Aquinas' Argument from Contingency

A redated post.

Perhaps the most enduring of Aquinas's Five Ways has been the argument from contingently existing things, the third way. Amazingly, some people actually think that Aquinas's cosmological argument is something like this.

1. Everything has a cause.
2. So the Universe has a cause.
Therefore, God exists.

Now let's set aside the question of whether that which causes the universe has to be God. Surely there is something God-like about anything that has the power to cause the universe to exist, even if that being is not, strictly speaking, God. At the very least, naturalism, the view that they there is nothing over and above the physical universe, would be false if this argument were to be correct.

But the problem is obvious. If the universe has to have a cause because everything has to have a cause, then the universe not only has a cause, it has a cause of its cause, and a cause of the cause of the cause, and the cause of the cause of the cause of the cause....There are people, Like Bertrand Russell, who have suggested that you can refute Aquinas, or even all forms of the cosmological argument, by asking the question that an 8-year-old child knows how to ask, namely "Who made God?" Aquinas may have been called the Dumb Ox, but you don't get to be the Angelic Doctor by being stupid. I was a little surprised to find an article, published in Philo in 1998, which attributed this kind of argument to Aquinas.

The range of what needs a cause, in other words, has to be restricted, so that the things in the physical world do need causes, and God does not need a cause. One way to do that it in the way that is employed by the present-day Kalam Cosmological Argument:

1. Whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

This argument doesn't require that God needs a cause, because God never began to exist. However, Aquinas did not argue in this way either. The reason for this is that Aristotle had said that even though the universe is caused to exist by the Unmoved Mover, it nonetheless never began to exist. It has existed from eternity. And Aquinas maintained that while you couldn't prove Aristotle right on this score, you couldn't prove him wrong either, and so premise 2 is an article of faith rather than an article of reason; that is something that is must be believed on the basis of the revelation delivered through the Bible and the Church. (Aquinas' concept of faith is not what a lot of people today mean by faith; belief that is contrary to reason). But articles of faith are going to be useless in arguments for the existence of God, since obviously anyone you are trying to persuade will not accept the Bible and the Church as authorities. (You may be able to use the Bible as ancient historical documentation, but not as the Word of God).

So how did St. Thomas Aquinas argue for theism? Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger, in their book Reason and Religious Belief (OUP, 1991) present the following argument, which they call the Thomistic cosmological argument.

1. A contingent being exists.
2. This contingent being has a cause of its existence.
3. The cause of its existence is something other than itself.
4. What causes this contingent being to exist must be a set that contains either only contingent beings or a set that contains at least one noncontingent (necessary) being.
5. A set that contains only contingent beings cannot cause this contingent being to exist.
6. Therefore, what causes this contingent being must be a set that contains at least one necessary being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being exists.

Here, we can respond to any challenge coming from the "Who made God" quarter by pointing out that a the causal principle in 2 requires only that contingent beings need a cause for their existence.

The critical premise here seems to be 5. One could argue, and I that Aquinas does argue, that if the series is a series of contingent beings, then there would have to be an infinite number of contingent beings. But the number of contingent beings in the universe is finite, so this can't be right.

Further, if there were an infinite number of contingent beings, each explanation would be an explanation in terms of something that needs an explanation as much as did the thing we were explaining. If you explain the position of the earth by saying it rests upon a turtle, is it really a satisfying answer to say that it's turtles all the way down.

We might want to ask this question: Why are there any contingent beings at all? The existence of particular contingent things that explain the existence of particular other things is not a satisfying answer to this question.

Russell responded to this question by saying "The universe is just there and that's all." If everything in the universe is contingent, does that make the universe contingent. But if each particle in the universe can cease to exist, doesn't it make sense to suggest that they all can cease to exist collectively?

But how do we know that everything in the physical world is contingent in the required sense? I believe that my car exists contingently because I have seen cars fall apart and go to the junkyard. I believe that people and animals exist contingently because I have seen them die. But what happens when I die? Since this is a theistic argument, we have to assume that our discussion partner is an atheist. What an atheist most likely believes is that we are all conglomerations of material particles. While we are alive, those particles work together organically, when we die, the functional unity that exists amongst the particles in our bodies is dissolved.

But while we know that organized unities of things in the world invariably fall apart, do we have equal confidence that the basic particles we find in the world (atoms, quarks, strings, or whatever they finally tell us it is) exist contingently. Scientists actually tell us that matter is not created, and matter is not destroyed. So couldn't the basic stuff of the physical universe be the thing that exist non-contingently, the existence of which does not depend on anything else for its existence.

So, does the basic stuff of the physical world exist contingently? I can't find anything in Aquinas that gives me a reason to think that it does. But suppose we have good reason to suppose that the universe began to exist. This was an article of faith for Aquinas, but if the standard interpretation of Big Bang cosmology is correct, then it has a basis in modern science. Historically, the atheist has answered the question "But why does the matter in the universe exist" by answering that the matter in the universe has always been there, and since it has always been there its existence does not need to be explained. If this response isn't available, then doesn't the beginning of the universe at the Big Bang provide a reason for supposing that the stuff of the physical universe exists contingently and not non-contingently?

Aquinas on the natural law, or how to avoid centuries of bloodshed

A redated post

These are my class notes on Aquinas and the natural law. But notice something important. If Christians had realized from the 13th Century on that governments are set up to secure human earthly happiness, how much blood on the hands of Christians could have been avoided?

The Natural Law
How right and wrong are based on reason
I. Human nature and the natural law
We can reflect upon human nature and find those things that will help us actualize our potentialities. This is what Aquinas calls natural law.
Human nature is the same from culture to culture and from century to century. So we can discover the natural law by reason.

II. Using reason to discover the law
How do we discover which objects, circumstances, and ends are good?
The good is determined by reason, what is in accordance with the natural law.
We can derive moral principles by reflecting on what is in accord with nature and our natural inclinations.
Since we have a natural inclination to preserve ourselves, suicide is against the natural law.
It is natural to care for our offspring, so we must educate our young to see that they reach their potential.
Since we are higher than the beasts, we must actualize out potential by pursuing the truth, including the knowledge of God.

III. Why don’t we all agree?
We are blinded by passion, bad habits, and ignorance.
Do we know these things in our consciences? Conscience is not a source of knowledge itself, but is that rational activity of apply moral knowledge to particular cases.
Conscience is fallible, but the best we can do is follow our informed conscience to the best of our abilities.

IV. Aquinas’s Four Laws
Eternal Law
Natural law
Divine law
Human law

V. The Eternal Law
The eternal law is the law by which God governs the universe.
Everything in natural follows the eternal law blindly, but humans have the capacity to obey it or disobey it.

VI. Natural law
Discussed earlier, the law available to reason that governs human moral behavior and is aimed at human happiness on earth. The virtues enjoined by natural law are temperance, courage justice, and wisdom.

VII. Divine Law
The divine law is given to us by revelation, and concerns how to achieve eternal happiness, in other words, how to be saved.
The virtues enjoined by this law are faith, hope, and love, the three holy virtues.
These can only be obtained through the grace of God.

VIII. Human law
Human law is instituted by governments.
If the law is legitimate, it must be rooted in the natural law. To obey such laws is to obey God.
Any human law that violates natural law is not a law at all.

IX. Aquinas and Dr. King
This raises a question of illegitimate laws, such as racially discriminatory laws (Jim Crow laws). Religious leaders in the South had written Dr. King a letter saying that while they approved of his coming to Alabama to work for civil rights, they asked that he obey the laws of the state while he was there. King didn’t follow their advice, and wrote the famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail explaining why. Aquinas says in some cass it is the lesser evil to obey a bad law to keep the peace, but in other cases civil disobedience in the name of a higher law may be necessary.

X. Aquinas an Human Laws
Some laws enforce the natural law  and should be uniform from one society to another (laws against murder and theft, for example).
Other laws set out details left open by natural law for the sake of uniformity in a society. It doesn’t matter if you drive on the right or the left, so long as everyone drives on the same side.
Other laws have to be reached on the basis of situational judgment. How old should a person have to be to drive a car. 16 seems to low of an age in urban Phoenix, but too high for rural Kansas.

XI. The extent of the law
Human law should not attempt to render illegal all kinds of immoral behavior. It should only be concerned with major evils that harm others and undermine and ordered society.

Political legislation should concern matter of justice, and should stay out of issues that concern spiritual matters or private morality. This is because human laws must be grounded in the natural law (aimed at human earthly happiness and not at salvation, and discoverable by reason) and not divine law (known by revelation and aimed at human happiness).

This represents the foundation of the separation of church and state, and on these matters the Catholic Church deviated from Aquinas’s teaching when they used the power of the government to enforce Catholic belief. After the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion (which left 1/3 of the population of Europe dead), we can see that Aquinas had it right.

A defense of the First and Second Ways

HT: Ben Yaachov

Aristotle and Aquinas on the true purpose of life

A redated post. 

Aquinas takes Aristotle as far as he can go, but then argues that human life is only really fulfilled in the vision of God. This has relevance to the argument from desire in Lewis.

Some notes from Notre Dame.

Bertrand Russell accuses Aquinas of Special Pleading

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know m advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given I in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. (H.W.P.p463)

VR: Funny thing. A good deal of present-day philosophy of mind could be accused of the same thing. In many discussions in the philosophy of mind materialism is a base assumption that is not to be questioned, and the debate concerns what version of materialism is true.

Aquinas on ethics

VI. Aquinas’s teleological ethics
Similar to Aristotle, as you might expect
All events occur to achieve some end.
Humans have their own natural ends and inclination.
However, humans can choose how they will fulfill a given end.
Ethics concerns what ends are worthy to pursue.
Good fulfills our natural end, evil is a deficiency or privation, something that keeps us from fulfilling our natural goal.
VII. Are all actions either good or bad?
Aquinas distinguishes between the actions of humans and human actions. The former are voluntary, the latter are involuntary.
While the latter are neither good nor bad, the former are always either good or bad.
The will naturally desire what is good, but it needs reason to tell it what is really good and the appropriate means for achieving it.
VIII. Three features of an action
The object of the action.
The circumstances
The end that is sought.
D. All these features of an action are necessary to evaluate the goodness of an actions.
IX. Aquinas and Oprah
Consider Oprah’s giving cars away. In itself the action seems is beneficial.
However, the act can be wrong if, for example, the cars were stolen.
If the needs of the people were trivial, but the financial burdens of here family were greater, that would affect the quality of the action.
If she was just trying to get praise (or ratings) then the motive would not be worthy.
In order for an action to be truly good, the object, circumstances, and end must all be good.
X. Where Aristotle’s Moral Theory Falls Short
Aristotle’s ethics is purely naturalistic,
He treats humans as one more species in nature. He does not believe that humans have a special relationship to God. There is no sense that what is right is commanded by God.
The final end of human life is the happiness and self-fulfillment found in the appropriate development of all categories of human excellence, especially intellectual virtue.
This moral vision is good as far as it goes, but must be supplemented and corrected by a Christian understanding.
XI. The human good for Aquinas
We desire the good in its fullest form.
Any good found in the natural realm can only be a particular and finite good.
Nature does not provide us the means to fulfill our spiritual nature, but points beyond itself to what does fulfill us.
If the purpose of life is the possession of the supreme good, this can only be found in God himself.
This is not just knowledge about God, but acquaintance with God.
Perfect knowledge of God is impossible in this life, so it must be attainable in a (heavenly) afterlife.

Responses to the discussion on the Argument from Contingency

I'd like to respond to at least some of the comments on the Argument from Contingency. I probably won't get to them all on this post, so be patient.

Remember, although I am a believer in the existence of God I have not, at this point, endorsed this version of the cosmological argument.

Steve Esser thinks that the argument refutes physicalism, because it shows that there must be something that make an individual objects parts be a unified individual. But could that which unifies a thing's parts be something other than God? But the argument, of course is designed to show that God is the necessary being on which the contingent objects in the universe depend. That is certainly Godlike though, of course, we are still a long way from John 3: 16.

David correctly points out that the argument I presented was not Aquinas's Third Way. That's true, but Aquinas's Third Way, as stated, seems to have some serious problems with it. Aquinas suggests that if there is an infinite series of contingent existents, then it is possible for each of them to cease to exist, and if it is possible, then in the course of an infinite period of time every possibility would have to be actualized, and if so that would mean that the possibility that everything goes out of existence would have to have been actual. That being true, if the universe is in existence now, it would have had to come into existence out of nothing, but nothing comes from nothing, so therefore there has to be a necessary being. But an infinite time would not guarantee the actualization of all possibilities. The infinite series of multiples of 3, for instance, does not include 22. So I think the version of the argument I presented actually avoids some difficulties that the original argument had.

Though I understand that the best source for Thomist thought on these arguments is the Summa Contra Gentiles rather than the Summa Theologica.

Steve responded by saying that he saw something problematic about the idea of a changeless entity causing the universe, and David responded that while this might be difficult to understand there is no proof that the idea is incoherent.

Clayton argued that an infinite series of contingent objects is not a patent absurdity, appealing to Hume's (and Paul Edwards') argument that if you can account for each individual in the series, it makes no sense to say that you can't account for the whole series.

He also makes an important point when he says that Aquinas objects to some infinite regresses but does not maintain that an actual infinite is impossible. If he took that view, he would then have an argument in favor of the claim that the universe had to have a beginning (the now familiar Kalam argument made famous by William Craig) but Aquinas explicitly says that this is an article of faith.

I think Aquinas holds that every object has to have a contemporanously existing cause, and that an infinite serious of those objects would generate an absurdity, while he would not say that about in infinite series of past causes.

The Unmoved Mover

Another old post revived; my Philosophy 101 class is going over Aristotle and Aquinas:

In St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways, we find the most evident way is the argument from motion, establishing the existence of an unmoved mover. Let me present a version of the argument as follows:

1. At least one thing, call it X, is in motion.
2. If X is in motion, then its motion must be caused.
3. If X's motion is caused, then the cause of that motion must be either a) a series of movers which are themselves moving or b) a series of movers that contains at least one unmoved mover.
4. A series of moved movers, even if it is an infinite series, cannot explain the motion of X.
5. Therefore, the motion of X must be explained in terms of the existence of an unmoved mover.
6. That which does not move but causes the motion of all other things deserves to be called God.
7. Therefore, God exists.

If we look at this argument, premise 1 seems undoubtable. Let us grant that the motion of X must be caused. The options in 3 look exhaustive. I'm going to grant 6 for the sake of argument. Mind you, we're a long way from John 3:16. But it does lead us in the direction of a belief in something non-physical on which the universe depends. But how about 4. Why does 4 seem unsatisfactory?

Well, put something somewhere, say, a five-dollar bill on top of your dresser. Now come back the next day, and see if it is still there. If you see it still there, you don't need an explanation. It is where you expected to find it. If it is gone, we need an explanation. Somebody removed the bill. So, we are inclined, at least initially, to suppose that rest needs no explanation, but motion does. Hence an infinite series of moved movers doesn't do the explanatory job needed, and you need an unmoved mover.

Or do you? Perhaps we think this way because we are accustomed to living in a gravitational field, called planet earth. But if we didn't live in a gravitational field, but lived on the space station, we would expect things to be moving, and we would have to explain why things get stopped.

So the idea that motion stands in special need of explanation, while the absence of motion does not, is an idea that modern science seems to reject. Without this assumption, the argument to the Unmoved Mover fails.

Or does it? Are there any good Thomists (followers of St. Thomas Aquinas) out there who can explain to me what I might be missing?

Aquinas on faith and reason

I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
Articles of reason would include:
1) Some trees lose their leaves in winter, while others do not.
Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
2) Pi= 3.1416…
Articles of faith would include
1) God is a trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2) God created the universe at a particular time in the past.
Articles of faith and reason would include
1) Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
God exists
VI. The concept of faith
Many people think of faith as belief in the teeth of evidence to the contrary. Aquinas did not think of it this way at all. He would have approved of C. S. Lewis’s statement, “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in.” Rather, Aquinas held that faith is the acceptance of propositions on the authority of the Bible and the Church. However, he maintained that it was perfectly reasonable to accept these authorities.

Aquinas on religious language

I. The problem of religious language
When we say, for example “God is good,” what do we mean? Are religious terms univocal, equivocal or analogical?

II. Do the terms mean the same things?
If the terms are univocal, that means God-talk means exactly the same thing that it means when we apply it to human beings. But God’s goodness is different from human goodness.

III. Do they mean completely different things?
A soda, a pancake, and a trumpet’s pitch can all be flat, but the words mean different things in each case. Does the term “good,” when applied to God, mean something completely different from goodness as applied to a friend?
Aquinas says no. The meaning of all our terms, even those we apply to God, are based on experience. There has to be some similarity between the concept as applied to God and the concept as applied to humans, otherwise we would not be created in the image of God.
IV. The Negative Way
The negative way claims that we speak of God’s properties by negating the properties applied to finite creatures.
But we cannot assert anything positive about God.
V. Analogy
Terms applied to God are similar to the terms applied to humans.
Starts with an object we know and say that what we do not know is like what we do know.