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cosmological argument - Coggle Diagram
cosmological argument
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Aristotle
Aristotle believed in the 4 causes which are what inspired Aquinas and he also had similar ideas about the prime mover and the prime cause but he did not believe these had to be a god of any sort
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the 2nd cause is formal: is the blueprint of an object so a statue would have its formal cause as its figure
the 3rd cause is the efficient cause which is the thing that creates that object for a statue wit would be the chisels and sculptor
the forth cause is the final cause and is the reason for an object to exist the purpose of a statue might be to honour a hero or make a garden look nice
Hume
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rejection of the necessary being: nothing has to be necessary because anything we can imagine existing was can also imagine as not existing
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no experience of universe making: we cant assume we know how the universe is made as we have never witnessed it its like assuming how a cake is made when you've never seen a baker or a recipe
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reasoning: argues that Aquinas uses inductive (starts with observations based on assumptions rather than fact) rather than deductive (starts from facts logically coherent) reasoning
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Leibniz
sufficent reason
everything must have a reason, cause or explanation for why it is the way it is and not otherwise. its irrational to accept brute fact he argued there must be sufficient reason for everything
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Copleston
similar ideas to leibnez
everything in the universe is contingent, contingent things require explanation, an infinite regress of contingent explanations doesn't prove why anything exists therefore there must be a necessary being and this for copestone was god.
mackie
causality cant be applied to the universe as a whole as it only makes sense within the universe not when applied to the universe itself
infinite regress isn't necessarily impossible: Mackie suggests that an infinite series of overlapping contingent things is logically possible challenging the idea of a necessary being
is it possible for a being whose non-existence is impossible. existence isn't a property you can just assign to make something necessary
argument just pushes back the problem: it dosent solve the problem it simply moves the mystery from the universe to god why is god exempt from needing a cause
the principle for sufficient reason isn't self-evident: why should we assume the universe must be intelligible maybe somethings just are,
kant
the cosmological argument relies on the ontological argument to work but the ontological argument had already been dismantled
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Nielsen
brute fact the universe needs no explanation beyond itself just like Russell he argued it was brute fact or self-explanatory
rejection of sufficient reason: challenged the idea that everything must have a cause he believed its not irrational to accept that some things just are.
problems with the notion of a necessary being: is not clearly intelligible he questioned weather we can meaningfully talk about something whose non-existence is impossible
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