Sunday, April 17, 2011

A Modal Teleological Argument (MTA)

I'm surprised nobody I'm aware of has attempted to modalize the classic design arguments. I figured I would give it a shot and see what sticks:

1. The appearance of order is possibly explained by design. (Premise)

2. There are necessary truths involved in the appearance of order. (Premise)

3. Nothing contingent can explain a necessary truth. (Premise)

4. A necessary designer possibly explains necessary truths. (From 1 - 3)

5. Therefore, a necessary designer exists. (From 4 and S5)

If this argument is correct, then it's even more of a knockdown argument than the MCA. For now we arrive not only at the conclusion that a necessary, eternal, and enormously powerful entity exists, but its intelligence may also be inferred.

One of the argument's drawbacks include the potential inclusion of theistic activism (does God actually cause necessary truths?). One alternative to this is theistic conceptual realism, which states not that God causes necessary truths (and other abstract objects), but is the ground of them.

It seems, then, that the MTA is a subset of the conceptualist argument.

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