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The Concept of a Cause of the Universe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith*
Affiliation:
Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH, 45387, USA
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Extract

I shall argue in this paper that extant definitions of causality are incorrect since they do not cohere in the proper way with the concept of a cause of the universe. This lack of coherence is twofold. (i) For some extant definitions of a cause, there are possible instances of the concept of a cause of the universe that do not satisfy the definitions. (ii) For these or other extant definitions, there are entities or occurrences (in some possible world) that are not instances of the concept of a cause of the universe but that count as causes of the universe according to the definitions. This failure of coherence between extant definitions of causality and the concept of a cause of the universe entails either that there is some other (as yet unformulated) definition of a cause that is correct or that causality is indefinable. I shall suggest in the conclusion of this paper that it is more plausible to believe that causality is indefinable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1987

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References

1 The interpretation of standard hot big bang cosmology presupposed in this paper is set forth in my ‘The Anthropic Principle and Many-Worlds Cosmologies’ (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 63 (1985) 336-48; ‘World Ensemble Explanations,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (1986) 73-86; ‘The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,’ Philosophy of Science 55 (1988) 39-57; ‘Atheism, Theism, and Big Bang Cosmology,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991) 48-66; ‘A Big Bang Cosmological Argument for God’s Nonexistence,’ Faith and Philosophy (April1992). Standard hot big bang cosmology is currently being challenged by some of the theories mentioned in John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge 1989), but no rival has as yet succeeded in gaining widespread acceptance (at least not if the standard theory is interpreted broadly so as to allow for Inflation).

2 In his Reply to the First Objections to the Meditations, Descartes alleges that God is an efficient cause of himself but fails to show this allegation is coherent. It seems to me viciously circular for x to cause x, since a logical precondition of x exercising an act of causation is that x exist; x’s existence cannot be both an effect and a precondition of x’s act of causation.

3 A space-time is a connected differential manifold that has a smooth, nondegenerate pseudo-Riemannian metric of Lorentz signature (+,-- -). I assume also that the space-time is inextendible and temporally orientable. The universe is a space-time (as so defined) taken together with its singular boundaries. Here I am allowing a singular boundary of space-time to count as a part of the universe, which differs from other ways of defining ‘universe,’ e.g., the definition I adopted in ‘The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe.’

4 ‘An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature,’ in An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Bobbs-Merrill 1955), 186-7

5 It might be objected to my interpretation that Hume once said ‘we may attain the knowledge of a particular cause merely by one experiment, provided it be made with judgement’ (A Treatise of Human Nature [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1888], 173-4). But as J.L. Mackie (The Cement of the Universe [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1974]) points out, the required judgment is that ‘like objects, placed in like circumstances, will always produce like effects,’ and there is an assumption that there are like objects and like effects (25).

6 Condition (ii) is based on Castañeda’s (C.3*), which lends itself to an interpretation as a universally quantified material conditional. The relevant passage reads: (C.3*) If an item c causes an item e, then there are properties Φ-ness and $-ness, and circumstances Z such that: if c is Φ, e is$, cis in Z, and whatever item of the same category as c is Φ and in Z causes an item that is$ and is of the same category as e (19-20).

7 D3 might seem to have a problem of another sort. William Lane Craig argues that ‘the cause of the big bang singularity’ cannot be defined in terms of D3 since D3 defines causality in epistemic terms and the issue regarding the big bang is an ontological issue. Craig states that ‘unpredictability [is] an epistemic affair which may or may not result from an ontological indeterminism. For clearly, it would be entirely consistent to maintain determinism on the quantum level even if we could not, even in principle, predict precisely such events’ (’The Caused Beginning of theUniverse,’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science [forthcoming], 29, n. 2). The problem Craig is suggesting is that if ‘cause’ is defined by D3, then ‘the big bang was caused’ would be false if something determined the big bang to occur but we could not predict this, which is counterintuitive.

But this allegation seems to me to be false. The notion of epistemic unpredictability is not the one used in D3 but in D4:

D4: x is a cause of y if and only if there is a law L knowable by humans that would enable humans to deduce a precise prediction of y from premises one of which is L and the other a statement that x occurs. Craig’s proposition

(1) There is determinism on the quantum level entails

(2) For each quantum event y, there is a cause x

if ‘cause’ in (2) is defined by D3 but (2) is not entailed if ‘cause’ in (2) is defined by D4. If there is a quantum determinism, then for each quantum eventy, there is a law L and a quantum event x, such that that L obtains and that x exists entails that y occurs; but this does not entail that L is knowable by humans. The word ‘enabling’ in D3 refers to the ability of a logically possible mind, e.g., an omniscient mind, and carries no implications about human abilities.

8 The Limit Assumption is that there are some worlds closest (most similar) to the actual world. Lewis holds that for any close world W there is a closer world W’.

9 Mackie believes this ordinary concept is incomplete since it requires’ causal priority’ (The Cement of the Universe, 86) as an additional feature. One suggestion is that x is causally prior to y if x is present or past and thus fixed and y is future and unfixed (191). In terms of our examples, we may say a mind’s willing the big bang would be fixed at an instant when the big bang singularity is unfixed. Mackie later adopts a counterfactual theory of causal priority; see Mackie, ‘Mind, Brain, and Causation,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4 (1979) 19-29.

10 A satisfactory formulation of the screening off condition is not easy to come by; some of the problems with the formulation just outlined are discussed in Otte, Richard ‘A Critique of Suppes’s Theory of Probabilistic Causality,’ Synthese 48 (1981) 167-89;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Davis, Wayne ‘Probabilistic Theories of Causation,’ in Probability and Causality, Fetzer, J. ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1988)Google Scholar.

11 See Salmon, Wesley Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1984)Google Scholar; Otte, Richard ‘Probabilistic Causality and Simpson’s Paradox,’ Philosophy of Science 52 (1985) 110-25CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Indeterminism, Counterfactuals, and Causation,’ Philosophy of Science 54 (1987) 45-62; Eells, Ellery ‘Probabilistic Causality: Reply to John Dupre,’ Philosophy of Science 54 [1987] 105-14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eells, Ellery and Sober, Elliot ‘Old Problems for a New Theory: Mayo on Giere’s Theory of Causation,’ Philosophical Studies 52 [1987] 291-307;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Giere, Ronald ‘Causal Systems and Statistical Hypotheses,’ in Applications of Inductive Logic, Cohen, L. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980)Google Scholar; Pollock, John ‘Causes, Conditionals, and Times,’ Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 63 (1982) 275-88;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Menzies, Peter ‘Probabilistic Causation and Causal Processes: A Critique of Lewis,’ Philosophy of Science 56 [1989] 642-63;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and other writings.

12 It is widely accepted by cosmologists today that in the sense of ‘universe’ defined in n. 3, there is no substantial evidence that there is more than one universe. Of course, in other senses of ‘universe,’ such as some of the senses articulated in Leslie’s Universes, it is accepted by many cosmologists that there are several universes (e.g., A.D. Linde’s ‘domains’), but the many universes in most of these other senses of ‘universe’ are parts of ‘the universe’ in my sense of a maximal and inextendible space-time manifold.

13 See Salmon, The Foundations of Scientific Inference (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press 1966), 83-108.

14 This may also be stated in terms of Pollock’s (Nomic Probability and the Foundations of Induction [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990]) theory of propensities. Pollock there distinguishes indefinite propensities from nomic probabilities and distinguishes both of these from factual and counterfactual definite propensities (24-32). On Pollock’s theory, there would be no propensity or nomic probability for the big bang to occur without C since (1) definite and indefinite propensities are defined in terms of nomic probabilities and (2) there is no nomic probability Γ prob(E/-C) = m/ n ˥ since statistical induction cannot be used to provider Γ prob(E I -C) = m/ n ˥ with a value and also cannot be used to give a value to any nomic probability from which Γ prob(E/ -C)= m/n ˥ can be derived by nonclassical direct inference. On nonclassic direct inference see Pollock, Nomic Probability, 128-40; and on the relation between nomic probability and statistical induction see 149-86.

15 Camap, Rudolph Logical Foundations of Probability, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1962)Google Scholar

16 If there are countably infinite possible worlds, then their measures must sum to one given the appropriate version of the principle of Countable Additivity: If {W1, W2 … Wn} is a countable set of all possible worlds, then

17 If each world has the same non-zero probability, then there is a finite class of worlds such that the disjunction of all the members of this class will have, by repeated application of the Addition Axiom of the probability calculus [If A+B+C is not possible, then P(AvB/C = P(A/C + P(B/C)], a probability greater than one.

18 See Plantinga, ‘The Probabilistic Argument From Evil,’ Philosophical Studies 35 (1979) 1-53, for a criticism of the thesis that Swinburne’s criterion of simplicity and Carnap’s criterion of content provide criteria for non-arbitrary assignments of unequal measures. But Plantinga’s criticisms are in a sense unnecessary since Swinburne and Carnap themselves insist that their assignments are arbitrary; Swinburne holds the criteria are culturally relative (An Introduction to Confirmation Theory [London: Methuen 1973], 99) and Carnap holds that they are mere conventions (299).

19 If there are aleph-one possible worlds each with a probability of zero, they ‘sum’ to one in the sense that

where dx is an element of the class of all worlds and f(x) the probability density function over this class.

20 I am grateful to a referee for Canadian Journal of Philosophy, an editor of this journal and William Lane Craig for helpful comments on the first version of this paper. I am grateful to the editor for further comments on second and third versions that led to this fourth version.