How is that not intellectually dishonest? If I wrote an article where I made the claim, "atheists are unable to refute the watchmaker argument," I could just as easily say when challenged on that claim, "well they have made arguments against it, but I don't consider them right, so I felt no need to mention that in the interest of brevity." That would obviously be absurd. One can't just ignore legitimate criticism if he isn't personally convinced by it.
Certainly you wouldn't be entitled to do that. But Russell didn't do (the equivalent of) that. He gave his understanding of the argument and the reason why he thought it didn't work. He didn't say "theists have tried to overturn my refutation, but they have failed". He didn't make any reference to the debate - to the extent that there was one - at all. I really don't see what's wrong with this. As I said, this was not an academic paper. It was not meant to be an exhaustive discussion of the cosmological argument. It was not even meant to be an overview of the issues involved with the cosmological argument. It was meant to be a short presentation of the reasons why Russell, personally, was not a Christian. Each of the sections is brief, cursory, and non-technical. I don't see at all why, in such a context, Russell would be obliged to mention contrary views at all, let alone go into details about them. All he's doing is setting out what he thinks and the reasons why, very briefly.
There's no essential difference between an argument for X and an argument for ~(~X). Given that I am contending that these arguments are logically sound, I see no reason not to call them refutations of Russell's position.
All right, I'll give you that. But I hope you'll recognise that not everyone thinks they are refutations of Russell's position, and that even people who have studied them far more closely than you, I, or probably Russell are among those who do not think they are refutations of Russell's position. Remember that what we're supposedly talking about here is Russell's honesty or knowledge in making the claims that he did. You said that Russell's text "demonstrates that he's likely never read anything metaphysical of Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas, because they both demonstrate why it's logically self-destructive". What I'm saying is that it demonstrates nothing of the kind, because it's perfectly possible to read both Aristotle and Aquinas in some considerable depth while still disagreeing with them. They are not some kind of divinely inspired authors, to read whom is to agree with them. They are philosophers like any other, who advance claims and arguments which other people may agree with or disagree with. Certainly they are among the greatest philosophers, but to say that anyone who says something that contradicts them cannot possibly have read them on that subject is to overstate the situation to a comical degree.
I don't know what you're talking about. Obviously Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas would not have written these passages if they did not consider them to be true, and nobody today would still be an Aristotelian or Thomist if they did not consider this fundamental point on infinite regression to be correct.
Of course neither author would have written those texts if they didn't think them true. That's not the point. I was trying to make the point I did above, namely that you can't just point to these arguments and say "Voila! objections to the cosmological argument refuted." If they were such self-evident refutations of those objections, no-one with the slightest philosophical education would continue to raise those objections, and all modern analytic philosophers would be dedicated theists. Since this manifestly isn't the case, these arguments clearly aren't the smoking gun that you imply. Apart from anything else, it seems to me that these are not defences of the cosmological argument against Russell-style criticisms; rather, they are articulations of the cosmological argument itself, and that's not the same thing.
I don't know if it's really true that one can't be an Aristotelian or a Thomist without accepting the argument on infinite regression. Perhaps one can't be a Thomist without it; I'm not so sure that one can't be an Aristotelian. It depends on what one means by these terms. Anyone who accepts a substance-accident metaphysics, or hylomorphism, or indeed virtue ethics could be considered an Aristotelian at some level or other. Indeed one may question how much of an Aristotelian Thomas was. I'm sure you'll be amused to know that my former research partner, who is an Aristotelian scholar, didn't much like Aquinas when we did some research on him together. She thought him not Aristotelian enough. She actually preferred Abelard, both as an Aristotelian and as a philosopher in general, which was interesting.
It's not just that. It's also that an infinite regression is impossible. If you chain a series of paperclips together, there always has to be a "first" paperclip, otherwise there's nothing holding the series together.
Right. What Aquinas is talking about here is an "essentially ordered" series. I'm sure you know this stuff better than I do, but let's set it out anyway for the sake of clarity, as well as to make sure I understand it correctly, because this is not my area. An "essentially ordered" series of causation is one where the first thing causes the movement of all the others at once, by its own act of moving. (NB. I use "movement" here in the same sense as the Latin "motus", i.e. pretty much any change, but the easiest examples involve what we would normally call "movement".) Examples are the train, that I gave before, or your paperclips. The medieval philosophers typically used the example of a man moving a stick. In all of these cases, the first in the series (the locomotive; the hand; the arm) moves all of the others (carriage A, carriage B, etc.; paperclip A, paperclip B, etc.; the hand, the stick)
at once. Furthermore, it moves them
through its own motion. It's not like the locomotive moves, then carriage A moves, then carriage B moves, and so on. Rather, the locomotive pulls all of them at once, and there is a single motion among them.
This contrasts with an "accidentally ordered" series, of which the paradigm example is human ancestry. Abraham (to wheel out the hoary old example) is the father of Isaac, who is the father of Jacob. Now Abraham may be considered the progenitor or ancestor of Jacob. But he is remote from him in time. There is not a single act of begetting by which Abraham begets both Isaac and Jacob. Rather, Abraham begets Isaac, who later goes on to beget Jacob. This is clearly a very different sort of situation from that of the train or the paperclips.
There's a good and clear explanation of all this in
this paper, which happily is freely available online.
Now as you know, the medievals, including Aquinas, thought that a key difference between essential and accidental series is that an essential series has to have a first member, while an accidental series does not. This is because, in an essential series, it's the first member that's really doing all the work. You have to have a hand pulling the paperclips, or a locomotive pulling the carriages, because otherwise the paperclips or the carriages are not pulled at all. All the force, to use the word loosely, is in the first one. If you had an infinite series of carriages pulling each other, why would they be moving at all? Why wouldn't they be standing still, or indeed going backwards? There has to be a first one which is pulling the rest, or no pulling occurs.
But this is not the case, Aquinas and his colleagues thought, with an accidental series, because in an accidental series there is not a single impulse coming from the first member in this way. In theory, Abraham could have a father, and that father could have a father, and so on all the way back to infinity. There could, in theory, be no first father. This is because each member in the series has the power to have a son irrespective of his own origins.
This is why Aquinas thought that, from a philosophical point of view, there is no reason why the world must have had a beginning. It could be the case that the world has always existed, because the world can be conceived as an accidental series of causes, and such a series doesn't have to have a first member. Of course, Aquinas thought that revelation teaches us that in fact the world did have a beginning, but it can't be proved that this is the case. And for this, as well as various other opinions of his, Aquinas got into a fair bit of trouble in his lifetime and, especially, shortly after his death.
But Aquinas thought that the world can
also be conceived as an essentially ordered series. That is, it is like the train or the paperclips. All the motion in the world (again, taking "motion" to mean change in general, not just movement) must have a first and single cause. It's like a clockwork toy. When it's moving, all its gears and things are in motion. But they are only in motion because there's a spring moving them. The spring itself is not moved by anything else, and it imparts motion to the gears - both those which are immediately attached to it, and (indirectly) to the gears that are attached to those gears, and finally to the parts of the toy which are attached to
those gears. The moment the spring stops moving, so does everything else. Similarly, Aquinas thinks, the universe can be conceived as a sort of giant clockwork toy, and the spring is the Unmoved Mover - which is, of course, God.
That, as I understand it, is the argument to the Unmoved Mover, or the Uncaused First Efficient Cause, if you prefer.
Given that fact, one must admit that there is an uncaused First Efficient Cause to the universe, which we commonly call God. Hence why Aristotle says, "those who posit infinity do away with the nature of the good without realizing it."
Right, but there are two things. First, you say "given that fact". But given
what fact? Given the definition of an essentially ordered series? No - all that we can conclude from that is that
where there is an essentially ordered series,
that series must have a first member which moves the others and is itself unmoved. To get the conclusion that
the universe has such an unmoved mover, we need to establish that the universe actually is an essentially ordered series. I don't see an argument to this effect in the texts of Aristotle or Aquinas that you linked to, and I don't know of such an argument elsewhere in their works. That might, of course, just be my ignorance. But if this version of the cosmological argument is going to work, it needs that key stage.
The second thing is what I said before: even if we accept this argument, all it gives us is a first cause of the motion in the universe, a sort of cosmic spring. It doesn't give us God. It may be that the first cause is in fact God, but clearly further argument is required for that.
"But that's by the by?" Could you elaborate on that?
I meant that my criticism there of Aristotle's argument is really incidental to
our discussion, which at that point was about whether Aristotle's argument addresses Russell's criticism. Russell's criticism, you'll remember, was that if the universe can't be uncaused, then God can't; and, conversely, if God can be uncaused, so can the universe. One can't say that it's impossible for the universe to be uncaused and then explain it by saying it's caused by an uncaused God. What I was saying at that point was that Aristotle's argument doesn't really address this criticism - hardly surprising, given that Aristotle's argument and Russell's criticism are expressed in such different philosophical terms and categories that it's hard even to bring them together for comparison. I then said that I thought the argument wasn't very good for other reasons, but that's not really relevant to what we were discussing, hence "by the by".
There has to be an uncaused First Efficient Cause to activate the causal series, but also following from that, the UFEC has to be continually holding the series together, thus making it eternal.
It only has to be eternal if the series itself is eternal. Of course Aristotle thought it was; equally of course, Aquinas thought it wasn't, and I assume you agree with him. In which case I don't see why the First Cause of the universe - even if we accept that there is such a thing - has to be eternal, any more than the spring of a clockwork toy has to be eternal. The spring has to exist only for as long as the toy is in motion. Similarly, the First Cause of the universe has to exist only for as long as the universe does. If the universe isn't eternal, there's no reason why the First Cause has to be. (Of course, it
could be eternal as a matter of fact - the point is that this is not necessitated by its role as First Cause, so it is not proved by this argument.)
As for why there cannot be multiple UFECs, this is explained by Thomas in another text. Given that the UFEC has the power of moving matter without being moved itself, it must be an infinite being. In the Metaphysics:
"169. But it is necessary to understand that there is matter in everything that is moved, and that the infinite involves nothingness, but essence does not. But if there is no infinite, what essence [i.e., definition] does the infinite have?"
Thomas' commentary:
"He gives the fourth argument, which runs thus. Matter must be understood to exist in everything that is moved; for whatever is moved is in potentiality, and what is in potentiality is matter. But matter itself has the character of the infinite, and nothingness belongs to the infinite in the sense of matter, because matter taken in itself is understood without any of kind of form. And since nothingness belongs to the infinite, it follows contrariwise that the principle by which the infinite is a being is itself not infinite, and that it does not belong to the infinite, i.e., to matter, to be infinite in being. But things are by virtue of their form. Hence there is no infinite regress among forms."
In other words, the UFEC must be essentially infinite;
Now I do actually like scholastic philosophy, and I particularly like Aquinas, who is a model of clarity in his own way. But I have to confess that he's lost me here. Part of the problem here is that he's using his own definition of matter as the principle of potentiality, which I find hard to comprehend at the best of times. I think there are a fair few problems with Aquinas' understanding of matter, which Scotus highlighted with his customary lucidity. (Most famously: if it is the distinction between this matter and that matter that individuates one member of a species from another, then what individuates this matter from that matter, eh? But that is, again, by the by.)
More important, it seems to me you've misunderstood what Aquinas is arguing for here. He's not arguing that the cause of motion must be an infinite being (in the sense that God is infinite). He's arguing that there cannot be an infinite number of formal causes. (See Aquinas' para. 320.) The kind of "infinity" he's talking about here is not the kind of infinity that God possesses - it's the kind of infinity that matter possesses, in the sense of having infinite potential. He's arguing that this feature of matter is a reason why the fact that (existing) material things
do have form cannot be down to an infinite number of causes. I must admit that I'm a bit hazy about why, but that's just me. The point is, however Aquinas reaches his conclusion, the conclusion isn't that the First Cause must be infinite.
and there cannot be two infinite beings, of course, as that would put a limit on infinity.
I don't see that. It depends on what you mean by "infinite". Something isn't "infinite" tout court - it has to be infinitely
something. And there are some properties which a thing could have to an infinite degree that wouldn't preclude another thing from also having it to an infinite degree. Length, for example. If there could be an infinitely long road, you could have two of them, side-by-side. You could even have two things of infinite volume, if you imagined that one each of these roads there was a fish tank as long as the road. Each would have an infinite volume. You could have two things each of infinite length, breadth, and height if you imagined them side-by-side, too: they each zoom off to infinity in opposite directions. You could even - if you're not a Cartesian - have two things of infinite length, breadth, and height, each of which has these dimensions to an infinite degree in each direction, if you imagine them occupying the same space. So for properties such as these I don't really see why, if one of them is possible, more of them aren't equally possible.
Now arguably you can't have two beings of infinite power, since the power of each would constrain that of the other. Equally arguably, however, you could, if you could guarantee that neither being would ever act against the other. In fact on some versions, precisely this situation exists with the Trinity. (Except that there are three of them.)
Beings exist in their own right, even though they are only good qua as being participants in the creative power of God. This point, therefore is irrelevant to the argument at hand.
Good. That's something we can forget about then, at least.
The universe cannot be uncaused, as then motion and causality would be impossible;
Only if, as I said, we accept the model of the universe as a single huge essentially ordered series. But not only does Aquinas not offer an argument for viewing it in this way in your texts, I can't personally see any reason to see it in this way at all. Here again we return to the point I made before, which is that we just don't know what causation is or how it works, or indeed
whether it even exists at all (occasionalism and the pre-established harmony may not be very fashionable theories today, but they are still possible). I certainly don't see any reason to suppose that, assuming there is such a thing as causation, it operates as an essentially ordered series. I don't see why we have to think that the universe requires an external (or at least a primary) motive impulse, in the same way that a wind-up toy requires a wound spring. Maybe the universe required only a single infusion of force or motion at the start, and since then it's been able to get on with it without requiring any continuous input, like one of those elaborate executive desk toys from the 1980s. Don't scientific laws about the conservation of energy/mass suggest such a model? The universe has got what it needs to keep running
within itself - it doesn't need to be pulled.
Now maybe that's wrong and it doesn't work like that. Who knows? That's kind of the point. And that takes us back to what the point of this whole discussion is meant to be. Within a metaphysical framework which conceives of the universe as a great essentially ordered series, then yes, there must be a First Cause. And yes, perhaps we can come up with reasons why that First Cause must be infinite and all the other things. (Aquinas does have some good arguments for God's infinity, which we haven't talked about here, although I still think he doesn't really have a good means of showing that this or the other divine properties can be ascribed to the First Cause as such.) But even if we accept these arguments, they still rest quite clearly on the prior assumptions that the world works in this kind of way. Those
are just assumptions, at least within the Aristotelian context you've given, and this is one of the reason why not many people today are convinced by this form of the cosmological argument, because not many people today accept those assumptions. Note that this is true, I think, even among people who accept some other form of the cosmological argument.
Aristotle didn't know why nature had the property of drawing objects closer to the earth. But that's a matter of physics, not metaphysics. In the realm of the latter, all one needs to posit is that movement has a cause, and as objects move, something caused their movement; which in the case of gravity, the efficient cause is the natural attraction between matter.
Well this is its own issue entirely, and not one that I think I could answer with a few paragraphs! My abbreviated answer:
In Plato's dialogues, the usual course of the conversation was that Socrates would ask for a definition of X, and then challenge his pupils' given definition by offering examples that seem to contradict the usual perception of X. The reason he did this is because he thought that humans did actually understand what X is, they just had difficulty in confining it to a verbal definition; thus he investigated the manner in which we speak in order to isolate the "hidden" truths behind our words. Aristotle follows this in the same manner. We innately know what causation is, the only thing Aristotle is doing is codifying it into a sentence. So it's false that Aristotle was simply offering a categorization of our observations; when he says a being is "that which is," for instance, that is truly what the definition of being is.
This may be the case. I don't know; certainly Aristotle did think that whatever all or most people believe must have something going for it - not an unreasonable supposition. But in that case, if you're taking Aristotle's account of causation to be more than just a categorisation of the kind of explanations we offer, and a truly metaphysical account of what causation actually is, then that account becomes more vulnerable to the kind of objection I gave above, namely that we don't actually know what causation is and we don't agree even on the conditions under which causation is possible (or actual). That's the point I was trying to make before: either Aristotle is just offering a categorisation of how we think (in which case he's probably immune to doubts about the nature of causation, but you can't build much of a metaphysical argument for God on this) or he's doing something rather stronger and more metaphysical itself (in which it may offer a more viable basis for an argument for God, but it's far more vulnerable to the problems I've mentioned). That, at least, is how I see it, but what bearing that has on the main point at hand I'm not sure. (That's not my way of saying it has no bearing, for once - I'm really not sure any more.)
So to sum up: there are big problems, in my opinion, with the argument as given, primarily revolving around its assumptions about causation and the nature of the universe - assumptions which I think I can reasonably say most people today would at the very least hesitate to agree with. This is why even among defenders of theism you won't find this version of the cosmological argument being used very much. So if Bertrand Russell criticised this argument, it's not (necessarily) because he didn't know much about it or had not read Aristotle or Aquinas. He did, after all, devote five chapters to Aristotle in his
History of western philosophy, more than any other figure other than Plato - although he was rather cursory and unfair in his treatment of Aquinas (which naturally includes a brief overview of the five ways), I'll admit. It is more likely that Russell was well aware of the argument and the form it took in these philosophers, but simply disagreed with its basic assumptions. Not only that, but I don't think that these philosophers did really address the criticisms of the argument that Russell gave in the text with which we began. At any rate, they didn't in the texts we've looked at, or at least I can't see that they do. Perhaps I'm missing something, but then that is in itself indication that it's possible for someone to read these texts and come away without the conviction that the criticism of the cosmological argument has been refuted. If I can do that, rightly or wrongly, Russell could. So that's why I think it's unfair to charge Russell with ignorance because he thought the cosmological argument was unsound. As for the charge of being wilfully misleading or otherwise deliberately dodgy, as I said, I don't think it's appropriate to expect discussion of the opposite points of view in a short talk that covers a lot of topics and is intended for non-experts. Russell wasn't giving an overview of the arguments for and against theism, he was stating what his own reasons were for what he believed. You may think that those reasons were poor or that they had been refuted by greater minds. Perhaps you are right, but that doesn't mean that Russell was stupid, ignorant, or deliberately misleading for disagreeing.
Fascinating debate, just wish I knew more about it.
