From: paulk@engin.umich.edu (Paul J. Kominsky)
Subject: St. Thomas and The Contingency Argument
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 92 11:47:13 EDT
Organization: Rarely

mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins):
} In other words, I am inclined to think that,
} if we are right about deriving factual knowledge from
} descriptions, then no coherent description of a 'necessary
} being' is possible.

Well, it would be interesting to go into this further, but since
we seem to agree on the essential point, my time limitations force
me to drop this line of discussion.  My position (and I think also
that of St. Thomas) is that we can derive no knowledge of an actual
existence from a definition ("description") alone.

} If 'nothing' is to unstructured, then we cannot know
} anything definite about it, including that nothing can
} come from it.

Well, I'm not sure what "structured" is supposed to mean,
but it isn't at all clear to me that we cannot have negative
knowledge about something that is supposedly "unstructured."

With a true "nothing" there is no possible process to get 
"something."  It's a bit odd to call the *lack* of such a 
process "something."  Nothing is the absence of "something,"
and we work from that understanding.

} We can argue that, given infinite
} time, if all things have this 'tendency not to exist' then
} all must have changed, but it is not clear that all must
} have changed into 'nothing' any more than all must
} have changed into cheese. 

Hmmm, I think this is a useful analogy.  Thanks.

Either everything changes into "cheese" or it doesn't.
If there is a (true, real) process by which everything 
is changing into cheese, then in infinite time it would
have, and everything would be cheese now.  But that is
not the case.

There are therefore three cases:
1) a process of changing into cheese exists in all things.
If so, we must posit something creating "non-cheese" stuff.
The possibility of "non-cheese" stuff popping into existence
without a reason is excluded.  (While we are referring to
"cheeseness" in particular, the argument is still about 
existence, so the analogy isn't exact.)
-or-
2) a process of changing into cheese does not exist
universally.  If so, then we must posit some "non-cheese"
stuff that doesn't have a process of becoming "cheese."
This is where the second part of the contingency argument
takes over.
-or-
3) there is not infinite time.  If so, then we must posit
something creating the "non-cheese" stuff to begin with.
and the second part of the argument takes over.

} The only alternative I see is to posit that creation
} is the act of changing 'nothing' into 'something'
} (ex nihilo creation), and that corruption is the
} changing of something into nothing. It is not clear
} to me that either ever occurs at all, nor that 'nothing'
} is even a well-defined term.

Very well, if you claim that the situation never occurs
where "something" becomes "nothing," then you are positing
some necessary being.  That's why I said:
} >Don't you see that positing such a metamorphosis involves 
} >positing a necessary being, namely the continuity of the
} >species of things changing into other things?

The set of "somethings" which never become "nothing" is either
empty or it isn't.  The contingency argument considers both
possibilities.  The first is ruled out in the first part of the
argument (because of infinite time), and the second is handled by
the second part of the argument.  It's not a problem if you think
the set contains "everything."

pjk