#368 Some Reflections on the Sean Carroll Debate

Dr. craig’s response

---

A

Thank you for your questions, Jahir! I’ve refrained from commenting on the debate with Sean Carroll until I could study carefully the transcript of what was actually said by way of point and counter-point. Now that the transcription of our exchange has been completed, I feel ready to comment. Alas, however, I find that there is so much to say that I can at most respond to just the first of your questions about the causal premiss, leaving the others for another day. I was intrigued that in his blog Carroll calls this question “the most important part of the debate.” While I think that the second premiss is far more important, Carroll’s comment reveals the weight he places on his objection to the first premiss.

Aristotelian Causation?

Time constraints precluded a discussion of the first premiss of the kalam cosmological argument in my opening speech. So all I said was:

Those who know my work will notice that I did not use the typical medieval formulation of the first premise, namely,

Why the change? Well, some time ago my friend Chris Weaver, a grad student in philosophy, alerted me to the fact that some persons might object to (1*) because it presupposes an Aristotelian conception of causality, according to which substances stand in causal relations to one another, whereas contemporary theories of causation think of causal relations as obtaining between other entities, for example, events or states of affairs. The contemporary causal theorist would not say that God is the cause of the universe, but, for example, that God’s creating the universe is the cause of the universe’s coming into being. Now I think that the view that causal relations obtain between substances (as well as between events or states of affairs) is perfectly defensible.1 We say that God created the universe, just as Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina or Picasso painted Guernica, which statements posit causal relations between these things. But I’m constantly engaged in honing my arguments to make them more immune to possible objections, so I re-formulated the first premiss to make it as neutral as possible with respect to one’s theory of causation. My opening speech actually includes a footnote at this point (which, of course, was not delivered orally) which reads:

(1) leaves it entirely open whether the transcendent cause is a substance, an event, a state of affairs, or what have you.

Notice the justification of (1): it’s obvious. In magic, the magician makes a material thing come into being without any material substratum. But if (1) is false, then the universe came into being without either a material or a productive cause, which is truly worse than magic. Anyone who denies (1) should therefore also have no problem with magic.

So how does Carroll respond to (1) in his opening speech? He says,

There are three separate complaints here. The second complaint is quite correct and will be rectified later in the debate, as we’ll see. The first and third complaints are self-contradictory. (1) cannot be both false and not even false. To say that (1) is not even false is to say that it is meaningless and therefore has no truth value. Although Carroll will claim that (1) has no truth value, we’ll see as things unfold that, quite to the contrary, he treats it as a meaningful and well-understood proposition which he thinks is false.

So why does he say (1) is meaningless? He explains,

Here we see a rejection of an “Aristotelian analysis of causation” because “Today we know better.” This seems to be precisely the objection Chris Weaver had alerted me to and which I had pre-empted. So in my following speech I responded,

Carroll’s allegation that the argument is based on outmoded concepts of causation is therefore groundless.

Carroll’s Rejection of a Transcendent Cause

Although Carroll appears to claim that in physics things are explained in term of laws of nature, not causes, we’ll see that he’s quite happy to admit immanent causes in the universe. In his second speech he’ll say, “when you find some event or state of affairs B today, we can very often trace it back in time to one or a couple of possible predecessor events that we therefore call the cause of that, which leads to B according to the laws of physics.” So offering explanations in terms of natural laws does not exclude there being causes and effects.

Rather what Carroll objects to is a transcendent cause—of any sort! Why? Carroll explains that in physics causal explanations are given in terms of natural laws (and, presumably, initial conditions), and so in the case of a beginning of the universe there cannot be such an explanation, since there are no prior conditions on which the laws of nature impinge.

Now to my mind all this proves is that there cannot be a physical explanation of the origin of the universe; that is to say, as we go back in time, physics stops at the beginning of the universe.2 So, of course, physics, which operates only within the universe, knows nothing of “transcendent causes.” But why couldn’t there be a meta-physical cause which transcends the universe? I think the key to Carroll’s thinking lies in his little sentence: “Our metaphysics must follow our physics.” This is an expression of epistemological naturalism. Physics leads metaphysics by the nose, and metaphysics cannot postulate entities beyond what physics requires. It goes without saying that I reject epistemological naturalism—see my debate with Alex Rosenberg for reasons why.3 Metaphysics goes beyond physics—that’s what “metaphysics” means!

Carroll goes on to advise:

Here Carroll rightly says that physics can (in principle, at least) craft a model of the universe in which the state of the universe at any time t has a complete physical description. Such a model is “self-contained” in the sense that does not include supernatural interventions in the universe (miracles) at any time t. But Carroll takes it be self-contained in a more radical sense, namely, the universe does not have a transcendent cause that brings it into being. He thinks that the Hartle-Hawking model represents a universe which is uncaused in that sense.

In my second speech I replied,

Notice here that I am quite willing to admit, for the sake of argument, that the universe is self-contained in the sense that there are no supernatural interventions at any time t. As a purely physical model, the Hartle-Hawking model says absolutely nothing about whether there is a transcendent cause of the universe’s coming into being. How could it? As Carroll himself repeatedly emphasizes, such causes are not contemplated in a physical theory and so are neither affirmed nor denied. So the question remains, why did the universe come into being? Apart from a metaphysical, transcendent cause, you’re stuck with the universe’s popping into being uncaused, and, as I said, if that’s the price of non-theism, then the non-theist is welcome to it.

So how does Carroll respond? He replies, “I claim that a consistent, complete model that fits the data accounts for what we see in the world is a success. There’s no right that we have to demand more than that, and I believe that Dr. Craig’s response was, ‘Yes, there is!’ I don’t think this counts as a very good response.” This is an uncharitable rendering of my response! My claim has been precisely that “a consistent complete model that fits the data” will involve a beginning of the universe. It is beginningless models that are inconsistent or fail to fit the data. As for the right to demand more than that, such a right is grounded in the absurdity of the universe’s coming into being from nothing.

Carroll now proceeds to explain why we shouldn’t be worried about the universe’s beginning to exist without a cause:

Look what’s going on here: Carroll identifies two features of the universe (natural laws and a direction of time) that, he thinks, make it appropriate to demand causes of immanent events but which do not apply to the universe’s beginning to exist. Therefore the universe’s beginning is exempt from the causal principle. This argument is a non sequitur. (That is to say, it is logically invalid.) For this argument to pass muster, Carroll would need to show that these two features are not only sufficient but necessary conditions of the demand for causal explanation. He doesn’t do either. Indeed, if something can’t come into being uncaused at an embedded moment of time, how could it come into being without a cause if that moment were the first moment of time? If something that can be explained by natural laws requires a cause of its coming into being, how would that exempt something which admittedly cannot be explained in terms of natural laws? Carroll’s view seems unintelligible.

By now it should be clear that Carroll’s claim is, not that premiss (1) is meaningless, but that it is false. In fact, he later admits in response to Question 11: “I completely can conceive of a universe that was brought into existence by God who was omnipotent and so forth and for whatever reason God has chosen to be completely invisible and the universe runs by purely naturalistic principles.” This is to agree with what I say in response to that same question: “The arguments that I've offered tonight are consistent with the universe’s being self-contained in the way that Dr. Carroll described. So that needn't be an issue of debate between us.” Carroll thinks that there could be a cause of a self-contained universe’s beginning to exist but that there need not be such a cause. The universe can just begin to exist uncaused. In response to Question 13 he will later say,

In my view, you’re far from done. For the biggest question still remains unaddressed: why did the universe come into being?

Justification of the Causal Premiss

So in my third speech I provide my justification for the causal premiss which Carroll had complained was missing from my opening presentation:

My first argument above makes it clear that I think that metaphysics is an independent discipline. There are obvious first principles that we must come to terms with.

My second argument comes from the great Oxford philosopher A. N. Prior. I find it an incredibly powerful argument. Since nothingness cannot constrain anything, if the universe can come into being without a cause, then it is inexplicable why anything and everything does not do so. Why didn’t a Chevron gas station or an Eskimo village pop into being instead of our universe? No reason can be given. Not only is this the case with respect to absolute beginnings, but also for things immanent in the universe. You can’t say that the laws of nature or the arrow of time prevent things’ popping into being uncaused, precisely for the reason that they are uncaused. There are no causal conditions governing their coming into being. So you can’t confine them just to the beginning of time and the universe.

Finally, the third reason is meant to appeal to scientific naturalists like Carroll. Here I try respond to Carroll’s attempt to subvert the inductive argument by exempting the universe from the causal principle. I claim that his attempt to exempt the universe is arbitrary and would be a science-stopper, since cosmogony tries precisely to give a causal explanation of the universe’s origin. Here I could have been clearer that I see no reason to think that the two features mentioned by Carroll are essential to the need for causal explanation. Rather I maintain that a sufficient condition for demanding a causal explanation is that something begin to exist, and that condition is met in the case of the universe. Fortunately, in response to Question 1 from the audience I expressed myself more clearly:

This seems to me quite correct. Being embedded in time or admitting of a natural explanation are not necessary conditions of requiring a causal explanation. Rather a sufficient condition for requiring a causal explanation is beginning to exist.

In his final speech Carroll responds to these points:

Actually, David Lewis considered the incredulous stare to be a very powerful way to respond to a philosophical position! Some things are just unbelievable. That the universe should come into being from nothing is one of those, in my opinion.

Carroll then alludes to his two aforementioned, allegedly necessary conditions for demanding a causal explanation, to which I have given my response above.

Finally, he objects to the language of “popping into existence” because it seems to presuppose a prior time during which the thing in question did not exist, a condition which is inapplicable in the case of the beginning of time itself. He thinks that it doesn’t sound so implausible to say instead that there was a first moment of time. Right; but the whole point of philosophical analysis is to unpack such locutions and to expose their implications, which may turn out to be quite implausible. I’ll say more on this in a moment. Note that I give affirmative answers to the three questions he poses: yes, there are models with a beginning of time; yes, the equations of such models hang together; and yes, the models fit the data! Therefore, we have good reason to believe that the universe began to exist, which is the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument.

Philosophy of Time

The question, then, is whether it is more plausible that there is a transcendent cause which brought the universe into being or the universe began to exist uncaused from nothing. During this entire debate, I tried hard to avoid appealing to philosophical arguments, so as to remain squarely in Carroll’s field of specialization. But now a huge philosophical issue that had been lurking just beneath the surface finally breaks into view in response to Question 8. Picking up on Carroll’s complaint about the locution of “popping into existence,” I explain,

This philosophical question is vitally important to the debate over the causal premiss. On Carroll’s view the universe begins to exist at the Big Bang only in the sense that a yardstick begins to exist at the first inch. That is to say, it has a front edge, so to speak, but it really does not come into being. But on my view the universe comes into being at the first moment of its existence. The tensed theory of time is my trump card for defending the causal premiss. If Carroll’s denial of the causal principle is to have any credibility he must argue for a tenseless theory of time. That is a philosophical debate in which I am happy to engage, but also a debate for another day.

Summing Up

Let’s sum up this portion of the debate. The causal premiss

does not presuppose any particular analysis of the causal relation but was deliberately formulated to be as neutral as possible in that regard. So Carroll’s charge that it assumes an Aristotelian concept of causation (the tenability of which remains moot) is vacuous.

(1) is also consistent, as Carroll comes to admit, with the universe’s being self-contained in the sense that a complete physical description of the universe can be given at any time t. So Carroll’s repudiation of a transcendent cause on the basis of the completeness of physics is gratuitous.

I have offered three arguments in support of (1). First, it is grounded by an obvious metaphysical first principle that something cannot come into being from nothing. If Carroll’s naturalism requires him to flout this principle, then his view, being worse than magic, heartily deserves the incredulous stare. In the end, however, Carroll, by adopting a tenseless theory of time according to which beginning-to-exist does not imply coming-into-being, does not, in fact, flout this first principle. Given this first principle, a tensed theory of time is sufficient for (1). The question then for Carroll becomes two-fold: (i) what justification can he offer for a tenseless theory of time, and (ii) is (1) true even on a tenseless theory, that is, is a tensed theory of time merely a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for (1)? Those questions remain to be addressed.

Second, if something can come into being without a cause, then it becomes inexplicable why anything and everything does not do so. Carroll might try to avoid this argument by appealing once again to a tenseless theory of time. But it is not evident that this argument will not also work even on a tenseless theory. One may simply re-phrase it to remove any reference to temporal becoming: if something can begin to exist without a cause, then it becomes inexplicable why anything and everything does not do so.

Third, we have overwhelming inductive evidence in support of (1). Carroll’s attempt to subvert this inductive inference by pointing out that two features of immanent events, namely, their being temporally embedded and explicable in terms of natural law, do not apply in the case of the universe’s beginning to exist fails to show that these features are necessary conditions of the requirement of causal explanation. Indeed, it is unintelligible why being located at a first moment of time and being naturally inexplicable would enable an event to occur without a cause. A common condition shared by both immanent events and an initial cosmic event is beginning to exist, and it is this commonly shared condition that is plausibly sufficient for the need of causal explanation. Hence, the inductive inference goes through.

So we have good grounds for affirming (1), whereas Carroll’s proffered defeaters of (1) are either inconclusive or outright failures.

Next stop: premiss (2)!

 

• [1]

  See, e.g., Alfred Freddoso’s defense of medieval conceptions of causation in his Introduction to Francisco Suarez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence, trans. by Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2002). Freddoso argues persuasively that Suarez’s analysis of causation compares very favorably to contemporary theories.

  See, e.g., Alfred Freddoso’s defense of medieval conceptions of causation in his Introduction to Francisco Suarez, On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence, trans. by Alfred J. Freddoso (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2002). Freddoso argues persuasively that Suarez’s analysis of causation compares very favorably to contemporary theories.

• [2]

  In fact, I actually appeal to physics’ impotency in this regard as one argument for the personhood of the cause of the universe. As I explain in Reasonable Faith,

  “First, as Richard Swinburne points out, there are two types of causal explanation: scientific explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions and personal explanations in terms of agents and their volitions (The Existence of God, rev. ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991], pp. 32-48). For example, if I come into the kitchen and find the kettle boiling and I ask Jan, “Why is the kettle boiling?” she might answer, “The heat of the flame is being conducted via the copper bottom of the kettle to the water, increasing the kinetic energy of the water molecules, such that they vibrate so violently that they break the surface tension of the water and are thrown off in the form of steam.” Or she might say, “I put it on to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?” The first provides a scientific explanation, the second a personal explanation. Each is a perfectly legitimate form of explanation; indeed, in certain contexts it would be wholly inappropriate to give one rather than the other. Now a first state of the universe cannot have a scientific explanation, since there is nothing before it, and therefore it cannot be accounted for in terms of laws operating on initial conditions. It can only be accounted for in terms of an agent and his volitions, a personal explanation.”

  In fact, I actually appeal to physics’ impotency in this regard as one argument for the personhood of the cause of the universe. As I explain in Reasonable Faith,

  “First, as Richard Swinburne points out, there are two types of causal explanation: scientific explanations in terms of laws and initial conditions and personal explanations in terms of agents and their volitions (The Existence of God, rev. ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991], pp. 32-48). For example, if I come into the kitchen and find the kettle boiling and I ask Jan, “Why is the kettle boiling?” she might answer, “The heat of the flame is being conducted via the copper bottom of the kettle to the water, increasing the kinetic energy of the water molecules, such that they vibrate so violently that they break the surface tension of the water and are thrown off in the form of steam.” Or she might say, “I put it on to make a cup of tea. Would you like some?” The first provides a scientific explanation, the second a personal explanation. Each is a perfectly legitimate form of explanation; indeed, in certain contexts it would be wholly inappropriate to give one rather than the other. Now a first state of the universe cannot have a scientific explanation, since there is nothing before it, and therefore it cannot be accounted for in terms of laws operating on initial conditions. It can only be accounted for in terms of an agent and his volitions, a personal explanation.”

• [3]

  See William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg, Is Faith in God Reasonable? Debates in Philosophy, Science, and Rhetoric, ed. Paul Gould and Corey Miller, with Responses by Robert Kaita, Victor Stenger, Paul Moser, Theodore Drange, Timothy McGrew, Michael Ruse, Martin Medhurst, and Clarke Rountree, Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, 2014).

  See William Lane Craig and Alex Rosenberg, Is Faith in God Reasonable? Debates in Philosophy, Science, and Rhetoric, ed. Paul Gould and Corey Miller, with Responses by Robert Kaita, Victor Stenger, Paul Moser, Theodore Drange, Timothy McGrew, Michael Ruse, Martin Medhurst, and Clarke Rountree, Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (London: Routledge, 2014).

• [4]

  See William Lane Craig, The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Synthese Library 293 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) and William Lane Craig, The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Synthese Library 294 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).

  See William Lane Craig, The Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Synthese Library 293 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) and William Lane Craig, The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, Synthese Library 294 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000).