The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

Does contingency give us reason to believe in God? The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument (LCA) answers in the affirmative. In this video, I explain Alex Pruss’ LCA from the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology.

Video Outline

1 Introduction, background, and argument 0:00
2 Principle of Sufficient Reason 4:49
3 PSR: OBJECTION TIME 49:14
4 Global Causal Principles 59:57
5 Toward a first cause 1:09:19
6 The Gap Problem 1:26:14

Presentation Outline

1 Introduction
2 Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)
-----2.1 Self-evidence
-----2.2 Koons-Pruss epistemological argument
-----2.3 Evolution (Induction in science)
-----2.4 Inference to best explanation
-----2.5 Precluding chaos
-----2.6 Nature of modality
----------2.6.1 Narrowly logical account of modality
----------2.6.2 Lewisian modal realism
----------2.6.3 Platonic account of modality
----------2.6.4 Aristotelian-essentialist account of modality
----------2.6.5 Aristotelian-causal account of modality
----------2.6.6 The argument
-----2.7 Philosophical argumentation
3 Objections to PSR
-----3.1 Modal imagination argument
-----3.2 Van Inwagen’s modal fatalism argument
-----3.3 Quantum mechanics
-----3.4 Contrastive explanation
4 Global Causal Principles (CPs)
-----4.1 Objection: causing the causing
5 Toward a first cause
-----5.1 The PSR
-----5.2 Objections
----------5.2.1 Can we even form BCCF?
----------5.2.2 HECP
----------5.2.3 Taxicab Problem
-----5.3 CP for wholly contingent states
6 The Gap Problem
-----6.1 Agency
-----6.2 Goodness
-----6.3 Divine Simplicity?
-----6.4 Gellman’s argument for uniqueness and omnipotence

Links

Craig and Moreland, “The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology”:

Against the BCCF:

Re: some of my stuff on divine simplicity/CT

And, of course, the usual resources... :)

[MajestyofReason]

Btw, the section from 1:38:56 onward also contains a whole host of responses to Feser's Neo-Platonic proof (mutatis mutandis)! :)

[_titanslayer_]

I am currently reading Pruss' chapter on LCA in Blackwell. Your explanation is helpful. Thank you.

[yourfutureself]

Great vid. I really like this channel.

[shahjadsadab]

The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology is heck of an effort.

[logos]

Nice video! My first article I read on the Leibnizian Argument was this article, the I read the Monadology and Necessary Existence. I think the Leibnizian argument is always one of my favorite arguments that I come back to. I do have some comments for discussion, as I've been pondering modality lately.

24:00 "Truths of arithmetic are necessary (wrt Godel)"

I take a pretty radical view about "why" truths of math are necessary that diffuses this objection. Note, when people say things like: 2+2=4 is necessarily true, they aren't exactly correct.

If we're in Z mod 3, and "2" is actually an equivalence class representative of all numbers who have a remainder of 2 when divided by 3, and "+" is addition on equivalence classes, then 2+2=1 (where 1 is the representative of the equivalence class of ... who have remainder of 1).

This point may seem a bit pedantic but there's a reason I bring this up. Technically, what's necessarily true is:

IF we define the natural numbers, and
IF we define addition in some manner equivalent to Peano's axioms, and
THEN we have 2+2=4.

This whole compound conditional statement is what's necessarily true. In fact ALL necessarily truths of mathematics take this exact form, i.e. the form: If we have a set of assumptions in which P holds, then P holds. Here are more examples.

IF we have a Euclidean space, and
IF we have a right triangle in that Euclidean space,
THEN the sum of the squares of the legs of the right triangle = the square of the hypotenuse (assuming we know what those words mean).

Here's one more:

IF we're talking about the Harry Potter novels written by our current J. K. Rowling (and not some counterpart),
THEN Snape kills Dumbledore.

Oh wait, that's not mathematical, however it's a proposition which takes the exact same semantic form, and is necessarily true for the exact same reason. Namely, the sentence contains its truth bearer in the first part of the condition. For any proposition in which: "If we a set of things which logically entail P, then P" this proposition must be necessary, and not for some "mystical" reason, really. So what are we to make of Godel? The way I take Godel, really, is that even undecidable truths in some axiomatic system, are necessary relative to some OTHER axiomatic system. Let's take a classic example, The Continuum Hypothesis.

The Continuum Hypothesis isn't undecidable, simpliciter. It's undecidable under ZFC axioms (and others). So, to be meta for a second, the proposition: "Under ZFC axioms, The Continuum Hypothesis is undecidable" is a necessarily true proposition. Further, if we do find some set theoretic axioms which would entail The Continuum Hypothesis, then it would be necessarily true that: given those axioms, The Continuum Hypothesis is true.

I've never seen a necessarily true statement that didn't, once properly analyzed, take this form. Even so-called "a-posteriori" necessary truths seem to take this form. Instead of saying: "All horses are mammals", we could instead say:

1. If a horse is defined as...
2. If a mammal be defined as...
3. Then all horses are mammals

In this way one would know the truth of this proposition without ever having seen a physical horse. Now that seems like a copout maybe, but I want to point out that this is how math works a lot of the time. How long did it take us to discover Quaternions? Octonions? Homology Groups? Thousands of years. These, just like horses, are in a sense just as a-posteriori. You don't understand the pythagorean theorem until you've seen at least one right triangle drawn for you, with legs and hypotenuse labeled, and you don't fully understand why horses are mammals, perhaps, until you've seen a horse.

Metaphysics? Let's look at the cause example. I argue we cannot fully understand the sentence "nothing can cause itself" until we fully understand the definition of the word "cause", or in other words, to the extent that we think this sentence isn't deductively necessary, but we think it necessary in some other sense, we haven't defined the word "cause" in such a way that the definition matches our intuition such that deductive entailments match our intuitive entailments. For example, implicit in the definition of cause could be that the cause must be ontologically distinguishable from the things it produces (this is a cause, this is an effect, they're always different). Then saying X causes itself would be saying: X causes an effect which fails to be ontologically distinguishable from itself. So X causes, and X fails to cause (by definition) forcing a formal contradiction.

I outright deny 4. What I think people get confused is that axioms describe possible universes of discourse (i.e. possible worlds). And to the extent that axioms are necessary, it's because all possibilities are necessarily possible by S5. Now we could say that about, say, principles like the principle of sufficient reason. But I don't think that principles are necessary either. I guess I'm more of a pragmatist in this regard. It's useful for us to act as if the principle is true, but we may find a better principle that does what we want without certain other burdens, etc.

For example, if Pruss's PSR here is necessarily true, then why would he talk about another one involving natural facts with Koons? What if people hold PSR's which are logically incompatible with one another? Well if they're both necessarily true but also inconsistent, what does that even mean? Are there necessarily true contradictions? I just don't think that's right. On my view, I think what's going on is something like this. Axioms / principles consider possible worlds in which they are true and things are derived from their being true (in that world). And then we decide, based on our experience, etc. whether those we live in a world more consistent with principle A or B (if they compete).

So yeah, this comment has become 3x as large as I expected, I didn't realize I've come to disagree with Pruss so strongly about modality since I read this last. It's crazy how your views can change in 2 years.

[GhostLightPhilosophy]

Would you be able to do a video on how Craig attempts to cross the Gap Problem with his Kalam article in the Blackwell Companion?

[maximilianstein]

Hi Joe, I hope you are doing well. I wanted to thank you for making this video, I thought it was really informative and helpful. I have a point relating to the first route of 6.1. You deny premise 1 because you say that there are distinctly metaphysical explanations. The example you give to counter premise 1 is that of a substantial form which grounds the way in which a thing's parts are arranged in the way that they are. I think I would agree with this critique, but I'm wondering if it ultimately leads to a denial of the agency of the First Cause. Here is what I mean, and I may be wrong on some terms because I am not as familiar with metaphysics as you are so forgive me for that. The example you give of the substantial form of a thing grounding the ways its parts are arranged seems to be to imply that the substantial form is, at least in some way, concrete because it is able to actually ground the matter that makes up those parts of the thing. Now, it seems to me that if you say that something metaphysical which is not concrete, like the PSR for example, cannot actually ground anything things, it lacks the power to do so since it is not concrete. So it seems to me that this first cause, in order to ground the whole of contingent reality, must, in some sense, be concrete for if it were something like the PSR or other metaphysical principles or abstract objects, it would not have the power to do so. It seems to me, then, that the First Cause would have to be concrete in some sense. I think this would leave you with the options of saying that the First Cause either has agency or is an indeterministic concrete object. Further, it seems to me that the later could not be the case because if it were an indeterministic concrete object it would intrinsically change when it created the whole of contingent reality. It would be nice to see what you think of this. Thank you again and God bless.

[esauponce]

_“Hiccup”_
Thank you for giving me a way to say that easily without trying to spell the acronym HECP.
Great video!

[MrGustavier]

24:25 _"First we know from Kirt Gödel that for any set of axioms there will be truths of arithmetic that we cannot prove from such axioms in which case they aren't necessarily true according to this account in question but they would be they would then be contingently true but surely that's absurd right truths of arithmetic are not merely contingently true"_

I would need some clarifications about that.
In computer science we talk about "undecidability", and Gödel sentences are considered undecidable, NOT _"TRUE"_ ! In fact I am not sure what it means to say that a something is _"true"_ in arithmetic if it isn't provably so...

[MrGustavier]

54:04 _"But and explanans need not entail its explanandum"_

But what if one takes the Aristotelian causal modality ? If metaphysical possibility is reduced to causal possibility, then doesn't a same cause produce the same effect ? Why wouldn't a necessary cause necessarily entail its effects ?

[MrGustavier]

22:00 Why is it a _"vicious"_ circularity ? Isn't that simply circular ?
Vicious circularity involves sets containing themselves does it not ?

[adn]

The objection time song was beautiful.

[zarla]

Nice!! Great presentation Joe! Finally someone mentioned gellman's argument for omnipotence xD. What do you think about his argument, does it succed? It looks very plausible to me..

[matthieulavagna]

Great! I will watch with great interest! Please make one on Josh Rasmussen's modal contingency argument 😉

[monkeymadness]

Great video as always! I've always found Van Inwagen's reductio quite compelling but I can't find any counter-response to Pruss' arguments for why explanations need not be entailing/contrastive anywhere, so now I'm questioning whether that critique of the PSR can be salvaged.

[thomistica]

Good presentation, as usual. I think an interesting objection always worth considering but rarely discussed in contemporary philosophy is roughly Kantian, viz. we have warrant for affirming synthetic _a priori_ propositions, such as the PSR, only insofar as they express conditions of the possibility of experience. If this is the case, the PSR won't get us to a transcendent being lying beyond possible experience, so the cosmological argument fails. Granted, this kind of view entails epistemological commitments we might find unattractive for independent reasons, but in contrast to some blithe dismissals of the PSR it at least fits with our intuitions that contingent objects of experience must have explanations.

[veridicusmind]

I have a question. I agree that for an explanation, the explenan need not entail its explanandum, but then it seems that this explanations only has the necessary conditions for the explanandum to follow. But doesn't PSR say that the conditions must be sufficient, i.e., that the is entailment? If there is a conditional statement, then with the sufficient conditions in place, the conclusion will be entailed, so what exactly is meant by a 'sufficient explanation' when only the necessary conditions need to be in place? I haven't read Pruss' book on this yet because of time-constrains, but I would like to see your answer!

[diegonicucs]

My mayor issue with most of the counter objections (objection to the objections) is that they are ether a bunch of contingent things that can be explain by other contingent things (and therefore no addressing the issue of necessary existence) or examples of conjunctions (ODD and EVEN) without addressing issue in hands which is why this conjunctions require and explanation their self. Is like pushing back the necessary explanation for the original issue.

although probably I'm missing something....

[tomphilips]

Great video! I was wondering if you could make a video about Ibn Taymiyyah on reason and revelation.

[rebelresource]

Oh boy, not sure how you will address concerns here! Very curious! I will be replying soon.