I know you stated that you don’t particularly favor deductive arguments, but I highly advise going and looking over Rob Koons and Dan Bonevacs reinterpretations of the 5 ways from Aquinas.
It seems highly implausible. I'd like to see you write more on why you think it seems right. If existential inertia seems right then what is God's causal relationship to reality?
Have they published anything together on the topic yet? I know Koons said they're working on a book on the five ways, but aside from Koons' blog I haven't seen anything from them yet.
Im sure you’re already aware, but Dan’s reinterpretation of the third way is up on Koons blog tho, and I’m pretty sure Koons newer interpretation of the first way is actually present in the book “Classical theism and the metaphysics of God”.
Nothing published yet to my knowledge. I’ve seen them both separately talk a bit about it, and they just held a discussion on it with Fr. Gregory Pine.
I haven't read Pruss' book, but I'm unconvinced by your description of his Grim Reaper arguments. My response (which is related to the one you briefly mention) to the standard Grim Reaper scenario is that it merely describes a collection of physical laws that's either underspecified or inconsistent. The 12:59 thought experiment still involves basically the same thing, it just proceeds from the fact that there are some generally inconsistent/underspecified laws that are consistent/well-specified given certain initial conditions.
Imagine I give you a modified set of rules of chess. It turns out that under certain boardstates, the king both is and isn't allowed to castle - an impossibility. But then I ask you to imagine that we start the game at a different boardstate B where this contradiction of rules doesn't apply. Maybe I can even mathematically show that you can't ever reach a contradictory boardstate from B! It seems like your argument is tantamount to suggesting that I can't ever play the game starting at B, because if I changed it to a pathological starting position instead, the pathology would arise.
If the laws of physics of the 12:59 scenario include "I can interactively reprogram the 12:59 reaper to reap whenever I want," then those specific laws are inconsistent, hence impossible. This is just like the ordinary Grim Reaper setup, where it's the collection of default settings that's inconsistent, hence impossible. So we can just reject those laws and go with consistent ones involving infinite causes/causal chains, instead.
I'm not sure I currently understand why. The configuration of the reapers in the 12:59 scenario is possible. The joint unsatisfiability, and thus impossibility, only enters in if you stipulate the laws of physics, in addition to permitting all the reapers, are also such that arbitrary reaper reprogramming can happen before 12:59.
But even if I'm confused about this (which I feel I am - probably I've misunderstood you/Pruss somehow), it seems weird in general to reject the possibility of hypothetical, non-obviously pathological infinite causal chains on the basis of pathological infinite causal chains from some completely different thought experiment. It just seems really hard to understand why I should reject a priori a universe in which (for example) there's just two particles circularly orbiting each other for eternity on the basis of exotic Grim Reaper stuff in a vastly richer hypothetical universe.
In the game setup, no contradictory state of affairs arises. Nonetheless, it's clearly impossible. This means we'll need a deeper theory--e.g. the fact that the kings have contradictory dispositions.
The idea is that that atom case can be transformed into the grim reaper case by adding a reaper that will kill a guy if he's still alive each of those years.
>In the game setup, no contradictory state of affairs arises. Nonetheless, it's clearly impossible. This means we'll need a deeper theory--e.g. the fact that the kings have contradictory dispositions.
I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but it's not clear to me that any deeper theory is necessary beyond "consistent laws are possible, inconsistent ones aren't." Whatever chess-physics we do to determine why we can't move the board into a pathological boardstate while still obeying the rules of the chess variant, it's ultimately going to boil down in the end to the existence of some inconsistency of the laws otherwise.
>The idea is that that atom case can be transformed into the grim reaper case by adding a reaper that will kill a guy if he's still alive each of those years.
I also don't understand this objection. If you take one very simple conceptual possibility (a universe with two eternal atoms) and drastically change it to something vastly more complicated and pathological, then sure, that new modification is impossible. But why should I grant that that tells us anything interesting about the original thought experiment? In other words, why grant "If a possible universe has laws of physics X, it should also be possible to modify the laws into some other thing Y" in this case?
Finally, I don't see how your objection (= "you could add a Grim Reaper pathology by modifying the laws") is specific to the time-eternality of the atoms case, which was the point of my bringing it up.
Nice. Have you looked into Dr. Zarepour's work? He's excellent. I wrote an article on his version of the Avicennian argument which addresses some issues your argument may be susceptible to (e.g., modal collapse).
Besides filling the space of "unavailable cause", doesnt "God" remain devoid of any other qualities or attributes in this argument? Why use the word/concept "God" for this uncauseable cause and not "flooblewabble"?
The argument establishes that there's an unlimited mind, unlimited agent, or something like that--which implies infinite power, goodness, and knowledge, as I explain here https://benthams.substack.com/p/10-ways-god-can-be-simple
Why would mind-ness or agency be implied as an attribute of the causeless cause by the bare argument for a causeless cause? That seems like a leap that isn't covered by the argument.
The argument gives you a few things: simplicity since reducability to parts would continue the causal regress, creativity as this is this is implied and some sense of eternal or timelessness. There exists something timeless, creative and simple entity; this is about half way to a monotheistic vision of God (and a third of the way to a Christian concept)
If you think creation is good, you have some argument that God is therefore intrinsically good. You could also induce that a creative, eternal force is going to impact the casual chain more than once... probably perpetually. Relative power of to achieve what we see... not necessarily limitless but "very powerful" seems more likely than not. If you bring in a fine tuning argument, you can ground intelligence and agency.
I feel like Joe Schmid here, but what positive reasons have you given to rule out the necessarily uncaused thing being some fundamental matter, a foundational quantum field, a universal wavefunction, space itself, the impersonal Neoplatonic One or the Tao or anything like that?
Well first of all, even if those remain as options, knocking out all alternatives to theism except for 3ish of them is pretty good!
Matter just doesn't seem uncausable. Surely there's a possible world where something else causes whatever matter is thought to be fundamental! I don't really understand the Tao or Neoplatonic One, but I'd imagine they'd be causable or unintelligible.
Why can’t we just invoke some special kind of uncaused matter, in the same way as God is a special kind of uncaused mind? Sure the matter we see around us doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of thing which is uncausable, but the same applies for the minds around us.
Exactly this - the argument doesn't imply any particular attributes about the causeless cause. At the limit, whatever the causeless cause is couldn't be distinguished (from this argument alone) as a "physical" phenomena or a "sentient" one
I think the notion here might be that an uncaused mind is simpler than an uncaused kind of matter, but I find that line of reasoning quite dubious too. Whether you view the concepts “mind” and “matter” as simple or complex will depend on your conceptual schema! For the physicalist, the concept of mind is actually extremely complex, and we can similarly imagine views of matter which define it in terms of some kind of intrinsic property, where this intrinsic property is very simple relative to the causal structure that matter manifests.
So yes I agree with you that the assignment of particular attributes to the uncaused entity needs a much stronger argument than what is given here. I have a lot of other problems with it as well, but don’t have the space in this comment to get into them.
I just don’t have that seeming. Mind doesn’t seem particularly uncausable to me either, but something must be uncausable if the first half of the argument succeeds.
I think, on a theist perspective, the only things that could be uncausable are unlimited. A theist would probably argue that each of the other candidates you mentioned are limited in some way. I believe Schmid has mentioned in several videos that theists often take the existence of an unlimited being to entail the existence of God, but that he personally doesn't see any reason why the necessary being couldn't be limited in some respect.
That’s true, but this turns the original argument into an argument from limits, revealing that the premise 4 depends on a whole other controversial argument. That’s fine, but it just means the argument is presented deceptively simply.
Schmid also argues that a being without limits may not resemble God (as God has limits such as the number of divine persons (unless you are Amos Wollen and think there are infinite divine persons), the amount of justice vs mercy etc.
I agree that premise 4 needs more justification if the argument is going to be successful. However, it does seem to me that the author is trying to do some of the work of justifying the jump to an unlimited being in his explanation of premise 1, by appealing to notions like explicability and bruteness. It would certainly help for him to be a bit more clear on how exactly those concepts apply to the uncausable cause, though.
I’m confused about God being the only thing that can be an uncaused cause. Why can’t it be anything else with that property, as God has some properties that aren’t necessary for being an uncaused cause? Shouldn’t we only invoke the necessary things for an uncaused cause given this argument?
The problem with this line of reasoning is that people take that and go "oh, a first mover event exists, therefore the Bible is factually accurate, praying works, etc." It's hard to imagine a larger leap.
Well since you're asking for where it goes wrong, allow me to condescend to you with my physics knowledge. All cosmological arguments go wrong because they use this weird folk-theoretic idea of matter "coming into existence." One of the surviving dogmas of physics is that matter is neither created or destroyed - all the existing matter you see today is just recycled matter whose history we can trace backwards in time up to the Big Bang singularity. Before that, we have no knowledge on whether that matter was created, or whether it's eternally existed into the past, or whether it's just previous matter from another universe in the multiverse, or something else. Now let's go through the premises.
>1. Everything that exists and is possibly caused is actually caused
It's possible that matter was eternal and was never "caused" to exist. That would mean the only "causes" are the relative ones we draw in the universe where we mean to say that some matter was recycled into more useful matter by an agent. A wood manufacturer causes a table to come into existence by chopping up the already existing wood in trees - at no point does non-recycled matter pop into existence at the will of the wood manufacturer.
>2. There cannot be an infinite chain of possibly caused things without some deeper cause of the chain.
This just begs the question against infinitism.
>3. Therefore, there exists at least one uncausable cause
This could follow, but again, there is no reason to suspect that anything has ever been caused in the sense you think. Physics doesn't make use of this idea, and the existing evidence leaves it undetermined whether everything in the universe popped into existence, or exists eternally backwards in time, or is part of an infinite descending chain of universes, or whatnot.
>4. If there exists at least one uncausable cause, then God exists
>5. Therefore, God exists
There can also be a family of uncaused causes, like a family of gods, although it's not clear from the premise alone whether my objection would be meaningful, or if there's analytic trickery going on where you decide to call any uncausable cause a God.
I think most of your post goes on to conflate recycling-causation with popping-into-existence-causation, and so I won't respond to it in its entirety. Here is one comment you make that I think is ignorant:
>Or here’s another case. Imagine we have an infinite chain of boxcars that are stationary. Suddently, they all start moving. You can’t figure out why they all started moving. However, someone helpfully explains that each boxcar’s movement is explained by the one before it. This wouldn’t be an explanation—even if each member in the sequence is explained by something before it, what explains the sequence as a whole??!
This just begs the question against the infinitist. Their explanation is that there is an infinite chain of boxcars and each one before the current one pushes it. If you think this isn't an explanation, then feel free to point out what's wrong with it. What explains the sequence as a whole is that it's infinite so you never run out of cars that are pushing the one in front of it - by stipulation. It's not clear to me that you made any objection here besides applying finitary reasoning to an infinite case - which is absurd. "If the universe exists infinite into the past, then what explains the universe as a whole?" The fact that it has always existed infinitely into the past and never needed an explanation for popping into existence is what explains it.
Hey I was wondering what are your thoughts on Graham Oppy's most recent objections to the fine-tuning argument? He starts talking about it here:https://youtu.be/B-4K6-tPNho?t=3465
Have just started reading this. One thing I've been musing about... is a sort of cosmological argument on psychophysical harmony. I think it is distinct from the nomological emphasis, would think in terms of causal chain in particular
This seems to be a refinement of an argument from a previous post. There you said:
1. Everything has an explanation
2. But there can't be an infinite chain of explanations
3. Therefore there is an ultimate explanation/self explanatory thing
4. Therefore God
Now you are saying:
1. Everything has a cause, unless it can't possibly have a cause.
2. But there can't be an infinite chain of causes
3. Therefore there is an uncausable cause
4. God is a possible uncausable cause
5. God is the only possible uncausable cause
Abandonning the "it's not unexplained, its self-explainatory" line of reasoning is definetely an improvement. You've weakened the first statement, explicitly allowing some things to be uncaused. This loophole makes 1 and 3 compatible, which is nice, but it creates all kind of other problems.
For example now we can say that 2 is false because infinite chain of causes can't possibly have a cause and therefore is uncausable which according to loophole in 1 makes it a completely acceptable state of affairs. To be fair, there are other ways to justify infinite causal chain by declaring it not to be a thing and therefore not needing a cause or by saying that it simply follows from 1 by induction.
The antiinductiveness of 3, conditionally on 1 is an issue. It's very much not clear whether we should accept infinite causal chain or the existence of uncausable and, therefore, uncaused thing. This is not the weakest point of the argument, but a more honest explaration of the options and their drawbacks would be an improvement. Infinitely old tiger is weird, but it is less weird then uncausable tiger. In the former case I can just say, okay it seems that my limited brain is just unable to comprehend the full causal chain of tiger existence because its infinite, so the problem may be on my end, while infinitely old tigers are completely valid. In the later it feels as some kind of semantic trick and the whole situation is even less satisfying.
Your formulation of 4 is extremely misleading. The statement "If there exists at least one uncausable cause, then God exists." is an implication from 3 to 5 which is an obvious non-sequitur: on step 3 you are talking about all possible uncausable things, but on step 5 you've suddenly switched to a very specific thing, namely omnibenevalent god. Clearly you need some additional assumptions to make it work. Your explanation for step 4, however, is talking about why God is a possible uncausable cause, not a natural reading of your version of 4.
Now, lets adress 4 as you seemed to mean it and as I formulated it. You are saying that unlimited thing can't be caused because otherwise it will be limited in time. But maybe it can be caused in such a manner to be retroactively always have been the case? The arrangement where one unlimited thing causes other unlimited thing doesn't appear to be logically impossible, especially if we can imply difference in dimensions/cardinality of unlimitlessness.
But even accept it how do we get to 5 from here? The fact that God is a possible uncausable cause doesn't mean that its the only one. For this you make an implicit assumption:
4.5 Only unlimited things can be uncausable.
You are defending it here:
> The initial singularity isn’t uncausable—the physical world could be caused by something else.
I think there is a very good argument why our world couldn't be caused by something else - causality itself can be property of our world and so the whole notion of cause and effect does not make any sense outside of it.
But also, if you really think about potential uncausable things which have some kind of limit, well the possibilities are, ironically, limitless. What about mathematical objects? A lot of them have limits and yet are not produced by causality. Now you may adopt nominalism to avoid this possibility, but citing one of the smartest and most handsome philosophers of our time: "it’s certainly a cost to a theory if it requires nominalism". And don't forget about uncausable tiger! That is, a tiger that is metaphisically uncausable - they hang out with infinitely old tiger from time to time. Or literally anything else which we added "uncausable" prefix.
And last but not the least, lets grant all the premises from 1 to 4.5. Does it follow that God exists? Not really. There are infinite amount of alternative gods which are also limitless but not good. Unlimitly evil god, unlimitly neutral god, unlimity blue god with exactly eleven red dots. This unlimited thing doesn't even have to have a mind. And this is a fundamental issue with all deductive arguments for God. They try to carve a God sized loophole in the reasoning, but it has to be infinite in size and therefore infinite other things can pass through it as well.
I don't see why this argument is any more compelling than the Kalam. I think every premise of it is wrong.
1. This might be intuitively plausible in the sense that it *might* be true, but I certainly don't have any intuition suggesting that it must be true, or that it actually is true. I actually find it extremely implausible that this is a necessary metaphysical principle, or that one could come it to by a priori reasoning alone. I also don't think the argument that we need it to make sense of our everyday experience of causality works. The known laws of physics are already a perfectly good reason for why everyday objects always have causes - there's no reason to posit an extra metaphysical principle on top of that. And arguments like your golf ball argument can be pretty easily addressed by appealing to simplicity without the need to posit a metaphysical principle.
The argument from simplicity to premise 1 doesn't make any sense. Positing an uncaused but causable thing doesn't make a theory any less simple than positing an uncausable one. If you have to posit some uncaused thing, why is it simpler to assume that this thing's uncausedness is necessary rather than contingent? That just seems to add extra modal baggage to the theory. And the specific conclusion you draw from this, "Therefore, one should reject brute facts, and expect all of reality to be fundamentally explicable," is extremely implausible. That goes much farther than the premise you're trying to justify - it's the full-on principle of sufficient reason, which entails necessitarianism. I think this fact alone is a fatal objection against the PSR, but even if you don't, necessitarianism undermines your argument anyway, since it would eliminate any reason for thinking that an uncausable cause must be God.
The fourth argument you made for it is really just a repeat of the second one and has the same problems.
Besides the fact that none of the arguments for it work, there are three reasons for thinking that the premise is false:
- This premise seems to be contradicted by quantum mechanics, which implies that basically everything on the smallest scales happens without a cause. You could posit that these things are uncausable in order to save this premise, but then you undermine Premise 4.
- The premise assumes that particular individuals, rather than just categories or specific ways of describing an individual, can have essential properties (otherwise, it doesn't make sense to call one uncausable), but this doesn't make sense. P is an essential property of X if, necessarily, any Y that doesn't have P isn't X. If X represents an individual, rather than a category of things, then we can interpret this statement in one of two ways. Either "Y isn't X" means Y isn't identical to the actual individual X, in which case every property of X is an essential property, or we are using some rigid designator to identify individuals in different possible worlds as being that possible world's version of X. But in the latter case, P's being an essential property of X is purely a matter of linguistics - it depends on what possible individuals we take the name X to represent. there does not seem to be any other way to interpret this. Either the concept of an essential property is a category error when applies to individuals, or it is trivial (every property of an individual is essential), or it is just a property of the name we give to an individual and doesn't say anything special about the individual itself. But none of these accomplish what is needed for the argument.
- It just seems like special pleading. Why did you have to specify that anything causable has a cause and not just that everything does? Only because otherwise the premise would imply that God needs a cause. Most of the arguments that you used to justify the premise don't specifically invoke the fact that the thing was causable.
2. I don't find the paradoxes to be a convincing proof of the impossibility of infinite causal chains. All they show is that some situations involving infinite causal chains are impossible, but there's no argument even made for why the infinitude of the causal chain, and not some other feature, is what makes them impossible. Even if you object to the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis, that still doesn't mean that your diagnosis is correct. I find the argument that conceivability implies possibility, and infinite causal chains are conceivable, to be much more convincing than any attempt to refute infinite causal chains by gesturing to specific ones that are logically contradictory and then declaring that all of them are rendered impossible by association.
The second argument you make for Premise 2 doesn't really seem to be an argument. You just say that it seems like it's true. The specific examples you point to would be surprising if they happened in real life, but not because there was an uncaused infinite causal chain. In the tiger case, it's a lack of simplicity - a tiger is not a simple thing, so positing one as a brute fact is a large theoretical cost. Similarly, the simplest thing that could happen to the boxcars is for them to just remain stationary. If they suddenly start moving, that's surprising, so we would look for a way to explain it. But that doesn't require that all infinite causal chains are similarly in need of explanation.
The third reason you give doesn't make much sense. Just because one doesn't hold that a causeless infinite causal chain occurring is unlikely doesn't mean that one can't say that any specific outcome is unlikely. How does that follow at all? If I were to learn today that the universe was eternal, so that everything that happened is the result of an infinite causal chain, that wouldn't change my credence that a tiger is suddenly going to show up in my room. I still have plenty of reasons for believing that won't happen.
4. This seems like the least plausible premise of all, and the only argument you give for it is basically just affirming the consequent. Why couldn't anything other than God be uncausable? There are plenty of plausible reasons why the beginning of time itself should be considered uncausable - after all, there was nothing prior to it that could have caused it. This wouldn't imply that the universe or the laws of physics are necessary like Oppy's view does. And even if you can't think of something else, "I can't think of anything other than God, so it must be God," is a really, really bad argument.
Ultimately, I don't think this argument is any better than other cosmological arguments I've seen. The arguments you made for the first two premises are the exact same type of arguments made in favor of the premises of any other cosmological argument, but they're strictly weaker than those made for the Kalam, since Kalam proponents can also appeal to cosmology as evidence that the universe had a beginning, while you can't. And your argument doesn't do any better than other cosmological arguments in trying to justify the leap from the uncaused cause to God. What advantage is it supposed to have?
Wow, I'm in love with this argument, I find it really compelling. I'm completely ignorant, but a couple thoughts from most to least confident:
1. One plausible name for an uncausable cause might be the foundation of being. It seems conceivable that God could be the foundation of being, or that God may not be the foundation of being. For example, the foundation of being may cause necessary truths like mathematics, axiology, and may cause God. I think there is still a lot of work to do on Premise 4.
2. I haven't read Pruss' Book, but I do not find these counterarguments compelling. For one thing, my view is that Causal Finitism is just the UPD with more commitments. I am required to hold the UPD, but I am not required to hold Causal Finitism, and given the additional commitments of Causal Finitism with respect to space and time, I may prefer to only hold the UPD.
3. I'm way out of my depth here, but your second defense of the 2nd premise suggested that you hold the PSR. What do you think of more extreme PSR fanatics like Michael Della Rocca who uses the PSR to defend the Parmenidean conclusion that all is united? (I don't actually know whether you subscribe to the PSR so this may be completely irrelevant.
2. Right, well, I think the argument that I gave against the UPD is decisive.
3. Haven't read it, but sounds interesting. I'm not too wedded to the PSR, but I think there's at least a *presumption* in favor of an ultimate explanation.
1. That's my bad, I screwed up. I didn't properly interpret your argument. I think I was getting at something. God does seem limited in some ways, for example by the laws of logic. This dependence does not take away from the unlimited aspects of God's nature, and thus it seems reasonable to suppose that dependence or being grounded in something else does not necessarily substantially limit God.
2. I agree that the arguments you give compelling reasons to subscribe to Causal Finitism . I do not believe they are not counterexamples to the UPD. My understanding of the UPD is that it merely asserts the Grim Reaper Paradox results from a contradiction between two implications of the premises. Denying either of the premises is sufficient to resolve the paradox. Causal Finitism denies the premises which result in this, so it is consistent with the UPD. I think I am logically required to accept the UPD, and I think that Causal Finitism is the most likely explanation for why Grim Reaper Paradoxes are impossible. But, I think someone else could be rational in withholding judgment on Causal Finitism because of other unpleasant metaphysical commitments it entails. I think the fact that Causal Finitism is a subset of UPD objections is obscured by the fact that people reference UPD to avoid accepting Causal Finitism. Probably the simplest way to convince me I'm wrong is to give me an example of a scenario ruled out by UPD that is not ruled out by Causal Finitism.
>>Second, one can posit something that could be caused, but just exists for no reason—say, positing that the universe just exists. This is unsatisfactory—we want a theory that explains as much as possible. Positing something simply exists for no reason is a last-ditch effort.
One way around this problem is to consider the nature of existence.
For instance, if my axiom is "all things that can exist, do, to some extent of reality", then that explains everything without resorting to causality. It's possible for a world made of cotton candy to exist, but we know it doesn't exist in the reality you and I share, so it has to exist on some other level of reality.
In a way, it would be like the MCU's Reality Stone. Everything has some kind of reality to it. But it all *exists* -- the mere fact that we can even imagine it, means it exists on its own in some way, shape, or form.
Now, this doesn't necessarily *abjure* causation, but it does *clarify* the causal picture for us. Because if we can imagine God, then God must exist. And all the other gods too! They all exist with some kind of reality. Maybe they caused this particular reality, maybe they didn't. We don't have to know the answer, we just have to know that our Axiom Of Existence And Reality says they CAN have caused it, so there's no infinite paradox of causation.
Assuming that the Reversed Reaper Scenario is possible, what prevents that scenario from becoming into the traditional Grim Reaper Paradox? A mysterious force.
Assuming that it is possible to go back into time to meet your grandfather before he met your grandmother, what prevents you from killing your grandfather? A mysterious force.
Assuming that backwards causation is possible, if A causes B, and B happened before A, what prevents intervention such that A doesn't happen? A mysterious force.
David Lewis once said about time travel: "The forces of logic will not stay his hand! No powerful chaperone stands by to defend the past from interference."
However, if there is a necessary being with necessarily both the causal power and the inclination to prevent contradictions from happening, then the causal force is no longer mysterious. For example, if God has infallible foreknowledge and makes a true prediction about Bob to Bob (you will give a speech in front of a crowd tomorrow at this location), it is impossible for Bob to contradict that prediction. Bob might try to kill himself, or go as far away from this location as possible, or hurt his throat so that he cannot speak, etc., but God has the power and the inclination to prevent contradictions from happening.
Similarly, if there could be infinite causal chains, time travel, and backwards causation, then there is something like God (who exists in every possible world) that prevents contradictions from happening.
And if there couldn't be infinite causal chains, then we can identify the First Cause as God, with help from your argument. Hope to hear your thoughts.
That doesn't seem to be the right sort of explanation. On this picture, God could make a contradiction if he wanted to, but he just hates contradictions! That seems wrong.
It’s a necessary inclination or disposition. The idea is that this necessary being has to prevent contradictions from happening.
Like what would happen if Peter tried to prevent himself from denying Jesus 3 times after Jesus predicts to Peter. Since contradiction cannot happen, God will act such that all of Peter’s attempts will fail. Similarly, all attempts to kill your grandfather will fail. And all attempts to turn an infinite causal chain scenario into the Grim Reaper Paradox. And so on. Not because God could have wanted otherwise, but because contradictions cannot happen.
I know you stated that you don’t particularly favor deductive arguments, but I highly advise going and looking over Rob Koons and Dan Bonevacs reinterpretations of the 5 ways from Aquinas.
Thanks! It's on my list of things to do.
What are your thoughts on existential inertia?
Seems right
It seems highly implausible. I'd like to see you write more on why you think it seems right. If existential inertia seems right then what is God's causal relationship to reality?
He creates it.
And does not sustain it in existence from moment to moment.
Have they published anything together on the topic yet? I know Koons said they're working on a book on the five ways, but aside from Koons' blog I haven't seen anything from them yet.
Im sure you’re already aware, but Dan’s reinterpretation of the third way is up on Koons blog tho, and I’m pretty sure Koons newer interpretation of the first way is actually present in the book “Classical theism and the metaphysics of God”.
Nothing published yet to my knowledge. I’ve seen them both separately talk a bit about it, and they just held a discussion on it with Fr. Gregory Pine.
I'd seen the stuff on Koons' blog and the classical theism book, but I hadn't seen the discussion with Fr. Pine. Thanks for the info!
I haven't read Pruss' book, but I'm unconvinced by your description of his Grim Reaper arguments. My response (which is related to the one you briefly mention) to the standard Grim Reaper scenario is that it merely describes a collection of physical laws that's either underspecified or inconsistent. The 12:59 thought experiment still involves basically the same thing, it just proceeds from the fact that there are some generally inconsistent/underspecified laws that are consistent/well-specified given certain initial conditions.
Imagine I give you a modified set of rules of chess. It turns out that under certain boardstates, the king both is and isn't allowed to castle - an impossibility. But then I ask you to imagine that we start the game at a different boardstate B where this contradiction of rules doesn't apply. Maybe I can even mathematically show that you can't ever reach a contradictory boardstate from B! It seems like your argument is tantamount to suggesting that I can't ever play the game starting at B, because if I changed it to a pathological starting position instead, the pathology would arise.
If the laws of physics of the 12:59 scenario include "I can interactively reprogram the 12:59 reaper to reap whenever I want," then those specific laws are inconsistent, hence impossible. This is just like the ordinary Grim Reaper setup, where it's the collection of default settings that's inconsistent, hence impossible. So we can just reject those laws and go with consistent ones involving infinite causes/causal chains, instead.
But I think this shows that it's not the case that only jointly unsatisfiable pairs of events are impossible.
I'm not sure I currently understand why. The configuration of the reapers in the 12:59 scenario is possible. The joint unsatisfiability, and thus impossibility, only enters in if you stipulate the laws of physics, in addition to permitting all the reapers, are also such that arbitrary reaper reprogramming can happen before 12:59.
But even if I'm confused about this (which I feel I am - probably I've misunderstood you/Pruss somehow), it seems weird in general to reject the possibility of hypothetical, non-obviously pathological infinite causal chains on the basis of pathological infinite causal chains from some completely different thought experiment. It just seems really hard to understand why I should reject a priori a universe in which (for example) there's just two particles circularly orbiting each other for eternity on the basis of exotic Grim Reaper stuff in a vastly richer hypothetical universe.
In the game setup, no contradictory state of affairs arises. Nonetheless, it's clearly impossible. This means we'll need a deeper theory--e.g. the fact that the kings have contradictory dispositions.
The idea is that that atom case can be transformed into the grim reaper case by adding a reaper that will kill a guy if he's still alive each of those years.
>In the game setup, no contradictory state of affairs arises. Nonetheless, it's clearly impossible. This means we'll need a deeper theory--e.g. the fact that the kings have contradictory dispositions.
I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but it's not clear to me that any deeper theory is necessary beyond "consistent laws are possible, inconsistent ones aren't." Whatever chess-physics we do to determine why we can't move the board into a pathological boardstate while still obeying the rules of the chess variant, it's ultimately going to boil down in the end to the existence of some inconsistency of the laws otherwise.
>The idea is that that atom case can be transformed into the grim reaper case by adding a reaper that will kill a guy if he's still alive each of those years.
I also don't understand this objection. If you take one very simple conceptual possibility (a universe with two eternal atoms) and drastically change it to something vastly more complicated and pathological, then sure, that new modification is impossible. But why should I grant that that tells us anything interesting about the original thought experiment? In other words, why grant "If a possible universe has laws of physics X, it should also be possible to modify the laws into some other thing Y" in this case?
Finally, I don't see how your objection (= "you could add a Grim Reaper pathology by modifying the laws") is specific to the time-eternality of the atoms case, which was the point of my bringing it up.
Nice. Have you looked into Dr. Zarepour's work? He's excellent. I wrote an article on his version of the Avicennian argument which addresses some issues your argument may be susceptible to (e.g., modal collapse).
Besides filling the space of "unavailable cause", doesnt "God" remain devoid of any other qualities or attributes in this argument? Why use the word/concept "God" for this uncauseable cause and not "flooblewabble"?
The argument establishes that there's an unlimited mind, unlimited agent, or something like that--which implies infinite power, goodness, and knowledge, as I explain here https://benthams.substack.com/p/10-ways-god-can-be-simple
Why would mind-ness or agency be implied as an attribute of the causeless cause by the bare argument for a causeless cause? That seems like a leap that isn't covered by the argument.
The argument gives you a few things: simplicity since reducability to parts would continue the causal regress, creativity as this is this is implied and some sense of eternal or timelessness. There exists something timeless, creative and simple entity; this is about half way to a monotheistic vision of God (and a third of the way to a Christian concept)
If you think creation is good, you have some argument that God is therefore intrinsically good. You could also induce that a creative, eternal force is going to impact the casual chain more than once... probably perpetually. Relative power of to achieve what we see... not necessarily limitless but "very powerful" seems more likely than not. If you bring in a fine tuning argument, you can ground intelligence and agency.
Autocorrect ... "Uncauseable cause" not "unavailable cause"
I feel like Joe Schmid here, but what positive reasons have you given to rule out the necessarily uncaused thing being some fundamental matter, a foundational quantum field, a universal wavefunction, space itself, the impersonal Neoplatonic One or the Tao or anything like that?
Well first of all, even if those remain as options, knocking out all alternatives to theism except for 3ish of them is pretty good!
Matter just doesn't seem uncausable. Surely there's a possible world where something else causes whatever matter is thought to be fundamental! I don't really understand the Tao or Neoplatonic One, but I'd imagine they'd be causable or unintelligible.
Why can’t we just invoke some special kind of uncaused matter, in the same way as God is a special kind of uncaused mind? Sure the matter we see around us doesn’t seem like it’s the kind of thing which is uncausable, but the same applies for the minds around us.
Exactly this - the argument doesn't imply any particular attributes about the causeless cause. At the limit, whatever the causeless cause is couldn't be distinguished (from this argument alone) as a "physical" phenomena or a "sentient" one
I think the notion here might be that an uncaused mind is simpler than an uncaused kind of matter, but I find that line of reasoning quite dubious too. Whether you view the concepts “mind” and “matter” as simple or complex will depend on your conceptual schema! For the physicalist, the concept of mind is actually extremely complex, and we can similarly imagine views of matter which define it in terms of some kind of intrinsic property, where this intrinsic property is very simple relative to the causal structure that matter manifests.
So yes I agree with you that the assignment of particular attributes to the uncaused entity needs a much stronger argument than what is given here. I have a lot of other problems with it as well, but don’t have the space in this comment to get into them.
Uncausable*
I just don’t have that seeming. Mind doesn’t seem particularly uncausable to me either, but something must be uncausable if the first half of the argument succeeds.
Mind isn't necessarily uncausable, but an unlimited mind is uncausable.
I think, on a theist perspective, the only things that could be uncausable are unlimited. A theist would probably argue that each of the other candidates you mentioned are limited in some way. I believe Schmid has mentioned in several videos that theists often take the existence of an unlimited being to entail the existence of God, but that he personally doesn't see any reason why the necessary being couldn't be limited in some respect.
That’s true, but this turns the original argument into an argument from limits, revealing that the premise 4 depends on a whole other controversial argument. That’s fine, but it just means the argument is presented deceptively simply.
Schmid also argues that a being without limits may not resemble God (as God has limits such as the number of divine persons (unless you are Amos Wollen and think there are infinite divine persons), the amount of justice vs mercy etc.
I agree that premise 4 needs more justification if the argument is going to be successful. However, it does seem to me that the author is trying to do some of the work of justifying the jump to an unlimited being in his explanation of premise 1, by appealing to notions like explicability and bruteness. It would certainly help for him to be a bit more clear on how exactly those concepts apply to the uncausable cause, though.
I’m confused about God being the only thing that can be an uncaused cause. Why can’t it be anything else with that property, as God has some properties that aren’t necessary for being an uncaused cause? Shouldn’t we only invoke the necessary things for an uncaused cause given this argument?
With what property? The argument doesn't say God's the only possible uncaused cause, but the only uncausable cause.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that people take that and go "oh, a first mover event exists, therefore the Bible is factually accurate, praying works, etc." It's hard to imagine a larger leap.
The argument gets you to a perfect being, but nothing about the Bible. However, I've literally never heard people say what you say they say.
Well since you're asking for where it goes wrong, allow me to condescend to you with my physics knowledge. All cosmological arguments go wrong because they use this weird folk-theoretic idea of matter "coming into existence." One of the surviving dogmas of physics is that matter is neither created or destroyed - all the existing matter you see today is just recycled matter whose history we can trace backwards in time up to the Big Bang singularity. Before that, we have no knowledge on whether that matter was created, or whether it's eternally existed into the past, or whether it's just previous matter from another universe in the multiverse, or something else. Now let's go through the premises.
>1. Everything that exists and is possibly caused is actually caused
It's possible that matter was eternal and was never "caused" to exist. That would mean the only "causes" are the relative ones we draw in the universe where we mean to say that some matter was recycled into more useful matter by an agent. A wood manufacturer causes a table to come into existence by chopping up the already existing wood in trees - at no point does non-recycled matter pop into existence at the will of the wood manufacturer.
>2. There cannot be an infinite chain of possibly caused things without some deeper cause of the chain.
This just begs the question against infinitism.
>3. Therefore, there exists at least one uncausable cause
This could follow, but again, there is no reason to suspect that anything has ever been caused in the sense you think. Physics doesn't make use of this idea, and the existing evidence leaves it undetermined whether everything in the universe popped into existence, or exists eternally backwards in time, or is part of an infinite descending chain of universes, or whatnot.
>4. If there exists at least one uncausable cause, then God exists
>5. Therefore, God exists
There can also be a family of uncaused causes, like a family of gods, although it's not clear from the premise alone whether my objection would be meaningful, or if there's analytic trickery going on where you decide to call any uncausable cause a God.
I think most of your post goes on to conflate recycling-causation with popping-into-existence-causation, and so I won't respond to it in its entirety. Here is one comment you make that I think is ignorant:
>Or here’s another case. Imagine we have an infinite chain of boxcars that are stationary. Suddently, they all start moving. You can’t figure out why they all started moving. However, someone helpfully explains that each boxcar’s movement is explained by the one before it. This wouldn’t be an explanation—even if each member in the sequence is explained by something before it, what explains the sequence as a whole??!
This just begs the question against the infinitist. Their explanation is that there is an infinite chain of boxcars and each one before the current one pushes it. If you think this isn't an explanation, then feel free to point out what's wrong with it. What explains the sequence as a whole is that it's infinite so you never run out of cars that are pushing the one in front of it - by stipulation. It's not clear to me that you made any objection here besides applying finitary reasoning to an infinite case - which is absurd. "If the universe exists infinite into the past, then what explains the universe as a whole?" The fact that it has always existed infinitely into the past and never needed an explanation for popping into existence is what explains it.
Hey I was wondering what are your thoughts on Graham Oppy's most recent objections to the fine-tuning argument? He starts talking about it here:https://youtu.be/B-4K6-tPNho?t=3465
Have just started reading this. One thing I've been musing about... is a sort of cosmological argument on psychophysical harmony. I think it is distinct from the nomological emphasis, would think in terms of causal chain in particular
This seems to be a refinement of an argument from a previous post. There you said:
1. Everything has an explanation
2. But there can't be an infinite chain of explanations
3. Therefore there is an ultimate explanation/self explanatory thing
4. Therefore God
Now you are saying:
1. Everything has a cause, unless it can't possibly have a cause.
2. But there can't be an infinite chain of causes
3. Therefore there is an uncausable cause
4. God is a possible uncausable cause
5. God is the only possible uncausable cause
Abandonning the "it's not unexplained, its self-explainatory" line of reasoning is definetely an improvement. You've weakened the first statement, explicitly allowing some things to be uncaused. This loophole makes 1 and 3 compatible, which is nice, but it creates all kind of other problems.
For example now we can say that 2 is false because infinite chain of causes can't possibly have a cause and therefore is uncausable which according to loophole in 1 makes it a completely acceptable state of affairs. To be fair, there are other ways to justify infinite causal chain by declaring it not to be a thing and therefore not needing a cause or by saying that it simply follows from 1 by induction.
The antiinductiveness of 3, conditionally on 1 is an issue. It's very much not clear whether we should accept infinite causal chain or the existence of uncausable and, therefore, uncaused thing. This is not the weakest point of the argument, but a more honest explaration of the options and their drawbacks would be an improvement. Infinitely old tiger is weird, but it is less weird then uncausable tiger. In the former case I can just say, okay it seems that my limited brain is just unable to comprehend the full causal chain of tiger existence because its infinite, so the problem may be on my end, while infinitely old tigers are completely valid. In the later it feels as some kind of semantic trick and the whole situation is even less satisfying.
Your formulation of 4 is extremely misleading. The statement "If there exists at least one uncausable cause, then God exists." is an implication from 3 to 5 which is an obvious non-sequitur: on step 3 you are talking about all possible uncausable things, but on step 5 you've suddenly switched to a very specific thing, namely omnibenevalent god. Clearly you need some additional assumptions to make it work. Your explanation for step 4, however, is talking about why God is a possible uncausable cause, not a natural reading of your version of 4.
Now, lets adress 4 as you seemed to mean it and as I formulated it. You are saying that unlimited thing can't be caused because otherwise it will be limited in time. But maybe it can be caused in such a manner to be retroactively always have been the case? The arrangement where one unlimited thing causes other unlimited thing doesn't appear to be logically impossible, especially if we can imply difference in dimensions/cardinality of unlimitlessness.
But even accept it how do we get to 5 from here? The fact that God is a possible uncausable cause doesn't mean that its the only one. For this you make an implicit assumption:
4.5 Only unlimited things can be uncausable.
You are defending it here:
> The initial singularity isn’t uncausable—the physical world could be caused by something else.
I think there is a very good argument why our world couldn't be caused by something else - causality itself can be property of our world and so the whole notion of cause and effect does not make any sense outside of it.
But also, if you really think about potential uncausable things which have some kind of limit, well the possibilities are, ironically, limitless. What about mathematical objects? A lot of them have limits and yet are not produced by causality. Now you may adopt nominalism to avoid this possibility, but citing one of the smartest and most handsome philosophers of our time: "it’s certainly a cost to a theory if it requires nominalism". And don't forget about uncausable tiger! That is, a tiger that is metaphisically uncausable - they hang out with infinitely old tiger from time to time. Or literally anything else which we added "uncausable" prefix.
And last but not the least, lets grant all the premises from 1 to 4.5. Does it follow that God exists? Not really. There are infinite amount of alternative gods which are also limitless but not good. Unlimitly evil god, unlimitly neutral god, unlimity blue god with exactly eleven red dots. This unlimited thing doesn't even have to have a mind. And this is a fundamental issue with all deductive arguments for God. They try to carve a God sized loophole in the reasoning, but it has to be infinite in size and therefore infinite other things can pass through it as well.
I don't see why this argument is any more compelling than the Kalam. I think every premise of it is wrong.
1. This might be intuitively plausible in the sense that it *might* be true, but I certainly don't have any intuition suggesting that it must be true, or that it actually is true. I actually find it extremely implausible that this is a necessary metaphysical principle, or that one could come it to by a priori reasoning alone. I also don't think the argument that we need it to make sense of our everyday experience of causality works. The known laws of physics are already a perfectly good reason for why everyday objects always have causes - there's no reason to posit an extra metaphysical principle on top of that. And arguments like your golf ball argument can be pretty easily addressed by appealing to simplicity without the need to posit a metaphysical principle.
The argument from simplicity to premise 1 doesn't make any sense. Positing an uncaused but causable thing doesn't make a theory any less simple than positing an uncausable one. If you have to posit some uncaused thing, why is it simpler to assume that this thing's uncausedness is necessary rather than contingent? That just seems to add extra modal baggage to the theory. And the specific conclusion you draw from this, "Therefore, one should reject brute facts, and expect all of reality to be fundamentally explicable," is extremely implausible. That goes much farther than the premise you're trying to justify - it's the full-on principle of sufficient reason, which entails necessitarianism. I think this fact alone is a fatal objection against the PSR, but even if you don't, necessitarianism undermines your argument anyway, since it would eliminate any reason for thinking that an uncausable cause must be God.
The fourth argument you made for it is really just a repeat of the second one and has the same problems.
Besides the fact that none of the arguments for it work, there are three reasons for thinking that the premise is false:
- This premise seems to be contradicted by quantum mechanics, which implies that basically everything on the smallest scales happens without a cause. You could posit that these things are uncausable in order to save this premise, but then you undermine Premise 4.
- The premise assumes that particular individuals, rather than just categories or specific ways of describing an individual, can have essential properties (otherwise, it doesn't make sense to call one uncausable), but this doesn't make sense. P is an essential property of X if, necessarily, any Y that doesn't have P isn't X. If X represents an individual, rather than a category of things, then we can interpret this statement in one of two ways. Either "Y isn't X" means Y isn't identical to the actual individual X, in which case every property of X is an essential property, or we are using some rigid designator to identify individuals in different possible worlds as being that possible world's version of X. But in the latter case, P's being an essential property of X is purely a matter of linguistics - it depends on what possible individuals we take the name X to represent. there does not seem to be any other way to interpret this. Either the concept of an essential property is a category error when applies to individuals, or it is trivial (every property of an individual is essential), or it is just a property of the name we give to an individual and doesn't say anything special about the individual itself. But none of these accomplish what is needed for the argument.
- It just seems like special pleading. Why did you have to specify that anything causable has a cause and not just that everything does? Only because otherwise the premise would imply that God needs a cause. Most of the arguments that you used to justify the premise don't specifically invoke the fact that the thing was causable.
2. I don't find the paradoxes to be a convincing proof of the impossibility of infinite causal chains. All they show is that some situations involving infinite causal chains are impossible, but there's no argument even made for why the infinitude of the causal chain, and not some other feature, is what makes them impossible. Even if you object to the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis, that still doesn't mean that your diagnosis is correct. I find the argument that conceivability implies possibility, and infinite causal chains are conceivable, to be much more convincing than any attempt to refute infinite causal chains by gesturing to specific ones that are logically contradictory and then declaring that all of them are rendered impossible by association.
The second argument you make for Premise 2 doesn't really seem to be an argument. You just say that it seems like it's true. The specific examples you point to would be surprising if they happened in real life, but not because there was an uncaused infinite causal chain. In the tiger case, it's a lack of simplicity - a tiger is not a simple thing, so positing one as a brute fact is a large theoretical cost. Similarly, the simplest thing that could happen to the boxcars is for them to just remain stationary. If they suddenly start moving, that's surprising, so we would look for a way to explain it. But that doesn't require that all infinite causal chains are similarly in need of explanation.
The third reason you give doesn't make much sense. Just because one doesn't hold that a causeless infinite causal chain occurring is unlikely doesn't mean that one can't say that any specific outcome is unlikely. How does that follow at all? If I were to learn today that the universe was eternal, so that everything that happened is the result of an infinite causal chain, that wouldn't change my credence that a tiger is suddenly going to show up in my room. I still have plenty of reasons for believing that won't happen.
4. This seems like the least plausible premise of all, and the only argument you give for it is basically just affirming the consequent. Why couldn't anything other than God be uncausable? There are plenty of plausible reasons why the beginning of time itself should be considered uncausable - after all, there was nothing prior to it that could have caused it. This wouldn't imply that the universe or the laws of physics are necessary like Oppy's view does. And even if you can't think of something else, "I can't think of anything other than God, so it must be God," is a really, really bad argument.
Ultimately, I don't think this argument is any better than other cosmological arguments I've seen. The arguments you made for the first two premises are the exact same type of arguments made in favor of the premises of any other cosmological argument, but they're strictly weaker than those made for the Kalam, since Kalam proponents can also appeal to cosmology as evidence that the universe had a beginning, while you can't. And your argument doesn't do any better than other cosmological arguments in trying to justify the leap from the uncaused cause to God. What advantage is it supposed to have?
Wow, I'm in love with this argument, I find it really compelling. I'm completely ignorant, but a couple thoughts from most to least confident:
1. One plausible name for an uncausable cause might be the foundation of being. It seems conceivable that God could be the foundation of being, or that God may not be the foundation of being. For example, the foundation of being may cause necessary truths like mathematics, axiology, and may cause God. I think there is still a lot of work to do on Premise 4.
2. I haven't read Pruss' Book, but I do not find these counterarguments compelling. For one thing, my view is that Causal Finitism is just the UPD with more commitments. I am required to hold the UPD, but I am not required to hold Causal Finitism, and given the additional commitments of Causal Finitism with respect to space and time, I may prefer to only hold the UPD.
3. I'm way out of my depth here, but your second defense of the 2nd premise suggested that you hold the PSR. What do you think of more extreme PSR fanatics like Michael Della Rocca who uses the PSR to defend the Parmenidean conclusion that all is united? (I don't actually know whether you subscribe to the PSR so this may be completely irrelevant.
1. Hmm, not sure if I get what you're saying. .
2. Right, well, I think the argument that I gave against the UPD is decisive.
3. Haven't read it, but sounds interesting. I'm not too wedded to the PSR, but I think there's at least a *presumption* in favor of an ultimate explanation.
1. That's my bad, I screwed up. I didn't properly interpret your argument. I think I was getting at something. God does seem limited in some ways, for example by the laws of logic. This dependence does not take away from the unlimited aspects of God's nature, and thus it seems reasonable to suppose that dependence or being grounded in something else does not necessarily substantially limit God.
2. I agree that the arguments you give compelling reasons to subscribe to Causal Finitism . I do not believe they are not counterexamples to the UPD. My understanding of the UPD is that it merely asserts the Grim Reaper Paradox results from a contradiction between two implications of the premises. Denying either of the premises is sufficient to resolve the paradox. Causal Finitism denies the premises which result in this, so it is consistent with the UPD. I think I am logically required to accept the UPD, and I think that Causal Finitism is the most likely explanation for why Grim Reaper Paradoxes are impossible. But, I think someone else could be rational in withholding judgment on Causal Finitism because of other unpleasant metaphysical commitments it entails. I think the fact that Causal Finitism is a subset of UPD objections is obscured by the fact that people reference UPD to avoid accepting Causal Finitism. Probably the simplest way to convince me I'm wrong is to give me an example of a scenario ruled out by UPD that is not ruled out by Causal Finitism.
Yeah, it's possible that you'd think the grim reaper scenario is impossible for some other reason. It's hard to see what that reason might be though.
Isn't this just Aquinas's third way?
I don’t think so but Aquinas is hard to interpret
>>Second, one can posit something that could be caused, but just exists for no reason—say, positing that the universe just exists. This is unsatisfactory—we want a theory that explains as much as possible. Positing something simply exists for no reason is a last-ditch effort.
One way around this problem is to consider the nature of existence.
For instance, if my axiom is "all things that can exist, do, to some extent of reality", then that explains everything without resorting to causality. It's possible for a world made of cotton candy to exist, but we know it doesn't exist in the reality you and I share, so it has to exist on some other level of reality.
In a way, it would be like the MCU's Reality Stone. Everything has some kind of reality to it. But it all *exists* -- the mere fact that we can even imagine it, means it exists on its own in some way, shape, or form.
Now, this doesn't necessarily *abjure* causation, but it does *clarify* the causal picture for us. Because if we can imagine God, then God must exist. And all the other gods too! They all exist with some kind of reality. Maybe they caused this particular reality, maybe they didn't. We don't have to know the answer, we just have to know that our Axiom Of Existence And Reality says they CAN have caused it, so there's no infinite paradox of causation.
But why is it that all things that can exist do? And this seems to undermine induction. https://benthams.substack.com/p/modal-realism-undermines-induction
The advantage of our axiom is that it's more parsimonious and simple, while addressing all of the same original questions.
Assuming that the Reversed Reaper Scenario is possible, what prevents that scenario from becoming into the traditional Grim Reaper Paradox? A mysterious force.
Assuming that it is possible to go back into time to meet your grandfather before he met your grandmother, what prevents you from killing your grandfather? A mysterious force.
Assuming that backwards causation is possible, if A causes B, and B happened before A, what prevents intervention such that A doesn't happen? A mysterious force.
David Lewis once said about time travel: "The forces of logic will not stay his hand! No powerful chaperone stands by to defend the past from interference."
However, if there is a necessary being with necessarily both the causal power and the inclination to prevent contradictions from happening, then the causal force is no longer mysterious. For example, if God has infallible foreknowledge and makes a true prediction about Bob to Bob (you will give a speech in front of a crowd tomorrow at this location), it is impossible for Bob to contradict that prediction. Bob might try to kill himself, or go as far away from this location as possible, or hurt his throat so that he cannot speak, etc., but God has the power and the inclination to prevent contradictions from happening.
Similarly, if there could be infinite causal chains, time travel, and backwards causation, then there is something like God (who exists in every possible world) that prevents contradictions from happening.
And if there couldn't be infinite causal chains, then we can identify the First Cause as God, with help from your argument. Hope to hear your thoughts.
That doesn't seem to be the right sort of explanation. On this picture, God could make a contradiction if he wanted to, but he just hates contradictions! That seems wrong.
It’s a necessary inclination or disposition. The idea is that this necessary being has to prevent contradictions from happening.
Like what would happen if Peter tried to prevent himself from denying Jesus 3 times after Jesus predicts to Peter. Since contradiction cannot happen, God will act such that all of Peter’s attempts will fail. Similarly, all attempts to kill your grandfather will fail. And all attempts to turn an infinite causal chain scenario into the Grim Reaper Paradox. And so on. Not because God could have wanted otherwise, but because contradictions cannot happen.
Still doesn't seem like the right sort of explanation.