Colin Matthews Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building
Nathan Elvidge: 'Branching Actualism, the Beginning of the Universe, and Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God'
Faculty Commentator: Tim Mawson
Format: In-person
Chair: Madeleine Parkinson
Abstract: Branching actualism is a view of modality on which all possible worlds as share some necessary initial state or stage, where the world then ‘branches’ into various possible worlds whenever we have objective chance. This view of modality has recently been invoked by atheist philosophers as providing responses to cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Schmid and Malpass argue that branching actualism undermines key premises in three different forms of the cosmological argument, the grim reaper kalam, the classic contingency argument, and the modal argument from beginnings. Graham Oppy invokes branching actualism in claiming that atheistic pictures of the causal history of the world can be constructed which parallel theistic ones in explanatory power.
I argue that branching actualism, as typically understood, requires a beginning to the universe. This means that, far from undermining cosmological arguments, it actually provides the crucial premise of the kalam cosmological argument. I consider some ways of amending the theory to avoid this implication, and argue that the only plausible way to do so renders branching actualism impotent for the purposes atheistic philosophers want of it.
