Never seen it discussed here before, I think it’s pretty interesting because it resembles the cosmological argument quite a bit, without relying on any reference to infinite regresses or how impossible they may be. Copied from the Prosblogion:
1 Every contingent fact has an explanation (PSR).
2 It is a contingent fact that some contingent beings exist. Call this fact ‘(E)’.
3 Therefore, (E) has an explanation (from PSR and 2).
4 On pain of circularity, no contingent fact or contingent being could explain (E).
5 If some contingent fact has an explanation, but is not explained by any contingent fact or contingent being, then it must be explained in terms of the free choice of a necessary being.
6 Therefore, (E) must be explained in terms of the free choice of a necessary being (from 3-5).
7 If some fact is explained in terms of the free choice of a necessary being, then there exists a necessary being who chooses freely.
8Therefore, there exists a necessary being who chooses freely, and this everyone calls ‘God’ (from 6 and 7).
I especially fine the move from 3 to 4 interesting, it guarantees that there is a necessary something even if you think 5 is going a little too far. Step 5 also underlines the connection between theism and libertarian free will, which I’ve always thought was there but never seen it logically confirmed.
There is an error in equating “free choice” with “non=contingent”.
Although free choice necessitates non-contingency, non-contingency doesn’t necessitate “free-choice”.
That's the part that I have a problem with too. But as I've thought through what you said, which is initially what I was saying to myself, I think the argument may work after all with the addition of a premise that you may or may not find controversial.
9 The only alternatives to contingency are free choice and necessity (you said free choice isn't the only alternative to free choice, I agree, necessity is the only other I can think of though).
so let’s revise 5.
5a: If some contingent fact has an explanation, but is not explained by any contingent fact or contingent being, then it must be explained in terms of the free choice of a necessary being OR the necessary act of a necessary being.
now this next premise should be impossible to disagree with:
10: If E is explained in terms of a necessary act of a necessary being, then necessarily E.
however,
11: NOT necessarily E ( 2, which states E is contingent).
12: E must be explained in terms of the free choice of a necessary being. ( 5a and 11).
and 12 is just a restatement of 5.
Now, this isn’t absolutely solid without an argument that free-choice, contingency, and necessity are the only options. But free-choice is the only alternative to contingency and necessity that I’ve ever even heard proposed before, so at the very least we have a very strong inductive argument here, unless you think it’s false that it’s a contingent fact that some contingent beings exist, which is as non-controversial as it gets as far as I know.
I consider even minerals as life forms. Also there is the issue of spontaneism and bions, which mean that there is some cellular life inside or on almost all planets. Reality is alive. Its source and cause must also be alive. Just like a human gives birth only to a human, a God gives birth only to a universe like itself, or a god like itself. I believe we experience the unconscious minor aspects of divine creation, like the dross and the unimportant. Humans are important morally, but not really. They are really specks, like bacteria.
This is a large assumption, but I think I’m better off with this as opposed to agnosticism.
Most of the work in the argument (i.e., proving a necessary being who chooses freely) was just stipulated into premise 5, and then carried down to the conclusion. P5 certainly doesn’t follow from any of the earlier premises. As a stand-alone premise, it’s something that really needs support. Unfortunately, supporting what was written into P5 was supposed to be the point of the argument in the first place. You can re-write P5, but then the conclusion becomes a lot less sexy when it just becomes, “Therefore, there exists some necessary fact(s) that explain contingent facts”.
About P2:
Some people will object to P2. IOW, it could be a necessary fact that some contingent beings exist. (All determinists, religious and naturalistic, would claim this. But so can non-determinists). Since that’s the case, 3 needn’t follow. IOW, it wouldn’t necessarily follow that E has an explanation. You can just change the premise to “Necessary facts have an explanation”. But then you’d have to also think that your “necessary being”—(God, in the conclusion)—has an explanation. (Probably not what you’d want, right?).
About P4:
There’s not much pain involved. It’s pretty much how explanation works for any model of explanation other than a Foundationalist one. Whatever circularity is, it is really not more painful than say, in the dictionary, to define a word by other words, and to continue on until you eventually use one of the same words.
I have a little trouble discerning which way that you mean which words, such as “fact” and “being” and “E” (is that the contingent fact or the statement concerning the contingent fact?)
So let’s see if we can get on the same page grammatically.
A contingent state merely means the state has yet to be caused.
If a dependent state exists, its dependency has occurred and the state has been caused.
Thus it is no longer contingent, but an “existing state/fact”.
The term “free-choice” merely means an acausal event.
And “acausal” merely means that there is no explanation.
Thus the words “it must be explained in terms of the free choice of …” comprise an oxymoronic phrase. It is saying that the explanation must be of the “inexplicable event” of …
Well, this is a modal argument. In that framework a contingent state is one that is neither necessary nor impossible. It’s like possibility minus necessity.
I’d need to see a good argument acausal being the same thing as ‘no explanation’. On libertarian free will, a volitional event isn’t caused in the sense of being a product of deterministic forces, but they have explanations.
Besides, ‘free-choice’ can’t merely mean an acausal event, because there are other types of acausal events that people postulate, like random events or certain kinds of quantum events.
Free choice comes in as the only way that a necessary being can be the explanation of a contingent state of affairs, without an interposed contingent state of affairs that would violate 4. I think! That introduction of free will to the argument is certainly the most difficult/controversial part.
There’s circular, and then there’s self-referentially circular. Even coherentists don’t like arguments so circular that a single premise references itself, which is what you have here. If you really think circular arguments are ok, then you can add a premise to the effect of “No contingent state of affairs can be the explanation of itself” which seems intuitively strong to me, and gets the same result. Though circularity really should be enough.
As far as premise 5, that is where the argument turns, but the defense of it is there if you know what contingency, necessity, and etc. are. What's entailed before 5 is that contingent states of affairs are caused by a necessary thing acting in a non-necessary way (or else E would cease to be contingent). How does a necessary thing act in a non-necessary way without introducing another element to E? If such is impossible, then the universe itself doesn't make any sense because the other premises are sound. But libertarian violition seems to fit the bill nicely for an explanation of how a necessary thing can act without the results themselves being necessary.
I don’t see how a single premise references itself when you think that the explanation of contingent facts does not terminate in a necessary one. —Explanation in that case is ultimately circular in the same way that the explanation/definition of any given word will use other words, and eventually re-appear in the definition of some different word. (And we don’t complain about the dictionary). Clearly, it is a problem if the word you are defining is used in its own definition. But I see no reason to think that’s happening with the explanation of contingent facts.
Not really. There’s nothing wrong with that premise, it just doesn’t change anything. Somebody who disagrees with the argument isn’t going to think that contingent facts explain themselves, only that other contingent facts might.
I’m pretty sure I know what contingency and necessity are. My issue with P5 was the inclusion of “free choosing being”—rather than simply, “some necessary fact”. “Free choosing being” was what I wanted the argument to support—or thought it was supporting. But it just sort of finds its way in there, and is carried down like long division.
I think they are viewing it as a set issue. The set of all contingent things can’t have, as an explanation, a member of that set- or the member would be explaining it’s own existence. X exists because X. That’s why I said it was a really really tight circle- the self-referencing kind.
We aren't talking about some contingent facts being explained by others. We're talking about the contingent fact "There are contingent facts". There are no other contingent facts to explain it with, there are just the very things we are trying to explain. So if you grant that no contingent fact can be the explanation of itself, I don't think you can explain "There are contingent facts" with a contingent fact. Yeah it doesn't change anything, it's just another way to get to the same place if an argument being circular doesn't dissuade a person.
Well, the problem is that you need a way in which a necessary fact can be the cause of all contingent facts- and the contingent facts remain contingent. “Being” is pretty leading, but it can’t just be a fact either because some of the contingent facts we’re talking about are that certain concrete objects exist. So you need a necessary object or substance or real thing, not just a necessarily true proposition. This necessary thing has to act in a way such that what is entailed by it’s actions isn’t itself necessary. So it’s still a bit of a leap from “Necessary thing acting in a contingent way” to “necessary being engaging in free will”, but not as big of a leap as it looks at first. “Volition” is a quality that immediately comes to mind when trying to pin down a quality a necessary thing has to possess in order to bring about contingent states of affairs. Not the only one, though!
If X exists because X, then you can remove X from the set of contingent facts, and make it a necessary one----because that’s all a necessary fact/being is. That circularity itself really shouldn’t be a problem for anyone arguing that a necessary being explains all contingent ones, (as if there’d be an explanation for that necessary being, other than itself).
It’s open to object that the fact “There are contingent facts” is itself a necessary fact—and not a contingent one. Since necessary facts either have a circular explanation or none at all, it’s no problem for the fact “There are contingent facts” to have a circular explanation, or none at all.
I don’t need that, personally… but if someone wants to adopt your conclusion without being a determinist or something then maybe. One issue is that I would have liked to see some kind of support other than, “Here’s where I want to end up in my conclusion, so I’ll insert some stuff to make sure I get there”. IOW, why are the necessary facts we’re talking about not simply dust particles, some other kind of molecule, or something like that?
Since where does it state that a human being is God?
It states that Christ is the Yehovah and Yehovah/God situation is interconnected.
Human beings are NOT CHRIST either, we follow the paths of the Christ (Man) being the alpha frequency of our spiritual interactions involved in the atmospheric communication.
Christ (Atmospheric OX), was a sacrifice, because human beings Adam/Eve caused the sacrifice by changing origin Earth’s Heaven (atmospheric frequencies). It was once a Paradise on Earth, Paradise was altered and the higher “alpha” frequency was sacrificed because of it…therefore we could not return to Heaven by light as we used to and we died instead.
Christ was therefore the sacrifice regarding the loss of our origin Alpha signals in the atmosphere (spiritual over view of the reasons of CAUSE for suffering itself) causing us all pain and suffering in our cells by receiving these new alpha signals because our cells now received the message to die. Death of the cell is the reason why human beings think evil thoughts and why we suffer illness for not listening to God in the previous Earth/Heaven of our origin state.
Therefore Christ as an Act in the Earth Heaven/Atmosphere was part of the Healing of our Spirit and when OXYGEN MASS evolved, so too does the human spirit, alleviating us of pain and suffering and causing our conscious awareness to heighten into loving,kind,caring human beings. We will always DIE because the origin signal was destroyed, the reason we DIE. Therefore the Alpha was sacrificed in the origin spirit in Earth’s Heaven because of human choice trying to transform themselves and keep eternal life as a angelic human being.
God is just the Philosophical over view of the Creation Act demonstrating that the Acts of God came out of O the first signal in Light as the signal that caused the creative Act.
The signal moved in the symbolic reference of how Light created via the symbol of G from a “point” it flowed…it caused separated cells forming O and in these light sound cells, the D implied the value of the completed cell as its removed sound. Hence the value of reference for light creating and causing separated bodies factored G O D. Therefore G O D was never actually a self manifested spirit, it was only spirit’s movement and once the O bodies all separated GOD returned to light O.
O as the fixed signal in Light Mass until this signal is no longer made manifest in Origin Light’s Creative mass. The fixed signal in Light keeps our cellular information manifest and this is not GOD. Scientists therefore do NOT and NEVER WILL have G O D…this is only Origin Creation and human beings ARE NOT origin creation.
If the explanation of all contingent facts is a necessary fact, then you aren't disagreeing with the argument anymore, you're just taking what seems to me to be a very strange route to get there. Yes, if some X is the explanation for 'some contingent facts exist' it is a necessary fact. If circularity is no big deal for you, then I suppose you've just shown that it's also true by definition.
Somebody arguing that a necessary being explains all contingent ones doesn't have any circularity to worry about- that, after all, is the position the argument is taking too.
Yeah, that my my mistake- you're right that 'there are contingent facts' is a necessary fact, if we count negatives; "There is a unicorn" is either true or false, if it's true it's not false, if it's false it's not true, its truth is contingent, so its falsehood is too, at least one of the pair must be true, so there you go- it's necessary that there are some contingent facts.
To get back to the argument, the premise to be explained actually is that 'some contingent beings exist', not that some contingent facts are true. The importance there is that the argument doesn't purport to explain negatives. It seems obvious to me that if any given individual contingent being could have not existed (which is true by definition) then it could have been that they all didn't exist, in which case "Some contingent beings exist" would be false. If "Some contingent beings exist" could have been false, then it is certainly contingent.
I've always taken it as a given that physical things like molecules and dust particles must by their nature be contingent and not necessary. If somebody was going to argue that such things could be necessary, I'd have to re-examine that, but I suppose my instinct would be to ask "All of them? No? WHich ones? Why are those ones special?"
You can do this though- you can say that quantum undetermined events take the place of free will in the equation. Then your necessary being would be 'the laws of physics'. To me, it's extremely counter-intuitive that the laws of physics could be necessary beings, but to some, that may be more palatable than theism, sure.
Specifically, I have 3 problems with the argument:
P5 includes “free choosing being”, rather than simply “necessary fact”. The former wasn’t supported, and supporting it was supposed to be the point of the argument.
P2 could be false. For example, if there is a necessary being, who necessitated contingent beings, then ‘E’ is a necessary fact.
I don’t think there’s any vicious circularity in P4. If the set of contingent facts is justified by a contingent fact, that’s viciously circular. But a set cannot be a member of itself, so there is some conceptual confusion going on for someone to be able to think that in the first place. (Analogy: It’s like thinking of the ‘universe’ as the set of all things, and thinking that the universe is also a thing in the universe).
You have a problem with circularity, but the apparent circularity of “X explains X” doesn’t seem to matter to you when ‘X’ is a necessary fact/being—only when it is a contingent fact/being. Why is that? Is your issue with circularity itself?
Like I said before, that's because it's not clear how a necessary being could bring anything into existence that wasn't itself necessary without a mechanism like volition. Like what you were saying about dust particles- if dust particles were the necessary being, well...they are pretty predictable. If the particles are necessary, you would expect anything they bring about to be necessary to- there's not going to be a possible world where the same arrangement of dust particles just up and do something else.
Volition, on the other hand, clears that up nicely.
If there was a necessary being who necessitated contingent beings, then either it necessitated [i]those particular[/i] contingent beings, in which case they aren't actually contingent after all, or it just necessitated that there be some unspecified contingent beings, in which case you still have the problem I described above, plus the additional problem of how it could be that there being some unspecified quantity and type of contingent beings is contingent, but there not being any contingent beings at all is impossible- for that's what the situation would require. I don't think either volition or quantum in-determinism gets us past that, I don't see how it's an option at all.
As far as I can tell the only way for E to be false is if it turns out there is no such thing as contingency. What do you think of that possibility (er, you know what I mean)?
I still don’t really understand what you’re saying here. That “If the set of contingent facts is justified by a contingent fact, that’s viciously circular” is precisely the claim 4 is making. Sure, somebody claiming that might also be guilty of conceptual confusion, but since the point of 4 is to show that a person shouldn’t make that claim, what’s the impact?
Nothing in the argument states or implies that necessary facts/beings require explanations. Do you think that they do?
Leaving aside quantum indeterminism,why can’t you just give volition to the contingent beings?
Necessary facts/beings can necessitate contingent facts/beings, and they would still be contingent if they had, say, free will.
Part of the problem is that P4 is ridiculous. When you parse it out, it reads like, “On pain of circularity, no contingent fact/being can explain the fact that it is a contingent fact that some contingent facts/beings exist”. What I thought was happening was a confusion in thinking that you can say the same thing of a set as you do about its members. But to try to simplify the issue… Maybe this is better: It is not viciously circular to think that any given contingent fact is explained by other contingent facts. If you want to talk about the set of contingent facts, then you can’t do so meaningfully… because you can’t apply what you do to the members of a set to the set itself.
If I am assuming that contingent facts all have explanations, (as per the first premise), then obviously I will be assuming that necessary ones do too. Why wouldn’t I be? If it is not a problem that necessary facts have no explanation, then I won’t find it a problem for some contingent ones not to have an explanation either.