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https://doi.org/10.31337/oz.77.4.1
Bošković’s Cosmological Argument
Zvonimir Čuljak
orcid.org/0000-0002-0698-3541
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Fakultet hrvatskih studija, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
In his treatise On Mind and God, Ruđer Bošković composed a specific cosmological argument, which could be labeled as the argument from a series of determining conditions. The traditional deductive cosmological argument from contingency (a contingentia mundi) has usually been classified as an a posteriori argument. However, some notable examples of the argument in this tradition, such as that of G. W. Leibniz and S. Clarke, appear to be in a relevant sense a priori. This holds true for Bošković’s variation of the argument as well. One reason for considering Bošković’s argument to be a priori is that its premises contain the principles of causality and determinism as basic metaphysical and necessary truths, believed a priori. The other reason is Bošković’s implicitly abstractionist conception of the world, which functions as a mathematical and, therefore, an abstract framework for deterministic laws, reduced to his law of forces and for the basic physical structures which he conceived as spatiotemporal arrangements of “the points of matter”. As in earlier a priori versions of the argument, the relevant contingent being from whose God’s existence is inferred is the world as an infinitely complex set of determining conditions and antecedently determined states, and not a particular contingent being in the world. Bošković’s argument, however cogent, may be objected to as containing the Fallacy of Composition and the fallacious inference from logical to metaphysical necessity.
Ključne riječi
Ruđer Bošković; God’s existence; cosmological argument; a priori
Hrčak ID:
283999
URI
Datum izdavanja:
5.10.2022.
Posjeta: 668 *