According to the heading of the article:
"The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists must have a cause . . . "
That is not an accurate statement of the Kalam argument. The correct statement found in philosophy textbooks is typically worded like this:
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that begins to exist must have a cause . . .
The Kalam doesnât make any claims about things which do NOT âbegin to exist.â (For example, do numbers exist? And is there a beginning to their existence? I guess it depends upon whether one is Platonist, Anti-Platonist, or whatever. In any case, the Kalam doesnât address these topics.)
The article also fails in âand the âfirstâ cause must be God.â The conclusion of the Kalam is âTherefore, the universe has a cause.â
Whether or not that cause is God/god/gods is not addressed by the Kalamâalthough many people have made arguments built upon the foundation of the Kalam argument where they do discuss deity/deities (and various other first causes.) In any case, the second clause of that heading is false.
Due to those errors in the heading to the article, I didnât read any further. Perhaps the author(s) corrected or excused these errors but Iâve read so much about the Kalam over the years to where I am quite bored by it. So, I must admit, apathy set in some years ago.
Others mileage may vary, obviously, but Iâm out on this one. (Yes, philosophy in general tends to bore me easily. That is a criticism of me, not a criticism of philosophy.)
The actual article doesnât have either flaw. This is the statement of the Kalam argument:
- whatever begins to exist has a cause that brings it into existence,
- and the Universe, which exists, must have begun to exist at some point,
- and therefore the Universe itself must have a cause to its existence.
I donât think the Kalam argument works very well, but I donât like this article much either.
For any single atom, however, if you ask, âWhen will this atom decay?â or, âWhat will cause this atom to finally decay?â or even, âWhat will cause the emergence of the decayed state?â there is no cause-and-effect answer.
The first question doesnât require a cause-and-effect answer, and the latter two do have cause-and-effect answers AFAIK, although they rely on nuclear physics that I wonât pretend to understand. A cause need not be a deterministic cause.
The rest of the article deals with
- Showing that the universe isnât (or rather, may not be) deterministic. But this doesnât really bear on the Kalam argument, which doesnât claim that all causes are deterministic. In fact, the second stage of WLCâs argument concludes that the cause of the universe is indeterministic.
- Showing that the universe may not have a beginning. I wonât pretend to understand the cosmology behind this, and it seems to me that this truly is a weak spot for the Kalam argument, since AFAIK we canât know what (if anything) happened before the Big Bang.
- Showing that the first stage of the Kalam argument doesnât prove Godâs existence, only the existence of a cause of the universe. This is true, but I donât think anyone has claimed that it does (WLC hasnât). There are two stages of WLCâs argument, indeed of any cosmological argument; the first stage seeks to prove a first cause, and the second stage seeks to prove that this first cause is God.
The end of the article says that we canât presuppose our conclusion, and maybe thatâs what WLC does, but thatâs not what the Kalam argument per se does. The Kalam argument is not question-begging. If it could be shown that (1) everything that begins to exist has a cause â which is a metaphysical premise â and (2) the universe began to exist â which is a scientific claim â then (3) the universe has a cause would simply follow without begging the question. Iâm not at all convinced that (2) can be proven, but one of the premises of an argument being insufficiently supported is different from an argument being question-begging.
If (2) can be proven, then (1) becomes dependent on (3).
Is that not just a question-begging assumption? How do we actually know this? Can we actually know this?
Iâm not saying it is incorrect, Iâm just asking for clarification.
Itâs not question begging except in the sense that the conclusion of any deductive argument is contained in the premises.
Given that if (1) all men are mortal, and (2) Socrates is a man, then (3) Socrates is mortal â âif (2) can be proven, then (1) becomes dependent on (3).â But that doesnât make this valid deductive argument question-begging.
Thatâs the argument as stated. I find the idea of âbeginning to existâ ambiguous. Iâd argue that the argument only works if there is a prior state where the thing did not exist. But itâs not clear whether âbeginning to existâ means the same thing or not.
Itâs an assumption, yes. You can say that you donât see a reason to agree with the assumption and ask those who use it to give a justification for it. If they canât you can consider it a sort of question-begging assumption in that it seems to have been advanced simply to make the argument reach a certain conclusion.
People like Craig and other apologists who use the Kalam do provide some sort of justification for it, but those justifications are rather poor in my view (and not just me of course, plenty of philosophers and scientists find them poor too). The apologists typically say that the justification for premise 1 is everyday experience. You, your table, meteor craters, paintings etc. donât just begin to exist spontaneously. You were caused to exist by your parents, the carpenter made the table, bolide impacts created the craters, a painter caused the painting to come into existence etc.
Thereâs been multiple good responses to this, one of which is nothing in our experience begins to exist from nothing in the way Craig argues the universe must have. So if the universe really did begin to exist from nothing, we actually have no experience that supports the inductive inference that âbeginning to existâ of that sort must have a cause when that beginning is from nothing.
Craig and others in turn have responses to this (he likes to talk about Aristotleâs different classes of causes, such as material causes, efficient causes, ultimate causes and so on and why he thinks the universe beginning to exist from nothing must require at least an efficient cause), and there are responses to those responses, etc.
In my experience these are some of the best responses to the Kalam out there:
Heck, soap-opera actor Scott Clifton gave a perfectly reasonable critique of the first premise, and his experiences trying to communitcate this critique to William Lane Craig, on youtube, 13 years ago now.
If there is some way of demonstrating (1) that doesnât require examining all items it refers to, then the problem disappears. This is more likely to work for Socrates as a man then it is for the universe as something that begins to exist. Socrates doesnât have any characteristic that may affect his mortality when compared to other men, but the universe does have a characteristic that may affect its uncaused status when compared to other things that begin to exist - its possible primality.
One particularly weak point of WLCâs argument, IMHO, is that even is one concedes that the universe began to exist, and that this required an efficient cause, it still does not establish that this efficient cause must be a god. In particular, there is no entailment that it be a personal being.
From what Iâve seen of the Kalam argument, as long as 1) is an assumption rather than a proven fact the argument isnât deductive but inductive.
It is similar to saying that because we have only ever seen white swans, all swans are white. And we know what happened to that argument.
It seems to me most proponents of the argument are not relying on induction to support P1. They, instead, treat it as an intuitively obvious truth. Thatâs why WLC simply could not cope when Sean Carroll attacked that premise in their debate.
Thatâs not really correct. A deductive argument is one where the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. The truth of the premises is not relevant to that question - it is quite possible for an argument to be deductive even if the premises are known to be false.
The distinction is between âvalidityâ - whether the form of the argument is logically correct - and âsoundnessâ which does include the truth of the premises, as well as validity. The Kalam argument, as described, is valid but its soundness is very much in question.
Insisting that the premises are arrived at by strict deduction would create an infinite regress - you canât have a deductive argument without premises. So if the premises of a valid deductive argument had to be arrived at by a valid deductive argument the premises of the arguments justifying the premises would have to be arrived at by a valid deductive argument etc. etc.
Yes, the debate among philosophers (or at least some of them) is whether or not P1 is a properly basic belief.
William Lane Craig does not promote that properly basic belief aspect. (Thatâs because Craig doesnât necessarily claim the premise is self-evident and/or immune to challenge as some would.) He considers P1 more of a reasonable and justifiable belief.
I donât recall if he brought it up in the Carroll debate but a major aspect of his argument is if P1 is not valid, it is not only counterintuitive but also leads to logical absurdities. (And no, I canât give details because it has been a long time since Iâve read WLC on such topics.)
Fair enough. Then Iâd say that as a deductive argument Kalam may be valid, but as a âproof of Godâ it fails badly because premise 1) is simply an assumption based on induction.
In my professor days I enjoyed tormenting my students with responses to the above like this one:
But âsimply an assumption based on inductionâ is as common in philosophyâand daily lifeâas three-leaf clovers. Indeed, the common argument âthe resurrection of a dead human is impossibleâ is based upon similar inductive reasoning.
Indeed it is. Induction does not equal proof, however, and so the threadâs title is correct.
The Kalam is an ARGUMENT. It has never been a proof.
Thatâs why it is called the Kalam Cosmological Argument and not the Kalam Cosmological Proof.
Arguments in philosophy should not be confused with proofs in mathematics. (And the purpose of an argument like the Kalam is that the conclusion is reasonable based on what precedes it. That does not make it a proof. And reasonable in such philosophical arguments is NOT the same thing as âWeâve proven this to be 100% trueâ, even though that is what a lot of people assume when they see such arguments.)
And as a reminder to any readers unclear about my first response to the thread: I objected NOT to the title but to the heading-summary of the article.
In the light of the discussion I propose that the argument gets changed to:
- whatever begins to exist may have a cause that brings it into existence,
- and the Universe, which exists, may have begun to exist at some point,
- and therefore the Universe itself may have a cause to its existence.
I think this is a much more reasonable argument given the state of our current knowledge (or lack of it).
It is also rather useless.