the other would have to precede the other in order to be a cause of the other. That means that A is both causally prior and causally posterior to B, which seems to be logically contradictory, since it seems that A both is and is not at the same time and the same respect.
As I see it, by my own quite limited lights, although "lights" may not be the right term here :), you may get out of this pickle by appealing to brute fact. That is, you don't need A to precede B qua A being the cause of B's existence, or you don't need to identify a ground of existence for this causal circle at all. But that also avoids any kind of explanation as I see it.
I have a hunch that I misrepresented your position, so please correct me if I did.
My point wasn't exactly to identify "brickiness" as a similar type of quality as contingency, but simply to illustrate that, provided we take the meaning of "whole" as I did, then the "whole" contains that same properties as each part. So, the whole would also be contingent. But I definitely acknowledge that the example suffers from certain limitations.
In that sense, I would deny that an aggregate of only contingent entities could lead to a sufficient explanation of the existence of those entities, but I do think that your two objections would be definite objections to my position. I attempted to address one, the problem of infinite regress is quite another! But others have addressed these much better than I have ...
There is a lot I could have explained but didn't, so forgive me for some holes.
Yes, that's precisely what I mean. Slightly more formally, let —> stand for the relation of explanat(with the arrow pointing from what explains to what is explained). Then, as you can easily see for yourself, both situations depicted bellow,
… —> A3 —> A2 —> A1
and
A1 —> … —> An —> A1, with n > 1
(with the ellipsis in the first symbolizing an infinite chain, and the ellipsis in the second symbolizing an arbitrary the possiblity missing links between A1 and An in the explanatorily chain) are situations in which each element in the chain is explained by some element other than itself.
Now suppose that every contingent B that is to be explained is either: one of the elements in a chain of strictly contingent things like some of the ones depicted above; or there is a chain C of strictly contingent things like some of the ones depicted above and a sequence B1, …, Bn of contingent things such that
- Bn —> B;
- for each k from 1 to n - 1, Bk —> Bk +1;
- Cm —> B1 for some element Cm of the chain C.
Then (as you can easily check for yourself if you "do the math"), every contingent thing is explained by some contingent thing other than itself.
(Notice that in all this I am assuming that the relation of explanation is transitive; i.e. that if A —> B and B —> C, then A —> C. I think we share this assumption, anyway.)
So, you see, for your argument that the two principles are jointly untenable to go through, you need to exclude from the outset causal explanatory chains with that kind of structure. (Formally: you need the causal explanatory relation to be what is called "well-founded".)
Now, as I see it, you are arguing that causal explanation excludes non-well-founded explanatory chains due to the additional assumption that causes must be prior to their effect. But then I ask of you: "prior" in what sense? Obviously enough, you can't say "In the explanatory sense" here, because that would be simply restating what is to be explained. There must be something particular to causal explanations that rules out non-well-foundedness.
(There are some contexts in which non-well-founded explanations are perfectly acceptable. Here's an example from thermodynamics. If I ask of you why the volume of the gas has increased, you may answer that it is because the pressure has increased while the temperature remained constant; and, if I ask you why the pressure has increased, you may answer that it is because the volume has increased while the temperature remained constant. Granted, you may want to point out that there's a deeper explanation to be given in terms of the states of the gas molecules. But my point is that there are reasonable explanatory schemes, for certain levels of description of physical reality, which only track counterfactual co-dependencies among variables and therefore admit non-well-founded explanations.)
Just for the sake of the argument, I will suppose you are assuming that causes must be temporally prior to their effects. That may be so (although quantum physics strongly suggests it is false; but physics mostly talk of causality between events, not things, and there may be some room for dispute over the counterexample there.) Even if so, temporal priority by itself doesn't rule out the possibility of infinite causal chains (and thus of infinite causal explanatory chains); for that you need the additional assumption that time has had a begging.
However (pace many famous — and flawed — arguments for the existence of God), I'd argue that doesn't really matter for theism, unless it concedes that God exists IN time. For, otherwise, in claiming that God causes the whole, one is implicitly admting that an atemporal thing can cause temporal things, and thus also forcefully that the cause need not be temporally prior to the effect (since God is not temporally prior to anything: God is ATEMPORAL — meaning God iis not even COMPARABLE to anything by the relation of temporal order; God is simply neither prior to, nor posterior to, nor simultaneous with anything anything at all.) So, as I see it, at least traditional theism needs to also argue for the additional assumption that temporal existence has had a begging (and I mean temporal existence: which may be — and almost certainly is — far larger than our observable physical universe); or else provide some alternative reason why non-well-founded causal explanatory chains with only contingent elements (and particularly infinite causal chains) are ruled out.
Notice that I'm not claiming those arguments can't work. I'm just pointing out that, from a logical point of view, there's quite a lot going on "behind the scenes", so to speak. I'm just trying to bring out that to the fore.
Sorry for the many typing mistakes you'll probably find here, but I've said too much and I'm too lazy to check it all 😅
Fair enough! Your formulation of your argument makes sense. I understand that each part has an explanation (e.g. A1 --> A2, and A3 --> A1). I am simply quite skeptical that this translates well into metaphysics, especially since they are a cause in the same respect/of the same mode, i.e. existence.
I do agree with you on what my assumptions are, however. I think you have correctly diagnosed what's going on, and that I'm "arguing that causal explanation excludes non-well-founded explanatory chains due to the additional assumption that causes must be prior to their effect." I tried (but didn't do the best job) of trying to mean prior not only in the temporal sense but in a simultaneous/non-temporal way, but maybe this is just sidestepping the issue you raised. At the very least, my argument doesn't hinge on that.
I see your point with your example from thermodynamics, but I am unsure if that is a fair example. Perhaps I actually failed to see your point. But I think in some sense that there is somewhat of a category mistake. How science explains the world and how philosophy explains the world can be fundamentally different, first of all. To put it simplistically, science concerns the "what", whereas philosophy ultimately wants to solve the "why". I think non-well-founded explanations can be fine with the former way, but fundamentally incomplete with the latter. I do think that it is fair to take issue with this characterization of mine, but something in me becomes frustrated when "philosophy" claims that we do not need to address a *sufficient* explanation of why. But this again comes from my position on PSR (which by no means is uncontroversial).
Building on the potential "category mistake," I think that the above argument is dealing with mathematical relationships and proportional correspondence, which, if you are simply trying to explain physical phenomena mathematically, this is perfectly adequate. But I don't think that this transfers very cleanly over to explaining how anything exists at all. I think it begs the question, which physics also does (and, I should add, *should* do if it wants to be precise as it is). But I do not think that this *should* be done in the discipline of philosophy. To summarize, I think that there is a good argument for there well-groundedness being necessary in specficially ontological explanations. I would see Pruss (or potentially someone like Koons or Swinburne) for an argument that's actually good, lol. But you're probably already familiar with arguments much better than mine.
If I am tracking the discussion correctly, it seems PSR is coming into play. My argument for sure hinges on a very particular form of PSR, which if rejected poses problems to my argument. There's no avoiding that, as I see it.
I also agree with you that temporal priority doesn't necessarily rule out an infinite (explanatory) causal chain. I still have conflicted feelings by arguments of the sort, but I'm not necessarily convinced by certain "Kalam" arguments, especially.
I'm not sure if I quite grasped your last argument (my bad)---I think I am missing a little context. But I personally don't think that theism really needs the assumption of a causal explanation being temporally prior. In some ways, I find openness non-temporal causality more in line with some forms of theism than strict adherence to temporal causation as solely explanatory. That's why I don't find Kalam arguments to be the most convincing, especially when it's directed at non-theists. Many theists (including Aquinas) didn't and don't have a logical problem with an eternal universe, i.e. the physical cosmos in some sense being simultaneous with God's existence. Aquinas even points to necessary beings being compatible with other necessary beings---it's simply that there is one necessary being which is necessary simpliciter and not due to another necessary being. They just think that it contradicts Scripture.
I want to commend you on your ability to draw out the underlying principles at work in discussions like this. As I see it, there is no avoiding it--and if we fail to do the work that you're doing, it seems that there will be endless talking past each other, which is no fun, and which is far too common. I think that most of the work and disagreement among philosophers ultimately concerns fundamental principles even more than the validity of arguments. For, if you reject one of the underlying assumptions, you do not have to affirm the conclusion even if the argument is valid. To be frank, I think there are a lot of assumptions which come with theism (and atheism). I don't think that's a problem, it just shows well what the stakes are. If you're going to take God, then you're going to be taking many other things along with you. I just happen to find it incredibly reasonable and quite fulfilling on the side! :)
Personally, I'm very skeptical of there being any substantive difference between explanations in science and metaphysics (and, in fact, I lean heavily towards Quinean epistemic naturalism, taking philosophy to be continuous with science). But that's beside the point here, because I agree with you that metaphysics should strive towards explanatory closure in ways that particular sciences need not (and perhaps should not, as you've already pointed out).
That said, I don't think this duty of metaphysics gives us any ground to believe that explanatory closure is possible, even in principle (and most likely it is not possible in practice). So, although I share with you the intuition that there should be an ultimate explanation for existence, I'm constantly worried that this might be just epistemic wishful thinking, as I myself, at least, can find no decisive reason to believe that explanatory closure in metaphysics is possible. For me, faith in the possibility of explanatory closure is just a somewhat Kantian practical imperative of metaphysical inquiry, not a theoretical ground for it.
Now, I agree with you that my example from thermodynamics is somewhat unfair, in the sense that volume and pressure are co-dependent variables in a broadly phenomenological framework; in other words, they are just two distinct aspects of the same underlying ontological reality (the state of the gas), and not two really distinct things. The "because" in that explanation is phenomenological, not ontological.
That said, Spinoza might point out that the same is (trivially) true of God and nature, since they just ARE one and the same thing. Of course, Spinoza is a necessitist, so for him there aren't even contingent things to be explained in the first place. But my point here is that there is at least one metaphysical system according to which an explanation of that same circular sort — "God exists because of nature, and nature exists because of God" — would be tenable. As a matter of fact, that's the ONLY adequate explanation that CAN be given for the existence of nature within that system. (Also, notice that nature is the only analogue to your "totality of contingent things" you will find in Spinoza.)
So, as you can see, completely ruling out circular causal explanations in metaphysics would by no means be a small feat (as it would immediately refute Spinoza's theological account, for one). That's why I think your stance about explanations in metaphysics requires robust reasons. Again, I myself instinctively tend to believe that ultimate explanations in metaphysics shouldn't be of the aspectual kind, as they are in Spinoza; but, as I've also said, for now at least, this is just epistemic optimism from my part, as I have no compelling reasons to back that instinct.