On the Very Idea of a Cause of Existence: Schopenhauer on the Cosmological Argument

Cosmological arguments for the existence of God rest on several ontological assumptions none of them quite obvious, and all of them reasonable candidates for philosophical examination. Among them, (i) existence is a ‘property’ of contingent individuals; (ii) the existence of individuals is not a brute fact but is susceptible of explanation; (iii) it is coherent to suppose that this explanation is causal: that contingent individuals could have a cause of their existence. It is the third item on this list that I propose to examine here.

1.  My concern is with the following question: Does it make sense to suppose that individual existing modally contingent things, whether taken distributively or collectively, have a cause of their existence? Or is it rather the case that only states of, and changes in, individual existents can be terms of the causal relation?

2. Schopenhauer is one philosopher who maintains that only changes can serve as causal relata. His idea is that the causal relation holds between changes (states, conditions, properties...) of individuals, but cannot be extended to individuals themselves. Thus if a rock changes in respect of temperature, say going from cold to hot, one can legitimately ask for the cause of this change. But one cannot legitimately ask for a cause of the rock itself, or a cause of the existence of the rock. (See #5 below for a refinement of this thesis.) Nor can one speak of a rock as a cause. It is not a rock that breaks a window, but a collision of a rock with a window that causes the window to break.

Causation is always and everywhere causation of change and never causation of existence. One can legitimately ask for a cause of a change in something that exists, but not for a cause of the existence of something that exists. If this is right, then cosmological arguments cannot succeed. For such arguments aim to demonstrate a causa prima, a First Cause, of the very existence of what (contingently) exists. Accordingly, the “law of causality” is to be formulated as “Every change has its cause in another change immediately preceding it.” (World as Will and Representation II, 42) It is not to be formulated as “All that is, has its cause.” (41) For “the mere existence of a thing does not entitle us to conclude that it has a cause.” (42) Since we cannot legitimately demand a causal explanation of the sheer being of anything, we cannot make this demand of the world; hence the cosmological argument, as presupposing the legitimacy of this demand, rests on a false presupposition. One illegitimately extends the concept of causality from states of things to the things of which they are the states.

3. But why does Schopenhauer restrict causality to changes? By ‘change,’ Schopenhauer understands alteration (Veraenderung). Indeed, for him alteration is the only kind of change. It is not obvious that alteration should be the only kind of change since there is a prima facie distinction between alteration and what we might call ‘existential change,’ i.e., coming-into-existence and ceasing-to-exist. Is there not a tolerably clear sense in which coming-to-be and passing-away are changes? Think of the coming-into-being of a batch of hummus, and its passing out of being when I devour it.

It seems obvious that if there is existential change, then it cannot be understood in terms of alteration in that very thing: before a thing exists it is simply not available to suffer any alteration, and likewise when it ceases to exist. Coming-to-be is not gain of a property, but gain of a thing together with all its properties; ceasing-to-be is not loss of a property, but loss of a thing together with all its properties. But, as will emerge in a moment, Schopenhauer denies the very possibility of existential change with respect to the ultimate substrata of alterational change.  His thesis could be put like this:  The ultimate substrata of alterational change cannot be the effects of a cause, hence they cannot be the effects of a divine cause.  They cannot because of the very nature of causality the relata of which are changes only.

4. Alteration may be defined by saying that x alters if and only if x has incompatible properties at different times. Change as alteration is always change in something which must remain the same through the change and which therefore, as the substrate of change, does not itself change in respect of its existence and identity. In a slogan, no change without unchange! The dynamism of change is erected upon a substructure of (relative) stasis. Without the latter there cannot be the former.

Thus there is alterational change only if the rock that was cold at t is numerically-existentially the same as the rock that is hot at t* later than t. Two rocks, one cold at t, the other hot at t*, do not a change make. For a thing to become different it must remain the same. If you deny this, then you are embracing a doctrine of Heraclitean flux. No doubt the world is 'fluxed up' but it is not that 'fluxed up.'

With respect to alteration, then, the slogan is ‘No change without an unchanging substrate of change.’ Schopenhauer’s point could then be put by saying that the ultimate substrates of change lie outside the causal nexus. They are presupposed by the causal nexus. As such, they are neither causes nor effects, and so they are not appropriate objects of causal explanation. One cannot meaningfully ask why there are substrates of change rather than none at all. And if this cannot be meaningfully asked, then “God caused them to exist” cannot constitute a meaningful answer.  There is no room for God as First Cause of contingent beings.  One cannot argue to God as causa prima a contingentia mundi, from the contingency of the world.

5. For Schopenhauer, then, the substrates of change lie outside the nexus of cause and effect as its presupposition. But this thesis clearly needs some refining. A rock may be a substrate of change, as when it goes from cold to hot in the morning sun, but it is not an ultimate substrate. For surely there is a sense in which one can reasonably ask: Why does this rock exist? One can reasonably ask this for the simple reason that it has a reasonable answer: “It was caused to exist by the congealing of lava.”

So we need to distinguish between ultimate and non-ultimate substrates of change. A meatloaf is a non-ultimate substrate of alterational change: straight from the oven it is hot, later it is cool. Clearly, its coming-into-existence is not a change in it. But this existential change can be construed as an alterational change in some other thing or things, namely, its ingredients. They are alterationally changed by being combined and cooked with the result that something distinct from them, but composed of them, comes into being. The proximate ingredients, of course, are themselves non-ultimate, but presumably we come to ultimate ingredients that are not a product of compounding.  Now if all change is alteration, then ultimate substrates of change cannot come into existence or pass away. And since these ultimate substrates are the basis upon which rests all causation, there can be no legitimate question concerning the cause of their existence.

6. Note that ‘This rock exists’ can be read in two ways. We can take it as an instantiation-claim, to wit, ‘The properties characteristic of rocks are instantiated here in this thing.’ But we can also interpret it as an existence-claim proper, namely, ‘This thing, which happens to instantiate the properties characteristic of rocks, exists.’ This duality of readings stems from the well-known ambiguity of ‘exists’ as between a second-level and a first-level use. If I say of a property that it exists, I am saying that it is instantiated; if I say of an individual that it exists, I am saying that it -- exists.

Accordingly, one question is: Why are rock-properties instantiated in this thing? And then the answer might be: because the volcanic lava of which this rock was formed cooled off, hardened, etc. The other question is: Why does this thing that has rock-properties exist? Clearly the first question, the instantiation-question, is legitimate. For this question asks why rock-properties as opposed to say lava-properties are instantiated in the thing, or perhaps in the space-time region before us. But the second question, for Schopenhauer, is not. For what the second question asks is why this property-bearer before us exists as opposed to not existing at all. But this question makes no sense on Schopenhauer’s assumption that causes and effects are changes (alterations). The sheer existence of an ultimate property-bearer cannot be a change from a previous state of nonexistence because every change is an alteration, and every alteration requires a substrate of alteration. But it is clear that a thing’s coming into existence cannot be an alteration of that very thing for the simple reason that before it exists it is not available to suffer any alterations. And the same holds at the other end: when a thing ceases to exist, it does not merely lose a property; it loses its very existence together with all its properties. It follows that if all change is alteration, then the ultimate substrata of change cannot come into existence or pass out of existence.

7. Thus we may impute to Schopenhauer something like the following argument:

1. The relata of the causal relation are changes.
2. Every change is an alteration.
3. Every alteration presupposes a substrate of alteration that does not change in respect of its existence and identity.
4. Some, but not all, substrates of alteration are non-ultimate: there must be ultimate substrates of alteration.
5. If there are ultimate substrates of alteration, then they do not come into existence or pass away.
6. Because changes occur, there are ultimate substrates of alteration.
7. There are ultimate substrates of change that do not come into existence or pass away, and are thus sempiternal. (5, 6)
8. The existence of these sempiternal substrata are at the basis of all causation.
Therefore
9. The existence of the ultimate substrata of change cannot have a cause, divine or otherwise.
Therefore
10. Cosmological arguments, presupposing as they do that causation of existence makes sense, are one and all unsound.

8. What can we say in critique of this argument? The crucial premise may well be (2). If every change is an alteration, then nothing can come into existence except by the tranformation of some thing or things already in existence. That is to say: there cannot be creation ex nihilo. But then Schopenhauer's argument may be said to beg the question against the theist at line (2) -- unless there is some independent way of supporting (2).

Comments

[Wm Tingley]

Hi, Bill.

I see how (2) is problemmatic if change means only the alteration of an individual's properties and not its existence. But Schopenhauer does make a distinction between property-altering events and existential events with the latter manifested in an "ultimate substrate of change". In doing so, doesn't (7) then allow for God as the uncaused cause -- i.e., THE ultimate substrate of change? If the buck does stop there for Schopenhauer, I don't see how he refutes creation ex nihilo. I am not sure how his scheme of cause-and-effect shines a new light on an old question.

Regards,
Bill T.

[Wm Tingley]

P.S., Bill: Kudos from this philosophy tyro on your lucid exposition.

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks for your comments, Bill.

Schopenhauer's claim is that only changes in substances can be causes and effects, but not substances themselves. And so the ultimate substrates of change cannot have a cause of their existence.

[Michael Valle]

Dear Bill,

This is the kind of piece that makes your blog one of my absolute favorites. Your reading of Schopenhauer is deep and insightful, and you manage to make him relevant to modern conversations by explicating his ideas in the language of modern philosophy and logic.

So I think that Schopenhauer would be most likely say that the only conceivable ultimate substrate of alteration would be matter. You may recall his discussion in WWR1 that the word "substance" ought to be replaced everywhere by "matter" once one realizes that only matter, and nothing else, stands under 'substance' (as an illustrative aside, Payne writes "see Matter" when one looks up "Substance" in his index).

But matter really is at the far edge of the subject/object binary, and can never itself be representation to the perceiving subject, although it is always presupposed by representation in general. It can never, therefore, be conceived to possess any existence that is independent of the subject. We, as representing beings, are as much a function of alterations in matter (presumably through the course of evolution) as matter itself is a function of representing beings.

But Schopenhauer, as he often does (as much as I love him), lives in tension with himself; for example, he often talks about things in the world being "grades of the Will's manifestation." These "grades", in themselves, do not have their existence in space/time, yet they stand in relation to things in space/time. One would have to think that, if an animal species goes completely extinct, that the relation in which that grade stands in relation to concrete beings changes, yet it is difficult to understand the nature of this change in accordance with Schopenhauer's account, since this change involves something that stands outside of the space/time world.

Of course this, insofar as this may be an internal tension in Schopenhauer's account, may conceivably be avoided with the right tweaks to his metaphysics or with pointing out a misunderstanding on my part of his philosophy. This brings up a question that interests me personally: If one is committed to a transcendental idealist picture of reality, can one make any sense of a Supreme Cause?

Kant's God exists in the noumenal world, and so would not seem to be a Supreme Cause, since causation only applies to the phenomenal world. Is there some sense of "cause" that could meaningfully be attributed to a noumenal God? Schopenhauer would not hear of such a thing, but I wonder.

If one is committed to transcendental idealism (which has long seduced, if not convinced, me), then at least (3) would seem a highly plausible, if not a necessary, presupposition of such a picture. If, however, one is instead committed to transcendental realism, according to which there is a space/time world of material objects that in no way depends on perceivers for its existence, then I don't see any particular reason for being committed to (3). Many materialists talk about quantum fluctuations in "nothingness." Many people conceive of an uncaused Big Bang, "prior" to which there is no sense to attach to "substratum" or "matter." One can speak of an alteration in nothingness after which there is somethingness. Of course, the fact that one can talk about such things is independent from whether such things are meaningful talk.

I am now officially confused by my own ramblings. I hope you enjoyed them.

[Bill Vallicella]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the comments. Glad you liked the post. You write, >>If one is committed to a transcendental idealist picture of reality, can one make any sense of a Supreme Cause?

Kant's God exists in the noumenal world, and so would not seem to be a Supreme Cause, since causation only applies to the phenomenal world. Is there some sense of "cause" that could meaningfully be attributed to a noumenal God? Schopenhauer would not hear of such a thing, but I wonder.<<

Kant is clearly a theist, though he maintains that the existence of God cannot be proven by theoretical reason, but neither can God's nonexistence be proven. The existence of God for Kant is a practical postulate. God as you say is a noumenal being for Kant. If the categories are restricted to phenomena, then, since causality is one of the categories, cause-effect relations hold only within the phenomenal world. It would seem to follow that God cannot be the cause of the phenomenal world. So the answer to your question would seem to be that on transcendental idealism God cannot be thought of as a supreme cause.

But it is more complicated than this because in Kant there is an unclarity about the exact nature of the restriction of the categories to phenomena. In some passages he takes the moderate view that the categories apply to both noumenal and phenomenal objects, but generate knowledge only when applied to phenomena. In other passages he takes the radical line that the categories are meaningless in a trans-phenomenal employment. But then the idea of God as practical postulate is drained of meaning.

Schopenhauer jettisons God and takes the radical line that restricts categories to phenomena for their very sense. But die Welt an sich is not featureless: he thinks of it in terms of will, which is a determination of human subjects. What justifies that? How can he import such a determination into the Ding an sich?

I would say that there are insurmountable problems in both Kant and Schopenhauer. Sorry if these remarks are not crystal clear. But what do you want for a blog?

[Michael Valle]

Dear Bill,

Thank you for this response. I find what you wrote here to be quite thought provoking: "In some passages he takes the moderate view that the categories apply to both noumenal and phenomenal objects, but generate knowledge only when applied to phenomena." This is an intellectually difficult yet intriguing idea.

In any case, you wrote: "Schopenhauer jettisons God and takes the radical line that restricts categories to phenomena for their very sense. But die Welt an sich is not featureless: he thinks of it in terms of will, which is a determination of human subjects. What justifies that? How can he import such a determination into the Ding an sich?"

I have been reading Julian Young's recent book on Schopenhauer and he makes the extremely interesting, and I think quite reasonable, claim that Schopenhauer attenuated his position here quite significantly in WWR2. He backs it up with a number of significant quotations not only from Book Two of WWR2, but also from his notebooks and correspondences with, for example, Frauenstaedt. Young claims that, for the older Schopenhauer, the phrase "Der Wille ist das Ding an sich" actually shifts its meaning. In WWR1, it means that we can really say something significant, even if radically incomplete, about the thing-in-itself. In WWR2, it means that Der Wille is the most fundamental reality of the phenomenon and is entirely and completely restricted to it and therefore actually says nothing whatsoever about the thing-in-itself.

The fun just never stops with Schopenhauer. He also happens to have the coolest name in philosophical history.

[Ilíon]

"2. Schopenhauer is one philosopher who maintains that only changes can serve as causal relata. His idea is that the causal relation holds between changes (states, conditions, properties...) of individuals, but cannot be extended to individuals themselves. Thus if a rock changes in respect of temperature, say going from cold to hot, one can legitimately ask for the cause of this change. But one cannot legitimately ask for a cause of the rock itself, or a cause of the existence of the rock. (See #5 below for a refinement of this thesis.) Nor can one speak of a rock as a cause. It is not a rock that breaks a window, but a collision of a rock with a window that causes the window to break."

And I question whether the rock, and perhaps the window, even exists in the first place. Certainly, there is some conglomeration is matter which you and I might call a 'rock;' but does this 'rock' really possess existence? Does it possess identity? Is it really an "individual" of which one really can say "that the causal relation holds between changes (states, conditions, properties...) of individuals, but cannot be extended to individuals themselves?"

[Wm Tingley]

After a couple of days of chewing on this , I think I've got it, Bill. Taking things as plainly as possible, I see how premise (2) of Schopenhauer's argument begs the question.

Regards,
Bill T.