(October 13, 2014 at 5:40 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: First, the validity of the cosmological argument does not depend on any particular empirical, i.e. evidence -based, physical theory (Newtonian or otherwise) because any rational deduction about the very nature of reality is a more fundamental claim.
Rational deduction about the nature of reality without empirical observation of the reality? How would that work? By presupposition?
The fundamental claim regarding the nature of reality has to be validated by empirical evidence - that is how we determine if the claim is justified.
(October 13, 2014 at 5:40 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Second, refuting the analogy does not invalidate Feser's main point. The analogy he uses conveys the idea of contingency. The idea of the cosmological argument is that the existence of whatever is contingent and subject to change is causally dependent on something else whose existence is neither contingent nor subject to change, a first cause.
To the extent that analogy is a representation of his argument, it does refute it. Feser's idea is that existential contingency - like gravity - is unidirectional. As gravitational support goes from cup to table to floor to earth, the existential contingency goes from water to molecules to atoms to subatomic particles. But as the former is refuted, it gives us another possibility for the latter - that existential contingency may not be unidirectional either. For example, one object may be contingent on two sources which in turn are contingent on three sources and so on. Thus his conclusion of a single first cause is in error. Further, since by his analogy, the removal of gravitationally non-contingent earth does not affect the position of the cup, so he'd have to justify why the removal of the other non-contingent should be any different.
