More on Rasmussen's New Argument
Recall that Joshua Rasmussen in his "New Argument for a Necessary Being" (2011), argues that (1) Normally, for any intrinsic property p that (i) can begin to be exemplified and (ii) can be exemplified by something that has a cause, there can be a cause of p's beginning to be exemplified. (p1) When I expressed concerns with his published defense of (1), he (first privately, and later publicly ) offered the following supplement (my paraphrase): Consider mundane intrinsic properties of the form being an apple , or being aluminum , etc., which can begin to be exemplified. Clearly such properties possibly have a cause for their exemplification, and so inductively we infer (1).