Suppose you already have a graduate degree but need to take a continuing education course or two. So you decide to go out of town to do this so that you can both tourist and student at the same time. You need to rent an apartment for the summer, so you contact the university to see if any year-round students are going to sublet their flats. This inquiry results in your getting the phone number of Brenda, who is offering her place for rent. Before you sign, however, you need to know if, in the event of a plumbing emergency, the pipes/sink/toilet/whathaveyou will be fixed gratis under the contract. You call Brenda, who tells you that, as she is a student, she too is renting it, but she can give you the number of Carlos, from whom she is renting the place. So you call Carlos and ask him about his plumbing policy. He says that there have been no problems so far with the pipes, but he can't guarantee that they would be fixed at all, as he is subletting the place from Danielle. Danielle gives a similar story, and the phone number of Edward, who does the same, etc.
Question, can there be an infinite number of individuals who are presently subletting this place? Answer: no, there must be some individual who actually owns the place and is not renting from another. A non-renting renter-outer, if you will.
Of course, this owner has a story with a beginning: she or he didn't always own the place. Perhaps he or she bought it from someone else who bought it from someone else, etc. Temporarily forgetting that the universe is under 14 billion years old, it occurs to you that the apartment, the street, the university, could have always existed. No, that seems ridiculous, so you adjust your daydream. This apartment, etc, could have come from something else, which could have come from something else, etc. stretching back farther than you can imagine. Stretching to infinity. Yes, there's no apparent reason why this could not go on forever.
But if we switch gears, change perspective, we find that even the owner of the apartment is beholden to other things in her or his world in a manner analogous to how Brenda relies upon owner. "Ownership" is a right within the context of a legal system. It "borrows" it meaning from a set of legal meanings. Some of these legal meanings interact with each other like the spindles of a spider web. But some are more fundamental. For example, the constitution is considered the foundation of all legal meanings. If we look at legal ownership, it depends upon city ordinances, which depend upon the articles of incorporation of the city, which depend upon state law, which depends upon the state constitution, which depends upon Federal law, which depends upon the U.S. Constitution. So, even though some legal meanings are, in a sense, circular, some are not: some are foundational with respect to others. To ask deep questions about the law is to be heading in the direction of constitutional law.
We could ignore what is more fundamental and just stick with the laws that immediately affect us. And given that it's not immediately obvious that the world is not eternal, we could entertain the question about the nature of ownership fixing our attention upon present city ordinances deriving from past city ordinances, which were preceded by other ordinances, and so on ad infinitum. Or we can look at ownership in a deeper manner and see that ordinances need lawmakers, which requires fundamental law or constitutional law. It would surely be silly to say that there could be an infinite series of higher level institutions right now, each of which is empowered by the higher level and which empowers the lower level legal institution. Not only silly, but impractical: and unecessary.
We could look more deeply into constitutional law, using history as a kind of guide. There wasn't always a constitution. Perhaps there was another legal arrangement prior to the USC in the USA. If the apartment is in Boston, then one can say that yes, there was a prior arrangement, for this town was once a colony, a part of the British empire. Once again, if we forget about the Big Bang, etc., and suppose not only the backwards-reaching eternity of the world, but of humanity, we can suppose that there always was one constitution or another. But even if there was, whenever a new constitution comes into being, it does so with reliance upon something more fundamental.
You can see where this is going. And you perhaps don't have time to follow that path. At the moment I am writing this, I don't have time to compose more. But I will point out the following. At each level of this analysis, we go not to a repetition of the same sort of thing but "up" or "down" a level--to something more fundamental, that makes possible the phenomenon that provoked our inquiry. Going backwards in time is a helpful way of uncovering these more fundamental levels. That is, going from renting, to the owner (who owned the house before she or he rented it out), to the city ordinance that made legal ownership possible, to the incorporation of the city, to the establishment of the state constitution, to the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, etc. At some point your inquiry might bring you to the coming into being of humanity, whenever that was. Each of these discoveries of a more fundamental level (one that is able to account for a broader swath of reality) is the discovery of something needed right now for you to be able to rent out this apartment for the summer so that you can take the continuing education courses.
Supposing that the world is eternal, the question arises: could an inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of your renting this apartment lead to an infinite set of such conditions? Note here, that in asking this question, I am not asking whether there could be an infinite series of landowners (there could be, but I am just being silly in bringing it up), an infinite series of governments (silly again) or an infinite series of big bangs preceded by big crunches, etc. (this time I'm serious). As far as my reason can tell, there could be such an infinite series.
But at any point in this series, there could not be an infinite set of dependencies any more than there could be an infinite set of sublessors. As to the exact nature of that upon which all else depends, that is something for another day. But to get the gist of this argument is to see the difference between the sort of unmoved mover argument (i.e., the argument for a fundamental reality upon which everything now depends) that Aquinas and Moses Maimonides have in mind and the straw man version (which argues that the world had a beginning) attacked by many atheists.
(afterthought: perhaps one could produce an analogous argument for a highest Truth, where such truth would be understood as comprehensive [including both possible and actual], not subject to correction on the basis of the impossibility of an infinite regress of hierarchical truths and is in some manner originative rather than a response. Certainly, Augustine would find this proposal agreeable...)
Question, can there be an infinite number of individuals who are presently subletting this place? Answer: no, there must be some individual who actually owns the place and is not renting from another. A non-renting renter-outer, if you will.
Of course, this owner has a story with a beginning: she or he didn't always own the place. Perhaps he or she bought it from someone else who bought it from someone else, etc. Temporarily forgetting that the universe is under 14 billion years old, it occurs to you that the apartment, the street, the university, could have always existed. No, that seems ridiculous, so you adjust your daydream. This apartment, etc, could have come from something else, which could have come from something else, etc. stretching back farther than you can imagine. Stretching to infinity. Yes, there's no apparent reason why this could not go on forever.
But if we switch gears, change perspective, we find that even the owner of the apartment is beholden to other things in her or his world in a manner analogous to how Brenda relies upon owner. "Ownership" is a right within the context of a legal system. It "borrows" it meaning from a set of legal meanings. Some of these legal meanings interact with each other like the spindles of a spider web. But some are more fundamental. For example, the constitution is considered the foundation of all legal meanings. If we look at legal ownership, it depends upon city ordinances, which depend upon the articles of incorporation of the city, which depend upon state law, which depends upon the state constitution, which depends upon Federal law, which depends upon the U.S. Constitution. So, even though some legal meanings are, in a sense, circular, some are not: some are foundational with respect to others. To ask deep questions about the law is to be heading in the direction of constitutional law.
We could ignore what is more fundamental and just stick with the laws that immediately affect us. And given that it's not immediately obvious that the world is not eternal, we could entertain the question about the nature of ownership fixing our attention upon present city ordinances deriving from past city ordinances, which were preceded by other ordinances, and so on ad infinitum. Or we can look at ownership in a deeper manner and see that ordinances need lawmakers, which requires fundamental law or constitutional law. It would surely be silly to say that there could be an infinite series of higher level institutions right now, each of which is empowered by the higher level and which empowers the lower level legal institution. Not only silly, but impractical: and unecessary.
We could look more deeply into constitutional law, using history as a kind of guide. There wasn't always a constitution. Perhaps there was another legal arrangement prior to the USC in the USA. If the apartment is in Boston, then one can say that yes, there was a prior arrangement, for this town was once a colony, a part of the British empire. Once again, if we forget about the Big Bang, etc., and suppose not only the backwards-reaching eternity of the world, but of humanity, we can suppose that there always was one constitution or another. But even if there was, whenever a new constitution comes into being, it does so with reliance upon something more fundamental.
You can see where this is going. And you perhaps don't have time to follow that path. At the moment I am writing this, I don't have time to compose more. But I will point out the following. At each level of this analysis, we go not to a repetition of the same sort of thing but "up" or "down" a level--to something more fundamental, that makes possible the phenomenon that provoked our inquiry. Going backwards in time is a helpful way of uncovering these more fundamental levels. That is, going from renting, to the owner (who owned the house before she or he rented it out), to the city ordinance that made legal ownership possible, to the incorporation of the city, to the establishment of the state constitution, to the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, etc. At some point your inquiry might bring you to the coming into being of humanity, whenever that was. Each of these discoveries of a more fundamental level (one that is able to account for a broader swath of reality) is the discovery of something needed right now for you to be able to rent out this apartment for the summer so that you can take the continuing education courses.
Supposing that the world is eternal, the question arises: could an inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of your renting this apartment lead to an infinite set of such conditions? Note here, that in asking this question, I am not asking whether there could be an infinite series of landowners (there could be, but I am just being silly in bringing it up), an infinite series of governments (silly again) or an infinite series of big bangs preceded by big crunches, etc. (this time I'm serious). As far as my reason can tell, there could be such an infinite series.
But at any point in this series, there could not be an infinite set of dependencies any more than there could be an infinite set of sublessors. As to the exact nature of that upon which all else depends, that is something for another day. But to get the gist of this argument is to see the difference between the sort of unmoved mover argument (i.e., the argument for a fundamental reality upon which everything now depends) that Aquinas and Moses Maimonides have in mind and the straw man version (which argues that the world had a beginning) attacked by many atheists.
(afterthought: perhaps one could produce an analogous argument for a highest Truth, where such truth would be understood as comprehensive [including both possible and actual], not subject to correction on the basis of the impossibility of an infinite regress of hierarchical truths and is in some manner originative rather than a response. Certainly, Augustine would find this proposal agreeable...)
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