Some Notes on Aquinas's First Three Arguments -Nate Strum
Now, whole books have been written on these arguments, and any analysis of them that's not at least an essay's length does them disservice, but I'm going to post some notes anyway.
I find the argument from motion to be the most convincing, although I prefer to replace motion with time, given Newton's first law (bodies can move forever without force), with which Aquinas didn't have the advantage of being familiar. One concern with the time approach is that, while an infinite regress in propositional justification is definitely impossible (if statement S1 is justified by S2 and S2 by S3 and so on to infinity, then S1 isn't justified at all; the chain of reasoning has to have a finite length and end at some statement that we accept as self evident) it's not quite as clear that an infinite time regress (a universe without a beginning) is impossible. On possible argument against a world without a beginning is that, if it were so, it would seem that it would take an infinite amount of time to get where we are now, but an infinite amount of time can never elapse, and, hence, the world had a beginning. But I'm not entirely sure this one works. There a lot of interesting rabbit holes surrounding the cosmological argument, and I'm looking forward to exploring them in the future.
Regarding the second argument, I think premise four is where things get tricky. "4. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results (the effect)." I just don't see any logically necessary reason that an object couldn't just sit there for positive or negative eternity. The object could exist at times ...t-2, t-1, t, t+1, t+2,.... The only problem I see with that is the what the first argument says, so I don't think that this one successfully stands alone.
The above counter argument applies to premise three of the third argument as well.
There also seems to be a logical misstep/implicit assumption in the third argument, at least the way it's phrased here. Number five does follow from premises 2, 3, and 4--it's a logical possibility that there could have been a time when nothing existed if everything is a "contingent being." If everything came into existence at the same time and ceased to exist at the same time, for instance. That doesn't contradict any of our assumptions. Six and seven are obvious, but eight doesn't follow. Given the assumptions, we can only prove that eight could follow (in other words, eight doesn't contradict our assumptions). Even if everything existed for a finite amount of time, you could still ensure there was always something that existed if you had a infinite amount of things. So you'd have to also assume that there are a finite amount of things in order to deduce eight. Only if our assumptions had implied that there had to have been a time when nothing existed could we deduce the absurdity and, by contradiction, show that our assumption of universal contingency is false.
I commented on Eliza's and Will's posts.
I find the argument from motion to be the most convincing, although I prefer to replace motion with time, given Newton's first law (bodies can move forever without force), with which Aquinas didn't have the advantage of being familiar. One concern with the time approach is that, while an infinite regress in propositional justification is definitely impossible (if statement S1 is justified by S2 and S2 by S3 and so on to infinity, then S1 isn't justified at all; the chain of reasoning has to have a finite length and end at some statement that we accept as self evident) it's not quite as clear that an infinite time regress (a universe without a beginning) is impossible. On possible argument against a world without a beginning is that, if it were so, it would seem that it would take an infinite amount of time to get where we are now, but an infinite amount of time can never elapse, and, hence, the world had a beginning. But I'm not entirely sure this one works. There a lot of interesting rabbit holes surrounding the cosmological argument, and I'm looking forward to exploring them in the future.
Regarding the second argument, I think premise four is where things get tricky. "4. If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results (the effect)." I just don't see any logically necessary reason that an object couldn't just sit there for positive or negative eternity. The object could exist at times ...t-2, t-1, t, t+1, t+2,.... The only problem I see with that is the what the first argument says, so I don't think that this one successfully stands alone.
The above counter argument applies to premise three of the third argument as well.
There also seems to be a logical misstep/implicit assumption in the third argument, at least the way it's phrased here. Number five does follow from premises 2, 3, and 4--it's a logical possibility that there could have been a time when nothing existed if everything is a "contingent being." If everything came into existence at the same time and ceased to exist at the same time, for instance. That doesn't contradict any of our assumptions. Six and seven are obvious, but eight doesn't follow. Given the assumptions, we can only prove that eight could follow (in other words, eight doesn't contradict our assumptions). Even if everything existed for a finite amount of time, you could still ensure there was always something that existed if you had a infinite amount of things. So you'd have to also assume that there are a finite amount of things in order to deduce eight. Only if our assumptions had implied that there had to have been a time when nothing existed could we deduce the absurdity and, by contradiction, show that our assumption of universal contingency is false.
I commented on Eliza's and Will's posts.
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