Castaneda 1 Caleb Castaneda Professor Yamada Phil 314 15 May 2013 Is the Universe (Possibly) Necessary?

Other than the question of God, perhaps no philosophical topic has received as much attention, from both professional philosophers and laypersons alike, as the question of origins. On the one hand, it is nearly universally admitted by anyone who has thoughtfully considered the issue that human knowledge is likely never to be able to provide conclusive answers to questions of this sort. On the other hand, human inquisitiveness naturally compels us to seek such answers. The point of this essay, then, is not to definitively establish from whence the universe came. Such a project, it seems to me, is misguided from the start. Rather, the point of this essay is rather more modest. For I aim to show that one of the options that is traditionally overlooked is not as absurd as it might initially seem. This option, the Metaphysically Necessary Universe theory (MNU), is really a denial of any contingency whatsoever, inasmuch as it amounts to the claim that all facts and events that we face in our reality are strictly necessary. Before beginning, I should probably state my assumptions. I will make no attempt to defend these assumptions. I take it that work has already been done elsewhere; readers will either find them persuasive or not. Even if they do not find the assumptions persuasive, they will nonetheless understand the motivation behind this paper.

Castaneda 2 1) I assume that the question respecting whether the universe requires an explanation or not is simply another way of asking whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) holds as a universal explicability demand, (as opposed to the sorts of local explicability demands that we make when we ask why it is that some particular fact happens to obtain). 2) I assume that it has been established that the PSR leads to necessitarianism, the doctrine that reality can only obtain one particular way, notably, the way it does obtain. 3) I assume that Michael Della Rocca's argument that there is a demarcation problem facing those who deny the PSR, such that they are not entitled to use explicability arguments even in local cases, is sound (Della Rocca, PSR 7).1 Given these three assumptions, a person could make an argument that we are never entitled to ask for explanations in the following manner, where `E' is the PSR, `N 'is the MNU and `S' is the hypothesis that we are never entitled to explicability arguments: 1. E v ~E 2. E N 3. ~E S 4. N v S 5. ~N S The motivation of this paper, then, is to block S by weakening the 5th premiss, ~N.
1 Della Rocca gives three options: (1) One can say that some of the explicability arguments are legitimate and some in particular, the explicability argument concerning existence are not. (2) One can say that none of the explicability arguments is legitimate. (3) One can say that all of the explicability arguments, including the explicability argument concerning existence, are legitimate (7). The rest of his paper he argues that the first option cannot be taken unless one has non-arbitrary criteria for determining when an explicability demand is appropriate and when it is not. The end result is that, unless a person can stipulate the non-arbitrary criteria by which she draws a line, she must either accept the PSR or else give up her legitimate usage of explicability arguments essentially a position which denies us our right to ever demand an explanation for anything.

Castaneda 3 But even that rather modest project must be further limited. There is not the space to consider every objection to the necessitarian hypothesis. So I will limit my argument to refuting what I consider the strongest objection. In his paper, Why Anything? Why This?, Derek Parfit considers the question of origins. His handling of the MNU, however, is disturbingly brief: Some people even claim that there may be only one coherent cosmic possibility. Thus, Einstein suggested that, if God created our world, he might have had no choice about which world to create. If such a view were true, everything might be explained. Reality might be the way it is because there was no conceivable alternative. But, for reasons that have been often given, we can reject such views. (Parfit 10) The problem is, the reader coming across these views for the first time has no idea where he might look. We must look elsewhere if we are to find out what is so objectionable about the necessitarian hypothesis.2 Thankfully, Della Rocca helps us here. He considers the strongest objection to the necessitarian hypothesis to be this: If . . . necessitarianism is true, then why does it seem to us (falsely) that things could have been otherwise than they actually are? (Della Rocca, Spinoza 78). The first point to be made is that, as structured, this is an incredibly weak argument. It essentially argues in the following manner: 1) It seems to me that X X
2 I am indebted to Professor Yamada for his notes in my response paper directing my attention to this particular argument against the necessitarian hypothesis. To the extent that those possibilities seem coherent to the reader, isnt that reason enough to reject the idea that the existence of our universe is logically necessary?

Castaneda 4 If the sole evidence that we consider sufficient to draw a conclusion is that it seems to us that it is the case, then it would seem to me (pun intended) that this is an impermissibly low standard of evidence. Using such a standard, it would seem to be possible to draw all sorts of erroneous conclusions. But I do not believe that this is the most charitable way of characterizing this argument. There is, it seems, a suppressed premiss in the argument. And, when fully explicated, this premiss makes the argument much more plausible. I want to rephrase the argument to state it in its strongest form: 1. 2. 3. 4. We can conceive of things differently than they are. Things that are conceivable are metaphysically possible. Non-actual things that we conceive are metaphysically possible. Necessitarianism denies 3. Necessitarianism is false.

This is a much stronger version of the argument against necessitarianism. It does not need to argue that something's seeming that X warrants a general conclusion that X. This is an argument from conceivability to actuality, and as such it is wildly implausible. Rather, the argument gives us reason only to conclude that if something is conceivable then it is possible, not that it is actual. And so necessitarianism happens to be false, not because it seems that way to us, but because necessitarianism denies even possibility. This type of argument has come to be called a conceivability argument. It has famously been used by Descartes to argue for God's existence (Descartes 59). That the argument crosses the ideological divide is shown by the fact that David Hume also used it, claiming that 'Tis an establish'd maxim in metaphysics, That whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is

Castaneda 5 absolutely impossible (Hume 32). In more modern times, in another famous piece, it has been used by David Chalmers to argue that the conceivability of zombies makes them metaphysically possible (Chalmers 6). Of course, Chalmers true aim is not proving that zombies are metaphysically possible, but rather that the mind must not be identical to the brain because we can conceive of an entity (zombies), that has a functional brain but not a mind (6). Zombies, of course, are interesting, and the conclusion that they are possible is provocative, so they serve as a good test case to ensure that, when we consider the conceivability argument, we are not guilty of creating a straw man (or is it straw zombie?) argument against it. In order to analyze the strongest form of the argument, it is necessary that we realize several things about the zombie argument, and by extension conceivability arguments in general. First, it is very important to realize that the conceivability argument is designed to measure metaphysical or logical possibility, not physical possibility. No one is arguing that zombies are physically possible. It would seem that the laws of nature in our universe are such that zombies are not physically possible. But metaphysical possibility is distinct from physical possibility in that physical possibility is constrained by the actual laws of the universe. Metaphysical possibility is not constrained by the physical laws. The only constraint on metaphysical possibility is non-contradiction. So a thing is metaphysically necessary if its denial would create a contradiction. I will consider this aspect shortly. Second, it is important to distinguish just what is meant by the term conceivable. If we allow our minds to play freely with concepts, we are likely to find almost anything

Castaneda 6 conceivable. As Kirk points out, Evidently, the lower the threshold for conceivability, the easier it is to accept (1) [the premiss that zombies are conceivable] but the harder it is to accept (2) [the premiss that conceivability entails possibility]. So the kind of conceivability invoked in premisses (1) and (2) needs to be strongly constrained (Kirk). To explain the sort of conception that might lead to possibility, Kirk explains a concept called ideal conceivability, (Kirk). The point would seem to be that all of the relevant details in the object under consideration must be represented in the conception. The conceivability argument, then, is designed to show only logical or metaphysical possibility, not physical possibility. And it is intended to work only with a very strong employment of the term `concept'. So, if one is to refute the conceivability argument, one must be very careful not to lapse into suggesting that an inference from conceivability to physical impossibility is unwarranted or imply that the argument will not work if it uses only a stunted form of conceptualization. This much is granted by all those who use the argument. As Hume noted earlier, the conceivability argument is an estabish'd maxim in metaphysics (Hume 32). It can be difficult, then, to find any argument for it. Typical are those philosophers who use it without explaining just why it is that the argument will work. David Hume, thankfully, is one such philosopher who did take the time to explain why it is that the conceivability argument should indeed indicate possibility: WHEREVER ideas are adequate representations of objects, the relations, contradictions and agreements of the ideas are all applicable to the objects (Hume 29). If we imagine, say, a square in our mind, and we truly imagine all the proper relationships between the sides and angles, then we will

Castaneda 7 not be able to imagine anything impossible about the square, because there is a correspondence between the square and our representation of it. If we were to lengthen one of the sides in our minds, as long as we held all the relations between the angles and other sides constant, our minds would no longer call such a representation a square because we know what it is that the square represents. To imagine it otherwise is to destroy the identity relationship between object and thing thought. Let's return to the conceivability argument. I have argued that, as it pertains to the necessitarian hypothesis, the strongest form of the argument is this one: 1. 2. We can conceive of things differently than they are. Things that are conceivable are metaphysically possible. Non-actual things that we conceive are metaphysically possible.

If we define metaphysical possibility as something that implies no contradiction, then so long as we represent the object properly, it seems to me that the second premiss works quite well. As long as we take care to conceive of all the relevant features of an object, with all of its proper relations that which makes the thing itself rather than some other thing the second premiss seems remarkably strong. But the first premiss does not seem quite so strong, and it is to the first premiss that I object. If I am using the term conceive in a colloquial sense, then it surely makes sense to claim that I can conceive of things being different than they are. I can imagine that life exists on the Sun or that helium is more massive than lead. These things, of course, are physical impossibilities. But I need not be so extravagant. It seems that I can imagine much more mundane things, things which do not seem (in the colloquial sense), physically impossible. I can imagine, for instance, that Lindsay Lohan might have attended her DUI

Castaneda 8 trial in a state of inebriation. This did not actually obtain, but it might have and it is consistent with her character. If the Knicks had played better, it might seem to me that they could have won game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. These certainly do not seem, colloquially, to be even physical impossibilities, let alone metaphysical impossibilities. But appearances can deceive. Remember, it is not the case that the conceivability argument works with a colloquial sense of conceive. Rather, to make the argument work we need a much stronger sense of the word, one that involves conceiving of all the relevant features of the object in question, along with all of its relevant relations. Is this possible? Can I conceive, in the sense of ideal conceivability, that the Knicks might have beaten the Pacers in game 4? Let us examine that claim. When I say something like, the Knicks could have beaten the Pacers, I am not talking about an event that happened completely without any causal history. I am aware that there was a causal history that bears on the outcome of the game. And I surely am not suggesting that all the physical causes of the events could have remained constant and yet the outcome be different. If the Knicks won the game, it would not be because everything happened the same as it did before, rather it would be because different things happened in the possible outcome than happened in the original outcome: perhaps a few crucial free throws were made rather than missed, or an important player was not called for a crucial foul, and thus did not foul out of the game. The point is that my conception of the Knicks winning the game involves writing a different causal history. It is not just that I must write a different causal history for those particular events that pertain to the Knicks game. It is, rather that I must write a different causal history for

Castaneda 9 the entire universe. To see why this is, it is important to remember that events do not happen in a vacuum. If the Knicks won the game because Anthony was playing better, then that would have to be owing to some cause. But that means that that cause would have to be different than what it was in the actual outcome. Let's say, for example, that Anthony played better because he drank a quart of Gatorade before the game in the possible scenario but not in the actual one. But now we must account for that difference. Why is it the case that Anthony drank a quart of Gatorade rather than not? And whatever difference explains that must itself be explained, back to the Big Bang. And because causal relations are so important to forming identity, and because I must conceive of all the relevant relations to make the conceivability argument work, then it seems that, to ideally conceive of any possibility, we must conceive the entire alternate universe in our minds. But this is something that not even an expert in physics can do. This, of course, is not what we do when we conceive, in the colloquial sense, that things might have been different than what they are. Instead, we take some small snippet of time, some event, and proceed to insert some other scenario while simultaneously holding everything else that we know about the universe constant. I argue that this is not conceiving in the important sense demanded by the argument. Because a thing's identity is shaped by its causal history, to imagine something differently I must imagine it complete with all its relevant relations, the entire causal history which brought it into being and make it what it is. As this is an impossibility, then it would seem that the first premiss is actually not true. We never do conceive, in the important sense demanded by the argument, that things might be different than they are.

Castaneda 10 Now, to be sure, there are some ways that a person might attempt to defend the conceivability argument from this challenge. The first way might be to assume that I am begging the question against the conceivability argument. At question, it might be said, is whether necessitarianism obtains. I might seem to be presuming that necessitarianism obtains by demanding that a complete account of an event's causal history be given in order to give a full, relevant conception of the object. For all we know, though, the universe might be indeterminate, such that, in the Knicks case, the indeterminism actually occurs at a late stage. Perhaps a missed free throw with 8 seconds remaining in the game was actually the indeterminate event that caused the entire outcome to be different. If indeterminism is the actual state of the universe, isn't it possible that events are much easier to conceive because their entire relevant causal history is much shorter? The short answer to that question is, yes, in the event of indeterminism events would be much easier to conceive in all their relevant glory. However, this situation does not help the case of the person trying to defend the conceivability argument. In fact, in the end it seems to be the case that such a hypothetical person is actually begging the question against me. It must be remembered what the goal of the conceivability argument is: the state of the universe, either determinate or not, necessitarian or not, is unknown. We want the conceivability argument to yield this information to us using something that we know (or think we know!), namely, our concepts. But my objection is to the effect that conceivability, in the important sense demanded by the argument, is actually itself an unknown. Now, if the universe happened to be indeterminate, concepts would indeed be easier to form because

Castaneda 11 they would have a shorter causal history to account for conceptually. But this cannot help the defender of the conceivability argument because, in the event that indeterminism holds, this fact is still not known to the conceiver. So she has no way of knowing whether her conception is ideally conceived or not. To accomplish the feat of robbing us of our ability to know whether we have conceived of something ideally, all the necessitarian hypothesis must do is be possible, in the sense that we do not know whether it is true or not. I do not need to assume that necessitarianism actually obtains, only that it has not been disproved. If necessitarianism might obtain, then I cannot know that I have conceived of the event. So in order to defeat the necessitarian hypothesis with this argument, the defender of the conceivability argument actually needs to know that indeterminism holds, which is begging the question. Another argument might be put forward to defend the conceivability argument from my objection. It might be said that, 14 billion years into the cosmos, I might be correct that it is futile to try to ideally conceive of any event. But, earlier in the universe's life certain events occurred, such as the formation of the physical forces. It might be thought that I could conceive, in the ideal sense, of, say, gravity being different than what it is, such that I might be able to show that it is metaphysically possible that the physical laws of the universe might be different, even if I cannot show that the Knicks could have won the game. Perhaps. Indeed, it might be noted that my objection assumed that the physical laws remain constant, and I am not supposed to comment on physical impossibilities. First, if one is trying to prove that something is metaphysically impossible, then yes, one ought not use a standard of physical impossibility to judge. But that is, importantly, not what I

Castaneda 12 am doing. The worry that the argument should not be interpreted as implying physical possibility is a worry that affects objections to the second premiss. But I am objecting to the first premiss. I am trying to show that it is the conception that is impossible, not the inference from conception to possibility. To properly conceive, it is necessary that I establish that what I am conceiving faithfully represents the identity of the object or event under consideration. And, whether other possibilities are possible or not, the events as they have actually occurred are an important part of the relation that makes something what it is. 3 And as such, these causal relations must be depicted in order to properly conceive of an event. However, there is something to this objection, in that the formation of the physical forces, such as gravity, are obviously not as sensitive to these sorts of relations. So, conceivably, the physical forces might be better contenders for making the conceivability argument work. In fact, properly understood, my original objection really amounts to the claim that, in order to make a conceivability argument about everyday facts, we really must ultimately relate them to the conceivability of the forces. However, it would seem that the physical forces present their own problems in trying to ideally conceive them. No one, including our best physicists, are even close to knowing how best to describe the physical forces, let alone conceive of them ideally. So, while the forces might ultimately be the conceivability argument's best bet, we are still a long way away from being in a position to make such an argument. After consideration, it seems to me that the conceivability argument's strength
3 In this sentence, I use possible in the first instance in an epistemic sense and in the second in an ontological sense.

Castaneda 13 against the necessitarian hypothesis has been undermined. But what if the goal is not simply to show that some objections against the argument fail, but rather to establish the MNU as a solid option? Is this possible? I believe that it may be. But more importantly, for this argument it is not necessary. The very possibility (in the epistemic sense) that the necessitarian hypothesis actually obtains is sufficient to put a stop to arguments that presume that it does not. By making the MNU a live option, it effectively stops those who would advance other hypotheses by presuming its impossibility. By arguing for the possibility of necessitarianism, it seems that a more modest ontology is forced. Socrates was famous for saying that his wisdom lay in the recognition that he did not know. This, it seems to me, is the practical benefit of defending the necessitarian hypothesis.

Castaneda 14 Works Cited Chalmers, David. Consciousness and its Place in Nature. Web. <http://consc.net/papers/nature.html> Della Rocca, Michael. Spinoza. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print. Della Rocca, Michael. "PSR." Philosophers Imprint 10.7 (2010): 1-13. Print. Descartes, Rene. Meditation Five: Concerning the Essence of Material Things, and Again Concerning God, That He Exists. Modern Philosophy An Anthology of Primary Sources, 2nd Edition. Eds. Ariew, Roger and Eric Watkins. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009. Print. Hume, David. A Treatise on Human Nature. Ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. Print. Kirk, Robert, "Zombies", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Web. URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/zombies/>. Parfit, Derek. "Why anything? Why this?." The London Review of Books 20.3 (1998). Print.