Objectivism and Leibniz’s contingency argument

[HappyDays]

Objectivists of this community, what is objectivism’s response to the argument for the existence of god presented by Leibniz in the argument from contingency

Edited September 12, 2024 by HappyDays

[Boydstun]

Where do we find that argument?

Do you mean his cosmological argument?

His use of the principle of sufficient reason? His conception of metaphysical perfections?

 

Edited September 12, 2024 by Boydstun

[Reidy]

I'd never heard of this one, so I'm relying on Wikipedia. Objectivism has never much bought into the necessary / contingent distinction, so we wouldn't expect them to have much to say about its consequences.

To judge from what the article says, it looks like a version of the familiar philosophical mistake of treating being, the universe, what is and the like as if it were a particular entity. Thus, people figure, it must have a beginning in time, a boundary in space and (most notoriously) a distinct entity that brought it about, when none of these follow. Applying the principle to this argument, we can imagine that a particular being didn't come about, but not being itself.

Edited September 12, 2024 by Reidy

[KyaryPamyu]

3 hours ago, Reidy said:

. . .we can imagine that a particular being didn't come about, but not being itself.

If all particular beings were blue, wouldn't that make "being itself" blue as well? I try to imagine some trait that applies to particulars beings, but not to being as a whole. It seems like I can't do it without invoking some kind of substance theory. In short, a substance theory posits that there is one substance (let's call it Being) which can take multiple forms - much like water can take the form of ice, snow, vapor. So, in theory, the forms which Being takes (water, fire, plasma, fire etc.) are subject to emergence and disappearance, creation and dissolution, birth and death. Being as whole, however, is immune to this, because it is the one substratum or "stage" onto which the grand drama of emerging and vanishing particulars unfolds.

However, this theory just clumsily transports a trait which particulars have (the ability to change into other forms, as water changes into ice, snow and vapor) onto the universe as a whole. It neatly solves a metaphysical problem, at the cost of postulating a substance (let's call it "matter") which no one has ever observed. In short, we assert this based on a priori reasoning, not on empirical grounds.

In the first Critique, Kant wrote:

Natural science (physics) contains a priori synthetic judgments as principles. I need cite only two such judgments: that in all changes of the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged; and that in all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal. Both propositions, it is evident, are not only necessary, and therefore in their origin a priori, but also synthetic. (CPR B17ff, bold mine).

In the Ayn Rand lexicon, the entry on matter has this proudly displayed as a "frotispiece":

"Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist." (Galt’s Speech, FTNI 121)

This is plucked out of its original context, where matter-as-a-whole (basically, the "being itself" mentioned by Reidy) is contrasted to particulars, specifically to biological particulars: "It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death."

Ancient philosophers as far back as Thales, Empedocles ("nothing comes to be or perishes") and Epicurus ("the sum total of things was always such as it is now, and such it will ever remain") have asserted this philosophical principle on essentially pure logic and a priori reasoning. [1]

Some philosophers thought that the principle of "particularity" completely obliterates the concept of a "being itself". According to Giovanni Gentile, any number is just the unity of a bunch of other numbers; said numbers, in turn, are just the unity of yet more numbers ad infinitum.[2, §14] Mind, for him, is a self-generating process which articulates itself against any theoretical opposite. Since Nature is merely supposed to serve as this opposite, its duties do not extend to "making perfect sense" or yielding elegant and neat metaphysics. On the contrary, Nature is riddled with unaesthetic antinomies and unsolvable quirks, like the aforementioned principle according to which something can apply to particulars but not to their sum (the universe).

One philosopher which has opposed the law of conservation of matter is Philipp Mainländer. He believed that if matter was slowly perishing, we wouldn't notice this by direct methods due to the small temporal scale of our species. He thought that the law of conservation of energy is a pure mathematical presumption and in direct contradiction to his prophetic observation that energy degrades over time. (Philosophy of Redemption, Vol. II, 6th Essay)

Edited September 12, 2024 by KyaryPamyu

[Boydstun]

33 minutes ago, KyaryPamyu said:

In the first Critique, Kant wrote:

Natural science (physics) contains a priori synthetic judgments as principles. I need cite only two such judgments: that in all changes of the material world the quantity of matter remains unchanged; and that in all communication of motion, action and reaction must always be equal. Both propositions, it is evident, are not only necessary, and therefore in their origin a priori, but also synthetic. (CPR B17ff, bold mine). [1787]

 

There are indeed embarrassing Cartesian elements in Kant's overlay of Newton's mechanics. Philosopher-overriding of Newton's three laws is most heavy-handed concerning the 3rd law (action-reaction) in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). Science must kneel before philosophy. Blah, blah, blah.

[Boydstun]

45 minutes ago, KyaryPamyu said:

. . .

"Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist." (Galt’s Speech, FTNI 121)

. . .

Scientifically, that still goes. But a clarification is in order. By "matter" one much mean mass-energy. Then the statement still goes. It is ordinary in physics, however, to say "matter" in contrast to fields. That is, "matter" is mass-energy having a non-zero rest mass. An electron and a positron each have non-zero rest mass. When they collide with each other the output is two gamma rays, which have zero rest-mass. The rest-mass vanished; the mass-energy was conserved. Modern physics is an empirical science ready to test for correctness by experiment and empirical observation, both theory and test now engaging much mathematics. Kant even had the principle of inertia (later captured as Newton's First Law) be an a priori result. Wrong.

Rand's statement above is consistent with her later essay "The Metaphysical versus the Man-Made" in which she took her concept EXISTENCE to include that the universe cannot come into or go out of existence. That is sensible, and not an outlandish claim from philosophy, I'd say. And from the empirical side (GR) the Initial Singularity has the same mass-energy as the universe has today.

[Boydstun]

On 9/12/2024 at 6:51 AM, Boydstun said:

Where do we find that argument?

Do you mean his cosmological argument?

His use of the principle of sufficient reason? His conception of metaphysical perfections?

 

"Hobbes and Spinoza, despite their own differences, advanced, or were read as advancing, a number of objectionable and deeply troubling theses which Leibniz (and most of his contemporaries) saw as an enormous threat: materialism, atheism, and necessitarianism. It is Leibniz's response to Hobbesian and Spinozistic necessitarianism that is perhaps of greatest interest, for he sought to develop an account of action and contingency that would preserve divine and human freedom. As will be shown, central to Leibniz's philosophy was the view that God freely chose the best world from an infinite number of possible worlds and that a person could be said to act freely when the contrary of that action does not imply a contradiction."*

Arguments of Leibniz on the Existence of God

[Reidy]

On 9/12/2024 at 11:14 AM, KyaryPamyu said:

If all particular beings were blue, wouldn't that make "being itself" blue as well?

No. What is encompasses objects to which color doesn't apply one way or another, such as the cube root of 16 or the taste of lime juice (not an exhaustive list). Limiting the question to objects that have color, if all of them were the same blue (so far as the eye can tell), we'd have no concept of color. If all of them were one blue or other, we'd have no concept of blue.

Your remarks on primary substance, too, suggest, that the universe or reality is identical to the physical objects and materials within it. If we limit primary substance to physical objects, the question arises: if the notion is not to be vacuous, reality must contain something that is not primary substance; such a contrast is indispensable to an understanding of what primary substance is. What then, is this other stuff?

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, Reidy said:

No. What is encompasses objects to which color doesn't apply one way or another, such as the cube root of 16 or the taste of lime juice (not an exhaustive list). Limiting the question to objects that have color, if all of them were the same blue (so far as the eye can tell), we'd have no concept of color. If all of them were one blue or other, we'd have no concept of blue.

Your [KyaryPamyu's] remarks on primary substance, too, suggest, that the universe or reality is identical to the physical objects and materials within it. If we limit primary substance to physical objects, the question arises: if the notion is not to be vacuous, reality must contain something that is not primary substance; such a contrast is indispensable to an understanding of what primary substance is. What then, is this other stuff?

Modern science has found exactly what is the primary substance that philosophers had chased themselves in circles over these last 25 centuries. It is mass-energy. It can be distinguished from its traits such as electric charge or intrinsic spin of the elementary particles of mass-energy. It can be distinguished from space-time and slices of pure time or pure space. The entities of existence are all forms, simple or amazingly elaborate, of mass-energy.

Edited September 15, 2024 by Boydstun

[tadmjones]

The gunas?  

[Boydstun]

On 9/15/2024 at 10:25 AM, Boydstun said:

. . .

Arguments of Leibniz on the Existence of God

With those, consider this one:

Quote

The imperfection of our machines, which is the reason why they need to be mended, proceeds from this very thing, that they do not sufficiently depend upon the workman. And therefore, the dependence of nature upon God, far from being the cause of such an imperfection, is rather the reason why there is no such imperfection in nature, because nature is so dependent upon an artist too perfect to make a work that needs to be mended. 

(From Leibniz's Fourth Letter to Clark, 1716)

This conception of both machines and nature is mistaken. A water main does not break because of some low degree of dependence on human craft. Among the causes of water main failures are temperature changes, high water pressure, root growth, and corrosion. That is, among the causes of water main failures are interventions of nature. It is sensible to talk of imperfections in our water mains such as these failures because we have constructed the water main to serve our purpose(s). It is not sensible to speak of perfections or imperfections in nature in general. Only where there is purposive action can there be imperfections and failures. Nature in general cannot need mending and no cause for it not needing mending is required. Where nature is teleological, such as root growth, there can be failure to the roots' end of supporting life of the plant or its species, but this too is not on account of degree of attendance by an originating and supervising mind that would be the God of Leibniz. Talk of such attendance to or perfection of nature in general is false talk.