(Another) Cosmological Argument - Norman Geisler

[tonyrey]

Additionally, to believe (contra Plato) that you can directly perceive objects external to you is to be an Aristotelian. To believe in a correspondence theory of thruth is to be Aristotelian. To believe that deductive syllogism is a valid way to extend one’s knowledge is to be an Aristotelian. To believe that being courageous is the superior middle action between being either a coward or rash/foolhearty, is to also be an Aristotelian. If you believe that man is a rational animal, you’re Aristotelian. And on and on it goes… I could probably point out numerous ways in which, unbeknownst to you, you’re an Aristotelian.

Thank you for a spirited defence of Aristotle! People tend to forget he was a pioneer in so many different fields: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, politics, psychology, aesthetics, biology, anatomy, physics…

 

[Oreoracle]

If you’re looking for the philosopher who is correct in every belief he holds, you’re very likely to never get beyond the ‘man in the mirror.’ You’re doing little more than throwing out the baby with the bathwater here. But why? Unless you know that a certain quirky (or ‘false’) view that a philosopher holds in one area X entails falsity in another area Y, you are not justified in believing that the philosopher’s statements about Y are false. I would challenge you to name one prominent philosopher (contemporary or past) who doesn’t hold rather quirky views that some would find humorous.

Okay, so we aren’t certain that he isn’t diligent with his philosophical ideas even though he is severely lacking in regard to others, but it seems obvious that this laziness of his (or perhaps arrogance) would carry over to other subjects he has written about.

Think about what you’re arguing here: According to you, if a husband beats his wife every night, smokes meth, and uses his rifle to shoot at imaginary people (hallucinations) that he perceives due to his usage of meth, we aren’t justified in believing that he wouldn’t be a suitable parent. Sure, he does all those things, but maybe his violence and recklessness wouldn’t be directed toward a daughter, eh? And yet, you surely wouldn’t advise such a man to adopt a daughter. Why is that?

Let’s take a ready example to illustrate my point. David Lewis is probably the most well-known philosopher today who has created an ontological system based on the modal logic you’re fond of.

I’m not really fond of it. As I said, outside of organizing one’s thoughts, I think modal logic is useless, be it modern or medieval.

Both. There simply is no either/or dilemma here. The only responsible philosophically-oriented individual will be the one that studies Plato and Whitehead, Aristotle and Loux, Aquinas and W Norris Clarke. To ignore the past or the present is woefully to your own detriment.

Some philosophy is simply nonsense, and so I would never advise anyone to bother reading about all philosophies (if such a feat is possible).

Additionally, to believe (contra Plato) that you can directly perceive objects external to you is to be an Aristotelian. To believe in a correspondence theory of thruth is to be Aristotelian. To believe that deductive syllogism is a valid way to extend one’s knowledge is to be an Aristotelian. To believe that being courageous is the superior middle action between being either a coward or rash/foolhearty, is to also be an Aristotelian. If you believe that man is a rational animal, you’re Aristotelian. And on and on it goes… I could probably point out numerous ways in which, unbeknownst to you, you’re an Aristotelian.

Thank you for a spirited defence of Aristotle! People tend to forget he was a pioneer in so many different fields: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, politics, psychology, aesthetics, biology, anatomy, physics…

Actually, this isn’t something I’ve forgotten or otherwise overlooked. I certainly concur with Aristotle on a few things, but those things are very fundamental–most people recognize the utility of syllogisms, for example, and we would have developed them with or without Aristotle. (The Stoics and Buddhists developed their own functioning logical systems, for example.) Aristotle wasn’t the first to believe that we directly perceive objects. In fact, he probably wasn’t the first to see man as a rational animal, though he might have been the first to go so far out of his way to define “rational.” The Stoics and Cynics both developed the idea of moderation without Aristotle’s help, though the concerns about what ought to be moderated were different.

But agreeing with Aristotle on these basic ideas hardly makes me “Aristotelian.” For example, a fascist might agree with a liberal’s contention that toddlers shouldn’t be killed in playgrounds, but this agreement hardly makes the fascist a liberal.

What you’re doing is taking basic ideas that nearly everyone has agreed with throughout mankind’s history and labeling them “Aristotelian,” as if to form a monopoly. I say this with all the respect I can muster, but you’re coming off as a fanboy (of Aristotle).

 

[Magnanimity]

Okay, so we aren’t certain that he isn’t diligent with his philosophical ideas even though he is severely lacking in regard to others, but it seems obvious that this laziness of his (or perhaps arrogance) would carry over to other subjects he has written about.

I think that the fact that I named quite a few areas in which many would sympathize, if not completely agree with Aristotle is enough to demonstrate that there’s nothing ‘obvious’ in what you suggest.

Your imaginary example pits behavior against philosophical positions so seems rather disanalogous, comparing one to the other. some academic disciplines have obvious overlap with others (eg, algebra and physics), but many disciplines are so thoroughly unrelated to each other that the beliefs in one have no effect on the others.

Some philosophy is simply nonsense,

OK, which would those be and how would you know unless you studied them. You point to Aristotle’s scientific views as laughable, but what do those views have to do with, say his views on politics, ethics, metaphysics? You’d have to actually demonstrate the connection to be justified in your wholesale undermining of the philosopher in question.

and so I would never advise anyone to bother reading about all philosophies (if such a feat is possible).

Like I said, no ever said that you or anyone ever had to read philosophy. However, how could it be rational to criticize that about which you know virtually nada?

Actually, this isn’t something I’ve forgotten or otherwise overlooked. I certainly concur with Aristotle on a few things, but those things are very fundamental–most people recognize the utility of syllogisms, for example, and we would have developed them with or without Aristotle. (The Stoics and Buddhists developed their own functioning logical systems, for example.) Aristotle wasn’t the first to believe that we directly perceive objects.

No, he wasn’t. But, he was countering the popular Platonic view of the times which would have you indirectly perceiving objects. However, Aristotle was the first to give a plausible, robust account of how we directly perceive.

In fact, he probably wasn’t the first to see man as a rational animal, though he might have been the first to go so far out of his way to define “rational.” The Stoics and Cynics both developed the idea of moderation without Aristotle’s help, though the concerns about what ought to be moderated were different.

But agreeing with Aristotle on these basic ideas hardly makes me “Aristotelian.”

I’m afraid it does. There isn’t one thing in my laundry list I gave to you which hasn’t had significant disagreement over the centuries, excepting maybe the validity of deductive symbolic logic. But, that’s not really the point. I don’t really care if you’re a Platonist, Aristotelian, or Humean. The point was to illustrate that despite your ‘humorous example,’ Aristotle has more than shown himself to be the purveyor of truth in rather a lot of areas. The secondary point entailed by this is to show the illegitimacy of your attempt to connect Aristotle’s views on science as somehow discrediting all his other views. That simply doesn’t follow, as I hope you’ll now admit.

What you’re doing is taking basic ideas that nearly everyone has agreed with throughout mankind’s history and labeling them “Aristotelian,” as if to form a monopoly. I say this with all the respect I can muster, but you’re coming off as a fanboy (of Aristotle).

I don’t mind being a fanboy (actually, I’m not even sure what that means!). But, see my reply immediately above as to your first point here. Other than syllogistic logic, none of those other things I’ve mentioned have been anything other than hotly debated.

Oreoracle, you simply need to read on a wider level if you want to engage on philosophical topics.

 

[Magnanimity]

Thank you for a spirited defence of Aristotle! People tend to forget he was a pioneer in so many different fields: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, politics, psychology, aesthetics, biology, anatomy, physics…

Agreed! I can’t hardly believe that this point has been lost on Oreo. Granted he held views about science which were pre-scientific revolution, poor guy. I mean, is it too much to ask of Aristotle that in addition to all he wrote, we should also have seen the Principia Mathematica as well as On the Origin of Species from his pen?!

 

[johncbrainerd]

“The ultimate truth is that there is no Ultimate Truth.” And is this not, too, an ultimate truth? There is no doing without dogmas, such as this, because at that point, reason turns in on itself, as in, negatively, “I’m a liar, and this, too, is a lie,” etc. A truth, as the adequation of the mind to reality, is a statement that is “truly” a statement, but whether it predicates reality in any sense hinges on the purpose of its immediate use.

In all these premises and the comments about them that follow in this thread, the assumption is that causality is trans-universal, that is, transcendent. However, the word “universal” is used here equivocally as both imminent and transcendent. Since causality is characteristic of the imminent, their assumption throughout is that causality is also transcendent.

However, “uni-verse” is an Anglicization of the Latin for “the one in the many,” which refers, not to either the imminent or the transcendent but to the way mental causality differs from extra-mental causality, namely in the number of aspects, the “one” being the “universal” (in Scholastic terms) and the “many” being the “res,” or objective, objects of abstraction.

Mental causality is a linear series of syllogisms, albeit mostly subconscious, whereas extra-mental causality is multi-dimensional. Each being, distinguished from the unbroken and unbreakable continuum of being, contains an infinite number of aspects and exists apart from any presence in the human mind, including imminent and transcendent reality.

David Hume had a hard time with causality because he could not find a substance for it, but he misunderstand Aristotle’s use of “substance,” as does Kant (perhaps purposely for both) as the set of accidents in any objective reality, i.e. the aspects selected by the immediate purpose for observation. In short, if causality is universal (imminent), it may not be trans-universal, (transcendent). In fact, we predicate as much when we talk about “An Un-caused Cause,” i.e. Deity. That is, “un-caused cause” is a “non-cause,” just as Stephen Hawking declares, “Before the Big Bang, there was nothing,” i.e. no causality.

Thus, all arguments for or against the being of God hinge on the relation of mentality (mind-dependent data) to reality (mind-independent data). Until we take this difference in our axiom of thought into account, we fail to be internally consistent, which is, of course, the goal of all reasoning. Aquinas merely assumed this with his “five proofs,” of which causality is only one and that Anselm and Descartes (Cogito, ergo sum) ignored in their “psychological” proof and disproof respectively.

In short, at the root of this apparent disparity is a neglect of the difference between mental and extra-mental causality.

 

[Magnanimity]

In all these premises and the comments about them that follow in this thread, the assumption is that causality is trans-universal, that is, transcendent. However, the word “universal” is used here equivocally as both imminent and transcendent. Since causality is characteristic of the imminent, their assumption throughout is that causality is also transcendent.

This cosmological argument variation is using causality in the medieval sense as that which moves a potentiality into actuality. All observed beings have potententiality within themselves (they change, etc.), so this argument attempts to account for that process of “motion” (moving a potentiality into actuality) that is regularly observed.

But, as to the use of the term causality, I may be wrong, but I believe that Geisler is using a Scotistic argument from essentially related causes, which gets you outside the “series” of contingent beings. iow, gets you to the transcendent rather quickly, as that which is, necessarily, the only thing outside any series of contingent being(s).

In another place, Geisler writes,
"An infinite series of essentially related causes is impossible, because

1. If the whole series is dependednt for its causality (every cause depending on a prior cause), then there must be something beyond the eries that acounts for the causality in the series…" (Geisler & Corduan, Philosophy of Religion, 2d ed. Baker Books, 1988, p. 161)

 

[johncbrainerd]

I see an important difference between “related causes” and “causality,” which is not related causes but relations between causes and their effects. Duns Scotus was under political pressure from Henri Tempier, the Archbishop of Paris at the time, to separate his ideology from that of the Arabists, and so Scotus reluctantly introduced the notion of “intuition” as a possible source of data other than from mind-independent objects in defiance of Aquinas. However, this opened the door to “post-Scholasticism” and, as today, the outcropping of an Easternist blurring of the Westernist distinction between the objective and the subjective. Hence, “related causes” is not pertinent to the issue of the imminence or transcendence of causality.