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(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963). There have been two subsequent editions in 1974 and 1983. In the latest edition, the statement of the defenses discussed in this paper is identical to the statement appearing in the first edition.
The only notice we have found is by Pheroze S. Wadia, “The Cosmological Argument,”Religious Studies, II (1975): 411–420.
See Jan Narveson, “On a New Argument From Design,”The Journal of Philosophy, LXII, 9 (1965): 223–229; Wilford Paul, “The Design Argument and Intuition,”Proceedings of the New Mexico-West Texas Philosophical Society, (1972): 58–63; Ronald J. Glass, “Taylor’s Argument from Design,”The Personalist,54 (1973): 94–99; Richard E. Creel, “A Realist Argument for Belief in the Existence of God, “International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 10 (1979): 233–253, which is the only attempt to defend Taylor’s argument we found in the literature; and Arthur E. Falk, “Purpose, Feedback, and Evolution,”Philosophy of Science, 48 (1981) 198–217.
This formulation attempts to capture the main thrust of the argument as it emerges from the critical discussion of Aquinas’ first two ways. In particular, Aquinas’ denial of an infinite series of movers or efficient causes cannot be adequately explored within the limits of this paper. Accordingly, our first premise allows for both a finite and an infinite series of things in the universe where each is explained by another, and our second premise allows for the claim that even an infinite series of dependent beings, i.e., beings whose existence is explained by something else, would need an explanation for its own existence. This last point seems to be the crucial issue between contemporary supporters and critics of the cosmological argument.
‘Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the parts.Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part IX, ed. by Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1947), see pp. 190–191.
In a widely publicized debate with Father Copleston, Russell claimed that there was nothing to explain beyond explaining everything in the universe. This debate was broadcast in 1948 on the Third Program of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is reprinted in numerous anthologies, includingClassical And Contemporary Readings In The Philosophy Of Religion, Second Edition, ed. John Hick (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964): 282–301.
Metaphysics, p. 93.
It should be noted that Taylor is rather circumspect concerning this further conclusion that the explanation of the existence of the physical universe is God,Metaphysics, p. 105.
Metaphysics, pp. 93–4.
Metaphysics, p. 100.
Metaphysics, p. 104.
Metaphysics, p. 105.
We presented a longer version of the first section at the Minnesota Philosophical Society Meeting in November 1988. The expert criticisms of our commentator, Dick Berquist, were of great help in better understanding the cosmological argument. We read the present two-part version at the APA Pacific Division Meeting in San Fransico, March 23–25, 1989. We thank Bradley Weakly-Goodman, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Ted Uehling for their comments on previous versions of this paper.
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Garavaso, P., Lemke, L. Taylor’s defenses of two traditional arguments for the existence of god. SOPH 29, 31–41 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02782713
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02782713