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Grounding, infinite regress, and the thomistic cosmological argument

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Abstract

A prominent Thomistic cosmological argument maintains that an infinite regress of causes, which exhibits a certain pattern of ontological dependence among its members, would be vicious and so must terminate in a first member. Interestingly, Jonathan Schaffer offers a similar argument in the contemporary grounding literature for the view called metaphysical foundationalism. I consider the striking similarities between both arguments and conclude that both are unsuccessful for the same reason. I argue this negative result gives us indirect reason to consider metaphysical infinitism as a genuine possibility, the view that chains of ontological dependence or ground can descend indefinitely.

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Notes

  1. See Feser (2021), Oppy (2021), Schmid (2021) for recent engagements on this topic.

  2. At various points throughout this paper, I use the terms ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological dependence’ interchangeably. I intend to remain neutral regarding the relationship between the two since some thinkers take them to be separate notions. My focus in this paper is on the broad similarities of the Thomistic and reality inheritance arguments. So, I intend my discussion of grounding, ontological dependence, and Thomistic causation to operate at a fairly general level of analysis.

  3. Schaffer (2009), Rosen (2010), Audi (2012).

  4. Many understand grounding to relate facts (Audi, 2012; Fine, 2012; Rosen, 2010). But some thinkers understand grounding to relate entities of arbitrary ontological category (Schaffer, 2009). I will confine grounding talk to facts in this paper.

  5. Schaffer (2009).

  6. Schaffer (2017, p. 305). The relationship between ground and explanation is fraught. In this paper, I remain neutral on whether ground just is a form of explanation or otherwise backs explanation. See Raven (2015) for a characterization of these two positions on the relationship between grounding and explanation. He refers to the position that grounding is a form of explanation as unionism, and the view that grounding backs or underlies explanation as separatism.

  7. See Schaffer (2009, 2010a, 2016), Lowe (1998), Cameron (2008), Bliss (2019).

  8. See Dixon (2016), Rabin and Rabern (2016) for an in-depth discussion of well-foundedness. To be more precise, foundationalism is compatible with infinite chains of ground. What is supposedly problematic is chains of ground that fail to be well-founded or fail to be fully grounded in some fundamental facts.

  9. Cohoe (2013, p. 841–842). Kerr (2012) also argues that Thomistic causation is a relation between things, not events (p. 543).

  10. Cohoe (2013, p. 842).

  11. See Schaffer (2009).

  12. See Schaffer (2009), Raven (2013).

  13. Schaffer (2012, p. 122).

  14. Kerr (2012, p. 543).

  15. Trogdon (2018, p. 189).

  16. Bernstein (2016), p. 24.

  17. Schaffer (2010b, p.345).

  18. Schaffer (2010a, p. 62).

  19. Though the terminology of ‘essentially’ and ‘accidentally’ ordered is not found in Aquinas himself, it fits with the secondary literature and is simply meant to refer to Aquinas’ original distinction. See ST, I, q. 46, a. 2, ad 7.

  20. ST, I, q. 46, a. 2, ad 7.

  21. Feser (2021 p. 514).

  22. Kerr (2012, p. 545).

  23. Kerr (2012 p. 550).

  24. Kerr (2012, p. 545).

  25. Kerr (2012, p. 545).

  26. Kerr (2012, p. 546).

  27. Davis (2016, p. 41).

  28. Lewis (1973, p. 161).

  29. For example, see Ned Hall (2014) for a counterfactual and productive account of causation. See also Pearl (2000) for the structural equation approach to causation.

  30. Kerr (2012, p. 550).

  31. Cohoe (2013, p. 848).

  32. Cohoe (2013, p. 848).

  33. Cohoe (2013, p. 848).

  34. Cohoe (2013, p. 851).

  35. Feser (2021, p. 517).

  36. Mackie (1982, p. 220).

  37. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this point.

  38. Feser (2021, p. 512).

  39. Feser (2021) writes, “First, when Aquinas judges that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, he is talking about causal series of the kind that I characterized above as hierarchical rather than linear, and the reasons for his judgement are the same as those I summarized when discussing this distinction. This is a point often emphasized in Thomistic discussions of the Five Ways, but Oppy appears not to be aware of it. At a couple of places in his discussion he remarks that Big Bang cosmology need not be interpreted in a way that rules out an infinite regress of causes, which indicates that he is making the exegetical mistake of supposing that Aquinas is concerned with linear causal series extending backward in time” (p. 516).

  40. Smart and Haldane (1996, pp. 129–31).

  41. Smart and Haldane (1996, pp. 129–31).

  42. Nielson (1971, p. 171). Mackie (1982) levels a similar complaint against Aquinas. He writes, “In fact, Aquinas has simply begged the question against an infinite regress of causes” (p. 220). Similarly, Paul Edwards also makes this complaint against the Thomist. A finite series of books, each stacked one upon the other, would surely come crashing down without a ‘first book’ that acts to hold all the rest up. As Edwards says, “if the series, however, were infinite this would not be the case. In that event every member would have a predecessor to support itself on and there would be no crash” (1959, p. 206).

  43. Schaffer (2010a, p. 37). Lowe (1998) also argues, “…in the absence of any primitive substances, it appears, no other concrete objects could exist at all, including even places and times” (p. 171).

  44. Schaffer (2010a, p. 62).

  45. Trogdon (2018, p. 185).

  46. Paul Audi (2012, pp. 798–709) seems to reject this notion of grounding, arguing that grounding is not a link between degrees or levels of reality. Additionally, one who endorses the operational view of ground, where statements of ground are expressed by use of a sentential connective rather than a relational predicate, will not conceive of grounding as a productive relation.

  47. Schaffer (2016, p. 95).

  48. Jacek Brzozowski (2008) offers an almost identical argument, which to my mind makes the same mistake. He argues, “Let us suppose that someone is royal only in virtue of their father being royal, and never in virtue of anything else. Then if there is only a finite series of people, no one is royal. And even if there is an infinite series, still no one is royal. In effect, there is nothing in the world that makes it the case that someone is royal in the first place, rather than no one being royal” (p. 201).

  49. Prominent discussions of metaphysical infinitism include Schaffer (2003), Tahko (2014), Raven (2016), Morganti (2014, 2015, 2018), Bohn (2018). Another alternative position is called metaphysical coherentism or holism, the idea that grounding can form loops or cycles. See Bliss (2014), Thompson (2016), Morganti (2018) for discussions of this view. See Cameron (2022) for a defence of both views.

  50. Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, Sect. 2, p. 7. Retrieved from, https://earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/clarke1704.pdf. July 11, 2022.

  51. Lowe (1998, p. 158).

  52. Cohoe (2013, p. 840).

  53. Searle (1995, pp. 190–1).

  54. Westerhoff (2020, p. 168) makes a similar critique of Searle.

  55. Kerr writes, “it follows from this view that the explanatory force that goes along with positing the causal relation is based upon the fact that there is a real connection between two things, cause and effect, such that one cannot understand the existence of the latter without the former” (p. 544).

  56. Cohoe (2013, p. 842).

  57. Hume argues, “Also: in such a chain or series of items, each part is caused by the part that preceded it, and causes the one that follows. So where is the difficulty? But the whole needs a cause! you say. I answer that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct counties into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one organic body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind and has no influence on the nature of things. If I showed you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I would think it very unreasonable if you then asked me what was the cause of the whole twenty. The cause of the whole is sufficiently explained by explaining the cause of the parts” David Hume, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion (1779), Part IX.

  58. See chapters 1 and 3 of Cameron (2022), wherein he develops a plausible take on the viciousness of an infinite regress of ontological dependence that is not unlike Aquinas’.

  59. I am indebted to several anonymous referees for helpful comments and for the reformulations of Cohoe’s and Kerr’s arguments. I would also like to thank Jack Zupko for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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The funding was provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 752-2021-1890).

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, 2-40 Assiniboia Hall Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E7, Canada

    Thomas Oberle

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Oberle, T. Grounding, infinite regress, and the thomistic cosmological argument. Int J Philos Relig 92, 147–166 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-022-09840-3

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