The Limited Efficacy of Rasmussen's Argument From Limits
Addressing Rasmussen's Argument from Limits
I was recently listening to an interview with Rasmussen on the argument from limits. I don’t think the argument is successful and so decided to respond to it. The basic argument is that, once we’ve established that the foundation for reality must be necessary, it can’t be limited because limits require an explanation. Thus, fundamental reality must be unlimited and an unlimited fundamental reality msut be God.
I’ll spell out a few basic objections.
I don’t accept that the ultimate thing must be necessary—but that’s a longer discussion.
I don’t think limits require an explanation. There’s no explanation for why I can’t fly, don’t have infinite power, don’t have infinite knowledge, and don’t have infinite sides. However, this does not mean I have infinite knowledge, power, sides, and the ability to fly. Generally, I think that abilities require explanations, limits do not. In the absence of an explanation for why agent x can do action y, it’s reasonable to assume that x can’t do y.
I think that a fully unlimited being is incoherent. Being unlimited in all respects would be impossible because, for any property, there is an opposite property. A being with infinite knowledge would lack infinite ignorance, a being with infinite power would lack infinite impotence, and a being with infinite goodness would lack infinite badness. Additionally, God is not unlimited in all respects. The following list of things God almost certainly doesn’t have in infinite amounts.
A) Love of plantain chips
B) Desire to befriend cockroaches
C) Number of strange science fiction stories taking place in fictional universes in which the main character is an elephant.
D) Amount of personal identities (ie, there aren’t infinite Gods).
E) Desire to turn into a human and get elected president of Belarus.
F) Anger.
G) Hunger.
H) Sadness.
I) Irritation.
J) Number of trees that he’s planted.
K) Desire to turn into a dolphin and have affairs with humans (as the Greek God’s were said to have done).
Etc.
Rasmussen makes a series of significant claims, paraphrased in quotes, that I’ll respond to.
Fundamental reality only has limits if that’s part of fundamental reality.
Whether I agree with this depends on how it’s defined. I don’t think that fundamental reality has an explanation of why there aren’t explosions randomly happening throughout the world. I just think there isn’t a mechanism for explosions to happen constantly.
We need an explanation for limits.
I disagree with this for the reasons spelled out before. One analogy that I’ve heard given before is about the speed of light. Prior to finding out that there was a maximum speed for things to travel, it was reasonable to assume it was infinite. This is true, however, this is a limit on possibility. Perhaps limits on possibility need explanations—ie, there needs to be an explanation for why x is impossible. However, limits on what things actually are don’t need an explanation. It wouldn’t make sense to assume, prior to examining the evidence, that there were actually things that went at infinite speeds. So maybe limits on possibility need an explanation, but limits on what actually happens don’t.
If this is true, this could rescue contingency. If limits on what can happen need an explanation, then the universe was just a thing that could have happened, that had no limit on its possibility.
Generally limits have explanations in our experience.
I disagree with this for the reason given above.
Fundamental reality couldn’t have a particular shape with a set number of sides because that would need an explanation
I think this is generally true that shapes need an explanation, but the fact that things that aren’t fundamental need explanations and have them doesn’t mean that ultimate reality needs an explanation and can’t be limited in shape. I would, however, suspect that ultimate reality probably doesn’t have a set shape.
There can’t be any numbers relating to it because any number like 3 sides would need an explanation.
I don’t think this is true. Most things have explanations—so pointing to a feature that usually has an explanation isn’t informative. One could similarly say that ultimate reality can’t have the ability to cause things, because the things that we observe cause things seem to have explanation. This seems like induction on the basis of a very incomplete set to the ultimate cause of the universe.
Won’t include any negations because those would be limits
But God does have negations. God is not evil, hateful, spiteful, and does not have an infinite desire for pizza.
Will have value because value can’t come from non value and there is value that exists. Unlimited value because no limit on its value.
I think that value can come from non value. Value is a necessary feature that supervenes on particular mental states. Thus, the cause of the non value ultimately causes value. Value itself is necessarily supervenient, so it can be analogized to numbers. Numbers can’t come from non numbers (or anything), but a number of things (E.g. 8 apples) can come from something else. Value is the same in this regard. The fact that some mental states have value is necessary and things without value can lead to the emergence of those mental states.
I don’t see a reason to accept that value can’t come from non value. Heat can come from non heat, life can come from non life, omelets can come from non omelets, stories can come from non stories, why would value be any different?
Indeed, it seems like this would imply that God has to have unlimited disvalue, because disvalue exists in the world, and if value can’t come from non value, disvalue can’t come from non value either. Thus, this would seem to imply that God has both unlimited goodness and evil.
Pain lacks value that happiness has.
Rasmussen argues that we can observe value when we consider our own pain. We can be directly aware of the fact that it lacks value. I agree with this. However, I think that when we observe pain, we don’t just find it lacking in value. We find that it actively has disvalue. Thus, the privation theory seems to be disconfirmed by this. Horrific torture isn’t just not good, it’s actively bad. This would pose a problem if Rasmussen uses the privation theory to argue that God lacks disvalue, because there is no disvalue, disvalue is just the absence of value.
Infinite cognitive power.
I don’t know why we’d accept that it has infinite cognitive power. It seems it could just as easily have infinite non-cognitive power, infinite heat, photosynthetic abilities, etc. Privileging cognitive power as the domain in which there is no limit seems arbitrary and ad hoc.
So as clever as I think the argument is, I find it ultimately unpersuasive.