Better Loke Next Time

Another Bad Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument

1. The Argument

1.1 A Kalamity

The Kalam Cosmological Argument (hereafter, KCA) is an argument often used as part of a broader case in support of theism, the view that God exists. The basic argument, as popularized by William Lane Craig, is this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

From there, proponents of this argument will typically offer reasons to think that the cause of the universe is God.¹

1.2 The Non-Being Argument

The plausibility of these further inferences, and of the KCA itself, is not my concern for today. Rather, I will be critiquing an argument made in support of the KCA’s first premise, sometimes called the “causal principle”. The argument is given by Andrew Loke, and appeals to the concept of “non-being”. He explains the argument as follows:

Now, the concept of non-being is the absence of anything: no matter, no energy, not even the potential for anything. Therefore it is metaphysically impossible that anything—whether the Universe itself or anything in the phenomenal or noumenal world—could begin to exist from non-being.²

In a video, Alex Malpass discusses his concerns with this “argument”. First, he points out that the conclusion that it’s impossible that something begins to exist from non-being is not itself the causal principle, and so more work would need to be done to show that Loke’s point supports the causal principle. Second, Malpass worries that Loke is treating ‘non-being’ as a sort of thing/state, or as a sort of ‘empty container’, but this is an illicit reification of non-being.

In response, Loke made a video to address these concerns. Against Malpass’s first concern, Loke says that the causal principle does follow. He says,

The conclusion is that, therefore, it is metaphysically impossible that anything, whether the universe or anything else, could have began to exist from non-being. So what that means is that whatever begins to exist would have to come from some being. Which means that whatever being to exist would have to come from something, and that something would have been the cause for whatever begins to exist. And, therefore, whatever begins to exist has a cause.

Against Malpass’s second concern, Loke denies that he is reifying non-being, saying,

What I mean by “nothing” is the absence of anything, regardless of whether there is or isn’t a container. […] I’m just saying, when somebody says that something comes from nothing, he is assuming that something begins to exist in the absence of any causally necessary condition. I am not referring to a thing called ‘nothing’.

Loke adds,

What he says does not answer my argument at all. Recall that my argument is saying that in the absence of any causal conditions prior to the beginning of the universe, there would be no potential, not even the potential for anything, for the universe to begin. […] In the absence of any potential for the universe to begin to exist, the universe wouldn’t begin to exist at all.

2. Response

2.1 Reconstructing the Argument

To start, I must say that I find Loke’s original argument, and subsequent defense, to be grossly unclear. Indeed, given the initial passage, I don’t think that Malpass’s interpretation is implausible. Nevertheless, I will try to reconstruct an argument from Loke’s sloppy exposition.

He does not mean to treat “non-being” as a thing, but is using it as a quantifier phrase. That is to say, if something “came from non-being”, that means that it did not come from anything.³ Furthermore, when he says that “in the absence of any potential for the universe to begin to exist, the universe wouldn’t begin to exist at all”, I take him to be suggesting that the universe (or anything else) beginning to exist requires the potential for the universe to begin to exist, and there would not be that potential if the universe (or whatever) did not come from something. Given this, we can express the argument as follows:

4. For all x, if x began to exist, then there was the potential for x to begin to exist.

5. For all x, if x did not come from something, then there was not the potential for x to begin to exist.

6. Hence, for all x, if x began to exist, then x did come from something.

For a more formal statement of the argument, let:

\(\begin{align*} B(x)&\text{: }x \text{ began to exist.} \\ P(x)&\text{: }\text{there was the potential for $x$ to begin to exist.} \\ C(x)&\text{: }x \text{ came from something.} \end{align*}\)

We then have:

\(\begin{align*} &\text{4. }\forall x(B(x) \rightarrow P(x)) \\ &\text{5. }\forall x(\neg C(x) \rightarrow \neg P(x)) \\ &\text{6. }\forall x(B(x) \rightarrow C(x)) \end{align*}\)

The argument is valid as expressed. What remains of our analysis is to (a) interpret some of the key terms (in particular, ‘potential’), (b) assess the plausibility of the premises as then understood, and (c) determine the consequences of this for the causal principle and the KCA.

2.2 Interpreting Key Terms

There are two key terms in this argument: ‘potential’, and ‘comes from’. The term ‘potential’ is sometimes used in different ways. Sometimes it’s used to refer to features of things, in particular, that they might do something or change in a certain way. For example, I have the potential to continue writing this post. In this sense of ‘potential’, potentials are attributes of things that exist. However, sometimes we use ‘potential’ to speak about possibilities.⁴

How are we to understand the “potential to begin to exist”? Is it saying something about the power of something to cause the universe (or whatever) to begin to exist, or is it saying that there is a possibility that the universe (or whatever) begins to exist? If the former, then (4) is the claim that if x begins to exist, then there is something with the power to cause x to begin to exist. On this interpretation, (4) is rather close to the causal principle itself, and so is unlikely to be compelling to anyone who does not already accept the causal principle (or something near enough).

Alternatively, we might understand “potential to begin to exist” as merely saying that it’s metaphysically possible that the universe (or whatever) begins to exist. However, on this interpretation, it’s a further question whether it’s possible that there is something that begins to exist and did not come from anything. The mere fact that it’s possible that it begins to exist does not evidently require that it came from something else. On this understanding of “potential to begin to exist”, (5) is basically a restatement of the causal principle,⁵ and so shouldn’t be compelling to anyone who does not already accept the causal principle.⁶

Notably, on either interpretation of “potential to begin to exist”, the plausibility of the argument seems to rest on the plausibility of the causal principle itself (or something near enough). As support for the causal principle, then, Loke’s argument as understood is a bad argument. Indeed, if I think that it’s possible that something begins to exist without a cause (as I do), it’s hard to imagine that anything like Loke’s argument, or anything based on the concept of non-being, will undermine my position.

The other key relation is “comes from”. What does it mean for something to “come from” something else, and how is that relevant to causation? We might think of “coming from” as efficient causation such that “x came from y” is merely another way of saying that “y caused x”. On this interpretation, the connection between (4)-(6) and the causal principle as given in (1) is clear, since (6) is simply another way to state the causal principle. However, if “comes from” expresses a relation other than (efficient) causation, then more work would be needed to infer the causal principle from (6). In the video, Loke says that,

Whatever begins to exist would have to come from something, and that something would be the cause for whatever begins to exist.

This suggests that if x comes from y, then y causes x, but this is true only if “comes from” is (efficient) causation, or otherwise some other relation that is a subrelation of the converse of (efficient) causation. I think it’s probably best to interpret Loke as using “comes from” and “caused by” interchangeably, but it would be helpful if he were more clear in his presentation.

3 Conclusion

The central problem with Loke’s argument is that its plausibility rests on the plausibility of the causal principle (or something like it), as explained in §2.2. If the “potential to begin to exist” is understood as the power to cause that thing to begin to exist, then (4) is unlikely to be compelling to anyone who does not already accept the causal principle (or something near enough). Alternatively, if “potential to begin to exist” is understood as the possibility that that thing begins to exist, then (5) should not be compelling to anyone who does not already accept the causal principle. Either way, the argument (4)-(6) in support of the causal principle is unlikely to be compelling to anyone who does not already accept the causal principle (or something near enough).

It is possible, of course, that Loke has in mind something else by “potential to begin to exist”, or otherwise a somewhat different argument than my construction in (4)-(6). I do think that my construction and interpretations are reasonable (and quite charitable), but I do leave open the possibility that I didn’t entirely capture his true intentions. Regardless, I think I did the best that I could from his remarks given how sloppy and unclear they were, and it doesn’t appear to me that his argument enables any meaningful progress in the ongoing debate over the causal principle or the KCA.

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1. For more on this argument and a defense, see the chapter “The Kalam Cosmological Argument” in Craig and Moreland (2009).

2. Loke (2017), p. 138.

3. For more on “coming from nothing”, see this post.

4. In everyday discourse, the relevant modality is often epistemic. For example, I might say, “there’s a potential for rain tomorrow”, where what that means is something like “for all I know, it might rain tomorrow”, or, perhaps, “it’s plausible that it will rain tomorrow”.

5. Note that, on this interpretation, (5) could be stated as “necessarily, if something begins to exist, then it came from something”. This is essentially the assertion that the causal principle is necessarily true.

6. Of course, some argument in support of (5) so understood could be offered, although I’m very doubtful that anything compelling is forthcoming.