Criticisms of the
Cosmological argument
Hume, Mackie and Anscombe
Hume and responses
 Fallacy of Composition – however, it is not a formal fallacy
and does not always hold (eg. it doesn’t hold for the coloured
tiles but does for the shapes – so the question is ‘is
contingency more like colour or shape’?)
 Problems with PSR – it’s not a logical necessity, but a
‘presupposition of all rationality’
Mackie – Necessary Being
 1. Criticism of the notion of a necessary being:
 1.1 We have no good reason to believe that there can be such a
thing: For any object, one can conceive of it failing to exist.
 1.2 Conceivability is evidence of possibility
 1.3 So, for every object, it's possible for it to fail to exist
 1.4 But if so, then we have evidence against the possibility of
necessary beings
 1.5 And if so, then this severely weakens our basis for thinking
that contingent beings need an explanation in terms of
necessary beings. For then it is dubious that there could
possibly be a necessary being.
Mackie - PSR
 2. Criticisms of PSR:
 2.1 PSR isn’t a necessary truth (or at least this isn't self-evident,
or otherwise derivable from what's self-evident)
 2.2 Even if we have an innate tendency to always look for an
explanation, it doesn’t follow that the universe has to cooperate
with this tendency and satisfy this desire
 2.3 Rejecting PSR doesn’t have the implausible consequence
that we can no longer do science.
 2.3.1 It is enough if we explain the existence of each object or
fact in terms of one or more contingent fact, and so on forever.
 2.3.2 We don’t have to give a further explanation of the series of
objects or facts taken as a whole.
Mackie in summary
 Building off the previous points: Since we have reason to
think that there can be no necessary being (as we saw in the
previous criticism), then we have excellent reason to believe
that the existence of at least some objects or facts (e.g., the
existence of the set of contingent objects and events in the
universe as a whole) is just a brute fact, with no further
explanation.
Anscombe’s response to Hume
 Responding to the Fallacy of Composition
 (a) G.E.M. Anscombe has responded to Hume’s argument by
pointing out that you could conclude that ‘existence must
have a cause’ without believing or knowing that ‘such
particular effects must have such particular causes’. (G.E.M.
Anscombe, 1974)
 (b) Anscombe gives the example of a magician pulling a
rabbit out of a hat, pointing out that you can imagine a rabbit
‘coming into being without a cause’ but this tells us nothing
about ‘what is possible to suppose ‘without contradiction or
absurdity’ as holding in reality’
Anscombe in summary
 Hume's fallacy of composition says that it is possible to conceive of an
event without a cause because there is nothing about an event that
requires a cause. This is Hume's zero tolerance policy for rational
conclusions. He required all conclusions to come from observation.
 Anscombe says that even if Hume is right about no rational conclusions,
Hume is jumping from conceiving of something happening to the
possibility of it happening and this is a mistake. The concept or idea of a
rabbit coming from nothing exists. That concept does nothing to prove
that it is possible for the rabbit to come from nothing.
 That is Anscombe's point. Hume did nothing to prove that events don't
need causes. At best he proved that if you don't observe that every event
has a cause, then you can imagine that events don't require causes.