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10/12/2015 1:16 am  #1


Grunbaum and the Kalam

I read Grunbaum's article, the Pseudo-Problem of Creation in Physical Cosmology, at the infidels website. Now, I'm not an expert in cosmology, so I will focus more on Grunbaum's metaphysical critiques. I'm not really a defender of Craig's Kalam argument, however, Grunbaum's critiques were pretty weak. For example, Grunbaum attacks the famous straw man that no one defends, and he mentions "Thus the question more or less tacitly assumes some sort of temporal beginning for the physical universe, preceded temporally by a supposed state of nothingness." Craig's Kalam, does not assume a temporal beginning for the physical universe. Grunbaum doesn't even attack Craig's Hilbert's Hotel Paradox.From my point of view, Grunbaum is being sloppy because he is not very clear on what types of causality is he talking about such as efficient, final, material and formal. One can interpret the first premise, "Whatever begins to exist has a cause" in the efficient casuality sense, which doesn't presuppose physical time. Grunbaum also mentions that Aristotle's "external force is needed as the cause of a sublunar body's  nonvertical motion" principle has been refuted, but no cosmological argument assumes this principle. Rather, some of the arguments are grounded in act/potency, simplicity/composition, contingency/necessity theories. Of course, there are more specificities within those metaphysical theories that Grunbaum never touches upon, but maybe in other papers he does.

 

10/13/2015 9:20 am  #2


Re: Grunbaum and the Kalam

I have not read the article in question though am aware of Grunbaum as a critic of the Kalam (Gale once described him as 'an atheist's atheist').

The caviler treatment of Causation may highlight a short-coming of Craig's own approach to the subject though, namely that he tends to take a minimalist approach to ontological questions e.g. the nature of causation. This of course gives his arguments potentially wider-scope - the reason for his doing so - though he pays for it in other situations. I recall in the debate with Carroll he accepted the claim that Aristotelean accounts of causation had been out-moded, without giving any clear idea what to put in its place.

On this note was not one of his other published exchanges on the KA with Grunbaum on whether the Cause was personal? He had to appeal to a dubious distinction between Event and Agent Causation* to try to argue that point.

*Agent Causation as in a volitional agent. Of course for Aristoteleans and other older philosophers all causation is agent based in as much as it occurs between substances (and as a result of their proper powers and liabilities) and not events.

 

10/14/2015 3:39 am  #3


Re: Grunbaum and the Kalam

Right, I remember Craig mentioning how the first premise of his Kalam argument does not presuppose Aristotelean causality. Rather, he wants his first premise to be as "neutral" as possible when it comes to different theories of causality. Of course, one can look at the argument in a more Aristotelean style. For instance, Oderberg defends the Kalam argument and he does respond to some of Grunbaum's objections.

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