I have to admit, when I first opened Sean Carroll's new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016) I immediately flipped to chapter 25, titled "Why Does the Universe Exist?" For many thinkers, ancient and modern, this is the philosophical question: why is there something rather than nothing? Your answer to this question drives your answers to most other big questions, including those about God, meaning, morality, and more. So I was interested in Carroll's response, especially in light of his "poetic naturalism."

(For an introduction to poetic naturalism, see past posts in this series.)

Does the Universe Need Outside Help?

Carroll begins the chapter with a glib anecdote from Sidney Morgenbesser, a philosophy professor at Columbia. Morgenbesser was once asked, “Why is there something, rather than nothing?” and purportedly answered, “If there were nothing, you'd still be complaining” (195). This, of course, is non-sense. If there were nothing, there would be nobody to complain. But thankfully, Carroll doesn't stop with the witticism (though one wonders why he quoted it at all—it certainly doesn't help his case.)

Carroll breaks the main question down into two sub-questions. First, he asks whether the universe could "simply exist". Could it just be a "brute fact" with no outside explanation, or does it require one? Second, he wonders, if the universe does in fact require an explanation, what is the best explanation (196)?

Let's start with his answer to the first sub-question. He writes, "The progress of modern physics and cosmology has sent a fairly unequivocal message: there's nothing wrong with the universe existing without any external help" (196). A few pages later he writes, "To the question of whether the universe could possibly exist all by itself, without any external help, science offers an unequivocal answer: sure it could" (201).

Note the double use of the word "unequivocal", which means "admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and leading to only one conclusion."

It's worth pausing here to note that in a previous chapter titled "Accepting Uncertainty", Carroll writes (emphasis mine):

"It is this kind of [religious] stance—that there is a kind of knowledge that is certain, which we should receive with docility, to which we would submit—that I'm arguing against. There are no such kinds of knowledge. We can always be mistaken, and one of the most important features of a successful strategy for understanding the world is that it will constantly be testing its presuppositions, admitting the possibility of error, and trying to do better." (128)

But apparently, this open-minded prescription only applies to religious believers, and not poetic naturalists like Carroll, since as noted above, he twice admits to being "unequivocally" certain (i.e., without any doubt) that the universe could exist all by itself.

Carroll's confidence here should cause the discerning reader to naturally wonder, "How and where has modern science determined the universe could exist all by itself? Which experiments or calculations have proved that?" Unfortunately, Carroll never explains in this book. He just asserts that modern science has settled the issue and hopes readers trust his confidence.

One problem with this is that science simply can't say anything about why or how the universe exists since, by it's own limitations, the sciences are constrained to questions about the natural world (i.e., that which exists within the universe). It can't ask, or answer, or even weigh in on metaphysical "why" questions like "Why does the universe exist?" or "Why is the universe this way, and not that way?"

The Kalam Argument for God

So we're not off to a good start in the chapter. To his credit, Carroll doesn't stop here, though. He next considers the Kalam argument for God, made popular by Evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig. The argument's first premise says that whatever begins to exist has a cause for its existence (implying "out of nothing, nothing comes"). The second premise holds that the universe came into existence (i.e., it has not existed eternally in the past.) From those two premises we can conclude that the universe has a cause, and from there we can deduce different qualities of that cause.

If the Kalam argument is sound, then it shows the universe has a cause outside of itself, and therefore Carroll would be wrong in his "unequivocal" assertions. But is the argument sound? Assuming the terms are clearly defined and the logic valid, the only way to show that the argument is unsound is to refute one of its premises.

Carroll agrees. Surprisingly, he seems to accept the second premise, that the universe began to exist: "There seems to be no obstacle in principle to a universe like ours simply beginning to exist" (201). But it's the first premise he disagrees with. Specifically, Carroll thinks the ancient principle ex nihilo, nihil fit (out of nothing, nothing comes), which is implied in the premise, is indefensible. Even though, as he admits, the principle is "purportedly more foundational even than the laws of physics" (201) and that most philosophers throughout history have believed it, even ancient skeptics like Lucretius, Carroll says it is "perhaps the most egregious example of begging the question in the history of the universe" (202). Why? He writes:

"We are asking whether the universe could come into existence without anything causing it. The response is, 'No, because nothing comes into existence without being caused.' How do we know that? It can't be because we have never seen it happen; the universe is different from the various things inside the universe that we have actually experienced in our lives. And it can't be because we can't imagine it happening, or because it's impossible to construct sensible models in which is happens, since both the imagining and the construction of models have manifestly happened." (202)

There is a lot of confusion here, and it would take several articles to unpack all of it. But in essence, Carroll thinks the principle ex nihilo, nihil fit is false for three reasons: first because since the universe as a whole is "different" than things within the universe, the universe doesn't necessarily follow the same metaphysical principles as things within it; second because we can imagine something coming into being from nothing; and third because it's possible to construct "sensible models" in which something comes from nothing. Let's consider each proposal.

First, Carroll thinks the universe may have come into being without cause, even if nothing else in the universe has, because the universe is simply "different." But how does this follow? Metaphysical principles, such as the one under consideration, are independent of scale. Mice and men are "different", yet they both follow the same principle. So why think everything in the universe follows the principle but not the universe itself, which is nothing more than the collection of everything within the universe? (And lest you think this falls into the fallacy of composition, read Dr. Edward Feser's reply to that suggestion.)

Second, Carroll thinks it's possible to imagine something coming from nothing, which therefore refutes the principle. This argument goes back at least to David Hume but has famously been discredited, even by many Hume supporters. Why? Because it's impossible to conceive of the act of moving from non-being to being. Sure, we can imagine "nothing" at one moment—though I'm skeptical we can even do that—and then another moment picture something suddenly there, but this is not to imagine something coming from nothing. It is simply imagining two successive states of being, one first and then the other. It doesn't demonstrate that it is ontologically intelligible (or possible) for something to come into existence from nothing.

Third, Carroll points to "sensible models" in which something comes from nothing. What are these models? He never says, so it's hard to explore them. This is the last remaining reason to plausibly deny the principle, yet sadly Carroll provides no specifics.

Note again that Carroll doesn't engage with any counterarguments to his position, such as those supporting the principle. For starters, if something can come into being from nothing, then why don't we see this happening all the time? Why would it only happen once in time, with a single universe, rather than with many other universes or multiple things within our own universe? Why don't things just pop into existence all the time? Carroll never responds.

(Karlo Broussard wrote an excellent article covering five reasons the universe can't just exist by itself.)

Well, Why Not?

Carroll finishes this section by offering one more dismissive anecdote:

"In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, an online resource written and edited by professional philosophers, the entry on 'Nothingness' starts by asking, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' and immediately answering, 'Well, why not?' That's a good answer. There is no reason why the universe couldn't have had a first moment in time, nor is there any reason it couldn't have lasted forever, even without the benefit of any external causal or sustaining influence."

Here again we see a lot of confusion. So let's break it down into parts.

First, as far as I can tell, Carroll never engages in this chapter the second question about whether the universe needs a sustaining cause. This is disappointing because for many thinkers, including Aristotle and Aquinas, this is the main reason they believe in a First Cause of the universe. The universe may or may not have needed a cause to get it going, but it certainly needs one to keep it in existence, here and now. Carroll never weighs in on the question.

Second, he concludes all his previous remarks in regards to the first question—does the universe require an initial cause?— with an answer (a "good answer"), which is essentially an appeal to authority. He references an encyclopedia edited by "professional philosophers" at Stanford, presumably to suggest they should know what they're talking about. But the answer he cites isn't really an answer—it's a dismissal of the question. Worse, it fails to engage or even acknowledge any of the arguments against the view that something can come from nothing.

This is really disheartening, especially for someone as bright as Carroll. I can't imagine he would be comfortable with that answer to any other serious question. For example, I'm guessing he would be frustrated if he asked me, "Why are there so many different species of life on earth?" or "Why is space itself expanding?" and I responded, "Well, why not?" That's not a good answer; that's avoiding the question. Carroll would be frustrated by such dismissals, and for the same reason, his readers should be frustrated by his answers to the much more interesting and foundational questions about the universe.

If the Universe Has an Explanation, What Is It?

In the final few pages of the chapter, Carroll switches gears. He assumes, for the sake of argument, that the universe does require an explanation for its existence. But in that case, what is the explanation?

According to Carrol, "The answer is certainly 'We don't know'" (202). Notice again his striking assurance. He's certain we don't know the answer—not confident or convinced, but certain. How did he arrive at such certainty, especially when earlier in the book he cautions against being certain about anything? He doesn't say. And how can we be certain that "we" (whatever that means) don't know something? Isn't there a chance that someone, somewhere knows the answer even if some, most, or all the rest of us are confused? I would think so.

But certainty aside, why exactly does Carroll think we don't know what would explain the universe (if it had an explanation)? Mostly because he finds none of the current proposals satisfying. Modern theories of gravity may be a popular choice, but as Carroll observes, "that can't be the entire answer" since the theories don't explain themselves, and still demand an outside explanation (203). They only kick the question up a level. The same is true about other theories relying on the laws of physics as an ultimate explanation.

The only other possible candidate would be God. But Carroll thinks that explanation fails since it fails to answer the question, "Why does God exist?" It kicks the question up just as other proposals do. Of course, Carroll admits, theists reason that God is by definition necessary since his nature is to exist (unlike our own human nature, which doesn't necessitate existence.) But Carroll doesn't buy that. God, if he exists, can't be a necessary being. Why? Because, Carroll says, "there are no such things as necessary beings" (203). Talk about an egregious example of question begging!

With not a little irony, Carroll counsels just a couple sentences later, near the end of the chapter, "We can't short-circuit the difficult task of figuring out what kind of universe we live in by relying on a priori principles" (203). Would that he take his own advice!

In the next post in this series, we'll examine Sean Carroll's thoughts on whether free will is real or imaginary. Stay tuned!

One of the main targets of Sean Carroll's new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016), is causality. Like many naturalists, he sees where the causal chain leads—a series of contingent causes demands a necessary First Cause. So if you want to avoid a First Cause, you must get rid of causality.

As discussed in an earlier post, Carroll's first attempt appealed to the conservation of momentum. It wasn't clear how that principle undermines causality, and Carroll showed many other signs of confusion.

Later in the book, he tries to refute causality again, but this time using a controversial theory of time, known as the "B-theory" or "tenseless" theory of time (Carroll never uses these terms, but they indeed describe his view.)

Philosophers distinguish between two major theories of time, and it's worth noting that the philosophical community is generally split between the positions.

First is the A-theory, which is the common-sensical view that the passage of time is a real feature of the world, and not merely some mind-dependent phenomenon. This position holds that time is tensed, which means the past, present, and future are objectively real—in other words, tense is real (i.e., we can accurately use the "past tense"). If you asked the average person on the street how they understand time, they would likely give an A-theory description.

B-theorists, on the other hand, hold that the flow of time is an illusion, that time is tenseless such that past, present, and future are just illusions of human consciousness. This would imply that temporal becoming (e.g., growing older) is not an objective feature of reality.

If the B-theory were true, causality would indeed become trickier. Some would say that on the B-theory, causality would disappear altogether, while others more modestly claim it still exists, just in a more constricted, nuanced fashion. Either way, if your goal is to disprove causality, the B-theory is your best bet since causality is an obvious feature of reality on the A-theory, but not so on the B-theory.

So other than trying to avoid the conclusion of a First Cause, why does Sean Carroll promote the B-theory of time? Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us in his book. He doesn't acknowledge the two competing views, nor the present debate over which is true. He just asserts the B-theory as true, stating without elaboration, "In reality, both directions of time are created equal" (55), which is only true on the B-theory of time.

Carroll doesn't engage serious scholars who challenge the B-theory of time, nor any arguments for the A-theory. (William Lane Craig, one of the most prominent A-theory proponents, has written at least four scholarly books on the topic. Presumably, since Carroll debated Craig on topics that broached the philosophy of time, he was familiar with those works. But he never acknowledges them in The Big Picture.)

In his book, Carroll merely assumes the B-theory of time is true, without evidence or argument, and then uses that in his quest to show that causality is not a real feature of fundamental reality.

As in his earlier chapters on causality and determinism, Carroll does waffle a bit in this section. While he doesn't think causality is fundamentally real, he also sees the need for causal language. He isn't willing to go as far as Bertrand Russell, who said, "The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age." Carroll believes such a view is "too extreme" since it contradicts our everyday experience of causes. "After all," Carroll writes, "it would be hard to get through the day without appealing to causes at all" (64).

Which is where his "poetic naturalism" comes in. Although Carroll doesn't think causality is a real feature of fundamental reality (since he holds the B-theory of time), he does think it's a useful concept to describe our everyday world, and thus should be retained, at least in the domain of our everyday experience.

But once again, as is the case with other applications of his "poetic naturalism," we're left with a contradiction. Causality is either a real feature of reality, or it's not. What Carroll essentially proposes is that at a fundamental level it's not, because the B-theory is true and thus the passage of time is illusory.

Yet if that's the case, it wouldn't be accurate to use causal language in any situation. At best, such language would create a useful fiction; at worst it would be delusory.

In the next post we'll explore Sean Carroll's take on Bayes’ Theorem of probability.

Today we continue our series looking at physicist Sean Carroll's new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016).

After exploring whether the universe needed a cause to get started, Carroll next turns to the topic of determinism: is reality determined or free?

Laplace's Demon

Carroll's answer relies on a famous thought-experiment involving "Laplace's Demon". Pierre-Simon Laplace was an accomplished French physicist and mathematician. He's also, according to Carroll, one of the fathers of determinism, which holds that all future states are inevitable consequences of past events and causes. Laplace proposed a hypothetical vast intellect (aka "Laplace's Demon") who has an omniscient grasp of reality. In today's scientific language, the Demon would know the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, understand all the forces they are subject to, and have sufficient computational power to apply the laws of motion. The Demon would then be able to determine any future event by simply analyzing the state of the universe right now. Or as Carroll says, "Laplace was pointing out that the universe is something like a computer"—current state in, future state out.

Now, Carroll admits that for all practical purposes, Laplace's Demon is not real. He's just a useful thought experiment. Such a Demon will never exist in the real world since there's simply too much information to account for. We will never invent a computer that can ascertain the state of every particle and force at every moment in time. To do so, Carroll admits, would require God-like programming (which he immediately dismisses, uncomfortable with any conclusion that may result in God.) So we will never be able to tell the future with complete certainty, ala Laplace's Demon.

But that's not what Carroll's primarily interested in. He doesn't aim to show that physics can ascertain the future; he's just interested showing that physics can determine the future.

That leads to a natural question: why do we think this is true? Even if a Demon or a computer had complete knowledge of the state of the universe, why should we assume such prior states determine what happens next? Carroll never explains. He simply presumes causal determinism without proving it.

(Careful readers will note that in the previous chapter, Carroll aims to show that causality is not a feature of fundamental reality. But here he aims to prove causal determinism, that prior states cause future states. Carroll either doesn't notice or doesn't worry about the apparent contradiction.)

Later in the book, in a different chapter, Carroll gestures toward a supporting argument for determinism. He writes:

"The Laplacian view...is based on patterns, not on natures and purposes. If this certain thing happens, we know this other thing will necessarily follow thereafter, with the sequence described by the laws of physics. Why is it this way? Because that's the pattern we observe."

This again raises many questions. For instance, why think patterns are mutually exclusive of natures and purposes? Again, Carroll just asserts this without evidence. Why can't things follow patterns given by their nature?

Also, why do things in the world follow these specific patterns and laws, and not others? It's not enough to say, "Because those are the patterns we observe." That just avoids the question. It's equivalent to saying, "Nature follows the patterns we observe because those are the patterns we observe," or to put it more simply, "That's just the way it is," an answer that may satisfy Bruce Hornsby but not the truly curious skeptic.

Still, the biggest problem with Carroll's Laplacian defense of determinism was already preempted by David Hume. The Scottish skeptic affirmed what stock brokers remind us of today, that past performance is no guarantee of future results. The fact that past events usually or even always occur in some pattern doesn't mean future events have to occur that way.

For example, suppose that from birth to age 30, I ate a vanilla ice cream cone at exactly 2:00pm, every single day. So when my 31st birthday party rolled around, you glance at the clock and see it's 1:59pm, and you're nearly certain what will happen next. After all, that's the pattern you've always observed, me eating ice cream at 2:00pm, not just once or twice, but repeatedly and without exception for thirty years. As the hour chime hits, you see me scoop ice cream into a cone, lift the cone to my mouth....and then I stop. I strangely put the cone down and decide not to have any today.

Now, if you suggested I was determined to eat ice cream on my 31st birthday since "that's the pattern [you] observed" (to use Carroll's language), you would have been wrong. Thus determinism can't be solely grounded in the knowledge of past patterns.

But suppose the determinist replied, "Ah! But maybe you were determined to eat ice cream every day for thirty years and then determined to stop eating it on your 31st birthday!" Perhaps. But how would we know it? What arguments or evidence could we offer to support that proposal? Carroll says we know events are determined "because that's the pattern we observed." But in this case, it's precisely not the pattern we observed. Assuming it would be a new determined pattern that was previously unobservable would only beg the question in favor of determinism and make it unfalsifiable.

Determinism, Destiny, and Fate

Bad arguments aside, Carroll's not wholly comfortable with the implications of determinism. Therefore, he tries to soften its blow by distinguishing it from destiny and fate (emphasis mine):

"The physical notion of determinism is different from destiny or fate in a subtle but crucial way: because Laplace's Demon doesn't actually exist, the future may be determined by the present, but literally nobody knows what it will be." (36)

This reveals a confusion. Carroll implies that since we can't know the future, determinism doesn't imply fate or destiny. But our knowledge of the future is irrelevant to the question of whether we're fated or free. Determinism indeed implies fate since perfect knowledge of the current moment yields perfect knowledge of the next, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. That means every future moment is already set based on the state of the world right now (which is, in turn, based on the states before it). On determinism, your entire future is unavoidably fated.

Carroll tries another route to sidestep determinism's dreary implications, this time returning to his poetic naturalism:

"There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now. There is also another way of talking about it, where we zoom out a bit and introduce categories like 'people' and 'choices'...Our best theories of human behavior are not deterministic. We don't know any way to predict what a person will do based on what we can readily observe about their current state. Whether we think of human behavior as determined depends on what we know."

Here, again, we spot the confusion. Carroll seems to think determinism means you can predict future states of events—to the degree you can predict them, they're determined. But determinism is independent of what we know or predict. If reality was completely determined, that would remain true whether we predicted some, all, or no future events.

Also, Carroll affirms that while fundamental reality (i.e, level one reality, the deepest, quantum level of the universe) is deterministic, the higher levels (i.e., "emergent" levels) are not necessarily deterministic. In fact, they seem to be quite the opposite. Yet how can this be so? If elementary particles and quantum states are determined, then categories like "choice" would be, at best, useful fictions. They may help us get along in the everyday world, but they're ultimately out of step with fundamental reality. Once again, we see another example of Carroll's instrumentalism, preferring "stories" that work rather than explanations that are true.

The Final Blow Against Determinism

In the end, Carroll offers no convincing reasons to think determinism is true. Yet even if Carroll thought it was true, why would he try to persuade us of it? If determinism was true, then we've been pre-determined to either accept or reject it—we have no choice in the matter! And so we arrive at the final knockout blow against determinism: anyone trying to convince people determinism is true, to convince them to freely change their mind about determinism, implicitly undermines it.

In the next post, we'll looks at Carroll's thoughts about the philosophy of time. Stay tuned!

Many theists, including myself, believe that some of the strongest arguments for God rely on the logical need for a First Cause of the universe (or First Mover, depending on which argument you use.) This sort of argument goes back at least to Aristotle, who thousands of years ago suggested that, "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something" (and by motion he meant any change whatsoever, not just locomotion, or spatial change).

However, physicist Sean Carroll thinks Aristotle had it wrong. In one of the earliest chapters in his new book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016), Carroll explains why. His reason? "The whole structure of Aristotle's argument for an unmoved mover rests on his idea that motions require causes. Once we know about conservation of momentum, that ideas loses steam" (28).

To put it another way, Carroll believes that the conservation of momentum debunks the idea of causality, the principle that all actions are determined by causes.

Carroll admits that it does seem to us, in our everyday experience, that things don't "just happen"—something works to cause them, to bring them about. But he still believes causal language is "no longer part of our best fundamental ontology" (29). Poetic naturalists can speak of causality as an emergent, second-level description of reality, but it's not a level-one story we should tell about the world (i.e., it's not a description of how the world really works at its core.)

Now, one obvious question that Carroll's position raises is, how exactly does the conservation of momentum disprove causality? Carroll never offers a clear answer. He suggests that objects on frictionless surfaces moving at constant velocity do not need a cause to keep moving (28).

But of course, this doesn't refute the Aristotelian principle of causality. At best, this would only show that in such cases, you don't need a sustaining cause to keep an object moving. It would say nothing about whether you need an initial cause to start the object's motion.

To use another example, you could say that in general, once a baby boy grows to age 21, he generally doesn't need his father to "stay in motion," and continue developing. Whether his father is alive or dead, distant or close, he can survive just as well (again, generally speaking.) But this fact doesn't show that the father was completely unnecessary in the child's life. For if there was no father, there would be no baby boy—and certainly no 21-year-old man! Thus the father was necessary to explain how the baby boy "started going," but not necessary to explain how he "kept going."

Similarly, Aristotle would agree that everything in that begins to move must be initially moved by something, regardless of whether it continues requiring a cause or not. Even in the hypothetical case of a cup sailing along a frictionless table, you still need to explain what caused the cup to move in the first place. It can't have been in motion forever without cause, at least within the real world, for various reasons (none of which Carroll acknowledges or engages.)

So Carroll's attempt to refute the principle of causality, and thus the universe's need for a First Cause, fails because he doesn't distinguish between different types of causality, such as initial or sustaining causes. He in essence suggests that since things in motion may not require sustaining causes, then they don't need any causal explanations.

(For a helpful background on the critical distinction between different forms of causality, read Dr. Edward Feser's book, Aquinas.)

Carroll makes a similar mistake when he concludes, "The universe doesn't need a push; it can just keep going!" (28). The problem is that, once again, this mixes up two different forms of causality. The first part of his claim concerns how or whether the universe began, whether it had an initial cause to "push" it into existence. The second part concerns how the universe continues existing after it comes into existence, whether or not it has a sustaining cause to "keep [it] going." The two questions are not identical.

Regardless, Carroll offers no convincing reasons to accept either idea, that the universe "doesn't need a push" or that it can "just keep going" without any sustaining cause.

Interestingly, Carroll doesn't think we should get rid of causal language. He writes (emphasis mine):

"It's possible to understand why it's so useful to refer to causes and effects in our everyday experience, even if they're not present in the underlying equations. There are many different useful stories we have to tell about reality to get along in the world." (29)

Note here, again, his concern over whether causal language is useful, not whether it's true. On his view, poetic naturalists can tell whatever stories they want about the world as long as they're useful—as long as they help us "to get along in the world."

But this recalls my major critique of poetic naturalism: it's fine with embracing false accounts of the world so long as they're useful. It cares more about pragmatism than truth.

In the end, this chapter doesn't so much refute causality as it exposes Carroll's internal conflict. He wants to reconcile two contradictory positions, first that causality is fundamentally an illusion, and second that we can't "get along in the world" (nor, I would argue, carry on the work of science) without taking causal language for granted.

Carroll says we should embrace causality because it's useful.

I say we should embrace it because it true.

Either way, whether it's only useful or both useful and true, Carroll gives no reason to oppose theists who use causal language. After all, if such language is useful, then certainly theists can use it in arguments for God!

In the next post, we'll look at another central idea in Carroll's book, determinism.

(Editors Note: Dr. Edward Feser has a post here at Strange Notions digging further into Carroll's views on causality. Read it here.)

Today we continue our look at Sean Carroll's anticipated new book,The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016).

Carroll starts his book by diving right into the deep end. The first chapter in the first section concerns a huge topic: the fundamental nature of reality. Carroll explains that philosophers consider this the domain of ontology, but then he offers a strange definition. Ontology, he says, is "the study of the basic structure of the world, the ingredients and relationships of which the universe is ultimately composed" (10).

Unfortunately, this is the first of several confusing errors in his book. There are two major problems in this case. First, it's simply the wrong definition. Ontology is the study of being qua being, or the study of existence. Physics is the study of the basic physical ingredients that make up the world. By getting this definition wrong, Carroll has already begged the question in the first few pages of his book. He's smuggled his conclusion—that physics can adequately answer questions about ontology—into his definition of ontology. It's a simple mistake, but it has profound effects. Instead of putting forth arguments that physics can justly and completely account for the fundamental nature of reality, Carroll simply defines the study of fundamental reality in physicalist terms.

To his credit, Carroll does express caution about any naturalist ontology. He admits that, "Naturalism presents a hugely grandiose claim, and we have every right to be skeptical...Naturalism isn't an obvious, default way to think about the world" (13). It certainly seems, at least to most people, that there is more to reality than collections of impersonal atoms and laws. Therefore if naturalism is true, Carroll affirms, its supporters "need to make the case" for it (13).

That's precisely what he aims to do throughout the rest of his book. His goal is to show how all of reality can be accounted for in naturalist terms, without recourse to God, souls, free will, or anything supernatural. And in Carroll's view, that's best done through a worldview he's coined "poetic naturalism".

What is Poetic Naturalism?

Carroll holds that, "The world is what exists and what happens, but we gain enormous insight by talking about it—telling its story—in different ways" (19). While straight naturalism tells us that the world revealed to us by scientific investigation is all there is, we still need ways of talking about that world. That's where poetic naturalism comes in.

According to Carroll, the "poetic" aspect of poetic naturalism, or what separates it from other naturalist schemes, can be summarized in three points:

1. There are many ways of talking about the world.
2. All good ways of talking must be consistent with one another and with the world.
3. Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking.

In other words, the same reality can be described in many different ways, using different stories or concepts. We don't only have to rely on the descriptions of fundamental physics.

Carroll offers a concrete example. For the poetic naturalist, Captain James T. Kirk is both a collection of atoms stretching through space and time (when we're telling a story about his fundamental nature) and a human person who captains the starship USS Enterprise (when describing him at a higher, macroscopic level.) This would be a different approach than, say, eliminativism (or eliminative materialism, or what some people just call straight naturalism). On that view, the latter definition of Captain Kirk would be nothing more than illusion. It may seem like Captain Kirk is more than a collection of atoms, but that's simply false—it's illusory. Poetic naturalism "strikes a middle ground, accepting that values are human constructs, but denying that they are therefore illusory or meaningless" (5).

Within poetic naturalism, Carroll distinguishes three "levels" of storytelling. First is the fundamental reality, the deepest (usually microscopic) way of describing the universe. This is where we talk about reality at rock bottom. The second level includes "emergent" or "effective" descriptions, which are valid within some limited domain. This level is where we see concepts like ships, dogs, animals, books, games, shapes, and more. The third and final level is reserved for values, "concepts of right and wrong, purpose and duty, or beauty and ugliness" (21).

The point of poetic naturalism is that these three levels don't necessarily conflict. You can, for example, talk about "dogs" (a level two concept) to your wife and kids, but then when you're in the laboratory, reduce dogs conceptually to fundamental particles. Different ways of talking are appropriate for different domains of life.

Poetic naturalism is clearly the main idea of Carroll's book. In fact, all other chapters simply apply the poetic naturalist framework to each of life's Big Questions. So that's why before diving in to those specific questions, it's worth asking a more basic one: is poetic naturalism true?

The Big Problem with Poetic Naturalism

Among scientists, there's a long, ongoing dispute about the goal of science. Is science about finding truth, or is it primarily concerned with adequately describing the world? In the twentieth century, the so-called instrumentalists, led by John Dewey and Karl Popper, took the latter view. They held that scientific theories are just practical tools used to map the world around us in order to achieve useful ends (like finding cures and inventing technology). In other words, if a scientific theory "works", then it's good one; if a theory comports with the available empirical data and leads to good results, it's successful.

Suppose a chemist was exploring malaria parasites, and she haphazardly devised a theory that yielded an effective malaria cure. Even if the science behind the theory was dubious, an instrumentalist would say it was a good one.

But here's the problem: sometimes a scientific theory can "work" even when that theory is false. In our malaria example, perhaps the chemist's theory was useful but false. Maybe her theory was flawed even though it resulted in a good end, namely a cure for malaria.

This isn't a rare situation. The history of science is littered with examples. Two significant ones would be geocentrism and Newtonian physics. In both cases, the theories matched our observable data to theretofore unheard of accuracy. Defenders of each theory occupied at one time just the same position that Carroll does now in regards to poetic naturalism: they thought the evident success in prediction, explanation, and description made it nearly impossible, or extremely unlikely, the theory was false, and the remarkable achievements made possible by these theories, false or not, made them good theories.

But we now know both theories are false (or, in the case of Newtonian physics, at least incomplete and fundamentally inaccurate.)

Throughout The Big Picture, it becomes clear that Carroll is most interested in harmonizing the many useful stories we tell about the world. That's the aim of poetic naturalism. The problem, as with geocentric and Newtonian theories, is that the journey toward truth often veers from the path of pragmatism. What's true isn't identical to what works.

(For more background on this distinction, read Mitch Stokes' excellent new book, How to Be an Atheist: Why Many Skeptics Aren't Skeptical Enough.)

So that gets to the biggest problem, in my view, with Carroll's poetic naturalism:

It's preferred because it's useful, not because it's true.

Two More Problems with Poetic Naturalism

There are at least two more flaws with poetic naturalism, both of which affect all forms of naturalism. First, poetic naturalism is self-limiting. Carroll tries to answer the big metaphysical questions noted in the book's subtitle, but since he's closed to supernatural answers, his answers are constrained and unsatisfying. They don't survey the full range of possible solutions. As we'll come to see in later posts, this is why he answers many of the biggest questions with some form of, "Well, we just don't know because science hasn't confirmed that yet...but we're confident it will one day." That answer, of course, is unsatisfying, especially in light of the book's grandiose scope, for even a child can give "we don't know, but maybe one day" answers to life's Big Questions. Those are really non-answers, but they're doubly worse because they neglect possible answers that may lie outside the purview of science.

A second problem with poetic naturalism is that it's self-refuting. As many thinkers have observed over the years, from C.S. Lewis to Victor Reppert, William Hasker, and Alvin Plantinga, if naturalism is true, then it seems to leave us with no reason for believing it to be true. Why? Because all judgments would equally and ultimately be the result of non-rational forces. Thus even if it was true, we would have no good grounds for believing it.

In the next post, we'll examine what happens when Carroll applies his poetic naturalism to a question of ongoing interest here at Strange Notions: did the universe have a First Cause or did it just move itself?

Physicist Sean Carroll has a high reputation in the scientific and atheist communities, and it's well-deserved. He's produced several acclaimed books on the philosophy of time, the Higgs Boson particle, and general relatively.

But none of his past books has been as daring or sweeping as his latest project, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016). One reviewer for Nature began by stating, "I don't think I have ever read anything with a bigger ambition than The Big Picture." Just look at the subtitle!

Carroll doesn't hide his lofty ambitions. In one interview he suggested "the book should accompany the Gideons Bible in all hotel rooms in the world." In other words, he hopes this book rivals the impact of the most influential book in human history.

In the months before its release, blogs, forums, Facebook pages, and comment boxes buzzed with anticipation. The Big Picture launched as the #1 bestseller in several Amazon categories including Physics and Cosmology, and almost cracked the Top 100 of all books on Amazon.

Even before reading it, some christened it a manifesto for naturalism, the belief, often associated with atheism, that nothing exists beyond the natural world. Many envisioned the book as the definitive, scientific refutation of theism and/or supernaturalism. (In discussions here at Strange Notions, more than one commenter has confidently said, in effect, "....just wait until Sean Carroll's book comes out—he'll address that issue.")

It's easy to see why Carroll, an unbeliever who claims "almost all cosmologists are atheists," has become such an important figure for atheists. He's smart, articulate, funny, and has impressive scientific credentials.

Even as a theist, I like him a lot; he's one of my favorite atheist writers. First, he's irenic. When reading his books and blog, you rarely see the angry, boorish rhetoric found among many New Atheist writers. You sense Carroll is far more interested in facts than insulting people who disagree with him. (He's also one of the few theoretical cosmologists to have appeared on "The Colbert Report.")

Second, he writes with clarity and verve. Most scientific writing is boring, even for specialists. But Carroll's work sparkles with excitement, and he makes even the most difficult problems in theoretical physics graspable for laymen like me.

Third, he respects philosophy. While scientists like Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have suggested philosophy is dead, Carroll penned a viral article chiding their "lazy critiques" of philosophy. It's titled "Physicists Should Stop Saying Silly Things about Philosophy", and he affirms the principle that everyone does philosophy. But while some do it well, others do it badly—and some do it badly without even knowing it (the worst of all.)

Finally, Carroll has no animus against religion. He never suggests that religion is dangerous (ala Hitchens), abusive (ala Dawkins), or a sign of mental illness (ala Sam Harris.) As a naturalist, he thinks people who believe in God are wrong, of course, but he recognizes the positive ways that religion shapes people's lives. (In fact, as of writing this post, Carroll's latest blog entry is one praising the Catholic priest who formulated the Big Bang model. There's a notable absence of any science vs. religion rhetoric.)

Carroll first came on my radar a couple years ago when he debated William Lane Craig during the 2014 Greer Heard Forum. It was a spectacular exchange. The topic was "God and Cosmology: The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology", and I thought Carroll handled himself better than any atheist who has ever shared the floor with Craig. (Although, in my view, Craig ably handled Carroll's objections and offered his own solid arguments, which Carroll failed to refute. Watch the debate on YouTube or check out the book based on the event, God and Cosmology: William Lane Craig and Sean Carroll in Dialogue.)

With all that in mind, I was almost as eager as my atheist friends to read Carroll's new book. With a subtitle promising to explore life, meaning, and the universe itself, all from a naturalistic point of view, I was excited to learn about Carroll's "Big Picture."

But after reading the book—two times now—I'm left somewhat disappointed. Why?

The book is too small.

By that, I don't mean physically. At a hefty 470 pages with 50 chapters, it's not suffering for girth. But it's small in the sense of Hamlet's reply to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Carroll believes just the opposite. He thinks there are fewer things, or fewer kinds of things, in heaven and earth (or in objective reality) than in most people's beliefs. Carroll is a reductionist.

This is evident from Carroll's master idea throughout the book, something he calls "poetic naturalism." This is the lens through which he views all other topics. In one sense, poetic naturalism is expansive, at least relative to traditional naturalism. It seeks to expand our understanding of the world by refusing to reduce all knowledge to a small set of fundamental stories (typically the stories told by fundamental physics.) On the other hand,  poetic naturalism is still reductive. As a form of naturalism, it precludes any supernatural explanations (or "stories," to use Carroll's language.) Thus, it's a small worldview, albeit a milder reductionism, offering a "small picture" of the world relative to the truly "Big Picture" offered by theism.

With his poetic naturalism framework in mind, Carroll divides The Big Picture into six parts:

• Part 1 - Cosmos (aka cosmology)
• Part 2 - Understanding (aka epistemology)
• Part 3 - Essence (aka ontology)
• Part 4 - Complexity (aka biology/evolution/teleology)
• Part 5 - Thinking (aka consciousness)
• Part 6 - Caring (aka morality)

In the book's Prologue, Carroll notes that he had two goals in writing the book: first to "explain the story of our universe and why we think it's true", second to "offer a bit of existential therapy...to face reality with a smile, and to make our lives into something valuable" (3).

It would take a whole book to fairly engage all the ideas in such a broad-reaching scope, but over the next few weeks I'll review a handful of important sections that should be especially interesting to Strange Notions readers.

Tomorrow we'll begin with Carroll's first chapter on "The Fundamental Nature of Reality" along with a deeper exploration of poetic naturalism. Stay tuned!

(PS. I'm hoping to get Sean here for an #AMA with Strange Notions readers. I know we'd get some great questions and answers. Hopefully we can make that happen!)

Can the universe be a mere brute fact? Can we say, “The universe just exists and that’s that—it has no explanation at all”?

Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, thinks so. In a recent interview at Salon.com, Carroll says, “There’s certainly no reason to think that there was something that ‘caused’ it; the universe can just be.”

Carroll is in good company with such an assertion. Bertrand Russell, the late British atheistic philosopher, argued the same thing in the famous 1948 BBC radio debate with Fr. Fredrick Copleston: “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.”

Notice neither Carroll nor Russell says the universe is self-explanatory in that its existence belongs to its nature, which would be the sort of explanation for God’s existence. Nor are they saying we don’t know what the explanation of the universe is. They are saying there is no explanation for why the universe exists rather than not. In essence they are denying the principle of sufficient reason, which states, “Everything that is has a sufficient reason for existing.”

How should we respond? Are we to exchange brute fact for brute fact and say, “Things just need an explanation, and that’s that”? Or is there a way we can show the appeal to brute facts is unreasonable? I answer the latter.

There are several arguments one can employ when arguing against the brute fact view, but for the sake of brevity, I will offer only five.

Double Standards

First, I find it interesting how it’s permitted for an atheist to appeal to unintelligible brute facts but not the theist. If a theist were to say, “God is just a brute fact, there is no rhyme or reason to his existence,” then an atheist would feel justified in denying him membership among the intelligentsia. This is manifest when atheists such as Richard Dawkins object to theistic arguments with, “Who designed the designer?”, thinking theists arbitrarily posit God as the terminus of causal series. If theists aren’t allowed to play the “brute fact” card (which we don’t do anyway), then atheists shouldn’t be allowed to do so either.

The Facts of Ordinary Life

A second response is to point out that we don’t appeal to brute facts when dealing with things in ordinary life. For example, suppose a team of police officers come across a dead body on their shift and begin conjecturing possible explanations. “It’s murder,” one says. “No, I think this was a suicide,” the other officer responds. Another officer says, “No, I disagree, I think the cause is a heart attack.” The last officer says, “We’re wasting our time here—it’s just an unintelligible and inexplicable brute fact that this corpse is here. Let’s keep going.” What would we think of such a police officer? How about, “He’s not a good one!” I think his chief would concur.

So, why should an appeal to a brute fact when faced with the existence of the universe be reasonable when an appeal to a brute fact when faced with a dead body is not?

Can’t Get Out of the Taxi

Our atheist friend might object, “I’m not saying we should accept the police officer’s appeal to a brute fact. I acknowledge everything in the universe probably has an explanation for its existence. But there is no reason to think the universe has to have an explanation for its existence.”

Besides the fact this objection begs the question against the theist—if God exists then the universe would have an explanation for its existence—it commits what some philosophers have aptly called the “taxicab fallacy”; thus a third argument against the brute fact view. Why commit to the idea “Whatever exists has a reason for its existence” and then dismiss it like you dismiss a taxicab once you arrive at the universe as a whole? Such a move is arbitrary and thus unreasonable.

“But,” an atheist might say, “isn’t a theist guilty of the same fallacy in saying God doesn’t have a cause for his existence?” The answer is no, because the theist is not saying God is a brute fact, i.e., he has no reason or explanation for his existence. It is essential to classical theism that God’s existence, though not caused by another, is explained by his essence. His essence is existence itself—ipsum esse subsistens. This is not something theists arbitrarily assert but is the conclusion of deductive reasoning that starts with certain features of the world—motion (change), efficient causality, contingency, degrees of being, and final causality.  So the theist is not guilty of the taxicab fallacy.

Skepticism of the Senses

Another reason the brute fact view is unreasonable is because it entails radical skepticism about perception. As philosopher Alexander Pruss argues in his essay “The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument” (in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland), if things can exist without any sufficient reason, then there might be no reason for our perceptional experiences.

For example, according to this line of reasoning there might be no connection between your experience of reading this article on a computer and the actual article the computer is showing on its monitor. Your experience might just be a brute fact having nothing to do with any of the objective things with which we normally would associate your experience.

Do we want to go down that bleak road of skepticism and say all our sensory experiences are untrustworthy? There might be some radical skeptics who choose to walk that path (such skeptics can read this article). But for most reasonable people this is not a path that can be traveled, because such a path leads to the demise of science, which is something I assume Carroll wouldn’t endorse because he would be out of a job.

We need to be able to trust our sensory perceptions if we intend to discover truths about reality through empirical observation. So, unless one is willing to throw science out, one shouldn’t allow brute facts in the game.

No Arguments Allowed

The last argument I’ll offer for consideration comes from philosopher Edward Feser in his book Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. Feser argues the denial of the principle of sufficient reason is at the same time a denial of rational argumentation, including any argument for brute facts. Consider how when we accept the conclusion “Socrates is mortal,” we do so based on the premises “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man.” In other words, we recognize the conclusion as rational because the premises are true and the argument is logically valid.

But if brute facts are possible, and the principle of sufficient reason is false, then it follows that our conclusion “Socrates is mortal” might have nothing to do with the truth of the premises and their logical structure. It might also be possible our cognitive faculties themselves had no role to play in explaining why we came to that conclusion.

The bottom line is, if brute facts are possible, there might be no reason whatsoever we believe what we do, even the belief that we believe on rational grounds. This applies to any conclusion we might draw, even the conclusion “Things can exist without a reason for their existence.” But if the conclusion “Things, like the universe, can exist without a reason for their existence” might itself be a brute fact—namely, it has no connection to truth or logic—then we would have no reason to accept it as true. So to deny the principle of sufficient reason undercuts any ground one might have for doubting the principle. It’s self-refuting and thus unreasonable.

Conclusion

Sean Carroll is a brilliant man. He is courageous in taking on heavyweights of the likes of Dr. William Lane Craig. But why such a great mind can’t see the rational implications of denying the principle of sufficient reason, I do not know. Perhaps he just hasn’t thought it through. Or perhaps he just isn’t willing to open the door to a line of reasoning that leads to theism. Whatever may be the case, the appeal to brute facts is not a good parry when in the ring with a theist.

In a book that was released a few days ago, Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist, critic of religion, and former guest of The Colbert Report, presents what he calls The Big Picture. Neil deGrasse Tyson says the book “weav[es] the threads of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy into a seamless narrative tapestry. Sean Carroll enthralls us with what we’ve figured out in the universe and humbles us with what we don’t yet understand. Yet in the end, it’s the meaning of it all that feeds your soul of curiosity.”

Unnatural Naturalism

At Salon.com, Carroll took part in an interview with fellow skeptic Phil Torres to discuss the book. At the heart of his work Carroll defends the naturalist worldview. What does that entail? According to Carroll:

"Naturalism is the simple idea that there is only one world, the natural world; there isn’t a separate spiritual or theistic realm of existence. . . . Naturalists are atheists—they don’t believe in God—but the label is a positive claim about what one does believe in rather than what one rejects."

Every definition of naturalism has to face the problem of circularity. Defining naturalism as a belief that “only the natural world exists” is like defining God as “a divine being.” Unless one already knows what God is or what naturalism is, a definition that uses synonymous (or sometimes the same) terms as what’s being defined is unhelpful.

Carroll claims the label of naturalism is a positive one about what does exist (the universe) rather than what does not exist (God). But, as Carroll points out in the interview, naturalists disagree over what constitutes a part of the natural world. Some naturalists say immaterial realities like minds, math, and morality are illusions and don’t exist. Other naturalists say they really do exist but in an immaterial way.

The only thing on which all naturalists agree that is unique to naturalism is that God is not natural, and therefore God (and probably angels or other spiritual beings) does or do not exist. That sounds more like a philosophy defined by what it lacks instead of what it contains.

Improbable Probabilities

Carroll says in the interview:

"I talk a lot in The Big Picture about Bayesian reasoning. To some set of competing ideas, we assign a “prior” credence (roughly, the probability we think each one might be true), then update those credences as we gather new information. It’s crucial that our credence in a given idea never go all the way to precisely 0 or 1, because that means that no new information could possibly change our mind about it. That’s no way to go through life."

While Bayesian reasoning can be very effective, it doesn’t make sense to say there are no statements that have a 100 percent chance of being true or false. People couldn’t even have reasoned conversations with one another without acknowledging self-evident truths of logic like the law of non-contradiction, which holds that there is a 0 percent probability that a statement can be true and false in the same time and in the same way. This is also important when discussing whether God exists, because God is a necessary being; on a Bayesian scale, the probability he exists is 1.

That doesn’t mean the existence of God is self-evident (which is why St. Thomas Aquinas did not subscribe to Anselm’s ontological argument), but it does mean that if the evidence shows God exists, then this is a necessary truth about reality and has to factor into our description of reality as such.

Uncaused Causes

Carroll’s interviewer tries to take the place of the honest lay believer and asks him “[if] every effect has a cause. If the universe is an effect—which one could certainly argue that it is—then what caused it?”

“It’s not true that every effect has a cause,” Carroll replies. “That’s just a convenient way of talking about certain features of the macroscopic world of our everyday experience, one that is not applicable to how nature works at a deeper level. . . . There’s certainly no reason to think that there was something that ‘caused’ it; the universe can just be.”

This seems to be a reference to the fact that some interpretations of quantum physics hold that there can be indeterminate and so “uncaused events.” But that is not the same thing as saying that something like our universe can come into being from pure nothing. (I addressed this objection here a while back). One also can’t say the universe, which didn’t have to exist, can “just be”—that doesn’t answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing (I address this question in chapter 8 of my book Answering Atheism).

Meaningless Meaning

The interview ends with Carroll answering the interviewer’s question about how life can have meaning if the universe will eventually collapse into a state of maximum disorder and all life will perish. According to Carroll:

"The fact that life is temporary is precisely what does give it value. Why should we care about a century-long existence if it was followed by an infinitely long span of additional existence? We are fragile, ephemeral, finite creatures, bringing meaning to the world around us through our understanding and our care. Our lives have meaning exactly because they are all we have, and therefore are infinitely precious to us."

First, the idea that value comes from scarcity applies only in some contexts. It’s true that natural resources are valuable when they are scarce, because the demand outstrips supply. But other things retain their value no matter their abundance. Virtues like love, courage, or compassion don’t become less valuable as more and more people practice them, for example.

Second, Carroll misunderstands the question when he says our lives have meaning because “they are all we have.” When people ask, “What is the meaning of my life?” they don’t want the pedestrian answer, “A series of interconnected conscious experiences and relationships that are embodied within a single person.”

Well, yeah, we know that. What we mean is, “What is my life meant for? What is the purpose of my life?” If atheism is true, the answer is: nothing; your life is a meaningless accident.

The famous twentieth-century atheist Bertrand Russell honestly embraced this depressing truth:

"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."

Of course, there is much more that I can say on these topics, but I will adjourn for now. I just received my copy of Carroll’s book, so keep an eye out for a future critical review of it.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” In The Grand Design (2010), Stephen Hawking made headlines by denying the need for God to get matter to jump into being; the law of gravity was enough to do it. Then, Lawrence Krauss created a Youtube sensation and book called, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing (2012), that made the same case, including an afterward by Richard Dawkins who heralded it as a death blow to the last proof for the existence of God. Jim Holt’s bestselling, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story (2012), surveyed contemporary thinkers on this ultimate question as he sought some alternative to the theistic answer to the question. For these authors, the question is ultimate, but God isn’t.

Due to this explosion of interest in the question and the common aversion to God as the answer, it is worth asking a second-order question about the question: Why is there the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”?

A Copernican Shift

A peculiar thing about the question, “Why something rather than nothing?” is that we were given the answer before it occurred to us to formulate the question. Like Jeopardy, the answer came first, and only second did we ask the question.

Usually it is otherwise. We see a rainbow and ask what caused it, and then after extensive inquiry, we discover the properties of water and light that explain it. In this case, we naturally come upon the context of the world as what is ultimate. Against the mythologies of the poets, the ancient philosopher Heraclitus articulated what he took to be the ultimate necessity when he said, “The cosmos, the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and is and will be” (frag. 30, trans. Kahn). For the natural habit of mind, the world just is.

Then something happened. Human reason was given something that had never occurred to it before: the idea of God the Creator. Ancient philosophers already knew about the mythological tales of makers who fashioned chaos into order. Such makers would be co-eternal with matter, a part of the cosmos. They would not be the kind of thing that could exist independent of the cosmos. Now, thanks to biblical revelation, philosophy was given to think of a being that need not create, a being whose nature qualified it to be before and outside the cosmos. A new insight was nourished: compared to such a being, the cosmos need not be. Now the ultimate is not the cosmos, as Heraclitus assumed, for a new possibility emerged: a first cause that need not even cause.

Slowly did the powerful logic of the answer insinuate itself and fully work itself out into a corresponding question. God is. The cosmos and all the creatures in it need not be. Instead of the cosmos, there could be nothing other than God. Hence the question formed, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Nothing in this question means the negation of all that once was, now is, and will at some future time be. Hence, nothing is not something at all. It encompasses and negates the totality of finite being. Nothing harbors no possibility in itself; in it lurks no hidden potentialities and powers, no laws or propensities. Nothing excludes the watery chaos of mythology, the unformed matter of ancient cosmology, but also all the stuff of contemporary physics.

To ask the question is to be in the performance of the distinction between God and world, a distinction Robert Sokolowski argues in God of Faith and Reason is original to Christianity. Due to the genealogy of the question, attempts to answer the question with another answer necessarily fail as answers to the question. They may very well succeed in answering a different question, but they do not do what their authors would like them to do, namely provide an alternative answer to the ultimate question.

If there is no God, then the ultimate thing will be the cosmos, and there is no sense in pretending to ask the question why something rather than nothing. The nothing in the question will be a closet something otherwise there could never be something here, but we each know quite certainly that there is a something here. The nothing in the question only makes sense provided that we affirm the existence of the God who is not part of the cosmos, who is not a being among beings, but the generous granter of existence. Such a God is precisely the God affirmed by Christian philosophers and theologians in every century.

I am proposing, then, that the question only occurs as a result of a basically theological answer. Does that mean it is not a philosophical question?

The God of the Philosophers

Even though, as a matter of verifiable historical record, no ancient philosopher asked the question, now that it has occurred to us to ask the question it can be explored and appreciated by reason as a question. It would occur to few of us to ask most of the questions we now know the answer to, but that doesn’t mean the questions are not able to be understood once they occur to us (it doesn’t occur to a child, for instance, to ask how many suns there are, since the answer seems to be obviously one, even though this turns out to be illusory). Naturally, it seems obvious the cosmos just is, even though it turns out this is just an illusion in perspective.

Also, the question itself is a philosophical question which occurs to the philosophizing mind; it does not appear in the Bible and was not dictated by an angel. So, while the answer comes by way of revelation, the question comes by way of reason reflecting on the world in light of the answer.

But even this is not quite right. For the answer is only an answer in light of the question. Thus, strictly speaking, revelation does not give us the answer to the question; revelation shows us there is a God who defies worldly categories, a God who creates all things. The logic of such a God implies the question, why something, and suggests the answer: there is a necessary being who is not part of the system, responsible for sustaining the system. The philosophical question, then, actually enriches our understanding of the answer. Both revelation and the answer identify the same one being, but revelation does so theologically and the question does so philosophically. Strictly speaking, then, it is an act of faith that it is the same being in both cases.

Who Created God?

At first glance, it doesn’t make sense to ask about the origin of the cosmos. That seems like a non-starter. But having confronted the non-intuitive possibility that God need not have created and could have been all there is, we can appreciate the non-ultimacy of the cosmos. In light of the possibility of such a God, it makes sense to ask about the origin of all things.

But what about the origin of God? It would only make sense to ask this question if there was a conceivable origin to the origin of all things. But further consideration shows the silliness of the question. Either God is the origin of the cosmos, himself unoriginated, or the cosmos is somehow ultimate. There’s no sense in asking about the origin of something that is the origin of everything. It must simply be.

When we ask about things like rainbows and turtles and even the cosmos itself, it makes sense to ask after a cause. But when we are dealing with the necessary being, the one responsible for the fact that all of these caused causes are, it no longer makes sense to ask what causes it. If we ask, “Who created God?” we are not really targeting God the Creator but a creature, something with an origin.

Can we answer the question without invoking the God of theism? What else could transcend the whole cosmos? Something like a physical law doesn’t make sense apart from a cosmos to govern, but something like God the Creator does. Attempts to pose the question while dodging the theistic answer necessary fail to engage and thus answer the question.

Holt’s Existential Detective Story dismisses the theistic answer in one page as obviously incoherent. Hence, the pathos of his book, earnestly seeking a satisfying answer to the question other than the only possibly satisfying answer to the question.

If one wants to avoid the answer to the question, one can deny it is a legitimate question, as some philosophers have chosen to do. Bertrand Russell for example insisted, “The universe is just there—and that’s all.” The problem is that the question exercises a peculiar hold on our reason and won’t quite go away. Even philosophers, like Wittgenstein, who deny the question has sense, admit it is a question which grips us. He said he regularly has the following experience:

“I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as ‘how extraordinary that anything should exist” or “how extraordinary that the world should exist.’”

Why from moment to moment should the universe exist? Like the Copernican revolution, the movement at work in this question is strange and disorienting. It questions what seems to be beyond question. The question, once asked, provokes us, and we must choose what is ultimate: God the Creator or almost nothing.

"There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible." - Summa Theologiae I.2.3

"If, then, something were its own cause of being, it would be understood to be before it had being – which is impossible…" - Summa Contra Gentiles I.22.6
 
 
Was Aquinas mistaken? Could something be its own cause? Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow seem to think so. In their recent book The Grand Design, they tell us that “we create [the universe’s] history by our observation, rather than history creating us” and that since we are part of the universe, it follows that “the universe… create[d] itself from nothing.”

I examine their position (and the many things that are wrong with it) in my review of the book for National Review. What is of interest for present purposes is their suggestion that future events can bring about past ones. Could this be a way of making plausible “the dreaded causa sui” (as I seem to recall John Searle once referring to the idea in a lecture)? That is to say, might a thing A possibly cause itself as long as it does so indirectly, by causing some other thing B to exist or occur in the past which in turn causes A?

To be sure, Hawking and Mlodinow provide only the murkiest account of how their self-causation scenario is supposed to work, and do not even acknowledge, much less attempt to answer, the obvious objections one might raise against it. But one can imagine ways in which such a scenario might be developed. Suppose for the sake of argument that the doctrine of temporal parts is true. And suppose we consider various examples from science fiction of one temporal part or stage of an individual playing a role in bringing about earlier parts or stages of the same individual.

In his 1941 short story “By His Bootstraps,” Robert Heinlein presents a tightly worked out scenario in which his protagonist Bob Wilson is manipulated by time-traveling future versions of himself into carrying out actions that put him into a series of situations in which he has to manipulate his past self in just the way he remembers having been manipulated. That is to say, temporal stage Z of Wilson causes temporal stage A of Wilson to initiate a transition through various intermediate Wilson stages which eventually loop back around to Z. In the 1952 E.C. Comics story “Why Papa Left Home” (from Weird Science #11), a time-traveling scientist stranded several decades in the past settles down to marry (and later impregnate) a girl who reminds him of the single mother who raised him, only to discover, after his abrupt and unexpected return to the present and to his horror, that she actually was his mother and that he is his own father. Doubling down on this Oedipal theme in what is probably the mother of all time travel paradoxes, Heinlein’s ingenious 1959 short story “–All You Zombies –” features a sex-changing time-traveler (“Jane”) who turns out to be his own father and his own mother. (Don’t ask, just read it.)

Now, if we think of each of these characters as a series of discrete temporal parts – again labeled A through Z for simplicity’s sake – then we might say that each part has a kind of independent existence. A, B, C, D, and on through Z are like the wires making up a cable, in which each wire can be individuated without reference to the others even though they also all make up the whole. The difference would be that while the wires are arranged spatially so as to make up the cable, the stages in question are arranged temporally so as to make up a person. And what we have in the science-fiction scenarios in question is just the unusual sort of case wherein some of the stages loop back on the others, just as some of the wires in a cable might loop back and be wound around the others.

Mind you, I do not in fact think any of this is right. I do not accept the doctrine of temporal parts, and I do not think that such time travel scenarios really are possible even in principle given a sound metaphysics. But as I say, we’re just granting all this for the sake of argument. And if we do, it might seem that we are describing a kind of self-causation.

In fact we are not, at least not in the sense of “self-causation” that Aquinas is ruling out as impossible in principle. For notice that in order to make sense of the scenarios in question, we have had to treat each of the stages of the persons involved as distinct, independent existences. For instance, in “– All You Zombies –” it is, strictly speaking, not that Jane causes herself/himself to exist so much as that the later stages of Jane cause earlier stages of Jane to exist. And since each stage is distinct from the others, we don’t really have a case of self-causation in the strict sense. For none of the stages causes itself – each is caused by other stages. The situation is analogous to the “self-motion” of animals, which Aristotle and Aquinas point out is not really inconsistent with their principle that whatever is moved is moved by another, since such “self-motion” really involves one part of an animal moving another part.

We might also compare these scenarios to the kinds of causal series ordered per accidens that Aquinas is happy to allow might in principle regress to infinity. The stock example is a father who begets a son who in turn begets another. Each has a causal power to beget further sons that is independent of the continued activity or inactivity of any previous begetter. Contrast a causal series ordered per se, the stock example of which is a hand moving a stone with a stick. Here the stick’s power to move the stone derives from the hand, and would disappear if the hand were to stop moving. In the strictest sense, it is not the stick which moves the stone, but the hand which moves it, by means of the stick. By contrast, if Al begets Bob and Bob begets Chuck, it is Bob who begets Chuck, and in no sense Al who does it. The reason the latter, per accidens sort of causal series might in principle regress to infinity, then, is that the activity of any member does not of necessity trace to the activity of an earlier member which uses it as an instrument. But things are different with a per se casual series, in which no member other than the first could operate at all were the first not working through it. (I had reason to say more about the difference between these sorts of causal series, and about what is meant by “first” in the expression “first cause,” in this recent post.)

Aquinas allows for the sake of argument that the universe might have had no beginning, given that the series of causes extending backward in time is ordered per accidens. When he argues for God as first cause of the world, then, he does not mean “first” in a temporal sense. His argument is rather that the universe could exist here and now, and at any particular moment, only if God is conserving it in existence, for anything less than that which is Pure Act or Being Itself could not in his view persist for an instant unless it were caused to do so by that which is Pure Act or Being Itself, to which it is related in a per se rather than per accidens way. In particular, anything which is in any way a compound of act and potency (as all compounds of form and matter are, and, more generally, as all compounds of existence and essence are) must be continually actualized by that which need not itself be actualized insofar as it is “already” Pure Actuality. (See my book Aquinas for the details.)

Now every temporal part of the characters in our hypothetical science-fiction examples is relevantly like the particular moments in the history of the universe. Even if the universe had no beginning but regressed back in time to infinity, it would still have to be sustained in being at any particular moment by God. It could not at any particular moment be causing itself. And even if the temporal parts of the characters in question looped around back on themselves, they would still at any particular moment have to be sustained in being by God. They too could not at any particular moment be causing themselves. In short, the theoretical possibility of a circular temporal series would be as irrelevant to Aquinas’s point as the theoretical possibility of an infinite temporal series is. When Aquinas denies that anything can cause itself given the absurdity of a cause preceding itself, what he is most concerned to deny is, not that a cause can be prior to itself temporally (though he would deny that too), but that it can be prior to itself ontologically, that it could be more fundamental than itself in the order of what exists at any given moment, as it would have to be if it were sustaining itself in being. (And again, in any event no cause strictly exists prior to itself even temporally in the scenarios we’ve been describing; for each temporal part of the characters in question is caused by a distinct temporal part, not by itself.)

Hence, even if the universe were (as it is not) as Robert Heinlein or Stephen Hawking describes it, it would require at any particular instant a cause distinct from it in order for it to exist at that instant. (The same would be true if we consider the universe as a single four-dimensional object. It would still be a composite of form and matter and essence and existence, and thus of act and potency, and could therefore not in principle exist were it not caused by that which is not composite in any of these ways but just is Pure Act and Being Itself.) When we carefully unpack what the scenarios would have to involve, we can see that they do not entail any sort of causa sui, nor anything that could in principle exist apart from a divine first cause.
 
 
NOTE: Dr. Feser's contributions at Strange Notions were originally posted on his blog, including this article, and therefore lose some of their context when reprinted here. Dr. Feser explains why that matters.
 
 
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