Existence and Knowledge

Existence and Knowledge

Alexander Pruss and Richard Gale’s cosmological argument in the proof of the necessary existence

Document Type : Research Article

Authors
Amirhossein Zadyousefi 1
Saeed Kianam 2
1 Assistant professor, Department of Philosophy and Logic, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
2 MA graduate, Department of Philosophy and Logic, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
10.22096/ek.2026.2084428.1625
Abstract
Cosmological arguments are a family of arguments offered in support of a necessary being and—unlike other kinds of arguments, such as the ontological argument—contain at least one a posteriori premise. In the late twentieth century, Alexander Pruss and Richard Gale proposed a new version of the cosmological argument that is distinguished from traditional Leibnizian approaches by its appeal to a weak form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (W-PSR). This innovation is often taken to make their argument more resilient to the classic challenges raised by atheists. In this paper, we first present two formulations of the Pruss–Gale argument. We then discuss Graham Oppy’s objection—arguably the most significant objection to the argument—and defend Oppy’s critique against Pruss and Gale’s response. Finally, we introduce a further objection that has largely been neglected in the existing literature.
Keywords
Cosmological Argument
Alexander Pruss
Richard Gale
Weak Principle of Sufficient Reason (W-PSR)
Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (BCCF)
Possible Worlds

Subjects

Bibliography
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