20 Cosmological Arguments: An Analysis

[@nemdenemam9753]

2:02:09 'the only way to get a temporal effect from a timeless cause is free will' How can 'will' exist without temporality? Any definition of 'will', that I can think of, includes some kind of decision based on preconditions and on your 'wants'. But something can't 'will' to create unless it conceives a lack of creation first, can it? If 'creating' is the process where through a will, 'nothing' becomes 'something' then it requires 'nothing' first, doesn't it? How else would it work? Is there some philosophical model for 'will' without any form of temporality? Or even just 'creation' without temporality where the act of creation is not preceded by a lack of created thing? (I mean temporality in any sense of ordering, not necessarily our 'time')

[@alittax]

34:45 The point of the argument isn't that the necessary being created itself (so it's not the cause of its own existence), but that it exists necessarily. Its existence isn't a result of the existence of something else, it is uncaused. As for 35:54, the theist doesn't just reiterate that it's true, but the theist shows you that the chain of causality must start at a necessary being. So the properties of the observable universe point to the existence of a necessary being. The alternative explanation for the existence of the universe is that the reason for the universe's existence is beyond human understanding. Or (as the third option) we may be able to understand it somehow, and the answer isn't the existence of a necessary being, but it's an explanation which no human has (to our knowledge) thought of, but may do so in the future.

[@musaaziri3568]

in 28:02 you sayd that it is not clear why "the series of beings which depend on another can't be infinite" I would like to know if you think that a world ( totality of existence ) with ONLY dependent beings can exist? if we define dependent beings as beings which in order to exist, must obtain/derive/inherit their existence from that on which they depend; like for example a child inherits it's existence from it's parents. THEN, the existence of any dependent being would necessitate some kind of source from which to derive their existence; because dependent beings cannot exist by themselves. but in a world with ONLY dependent beings, each being would have to obtain/derive it's existence first in order to exist. in such a case, no being can be a source from which to obtain/derive existence, because each being has to obtain/derive it's existence first. hence in such a scenario, there would be no existence in the first place. in summary, in such a world, every being would inherit it's existence, but there would be no being from which to inherit it; hence there would be no existence. it would be like asking is there water in a world with only empty cups, where each of the cups would need to obtain water first, but there would be no source from which to obtain it. Sow, I would like to know if you agree or disagree with this reasoning, and why.

[@intelligentdesign2295]

"Consider an illustration. Suppose that the series of contingent beings were merely a series of self-propagating robots, each one bringing the next into existence. No matter how far back in time you go, there was just one of these robots functioning. Each robot functions for, say, ten years, then, in the last few minutes of functioning, propagates a new robot. (Just as the new robot starts to function, the old one ceases to function and disintegrates.) Now, in this scheme, we have a cause for the existence and functioning of each of the robots. But we have not identified a cause of the robot series as a whole. For example, what causes (or caused) the series to be one of robots rather than one of rocks, roses, rats, or reindeer? What is the cause of there being any robots at all? That question has not been answered. In the same way, even if we know that each contingent being is caused to exist by some other contingent being, we still do not have an explanation for the fact that there are contingent beings. There might have been nothing at all or only necessary beings." (Stephen Layman "Letters To Doubting Thomas")

[@mnmmnm925]

Joe what are the strongest ones here in your opinion?

[@MajestyofReason]

The three strongest, in my view, in no particular order, are: (a) Pruss and Rasmussen’s basic contingency argument; (b) Swinburne’s inductive cosmological argument; and (c) Pruss and Rasmussen’s modal CA.

[@DigitalGnosis]

41:40 “is contingency more like colour or is it more like weight” *whispers* (wrt this single property that I’ve said they don’t share and absolutely nothing else). This is very interesting to me - why is this illustration supposed to provide reasons against Humes contention that the contingency argument commits a composition fallacy? (or “composition/division” for those who can distinguish imagination from reality /s). The illustration says here’s two things one has the property the other doesn’t and the thing I want to establish as having the property is like the thing in the example that has the property only with respect to having the property therefore the thing that I’m trying to establish having the property has the property!

[@yourfutureself3392]

Very very interesting video and good rebuttals. I agreed with most of them, I think

[@musaaziri3568]

if a series doesn't began then how can it end? sow you are saying that an infinite series end? wouldn't that be a contradiction. How can an infinite series end if it is infinite?

[@MajestyofReason]

The series of negative integers in their usual ordering is infinite and has an end: {…, -3, -2, -1}. It isn’t hard to conceptualize something having no beginning (and so being infinite in one direction) while also having an end. Again, think of the negative integers with their usual ordering relation.

[@musaaziri3568]

@@MajestyofReason I think that the crucial point here is the fact that an infinite cannot be crossed, because otherwise it wouldn't be an infinite. Now from - infinity to zero there is an infinite amount of units. therefore you cannot traverse the infinity present between minus infinity and zero; because otherwise it wouldn't be an infinite series. But if one says that you can "start" from - infinity and reach zero ( this moment in time ) that would meen that an infinite series of events has been traversed. Now the natural question would be: How can an infinite series be crossed? because if it is traversed than it is not an infinite. I would really like to know your opinion, Thanks.

[@MajestyofReason]

@@musaaziri3568 I address that argument with Wes Morriston in my Kalam playlist - check out the video therein on the successive addition argument🙂 (we go over a 2021 paper he published criticizing the argument)

[@musaaziri3568]

@@MajestyofReason I saw the video. To me it seems that Morriston simply accepts that an infinite series can be traversed, without explaining how. Sow I don't really understand what is his point. An infinite series cannot be traversed because otherwise it wouldn't be infinite. He simply reject it without explaining HOW an infinite series can be traversed. Sow I simply don't understand his objection.

[@MajestyofReason]

@@musaaziri3568 the onus of justification isn’t on him to prove or show how it can be traversed; the onus is on the proponent of the Kalam to prove that it *can’t*. And as he showed, they have done no such thing.

[@JohnnyHofmann]

Awesome video Joe

[@dianarising7703]

Very interesting, but the audio problem made it really unpleasant to listen to the video MoR was responding to. I'm wondering if MoR was the one that sped up the audio of the video they were responding to in order to save time.

[@DigitalGnosis]

In Pruss’ cannonball example shouldn’t a complete physical description at t0 include the cannonball or is the idea that the explanation leaves out why a cannonball is being fired at all? I.E. it’s not contrastive?

[@DigitalGnosis]

Because the cannon, the potential energy of the gunpowder, the velocity of a lit fuse moving toward the charge etc surely explains the firing?

[@MajestyofReason]

@@DigitalGnosis right, so I believe what we’re doing is just focusing on the cannonball, not the canon, gunpowder, fuse, etc.; and what we’re doing is the following. Let the exact time the cannonball is fired be 12:00, and suppose it’s on flight up until 12:01. We’re then focusing on the interval (12:00, 12:01], and seeing that there’s an infinite, beginningless chain of explanations for the posterior states and positions of the ball in terms of earlier states and positions of the ball. Each member of the series is the explained, and yet the series as a whole is left unexplained; and furthermore the series as a whole still demands an explanation despite the fact that each member of the series is explained. At least, that’s how my (highly fallible) memory recalls the example🙂 (I discuss the example drawing straight from Pruss in my LCA video)

[@DigitalGnosis]

@@MajestyofReason Thanks, I'll give that a watch and read Pruss' actual example too!

[@Hello-vz1md]

Cool video as always I would also like to recommend few great resources on cosmological Arguments by Muslim philosophers 1.The Burhān: Arguments for a Necessary Being Inspired by Islamic Thought by Muhammad Hijab (Available for free) 2. Necessary existence and Monotheism : An Avicennian Account of the Islamic Conception of Divine Unity (Elements in Religion and Monotheism) by Mohammad saleh Zarepour 3. Divine Certainty: A Qur’anic and Philosophical Argument for God by Hamza Andreas tzortzis (article) 4.Kalam cosmological Arguments by Muhammad Hijab (book) 5. Spacetime argument by Abdullah Al andalusi

[@BatmanArkham8592]

This is irrelevant to this video but I really miss Elephant philosophy and his awesome videos

[@chad969]

I heard he deconverted. Does anyone know if he’s still a theist?

[@BatmanArkham8592]

@@chad969 if I remember correctly he said he is an agnostic Christian theist

[@jasonkirven2120]

@@BatmanArkham8592 wonder why that is

[@BatmanArkham8592]

@@jasonkirven2120results of critical thinking and Philosophy ig

[@ILoveLuhaidan]

@@BatmanArkham8592what the hell is an agnostic Christian theist?

[@mitesh8utube]

2 hour 36 minutes long "clip" from a 12 hour long "video". EPIC!

[@ebrietassmaragdina1063]

I know it has nothing to do with the topic, but.... Do you have in mind to talk about prioritarian monism? I'd like to know what that notion sounds like to someone much more seasoned in philosophy than I am. I currently only know of Jonathan Schaffer who advocates it. I find it a bit intriguing to see that scholars who subscribe to that thought are not plentiful.

[@jameymassengale5665]

Also, the coded message in PI seems to be the CA that links reality mind and identifies the mind because the key is John 21. That would be a great discussion of the existence of the mind in polynomial time.

[@chad969]

Hey Joe, I would really appreciate your input on something if you have time. I'm currently reading Josh Rasmussen's book, _How Reason Can Lead To God_ and in chapter 3 he makes an argument about how dependent parts can't add up to something independent. He uses the analogy of white marble tiles, and how they can't add up to anything that isn't white and marble. Do you think there's anything inherently contradictory about the notion of an infinite chain of dependent things, the whole of which is independent in the sense that it doesn't depend on anything beyond itself? My intuition says this is a coherent idea, even though I can't quite make sense of how dependent things could add up to something independent. What do you think?

[@etzie1728]

How many examples of independent things can you think of?

[@chad969]

@@etzie1728 I can’t think of any examples of things that I know are independent. Though maybe the whole of everything is independent in the sense that it doesn’t depend on anything besides itself

[@NoahKilleen]

What makes the most sense to me is to think about what a dependent thing is by its very nature. Something is dependent if it lacks any potential to exist without outside help (some kind of prior condition, explanation, or cause). The main idea is that such a thing’s existence is conditional: This existence of a dependent thing is only possible if some outside condition is already met. With this idea of dependence, it becomes more clear (at least to me) why an infinite regress still leaves us with a puzzle. No matter how big we make our chain of dependence, every additional item doesn’t get us any closer to satisfying or removing this conditional nature. It persists no matter what we do, spreading like a virus. We just keep adding things to the pile of “stuff that needs an outside explanation in order to exist, but doesn’t yet seem to have one.” If we stop at any point, and never introduce something non-dependent, then the collection of things in question simply shouldn’t exist at all. It would be purely unrealized potential. Stretch this out to infinity and I think the result is the same. There is still nothing in existence that could have satisfied or removed that conditional nature-nothing that can explain why there are the dependent things that there are (as opposed to something else, or nothing at all). One might assert that, perhaps, this collection of dependent things simply has no explanation at all (its just a brute fact). But, to me, this seems to amount to one of two possibilities: Either (i.) the dependent things in question weren’t really dependent in the sense we defined earlier (and so at least some things are independent) or (ii.) the “whole infinite regress” itself is, in some weird way, prior to its parts, and IT is what is most fundamental / brute. The second option is actually something Rasmussen himself seems to be open to. He mentions it in “Is God the Best Explanation of Things?” and brought it up in a response to an email I sent to him asking a very similar question to yours. Rasmussen isn’t 100% convinced that a world made up of purely dependent parts is impossible. It just depends (haha) on how dependency works. The central question is this: How can the totality of reality be independent? One possible answer: There is some part of reality which is independent (i.e not everything “in” reality is dependent.) Another possible answer: Reality in total is ontologically prior to its parts (a view called “priority monism”), and all of the individual dependent things in reality depend “upwards” upon the whole. This second answer seems to be the hidden intuition between statements like “The universe just exists,” and perhaps even the intuition behind your thought as well. It's also gaining popularity among some physicists and cosmologists. You could have an infinite regress with no specific part of it being the “independent foundation”, so long as the totality itself, as a kind of monistic whole, exists in that special robust way, PRIOR to its parts. THAT would then be the foundation. Rasmussen clarified in the email that all of the later stages of the argument proceed from two important properties of fundamental reality: (i) that it is fundamental (and so unlike dependent things) and (ii) that all else proceeds from it. This is just as true in the case of the independent monistic "whole" as it is with a specific item (or collection of items) somewhere out there "in" the totality which exists independently. There are even views of God that are compatible with a monsitic picture of the world (pantheism, panentheism, etc.) Obviously there are also naturalistic alternatives (which Joe outlines in this video), but to me the basic idea is still very powerful. But I'm just an amateur philosopher, so I hope this was helpful :)

[@musaaziri3568]

@@NoahKilleen can I ask to you a question about "priority monism"? Sow, if I understood it right, it asserts that there are dependent beings and that the totality of thoose dependent beings is independent ( but no entity within this set is independent ). I don't understand how this statement is justified. for example: my computer is dependent, if I take together all the computers that exist and ever existed, does that totality became independent? well, obviously not. Sow, what makes priority monism different from this example? if this example is false, then how can priority monism be true?

[@NoahKilleen]

​@@musaaziri3568 Hey! It's actually been a while since my comment and I've changed how I think about some of this stuff. My original comment (it seems to me now) misrepresented how priority monism ought to be understood. The debate around priority monism happens almost exclusively within the context of metaphysical grounding / ontological dependence. This is a kind of dependence that is distinct from typical cause and effect (i.e. things bringing about other things in time), as it has more to do with "what it is" to be a thing in the here and now. You can think of it as "drilling down" into the present moment instead of extending "backward" in time. Priority monism is the view that "wholes" (of some kind) are ontologically prior to their "parts." You can think of a typical example: a coffee mug and the clay which composes it. Priority PLURALISM (the predominant view in philosophy) says that facts about the "whole" (the mug) are grounded in / depend upon facts about its smaller components--i.e. the clay. Priority MONISM says the opposite: It is the larger integrated "whole" which is more fundamental and which grounds facts about the smaller pieces (which you can imagine being "broken apart" from a larger unified whole). Zooming all that way out, a priority monist (who isn't a theist) is likely to say that the "cosmos" or the "universe itself" is what is most fundamental. This is the opposite of what a pluralist would say, as they would lean towards there being some kind of "fundamental particles" or "fundamental quantum fields" or something like that. The key thing---and what I wasn't really grasping before--was that NEITHER pluralism nor monism automatically gives you a "foundation" of any kind. They are just differing views of the "direction" that ontological dependence flows. You could have a situation where priority monism is true, and there are just infinitely-many bigger "wholes" of reality upon which things can depend. This is a parallel to how infinitism would work going the other direction, where there are smaller and smaller "parts" of reality we can drill down into, never finding the "base level." Rasmussen is specifically trying to structure his argument to be inclusive of both monism and pluralism, but this is a more recent development that isn't as apparent in "How Reason Can Lead to God." Instead of talking about "dependent PARTS" and "dependent WHOLES," he prefers to say "dependent THINGS add up to dependent TOTALS (or plurals)." This leaves open the relationship between the dependent things in question (whether causal, part-to-whole, whole-to-part or something else). Similarly, the "blob of everything" in Rasmussen's argument isn't a "whole" in the traditional sense (like a mug). It is a gigantic plurality that contains ALL THINGS which exist, whatever those things happen to be. If "the mug" depends on "the clay," then those two items would be represented SEPARATELY as distinct things within the larger "collection of all things which exist." As a result, priority monism does not automatically result in a situation where dependent things "add up" to an independent total. All it does is establish the "direction" of dependence between parts and wholes. If we accept that, we can still run Rasmussen's argument and get to an independent "thing." It's just that, given priority monism, this thing would "overlap" with everything else in a weird way. tl;dr I was wrong in my previous comment to contrast foundationalism with priority monism. They are totally separate issues. You could have one, the other, both, or neither. Hope that helps!

[@jameymassengale5665]

BTW, it's from Descartes argument that I have my understanding of the trinity. That you divide a mind into three parts, the being or consciousness, the logic or reason that communicates truth, and the movement from idea to idea. 1.being 2. Logos 3. Movement in train of thought. Now I can personate any of the three while talking to myself but still that I am one mind. Is that the modalism heresy? Remember I'm talking about myself and could do the water, ice, steam analogy but that wouldn't be exact, but I also can't see my mind as containing three distinct persons. Also this is the biblical language, Father being, Son logos, Spirit/wind movement, THREE IN ONE GOD=I AM.

[@Ken_Scaletta]

This is incoherent dogshit. There is no such thing as a "mind." You are dividing one imaginary thing into three imaginary things. The Trinity is not even Biblical, it's a 4th Century Catholic invention. Jesus never heard of the Trinity.

[@jameymassengale5665]

On Descartes CA, premise 1. Descartes is saying that we don't begin to exist from conception in a vacuum and that at whatever point we are aware of the idea of God and everything else based on how our sensory experience and how we learned to communicate knowledge . (I recommend practicing or at least reading his meditations, his debate with Thomas Hobbes). Descartes is then graphing reality in his coordinate system and with infinity asking how he gets the idea of infinity from the experience of counting. This is idea is more than "more than I can count " and set theory later proved this in its math of infinite sets. Another such workable idea is e=root of-1, why is it useful, and then Euler's identity? Like the liars paradox how does have meaning? The set of all lies is only meaningful to one who knows the idea of truth and where does that idea come from? We experience facts but what is the idea of the experience of truth like mathematical truths. Here the levels of reality might better be qualified as levels of perception, does a fish perceive reality as I do? Yet we know we perceive reality fairly close to how a might from observing it's behavior. So Descartes is saying that God is an idea that when perceived in reality can explain the perception of reality that are invisible but true like infinity and concludes that knowledge of that infinity is communicated to us from the being of infinite knowledge. That's not a paradox, I'm a truth teller and every thing I say is true, am I lying? There must be a set of all truths known by at least one mind who communicates them. Brain complexity might be factor in translating truth to emotions and language but it can't be said to create truth which exists in a mind, nor does a mind like ours seem to create truth so it must come from a perfect mind which we call God.

[@Ken_Scaletta]

This is incoherent AF, but don't waste your time practicing meditations that Aquinas himself admitted were worthless. There is no God. Live your life.

[@educationalporpoises9592]

Really random, but I had a dream for some reason that I was doing a group interview/party with my friends from high school and Zendaya and... Tom Holland! I kept telling Zendaya that her boyfriend d was a genius philosopher that runs a channel that argues about God and what not and that she doesn't appreciate that aspect of him nearly enough. I never got to ask Holland about the channel though.

[@MajestyofReason]

Lmao

[@Hello-vz1md]

This is weird I can't find my previous comment anywhere although Joe hearted that comment weird anyway I will just post that again for viewers Cool video as always I would also like to recommend some great resources on CA by Muslim philosophers 1.The Burhān: Arguments for a Necessary Being Inspired by Islamic Thought by Muhammad Hijab (Available for free) 2. Necessary existence and Monotheism : An Avicennian Account of the Islamic Conception of Divine Unity (Elements in Religion and Monotheism) by Mohammad saleh Zarepour 3. Divine Certainty: A Qur’anic and Philosophical Argument for God by Hamza Andreas tzortzis (article) 4.Kalam cosmological Arguments by Muhammad Hijab (book) 5. Spacetime argument by Abdullah Al andalusi 6. Historical works of Ibn sina, Al Gazali, Mulla Sadra, Al kindi, Ibn Rushd

[@Hello-vz1md]

Al Farabi,Ibn Arabi,ibn taymiyyah and Al razi This books are available as free pdf in Z library

[@BatmanArkham8592]

@@Hello-vz1md can you add the links of those pdf also

[@jameymassengale5665]

Joe if you're dispute is purely an exercise OK, but your arguments don't hold especially with regard to two things. First, indeterminate coin flipping, the truth is of course that it's strongly determined just hard to predict. It is exactly knife throwing physics. Second is your understanding of set theory, your badly arguing against the axiom of choice. Look up Banak tarski paradox, then whether that is a valid dispute, then zermelo and set mapping. Natural numbers (necessary numbers) N, are the infinite set to which the others are mapped whether countable or uncountable, then you can do the set establishment for particles, or plank measures,or whatever. That's why the ontological contingency argument is so powerful, because numbers can quantify or qualify as measurement. As in geometry the point is necessary quantity but it's defined by the necessary quality being ontologically the shortest segment of the contingent line of consecutive points.

[@MajestyofReason]

“First, indeterminate coin flipping, the truth is of course that it's strongly determined just hard to predict.” Yes, obviously actual coins are deterministic and exist in a deterministic system. I explicitly stipulated at the beginning that it’s a fair and indeterministic, chancy coin. (I also explicitly stipulated this at 53:11.) So you’ve completely missed the point. My point is that even in cases of indeterminism, there are probabilistic explanations. To make this vivid, I used a macroscopic example familiar in everyone’s experience, modified of course to make it truly indeterministic. But later in the video I pointed out how this extends to genuinely indeterministic phenomena like quantum phenomena (under the Copenhagen interpretation, that is). “Second is your understanding of set theory, your badly arguing against the axiom of choice.” Wrong. I never argued against the axiom of choice anywhere in the video. “Natural numbers (necessary numbers) N, are the infinite set to which the others are mapped whether countable or uncountable” This is wrong and evinces a clear misunderstanding. The natural numbers are *countably* infinite. Uncountable infinites *cannot* be (bijectively) mapped to the natural numbers. An uncountable infinite is non-denumerable infinite, where a denumerable infinite is an infinite that can be paired in 1-1 correspondence with the naturals. The real numbers, for instance, are uncountable. And they cannot be (bijectively) mapped to the naturals, as Cantor showed in his diagonalization argument. “then you can do the set establishment for particles, or plank measures,or whatever.” I didn’t deny in my video that there cannot be a set of particles, or plank measures, or whatever. This is an abstract object (specifically, a set), and contingency arguments aren’t interested in explaining abstract objects. If you carefully listen, I only ever questioned that there are various collection-like *concrete* entities, such as purely contingent totality events, purely contingent sums of concrete objects, and so on. So once more, your comment rests on a misunderstanding. “That's why the ontological contingency argument is so powerful, because numbers can quantify or qualify as measurement.” Nowhere did I challenge that numbers can quantify or qualify as measurement. This is obviously true. But in the video, I only ever challenged that there exist concrete totality events, concrete mereological sums, etc.

[@jakek.403]

@@MajestyofReason this man is clearly insane and senseless, as evidenced by the incoherent and ravening garbage he left in other comments here; why even bother with such things lol? Really nice vide tho

[@Ali124hdkflc]

Hello, I enjoy your content. I'm curious, are you an atheist or theist?

[@BatmanArkham8592]

Agnostic. Watch his video on why he is an agnostic

[@Bhuyakasha]

If you could talk at 2x speed you would do it wouldn't you :)