I've finally managed to get the reading done I needed to do to compose some thoughts on the debate between Vallicella and Forgie in Faith and Philosophy. My comments won't be particularly deep - just some things occasioned by the discussion.
What is at issue in the debate is Vallicella's suggestion about the cosmological argument (CA), taken as consisting of the following steps:
1) A move from the existence of a contingent fact to the existence of a necessary ground or cause (ens necessarium or EN for short);
2) A move in which one identifies EN with God, i.e., the maximally perfect being (ens realissimum or ER for short).
Vallicella argues that this type of argument depends on the ontological argument, taken as having the followign structure:
1) ER is possible.
2) Either ER is impossible or ER exists.
Therefore, ER exists.
This is the ontological argument from possibility (OA), and is to be distinguished from the ontological argument from concept that Kant actually tries to use. Vallicella's particular claim is that CA depends on OA for its probativeness, in that the CA is only probative if the OA is probative. The probativeness of a deductive argument requires five things:
1) The argument must be formally valid;
2) The argument must have true premises;
3) These premises must be known to be true;
4) The argument must avoid petitio principii;
5) The premises must be relevant to the conclusion.
The claim then is that the CA is then both superfluous and unavailing: superfluous, because, given the dependence of the CA on the OA, the arguer could just run OA; and unavailing, because ER cannot be proven from a contingent fact. This is close to Kant's view, although not strictly (hence it is 'Kant Chastened but Vindicated').
As I said, I don't have too much to say on the subject, but here are some thoughts occasioned by it:
* The 'unavailing' aspect requires that ER not be provable from a contingent fact, and on the CA's being a two step move, first to EN and then proving that EN is ER. The idea is that to make the latter move, the arguer must presuppose the possibility of ER. But what if some property of EN implies that it is maximally perfect? Then proving the existence of EN would be proving, ipso facto, the existence of ER. Consider, for instance, Aquinas's Fourth Way: roughly, it argues, on the basis of limited perfections, that there must be a maximally perfect ground of all perfections. This sort of argument would seem either to be just a different type of argument than the CA considered by Vallicella, or to be a counterexample (I'm not sure which). The same would hold for the others, though, although the exact path would be more complex for them, because Aquinas goes on later to examine what is actually required for something to be a first unmoved mover, first uncaused cause, etc.; and what he gets is certainly that it must be a being whose possibility implies its actuality. Conceivably, the Angelic Doctor could have overstepped the limits of his premises somewhere; but I don't really see where that could be.
* Vallicella holds that onto-cosmological arguments are not affected by the quasi-Kantian argument. Onto-cosmological arguments (OCAs) do not argue from contingent facts but (for example) from the possibility of contingent facts. This reminds me of Scotus, some of whose objections to prime mover arguments were at least roughly similar, and who preferred to argue from possibilities of contingent facts himself. But the reason we know contingent facts are possible, is that we know contingent facts actually exist; and the same sorts of causes would seem to be responsible for something's being possible that are responsible for its being actual (after all, it is the fact that they can be responsible for its being actual that is what makes it possible for it to be actual). If you trace this back to an ultimate source, though, it would seem to mean that what you get at the very root of it all would be the same result as in an OCA.
I don't know how strong these points are; as I said, they were just occasioned by the reading, and I haven't thought them through completely. But that will take a while, so I thought I'd post them anyway, in case anyone has anything to say about them.
