Pavel Tichý on Whether 'God' is the Name of an Individual

This post is the third in a series on Pavel Tichý's "Existence and God" (J. Phil., August 1979, 403-420). So far I have sketched his theory of existence, made a couple of objections, and refuted his argument for it. I now turn to section II of his article (pp. 410-412) in which he discusses Descartes' Meditation Five ontological argument. But in this post I will address only the preliminaries to the discussion of Descartes. Tichý writes,

We have seen that 'Jimmy Carter' and 'the U. S. president' are terms of completely different typological categories: 'Jimmy Carter' denotes an individual, and 'the U. S. president' denotes something for an individual to be, an individual-office. Which of the two categories does the term 'God' belong to? It would be patently implausible to construe it as belonging to the former category. If 'God' were simply the name of an individual, it would be a purely contingent matter whether God is benevolent or not; for any individual is conceivably malicious. But of course the notion of a malevolent God is absurd. If so, however, God cannot be an individual; God is bound to be rather something for an individual to be, and benevolence must be part of what it takes for someone to be it. In other words, 'God' must stand for an individual office, and benevolence must be one of the requisites that make up the essence of that office.

It is only because 'God' denotes an individual-office that we can sensibly ask whether God exists. To ask, Does God exist? is not to ask whether something is true regarding a definite individual; for which individual would it be? It is rather to ask whether, of all the individuals there are, one has what it takes to be God. It is to ask, in other words, whether the divine office is occupied. (410-411)

The argumentative structure of this passage may be set forth as follows:

1. If God were an individual, then it would be a contingent matter whether God is benevolent.
2. It is not a contingent matter whether God is benevolent.
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3. God is not an individual.

(2) is readily granted, but (1) is hardly self-evident. Why can't it be the case that God is necessarily benevolent but also an individual? Tichý appears to be assuming that all individuals are 'bare,' where a bare individual is one that has the following features: (i) it lacks a nature or essence and is therefore not a substance in Aristotle's sense of prote ousia; (ii) the properties it has are not rooted in it or emergent from it but tied to it by an external tie of exemplification; (iii) the properties it has are all accidental, none are essential. Tichý's statment that "any individual is conceivably malicious" is what commits him to a doctrine of bare individuals. What he means, of course, is that any individual is possibly such as to lack any property it actually possesses, and possibly such as to possess any property it actually lacks. (To make this rigorous we probably have to add: any property that it not trivial or transcendental such as self-identity.)

Some philosophers argue that bare individuals are incoherent. But this is not at all clear since noted philosophers have plausibly defended them. Gustav Bergmann famously championed them under the moniker 'bare particulars' and David Armstrong finds use for what he calls 'thin particulars.' J. P. Moreland ably defends them in his Universals, p. 148 ff. et passim. I discuss them favorably in sections 7 and 11 of Chapter VI of A Paradigm Theory of Existence. Of course, to understand bare individuals you must not confuse them with what could be called 'nude individuals,' individuals having no properties at all. Obviously, all individuals come 'clothed' in properties. The question concerns how they have their properties. Let us provisionally grant that there are bare individuals and that all individuals are bare. The rest of Tichý's argument is as follows:

4. Either God is an individual or God is an office.
3. God is not an individual.
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5. God is an office.

'God,' therefore, does not name an individual, but an office, and the existence of God is not the existence of an individual, but the being-occupied of the divine office. But this is puzzling. If God is an office, then what should we call the individual that fills the office if the office is filled? No doubt, if God exists, then the divine office is filled. But filled by what? The office is obviously distinct, really distinct, from the office-holder, and the office-holder is not a mere feature or property of the office. Presumably, what Tichý must say is that the divine office, if filled, is filled by a bare individual. He cannot say that it is filled by God, for God is the divine office and this office does not fill itself. So the divine office, if filled, is filled by a bare individual.

Now this bare individual — which we cannot name — instantiates the requisites of the divine office but does so accidentally because it is bare. Among the requisites of the divine office are omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. So the bare individual which holds, fills, or occupies the divine office is accidentally omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Since this bare individual is what instantiates the omni-attributes, it ought to be called 'God.' But it cannot be called 'God' if the (1)-(3) argument above is sound. And it cannot be called 'God' for the further reason that God possesses his omni-attributes essentially.

The divine office itself, of course, is constituted by the requisites of omnscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence, but it does not instantiate them: the divine office is not omniscient any more than the office of U. S. president is a U. S. citizen. So how can God be the divine office as Tichy maintains? God is omniscient, but the divine office is not.

My conclusion is that Tichy's conception of God is incoherent. He is driven to say that 'God' does not denote an individual but an office. But if God is the divine office, then he cannot instantiate the omni-attributes: no office instantiates its requisites any more than a concept instantiates its Fregean marks (Merkmalen). (The concept bachelor, for example, has male as a mark, but no concept is male.) On the other hand, if God, as one might naturally suppose, is the office-holder of the divine office, then God is a bare individual who has his attributes accidentally, which is absurd, as Tichy himself points out.

Could God be the divine office together with its office-holder? This is not what Tichy says, and in any case it would destroy the divine unity and necessity. God is a necessary being, but Tichy cannot make sense of this. For whatever instantiates the requisites of the divine office contingently instantiates them due to the fact that any office-holder of the divine office must be a bare individual. But this is equivalent to saying that God exists contingently if he exists.