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five alive

five alive Truth is the goal of philosophy. Some philosophers, like David Hume, struggle with eliminating falsity, while others, like Rene Descartes, look for causes to explain effects. A cause and effect argument is called a causal argument. Descartes is interested in logic, one truth progressing to the next. Descartes gives a causal argument for the existence of God in Meditation III. He deals with the effect of the idea of absolute perfection in our minds and rationalizes that the cause is God, therefore proving the existence of God. Descartes believes there are two types of reality: objective and formal.. The degree of reality depends on the degree of independence. The more independent, the higher the degree of reality. For example, consider a car and a dent in the car. You could take the dent away from the car and still have the essence of the car, but you cannot take the car away from the dent and still have the essence of the dent. The dent is dependent upon the car for its existence. Therefore, the car is more formally real because it is more independent. Now consider the is an idea of absolute perfection. This idea is too great for one’s mind to create or even conceive. Therefore the idea must have come from somewhere. It must have been placed there by an absolutely perfect being before our being, our existence. You could think of this like how a potter puts his tumbprint in a pot as an indicator of who made it. This absolutely perfect being has absolute knowledge. He puts this idea of absolute perfection into our minds. Descartes starts with the effect of the idea of absolute perfection in our minds and tries to discover the cause of it. He believes in cause and effect, and therefore the idea must be explained. Through this type of logic, he deduces that since the concept of absolute perfection is so great, only an absolutely perfect being could fully grasp it. Following in this line of reasoning, only one who understands the concept could put it into our minds, therefore coming to the conclusion that there must be a being of absolute perfection. Descartes calls this being God. The idea states that for all effects there is a cause. Hume said that even though the cause preceded the effect, there is no proof that the cause is responsible for the effect’s occurrence. The cosmological argument follows the same logic as the causal argument of Descartes. The cosmological argument states that all physical things, even mountains, boulders, and rivers, come into being and go out of existence, no matter how low they last. Therefore, since time is infinite, there must be some time at which none of these things existed. But if there were nothing at that point in time, how could there be anything at all now, since nothing cannot cause anything? Thus there must always have been at least one necessary thing that is eternal, which is God. (Proofs For and Against the Existence of God) Hume emphasized that there is no legitimate way we can infer the properties of God as the creator of the word form the qualities of His creation. For instance – Hume questions how we can be sure that the world was not created by a team: or that this is not one of many attempts at creations, the first few having been botched, or on the other hand, that our world is not a poor first attempt "of an infant deity who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance." (Proofs For and Against the Existence of God) The Cosmological Argument (especially as developed by Thomas Aquinas): This argument is based on observation of the universe (the cosmos); as such, it is an a posteriori kind of argument. It claims that if every individual thing or event has a cause for why it is as it is and why it changes as it does. Each thing or event depends on (or is "contingent" on) some other thing or event to account for why it exists or happens. Without a cause, nothing would exist or be intelligible. If there is no ultimate cause of a thing or explanation for why something exists -- that is, if the causal sequence is endless or infinite – then nothing would ever happen or be intelligible here and now. But things do happen here and now. So there must be some ultimate cause which itself is not caused by anything else, and that cause is God. Another way to put this: just as each thing or event depends on something else to account for its existence, so also the whole order of things (the universe) must itself depend on something elso to account for its existence. Otherwise, there woud be an infinite regress (and endless chain of causes causing causes) and thus nothing to account for why there is a universe at all. That other thing (God) doesn’t depend on anything for his existence: his existence is called "necessary". Notice: Aquinas’ rejection of an infinite sequence of causes does not apply to the horizontal sequence of causes in history, but rather to the vertical sequence of intelligibility in terms of which some merely possible thing is understandable as actual right now. That is, it is possible that the universe has existed eternally and never had a precise moment when it was created. If that is the case, then the cosmological argument cannot assume an ultimate beginning to history. Rather, in order to account for something’s existence hre and now – either things in the universe or the universe as a totality -–we have to think in terms of a vertical (ontological) terminus or end of causes. Inorder to account for the existence of anything in the universe right now, we have to assume that other things exist right now, and those things can only exist if other things exist right now. This sequence cannot go on indefinitely because there would never be something that ultimately accounts for thing existing right now. But since things do exist right now, there must be such a cause which does not depend on anything else for its existence: that it, it must exist necessarily rather than contingenly; and that cause is God. Hume has many criticisms for the Cosmological Argument. He atests there is no a priori reason to believe that everything has a cause or a reason by means of which it is explained or understood. And no set of observations can establish a posteriori the truth of the causal principle (viz., the principle that everything has a cause). Hume also believes the argument commits what is called the fallacy of composition: it assumes that a characteristic of parts of a thing is also a characteristic of the whole thing. The fact that members of a team had biological births does not mean that the team itself had a biological birth. Like wise, the fact that each thing in the universe has a cause does not mean that the universe in its entirety has a cause. Speaking about causes makes sense only in regard to thing in the world, not the world as a totality. Hume puts forth the question, If God is the cause of the universe, then what is the cause of God? If God is his own cause, then why can’t the universe itself be its own cause? Perhaps the universe has itself existed forever and needs no cause other than simply being what it is (as is said supposedly of God). Besides, why does the existence of anything have to have an ultimate reason in terms of which it is intelligible? Why not accept the possibility that things in the universe are caused by other things, and that the sequence of causes has no particular beginning: it simply goes on endlessly, indefinitely, in what is called an "infinite regress"? If thinking this means that things are ultimately unintelligible, so be it. Only the human inclination to think that everything is intelligible requires us to assume an end to the explanation. Finally, even if we were to accept the argument that the universe has a cause, that would not prove that God is infinite, good, caring, etc. Since the universe is finite, it would prove only that its creator would have to be powerful and wise enough to create it, but not infinitely powerful, wise, or good. Like wise, it would prove only that God is a cause of things who might not care at all about his creation. Hume’s objections to the cosmological argument are not intended to prove that there is not God. They are intended to show merely that the argument does not provide any justified reason to believe in God. That is, the result of Hume’s critique is not atheism (the denial that God exists) as much as agnosticism (the claim that we don’t know whether God exists or not). Now everything has an effect (an event) we want a cause. If you come across an event, to understand it, you must see it twice to understand the cause. (Notes) Bibliography: Branden, N. (1969). The psychology of self-esteem. New York: Bantam. Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (1979). Quasi-experimentation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Harre, R. (1985). The philosophy of science (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holland, P. W. (1986). Statistics and causal inference. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81, 945-960. Jones, W. T. (1952). A history of Western philosophy. New York: Harcourt Brace. Losse, J. (1980). A historical introduction to the philosophy of science (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oldroyd, D. (1986). The arch of knowledge: The history of the philosophy and methodology of science. New York: Methuen. Peikoff, L. (1967). The analytic-synthetic dichotomy. In A. Rand, Introduction to Objectivist epistemology (pp. 119-164). New York: Signet. Rand, A. (1961). For the new intellectual. New York: Signet. Rand, A. (1967). Introduction to Objectivist epistemology. New York: Signet. Tomlin, E. W. F. (1963). The Western philosophers (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Row. Windelband, W. (1901). A history of philosophy (2nd Ed.). New York: Macmillan.

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