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    The aggregate of all contingent things cannot exist witho... — Carmelics
    Home/Natural Theology
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The aggregate of all contingent things cannot exist without a cause external to the aggregate.

    Causation
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Every contingent thing requires a cause for its existence.
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    • 2.The aggregate of all contingent things cannot be its own cause, because a contingent thing requires a cause other than itself.
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    • 3.No individual within the aggregate is qualified to cause the entire aggregate's existence, since each individual is itself caused by other things within the aggregate.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.The concept of 'the aggregate of all contingent things' need not constitute a unified entity requiring a single causal explanation.
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    • 2.David Hume argued in the Dialogues that explaining each member of an infinite series explains the series itself, making an external cause superfluous.
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    • 3.If every contingent member of an infinite aggregate has a sufficient cause within the aggregate, the demand for an external cause commits the fallacy of composition.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Spinoza's monism entails that the totality of existing things is identical to a single necessary substance, making the aggregate itself necessary rather than contingent.
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    • 2.If the aggregate just is the one necessary being under another description, then P4's inference from contingent parts to a contingent whole fails by misidentifying the aggregate's modal status.
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    Topics

    Natural TheologyCausation

    Connections

    2 linked claims · 1 topic

    Modality & Possibility2 linked
    Therefore, the external cause cannot itself be contingent, since all contingent ...The existence of the aggregate of all contingent things requires a cause externa...

    Related

    David Hume argued in the Dialogues that explaining each member of an infinite se...Every contingent thing requires a cause for its existence.If every contingent member of an infinite aggregate has a sufficient cause withi...If the aggregate has a cause, that cause must be external to the aggregate.
    +8 moreShow less
    If the aggregate just is the one necessary being under another description, then...No individual within the aggregate is qualified to cause the entire aggregate's ...

    Similar

    The existence of the aggregate of all contingent things requires a cau...98%The aggregate of all contingent things cannot exist without a cause.95%Therefore, the external cause cannot itself be contingent, since all c...95%The aggregate of all contingent things cannot be its own cause, becaus...93%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: natural-theology
    View source passageHide passage
    Avicenna next considers the aggregate of all the existing contingent individual things, the existence of each of which is accounted for by its causal antecedents. He then proposes and evaluates four options for accounting for the aggregate’s existence. The first is that the existence of the aggregate does not require a cause. However, given the principle that the existence of any contingent thing must have a cause, the aggregate would then have to exist necessarily. But the aggregate’s existing
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Spinoza's monism entails that the totality of existing things is identical to a ...
    The aggregate cannot exist necessarily, because all of its constituent individua...
    The aggregate of all contingent things cannot be its own cause, because a contin...
    The concept of 'the aggregate of all contingent things' need not constitute a un...
    The existence of the aggregate of all contingent things requires a cause externa...
    Therefore, the external cause cannot itself be contingent, since all contingent ...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit