Didn’t originally see this comment. (That’s what I get for leaving a tab open for hours before bothering to reply.)
No worries, I was offline anyway. Came back to find both your comments.
Your second paragraph differs from my understanding of Maitzen’s core argument, but it’s possible I misread him.
This is why my original, obscenely long comment contained quotes for every point.
Naturalists
point to the many phenomena we used to attribute to supernatural agents but can
now explain scientifically: the change of seasons, the course of a disease, the orbits
of planets, and on and on. Their theistic opponents often admit that natural science
has discovered not only good piecemeal explanations of the existence of particular
phenomena but even good integrated explanations of the existence and operation of
entire systems. In this sense, the opponents concede that natural science can answer
not only mechanistic ‘‘how’’ questions but also existential ‘‘why’’ questions, such as
‘‘Why are there penguins?’’ or ‘‘Why is there cancer?’’ Yet they hasten to point out
that natural science hasn’t explained why there exists anything at all: not specific
things or kinds of things but anything in the first place, anything in general.
[...]
Properly put, then, the challenge to naturalism is that natural science may do a fine
job accounting for particular contingent, concrete things and kinds of things, but it
isn’t equipped or even meant to tell us why any such things exist at all.
Other philosophers regard the challenge as well-posed but
sufficiently met if natural science can explain the existence of each given
contingent, concrete thing. Their spokesman is Hume’s Cleanthes: ‘‘Did I show you
the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter,
I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the
cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of
the parts.’’
[...]
The nature of my complaint may become clearer if we imagine the following
exchange:
A: Why is there anything?
B: What do you mean? Are you asking why numbers exist?
A: No. If numbers exist, they had to exist. Why is there anything that didn’t have
to exist?
B: So you’re asking why there are any contingent things. Well, there are pens,
which are contingent things, and here’s how pens come to exist—
A: —No! I’m not asking why there are any pens.
B: All right then. Penguins exist, and they’re contingent. Penguins evolved
from—
A: —No! I’m not asking why there are penguins either. I’m asking why there are
any contingent things at all.
B’s answers may seem deliberately obtuse, but they bring out the emptiness of A’s
questions: A rejects each of B’s attempts to supply determinate content to the
dummy sortal ‘contingent things’, but without such content there’s no determinate
question being asked. Once ‘contingent things’ takes on content (e.g., in one of the
ways B suggests), the resulting question becomes empirical and scientifically
answerable.
Or suppose I mention pens, plums, and penguins. You then ask me, ‘‘Why are
there any of the things you just mentioned?’’ but tell me you don’t want
explanations of the existence of pens, plums, or penguins in particular; instead, you
want to know why there are any of the things I just mentioned (with table-pounding
emphasis on ‘any’) rather than none at all. Clearly your attitude is perverse: ‘the
things I just mentioned’ is only a covering term for pens, plums, and penguins; it
doesn’t pick out a category of thing requiring an explanation beyond those I was
already prepared to give and you didn’t want to hear. Likewise for ‘contingent
things’ and the other dummy sortals I’ve discussed: there aren’t any contingent
things whose explanations outstrip the explanations available for the individuals
covered by the covering term ‘contingent things’.
For the same reason, we can see that the question ‘‘Why does the Universe
exist?’’ taken in the way that objectors to naturalism must intend it, also poses no
unanswerable challenge to naturalism, for it amounts to asking (again) ‘‘Why are
there any contingent, concrete things at all?’’ or (again) ‘‘Why are there these
contingent, concrete things rather than none at all?’’ or perhaps ‘‘Why are there
these contingent, concrete things rather than other such things?’’ Once we substitute
true sortals (‘pens’, ‘plums’, ‘penguins’, etc.) so that those latter questions have
more sense than the question ‘‘Exactly how many contingent, concrete things are
you holding in your hand?’’ they seem to admit of naturalistic answers. If,
moreover, the explanatory challenge to naturalism should consist of a long
disjunctive question—‘‘Why are there pens, or plums, or penguins, or…?’’—then of
course naturalism can offer a long disjunctive answer.
The closest he comes to answering the actual question is this...
At this point, defenders of supernaturalism might counter that naturalistic
explanations must ultimately bottom out at brute, unexplained posits. But I see
no reason naturalistic explanations can’t go forever deeper. One bad reason for
concluding that they can’t is the notion that x can’t explain y unless x itself is self
explanatory. I don’t see that notion as at all implied by our ordinary concept of
explanation, which allows that x can explain y even if something else altogether
explains x. Moreover, there are grounds for thinking that naturalistic explanations
not only could but must go forever deeper. A common attitude among scientists is
that the more they discover, the more there is yet to discover—the more they know,
the more they realize they don’t know—a pattern there’s no reason to think won’t
continue indefinitely. Indeed, scientific discoveries routinely raise at least as many
questions as they answer. Biologists have described some 80,000 species of
roundworm, for example, but suspect there might be a million species. More
generally, having discovered organisms in places they didn’t think could support
life, biologists now worry that they lack even a rough idea of the total number of
species; knowing more shows us we know less than we thought we knew.
Furthermore, history teaches, just when some scientists begin to think the
explanatory end is in sight, a revolution comes along to open domains of further
inquiry. Maxwell gives way to Planck and Einstein, and Hilbert gives way to Go¨del.
Jonathan Schaffer usefully catalogues several other examples of this kind.
… which, naturally, misses the point. Yes, we can imagine something infinitely old and fractally complex existing—although there may be some technical reason why it’s impossible, I don’t know of any—but we can also, counterfactually, imagine it not existing, and declaring it’s turtles all the way down does not explain why this counterfactual is not true (in fact, I think it probably is true, because blah blah complexity bah blah Occam’s Razor.)
People automatically attach an implicitly understood meaning to the word “things” (or “anything”) when it shows up in everyday sentences, and that often works OK. But given the atypical question “Why is there anything?”, it’s not obvious which meaning they should substitute in, and their brains start flailing. Or so Maitzen speculates.
Except that you don’t need to substitute in something specific for “anything”, since it’s just the set of all things—including all those possible things he lists. This might be clearer if we said “everything” or “something”?
I think I understand better where you were coming from now. Your complaint (about how solving the A and B vs. A-and-B issue doesn’t address the infinite regress issue) seems like it’s basically answered by TOD.
Except that you don’t need to substitute in something specific for “anything”, since it’s just the set of all things—including all those possible things he lists. This might be clearer if we said “everything” or “something”?
Talking about “the set of all things” can be quiteproblematic in itself! But brushing abstract set theory paradoxes aside, I think once you pin down “the set of all things” or “everything” or “something” tightly enough, you have effectively substituted in something specific: you’ve given me enough information to discern precisely what you’re asking about, and rendered the question well-posed. At that point TOD’s reply kicks in.
Yeah… dunno if they’re actually arguing that a First Cause must exist, or simply differentially focusing their attention on how to talk about the FC in cases where we somehow-or-other expect it does exist without spending time examining the “chain of turtles”,.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve mostly been thinking about cases where the universe is somehow infinitely old*, with no temporal “first cause” (and thus no bottom turtle, metaphorically speaking.)
Ah, thanks. I’ve already replied to that by now, but we’re still haggling over the details. I assume you were referring to this paragraph?
If I try to answer that question generally, I get “Everything that exists, exists as a consequence of the way everything that existed a moment earlier existed, and all of that stuff existed as a consequence of the way everything existed a moment before that, and so on and so on.” Which is unsatisfyingly general, as expected, but accurate enough. (Or, to quote Lorraine Hansberry: “Things as they are are as they are and have been and will be that way because they got that way because things were as they were in the first place!”)
No worries, I was offline anyway. Came back to find both your comments.
This is why my original, obscenely long comment contained quotes for every point.
The closest he comes to answering the actual question is this...
… which, naturally, misses the point. Yes, we can imagine something infinitely old and fractally complex existing—although there may be some technical reason why it’s impossible, I don’t know of any—but we can also, counterfactually, imagine it not existing, and declaring it’s turtles all the way down does not explain why this counterfactual is not true (in fact, I think it probably is true, because blah blah complexity bah blah Occam’s Razor.)
Except that you don’t need to substitute in something specific for “anything”, since it’s just the set of all things—including all those possible things he lists. This might be clearer if we said “everything” or “something”?
I think I understand better where you were coming from now. Your complaint (about how solving the A and B vs. A-and-B issue doesn’t address the infinite regress issue) seems like it’s basically answered by TOD.
Talking about “the set of all things” can be quite problematic in itself! But brushing abstract set theory paradoxes aside, I think once you pin down “the set of all things” or “everything” or “something” tightly enough, you have effectively substituted in something specific: you’ve given me enough information to discern precisely what you’re asking about, and rendered the question well-posed. At that point TOD’s reply kicks in.
Sorry, I of course meant the set of all actual things.
I guess I’ll have to reply to that, then.
That link is to a list of all his comments. Could you point me at where he refuted me?
No problem.
Apologies, I meant to link to this specific comment.
Note that MugaSofer replied to that comment.
Indeed, and I think their line of argument is a reformulated cosmological argument. I’m still thinking on it, though.
Yeah… dunno if they’re actually arguing that a First Cause must exist, or simply differentially focusing their attention on how to talk about the FC in cases where we somehow-or-other expect it does exist without spending time examining the “chain of turtles”,.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve mostly been thinking about cases where the universe is somehow infinitely old*, with no temporal “first cause” (and thus no bottom turtle, metaphorically speaking.)
EDIT: *or in a causal loop.
Ah, thanks. I’ve already replied to that by now, but we’re still haggling over the details. I assume you were referring to this paragraph?
That paragraph and the one after it, yeah. But as you say, you’ve already replied to it. I’ll probably post a reply to your reply in a bit.