Notes on a Cosmology - Part 20, The Five Ways

At this point, I want to broach the subject of theology. This subject is often treated as lying outside of philosophy - and, thus, cosmology - but this is a purely modern prejudice. The topic of theology is basically inevitable because we are dealing with so many topics that lie on the beaches of the ocean of the divine: unending life, unlimited mind, boundless virtual creations, and so on. Avoiding the topic in order to conform to modern ideas of rigorous thinking does not conform to the ground rules for building a toolbox for thinking that we developed earlier. So, let's turn to one of the great theologians of history, Thomas Aquinas, and consider his Five Ways of proving the existence of God.

As Wikipedia notes, Aquinas's arguments are primarily types of cosmological argument for the existence of God. Cosmological arguments start from some set of facts about our world and argue that God (as defined thus-and-so) must exist, otherwise, these facts could not possibly be as they are. Let's look at his second argument,

In the world we can see that things are caused. But it is not possible for something to be the cause of itself, because this would entail that it exists prior to itself, which is a contradiction. If that by which it is caused is itself caused, then it too must have a cause. But this cannot be an infinitely long chain, so therefore there must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further. This everyone understands to be God.

Modern philosophers can shoot many holes in Aquinas's argument. Mathematicians utilize backwards infinite regressions with ease (e.g. Zorn's lemma), so it is not obvious that a causal chain cannot be infinitely long. If we can see that things are caused, and God is a thing (existing), then how is it that God is not caused? And so on. Nevertheless, I assert that Aquinas is on to something. Here are the five conclusions of each of Aquinas's arguments:

• There must be something that causes change without itself changing
• There must be a cause which is not itself caused by anything further
• There must be something that is imperishable: a necessary being
• There is something which is goodness itself
• The behavior of non-intelligent things must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent

I want to modernize Aquinas's arguments a little bit.

I'll start with the third argument. My mind (conscious awareness) exists, that is, it has presence. I am here. The world that I am aware of (what exists outside of me) seems to be perishable, transient. Yet, what a remarkable coincidence it is that my mind can comprehend the world in which it is supposed to have arisen. In principle, my mind can comprehend every last detail of the physical world, even if it requires me to enlist the aid of computational systems (which my mind can also comprehend) to sort out all the complexities of the physical world. Thus, the appearance that my mind is an impermanent artifact of the world around me must be a mistake. Thus, my mind is imperishable - I am an immortal soul. And if I am an immortal soul, having a beginning, there must be some greater soul which is immortal and has no beginning. This being must exist imperishably, that is, its existence must be necessary.

The first and second arguments treat causality. Let us suppose that there is an infinite chain of causality. At some point, the present consequences of some very remote cause will become very tiny, no matter how great its effects originally were (we know this from the second law of thermodynamics). There is some point at which causes become indifferent to any consciousness. Thus, the existence of consciousness is compatible with an infinitely long chain of causality in which the effects of causes dissipate over time until they are negligible. Yet, there must be some final consciousness that sets the final limit of this indifference. This consciousness must itself be free of the effects of thermodynamics, that is, it must be immortal.

The last two arguments treat consciousness or, at least, aspects of consciousness. The fourth argument treats judgment between varying degrees of goodness. In modern terms, we can view this argument as being connected to the nature of measurement - everything in the world can be measured by something else but there must be some final limit of measurement which itself exists beyond measurement. The fifth argument treats intelligence. The behavior of non-intelligent (or non-conscious) bodies must be following some originary principle or law. There must be some intelligence that is pure will, that is, free of any constraints upon its action, and this intelligence must impose its will upon all other things beside itself.

Anselm defined God as "that being than which none greater can be conceived." This is a useful thinking tool. We can use this definition to derive certain facts that must be true of God if He exists. For example, God must be choosing His own highest end at all times because a being that does not choose its own highest end would be inferior to one that does always choose its own highest end.

If God exists, we know that God must be able to create conscious beings because we are conscious. But, by Anselm's definition, God must be able to create unconscious beings, as well. Let us consider for a moment the idea of a world devoid of any conscious being. In what sense can such a world be said to exist? No one supposes that dreams are actual occurrences or involve real people and dreaming involves at least some level of consciousness. But a world completely devoid of something to be conscious of that world simply has no being in any sense. Thus, a world that has existed but has never been observed is indistinguishable from a world which has never existed at all.

The question then arises: how is it that we define the primacy of existence in the material substrate rather than in the mind? I believe there are two main reasons for this tendency. First, we never experience consciousness apart from the body. Second, when we awaken from sleep, we return to a world that has been existing apart from our own consciousness. These two coincidences reinforce the belief that the mind is derived from the body and that the world can (and does) exist without the mind.

However, I assert that this is a mistake of reasoning. In the first case, no one has ever proved that the mind cannot be conscious apart from the body. But the same is not true of the body. The body, as a fact of its nature, cannot live without the mind. The body will die if it is not fed, watered, clothed, and so on, and it is only the mind that is able to make long-range plans to meet these needs. When I dream, I might assume that I am "in my head" but, in reality, I cannot be certain about where I am or even if I am anywhere at all. When I awake, I assume that the world around me has been "ticking away" in the absence of my consciousness but, in reality, I cannot have any certainty about how much time has passed or even whether I have awakened into the exact same body that I fell asleep in.

I have introduced the scholastic theologians Aquinas and Anselm in order to talk about God. I have raised the topic of God in order to talk about consciousness and non-consciousness. And I have raised this topic in order to make the following thesis: there are no dark worlds. This assertion may seem to be out of left field. After all, nobody is actively asserting that there are dark worlds. But the idea of dark worlds is implicit in most modern cosmologies ("the material world before consciousness") and has important consequences to how we think about the nature of consciousness itself.

Because there are no dark worlds, we can easily see that consciousness is the primary thing. What it means for something to exist is for a conscious being to be aware of its existence, whether as a thought or feeling (internal consciousness) or as a sensation (external consciousness). When I am asleep and not dreaming, I am not. Thus, I can make no hypothesis about the material world in my absence.[1]

The dimension of consciousness which we have so far neglected is choice. Choice - or will - is the key to understanding the nature of conscious existence. We can resolve the problem of determinism with an idea that I will call the limit of God's indifference. Consider a young toddler playing in the house. This youngster certainly has choice, agency. When he wants something, he reaches for it. When he wants attention from his parents, he vocalizes. And so on. In the limit, however, his parents have deterministic control over every aspect of his life. They can introduce new objects into his world and they can make currently existing objects disappear. They can limit his movements around the house with child gates. Most of the time, they keep him from going outdoors or they keep him in a fenced play area, and so on. Despite the control that the parents have, the actions that they leave available to the child are in the limit of their indifference. The child is equally welcome to play with the red toy or the blue toy and it is only the wellspring of action within the child himself (his free will) that determines which toy he will choose to play with.

In the same way, we can give a rational account of compatibilism by drawing an imaginary limit of divine indifference. God sets certain limits that we cannot get past, without qualification. But within these limits, He is indifferent to our choices and we have free will, in the ordinary sense of the word.

But in order for us to be liable to God's moral judgment, our free will must partake in the same essence as His own, even though we are under divine restrictions. At this point, the organization of the Quantum Monad that we gave before should become clearer:

My will, no less than God's, superposes upon the causal structure which superposes upon time, which superposes upon the material creation. Thus, what the world is, at its deepest structure, is pure choice. The awareness of constraint - physical laws, bodily functions, social laws, etc. - tends to invert this pyramid and put the material limits at the top, with time and causality below, and my poor, helpless will at the very bottom, giving rise to the feeling of cosmic helplessness, particularly in the face of the inevitability of death.

In upcoming posts, I plan to delve deeper into the consequences of the theological conception of the Universe as pure, conscious choice and how this fits into the cosmological theory we have built up to this point.

Next: Part 21, The Primum Mobile

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[1] This is an intentional overstatement that I plan to refine in a future post