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The Cosmological Argument1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Pheroze S. Wadia
Pheroze S. Wadia
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University
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Extract

I. Professor William L. Rowe begins an interesting paper on the Cosmological Argument by stating that his ‘purpose …is not to resurrect it’ but ‘to uncover, clarify, and examine some of the philosophical concepts and theses essential to the reasoning exhibited in the argument’. (49) However, in the concluding pages of his paper, Rowe is at some pains to show that his discussion does at least demonstrate that the Cosmological Argument is beyond the reach of criticisms levelled against it in the works of its classical critics, Hume and Kant and their modern-day counterparts. To quote his concluding remark: ‘Like most important philosophical arguments, it appears that the Cosmological Argument is neither as good as its supporters have claimed it to be nor as bad as its critics have believed.’ (61) Now I have long suspected that some such estimate of the Cosmological Argument was correct; however I do not think that Rowe's discussions in his paper establish his contention that the reports of the death of the Cosmological Argument have been premature. Nevertheless, Rowe's uncovering of the reasoning that lies behind the argument does have the merit of laying bare the precise point from which, as well as the direction in which, the defence of the argument should proceed if we are to truly make some headway on this hoary topic. In what follows, I will first try to show why I think Rowe's discussion fails to establish his conclusion and thereafter try to give the outline of a more successful strategy for arriving at the same conclusion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 411 - 420
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

page 411 note 2 Rowe, William L., ‘The Cosmological Argument’, Nous, Vol. V, No. I, February 1971, 49–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (All parenthetical references in the text of my paper are to page numbers in Professor Rowe's article.) Professor Rowe's article was the first paper of the Fifth Symposium read to the meetings of the A.P.A. (Western Division) held on May 6–8, 1971.

page 411 note 1 Geach's, P. T. commentary on Thomas Aquinas from Three Philosophers edited by Anscombe, G. E. M and Geach, P. T. (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar, reproduced in The Cosmological Argument edited by Burrill, Donald R. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc.) 1967, 66.Google Scholar See also especially ‘Necessary Being’ by Alvin Plantinga in the same helfpul volume edited by Professor Burrill, 125–41.

page 412 note 1 Rowe considers in his article three different versions of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, of which two are said to entail (5) below. But Rowe himself rejects one of these—PSR2—as being false. That leaves PSR3, which reads as follows:

For every collection whose members are existing beings (which can be caused to exist or which can cause the existence of other beings) there is an explanation of the fact that it has members.

I know of no philosopher who would wish to claim that PSR3 is a presupposition of reasoning itself; if anything, it seems counter-intuitive. In any case, as Rowe himself is quick to point out, PSR3 is not the first premise of the Cosmological Argument.

page 413 note 2 Hick, John, Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), 23.Google Scholar

page 413 note 3 Ibid.

page 414 note 1 Geach's, P. T. commentary on Aquinas in The Cosmological Argument, op. cit., 64.Google Scholar

page 414 note 2 Edwards, Paul, ‘The Cosmological Argument’ in The Cosmological Argument, op. cit., 113.Google Scholar

page 415 note 1 Geach's, P. T. commentary on Aquinas in The Cosmological Argument, op. cit., 66.Google Scholar

page 417 note 1 , Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, translated by , C. Bailey (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1936), 34.Google Scholar

page 417 note 2 Taylor, Richard, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963), 95–6.Google Scholar

page 418 note 1 Maclntyre, A. C., ‘Hume on “Is” and “Ought”’ in Hume—A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Chappell, V. C. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1966), 244.Google Scholar

page 418 note 2 Taylor, R., op. cit., 96.Google Scholar

page 419 note 1 Cf. Prof. Sontag below, p. 429, and his Divine Perfection. Ed.