Q&A: The Cosmological Argument
The Cosmological Argument
Question
Hello Michael,
You brought in the book The First Being Kant’s objection to an infinite regress, and rejected it by arguing that the flaw in an infinite regress is against logic and not connected to our experience.
If that is so, the first premise in the revised formulation of the cosmological argument is not clear to me, since it too seems to assume that things about which we have no experience do not require a cause. Why should that be? After all, it contradicts our logic that everything—every single thing—has a cause (the principle of causality).
Or perhaps I didn’t understand the revision/premise.
Thank you.
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. I am not assuming that things outside our experience do not require a cause. I assume the opposite: only things within our experience necessarily require a cause. As for everything else, I do not know. And now comes the argument:
The argument says that the only way to avoid an infinite regress is to assume that there is a first link in the chain. It cannot be something within our experience, and therefore it must be something of a different kind, something that can be primary (without a cause external to itself).