How much do you like philosophy?

[MindForgedManacle]

Just out of interest are things like the Kalam argument for God considered proper philosophy?

Philosophy, yes. "Proper" philosophy, no. It's the kind of philosophy you would expect to see, I dunno, 300-400 years ago.

Let's take the WLC Kalam argument:

P1 Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2 The Universe began to exist.
C Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

Firstly P1 and P2 must be demonstrated to be true. In order to do that you have to examine the physical world and find evidence for them. Neither P1 nor P2 have been tested in any way.

I'm certainly no fan of Craig's, but Craig does not make this argument in a vacuum. Part of the intended power of the persuasion of this argument for Craig is that it DOES have some apparent backing from science and common experience. P1 could be defended by pointing out that all things we see existing have a cause for their existence. Craig does in fact have a further argument to support P1 by trying to logically demonstrate that actual infinities, like an infinite series of events, cannot be actual.

P2 is by even Craig's admission controversial.

Not only that but in order to make P1 valid, you'd have to first test that the Universe has a cause as the Universe is part of "everything". So it's completely pointless as if you'd managed to test the Universe has a cause, you wouldn't need the argument in the first place.

What? No you wouldn't, you seem to be profoundly misunderstanding Craig's argument. The argument isn't that everything has a beginning of its existence, or else how would Craig get to his God? The argument's scope is limited to the set of things that do in fact begin to exist.


There are many flaws in Craig's argument, but I don't think any of those are it. :o

Some philosophy seems to deal purely with ideas, which I have no problem with and is useful. It is when it starts getting applied to the real world, like above, that it all breaks down. Take Zeno's paradox. It is easy to show it is wrong if you understand calculus, but it was probably useful in that it got people thinking about infinitesimal quantities.

Philosophy breaks down in the world? Not so sure about that. Zeno's paradoxes were certainly important for what they were, and calculus gave us a way to show the flaws in his paradoxes. But that isn't the only way philosophy is applied to the world. Certainly ethics and political philosophy are branches of philosophy it would be a little crazy to say "break down" in the world, unless by that you just mean aren't perfectly acted out.