This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response.
Tomaszewski presents one of R. T. Mullins' arguments as follows:
1) Necessarily, God exists.
2) God is identical to God’s act of creation.
Therefore
3) Necessarily, God’s act of creation exists.
Tomaszewski claims that above argument is invalid and for the same reason that the following argument is invalid:
7) Necessarily, God exists.
8) God is identical to the Creator.
Therefore
9) Necessarily, the Creator exists.
Now the second argument is clearly invalid. It takes us from true premises to a false conclusion. God exists in every possible world. But in only some worlds does he instantiate the role of Creator. So it is not the case that the Creator exists in every possible world.
Some find the Leibnizian patois of 'possible worlds' puzzling. I don't need it. The point can be made without it, as follows. God exists of metaphysical necessity. But he does not create of metaphysical necessity: creation is a contingent act. Therefore, it is not the case that, necessarily, God is the Creator. Had he created nothing, he would exist without being Creator.
So the second of the two arguments is invalid. Now if the first argument has the same logical form as the second, then it too will be invalid. But the first argument does not have the same logical form as the second.
The form of the first is:
Necessarily, for some x, x = a.
a = b.
ergo
Necessarily, for some x, x = b.
Clearly, this argument-form is valid, whence it follows that any argument having this form is valid. I am assuming that the individual constants 'a' and 'b' are Kripkean rigid designators: they denote the same object in every possible world in which the object exists. I am also assuming Kripke's Necessity of Identity principle: For any x, y if x = y, then necessarily, x = y. By instantiation, if a = b, then necessarily a = b. Now if necessarily a exists, and a cannot exist without being identical to b, then necessarily b exists.
Contra Tomaszewski, the arguments have different forms. The first instantiates a valid form and is therefore valid while the second instantiates an invalid form and is therefore invalid.
I expect someone to object that (2) above -- God is identical to God’s act of creation -- is not an instance of the logical form a = b, where the terms flanking the identity sign are Kripkean rigid designators. But I say they are; indeed they are strongly rigid designators. A rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world in which the item exists. A strongly rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world, period. Thus the designatum of a strongly rigid designator is a necessary being.
My claim, then, is that (2) is a statement of identity and that 'God' and 'God's act of creation' in (2) are both strongly rigid designators. My claim is entailed by DDS which says, among other things, that there is no real distinction in God between agent and action. So if God is identical to his act of creating our universe, and God exists in every possible world, then the creation of our universe occurs in every possible world, which in turn entails modal collapse.
Tomaszevski has an interesting response (pp. 7-8):
While God’s act is indeed intrinsic (and therefore identical) to Him, “God’s act of creation” designates that act, not how it is in itself, but by way of its contingent effects. That is, whether “God’s act of creation” designates God’s act depends on the existence of a creation which is contingent, and so the designation is not rigid. And since the designation is not rigid, the identity statement is not necessary, as it must be in order to validate the argument from modal collapse.
This response begs the question. For it assumes that the effect of the divine act of creation is contingent. But that is precisely the question! If you just assume -- as we all want to assume -- that creation is contingent, then of course there is no modal collapse. The issue, however, is whether one can adhere to that assumption while holding fast to DDS. Besides, the second sentence in the above quotation makes little or no sense. The act of creation is individuated by the object of creation (our universe, say, in all its detail); an act of divine creation is nothing without its object.
Am I assuming what I need to prove (and thus begging the question) when I insist that (2) above is necessarily true and thus that the first argument is valid? No, I am merely unpacking what DDS implies.
My conclusion is that Tomszevski has clarified the problem for us, but he has not refuted the above argument from DDS to MC.
Of course one way out might be to bite the bullet and try to incorporate the result into a form of theistic modal realism. God actualizes one vast plenitudeness omniverse (and is identical to this activity), which can then be partitioned off into spatio-temporally isolated 'worlds' for us indexical plebs.
Posted by: Daniel | Friday, August 24, 2018 at 02:16 PM
I have a question about a tangential matter, in case you care to respond to it.
You say you don't need talk of possible worlds. I don't think I find such talk puzzling, but I've never understood the vogue for it. Since many absolutely first-rate philosophers seem to insist on using it, I assume there must be some great advantage to doing so, and not seeing what that is I assume that there is something important I don't understand. If you care to explain I'd be interested.
Posted by: Frank | Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 09:00 AM
Bill,
I think the problem can be avoided by rejecting what I will call the “No Difference without a Difference-Maker” principle.
The idea is that if God is perfectly identical across all possible worlds, with no intrinsic changes or differences of any sort, since He is purely actual, then if in α He creates this cosmos, then He creates this cosmos in every possible world (or, alternatively, α turns out to be the only possible world). After all, if in β He creates a different world (or no world at all), then we would expect there to be a “difference” in Him by virtue of which His effect is different. The principle: there can be no difference in effect without a difference-maker in the cause.
But if we reject that principle, then there is no problem — God can be identical across all worlds, though His effect is different in each of them, and there is no difference maker in God to explain this, nor need there be.
A person may appeal to a libertarian conception of free will to justify the rejection of the difference-maker principle. After all, libertarianism, at least construed one way, requires that a person be capable of choosing X or not, or perhaps choose between X or Y, all things remaining exactly the same. But on this view of things, there is no antecedent difference-maker to explain why in one scenario the agent chooses X and in another scenario the agent chooses Y. So libertarian freedom requires the denial of the difference-maker principle.
And if God is libertarianly free, then the proponent of divine simplicity is free to deny the principle as well.
An interesting line of thought to pursue: whether the only way to ground contingency in a necessary existent is through the denial of the difference-maker principle...
Posted by: Steven Nemes | Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 02:14 PM
since this post may get more traffic, i’ll post what i think a solution to MC is, which involves an extrinsic model of all divine attributes which have creatures as constituents.
https://notesonthefoothills.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/solving-the-modal-collapse-by-invoking-the-trinity-and-the-creator-creature-distinction/
Posted by: chris | Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 03:34 PM
Hi Bill,
Thanks for this gracious response to my article. I agree with you that the two arguments have different forms if "God's act of creation" is a rigid designator. But why should the proponent of DDS accept that? Remember, the argument from modal collapse is attempting to establish that DDS entails a modal collapse. So they are entitled only to what DDS affirms as their premises for establishing a modal collapse. But DDS does not affirm that "God's act of creation" is a rigid designator?
So if the opponent of DDS needs that to establish a modal collapse, they are not showing that DDS entails a modal collapse. They could hope only to show that DDS plus the fact that "God's act of creation" is a rigid designator entails a modal collapse. But then, again: why should the proponent of DDS accept that "God's act of creation" is a rigid designator?
Posted by: Christopher Tomaszewski | Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 04:14 PM
I have a very similar response to Tomaszewski's critique of the Modal Collapse Argument. View it here and let me know what you think:
http://freethinkingministries.com/the-collapse-of-the-anti-modal-collapse-objections/
Posted by: Shannon Byrd | Saturday, August 25, 2018 at 08:22 PM
Bill,
While I can see why the DDS might seem inevitably to imply your premise (2) at first philosophical glance, I am not convinced that that is what the Church's theologians have accepted or taught. Their traditional distinction between divine operations ad intra and ad extra defines only the former as internal to the divine essence. Indeed, they treat ad intra and essential as synonymous terms in this context. Since Creation is a work termed ad extra (and thus not identical to the divine essence) by orthodoxy, it appears that the orthodox DDS denies God is identical to his creative action.
The distinction above was not made for the sake of defending the contingency of creation, as I understand it, but for the sake of distinguishing in Trinitarian doctrine between operations specific to the persons but internal relations of the one essence, and those common to all 3 by virtue of the creative "procession" out of their substantial unity which obtains by virtue of the choice to be the Cause of other beings.
God's identity as Pure Act (consonant with his metaphysical simplicity) denies potency absolutely to him only in himself, internally, otherwise he could not create (cause anything to be outside himself) at all, either contingently or of necessity. It does not deny his "potential" to create.
Posted by: Fr Matthew Kirby | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 02:22 AM
It seems I was partly right, partly wrong in describing the orthodox understanding. Here is a useful excerpt:
19th century Catholic theologian Matthias Scheeben explains the relation of the attributes to God’s essence as follows:
“All the Divine attributes which designate something necessarily contained in God, designate the Divine Substance Itself, and not something distinct from It, inhering in it after the manner of an accident. This principle applies to the attributes of Unity, Truth, Beauty; and also to the Divine essential Activity—such as Self-consciousness and Self-love; because all of these necessarily belong to the integrity of the Divine Essence and Nature. It is also true of the Divine intellectual and volitional acts concerning contingent things; for although these acts are not essential to God, still they are not accidents of His Substance, but are the Divine Substance Itself as related to contingent objects. But the principle is true only to a certain extent in the case of attributes which express Divine external action—that is, active influence on creatures; because the power and will to act are in God, whereas the action itself (actio transiens), and still more its effect, are external to Him. Lastly, this principle cannot be applied to attributes expressing a relation between creatures and God—such as Creator, Redeemer, Rewarder; because these relations are not in God but outside Him. They need not belong to Him from all eternity, as may also be said of attributes designating Divine external actions, because their basis is not eternal. Essential attributes, on the contrary, and also attributes expressing something in God, even if not essential, belong to Him from all eternity. All this is the common teaching of the Fathers and theologians and is based upon the dogmas of the Simplicity and Unchangeableness of God.”
Scheeben, Matthias Joseph. A MANUAL OF CATHOLIC THEOLOGY: Based on Dogmatik (Complete in Two Volumes) (Kindle Location 3291). Lex De Leon Publishing. Kindle Edition
Posted by: Fr Matthew Kirby | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 06:42 AM
Daniel,
How about 'plenitudinous'? Your suggestion, which smacks of David Lewis' extreme modal realism, is itself a form of modal collapse. This would make a good separate post.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 11:52 AM
Frank,
You ask a fair question which I hope to address in a separate post. My answer *in nuce* is that possible worlds talk allows for an exceedingly perspicuous representation in extensional terms of modal relationships.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 11:55 AM
Christopher T.,
Thanks for the response, and congratulations on winning the Baylor prize and on the *Analysis* acceptance. Has your article appeared yet? I would appreciate a pdf of the article when it appears. I need to revise my SEP entry on DDS by the end of the year and I would like to add your article to the bibliography. And if you have other DDS biblio items I need to be apprised of please let me know.
You are right that DDS in its classical formulations says nothing about whether 'God's act of creation' is or is not a rigid designator. But they also say nothing about whether 'God' or 'Deus' is a rigid designator. Ut I think you commit yourself in your article to 'God' being a rigid designator. That's not obvious. I seem to recall Peter Geach arguing that 'God' is best understood as a definite description in disguise.
It seems that if you accept what Kripke says about identity statements, and if there are no real distinctions in God, then I think we should say that 'God's act of creation' is a rigid designator.
Would you say that 'Socrates is the teacher of Plato' is an identity statement?
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 12:19 PM
Shannon,
I basically agree with you. You say in your paper (link above):
>>Ryan Mullins’ argument does not assume the truth of what he is trying to prove; it isn’t as if he is arguing, “creation exists necessarily” because “necessarily creation exists,” no, Mullins is arguing that God exists necessarily and his act of creation is identical to God’s existence and so his act of creation is necessary as well.<<
That seems right to me.
One quibble. Later in your paper you speak of "accidental designators." But the opposite of a rigid designator is a non-rigid designator.
For example, the definite description 'the teacher of Plato' is non-rigid because it it does not designate the same person in every world in which Plato has a teacher.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 01:09 PM
@BV,
Yes it is though no more so (I would argue) than Lewis own modal concretism (I was slipshot in that post as I ought to have said modal concretism rather than modal realism). It's rather a way of sugaring the pill to persuade others that modal collapse need not be so detrimental. Of course I am assuming trans-world identity is workable in the case of God as do most theistic modal concretists.
Posted by: Daniel | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 01:58 PM
Fr. Kirby,
Thank you for that extended quotation. The crucial portion is this:
>>But the principle is true only to a certain extent in the case of attributes which express Divine external action—that is, active influence on creatures; because the power and will to act are in God, whereas the action itself (actio transiens), and still more its effect, are external to Him.<<
First, "true only to a certain extent" is a fudge phrase without a clear meaning.
And the distinction being invoked is none too clear. The distinction is between the will to act, on the one hand, and the transitive action and its effect, on the other. The will to act is one with the divine substance, and is therefore as necessary as the divine substance, while the action and its effect are contingent.
I understand what the orthodox theologian is trying to do, namely uphold the divine simplicity while accommodating the contingency of creatures. But I can't see that it makes sense.
God's will is automatically efficacious. So if God wills Socrates, then BANG the man exists. To change the example, there is no gap between FIAT LUX and LUX. We can make a conceptual distinction but in reality there is no distinction.
So if the will to create Socrates is identical to God, and therefore necessary, then S's existence is also necessary.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 02:01 PM
Steven,
Very interesting suggestion.
>>But on this view of things, there is no antecedent difference-maker to explain why in one scenario the agent chooses X and in another scenario the agent chooses Y. So libertarian freedom requires the denial of the difference-maker principle.<<
Granted, there is nothing antecedent to a free choice that explains it. But choosing X and choosing Y are rendered different by their different objects, X and Y. Choosings are individuated by their objects.
So I don't think you've cracked the nut. If God is simple, then he is identical to his choosing U1 over U2; whence it follows that his choosing U1 makes U2 impossible.
Posted by: BV | Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 08:05 PM
Bill,
Choosing X and choosing Y are rendered different by their different objects, but nothing in the agent, anterior to the decision is any different. So you can say that God's-creation-of-α is different from God's-creation-of-β in virtue of the differences between α and β, but there is nothing different in God, anterior to the decision.
Posted by: Steven Nemes | Monday, August 27, 2018 at 11:09 AM
Bill,
I e-mailed the paper to the e-mail address listed on your SEP article.
I do assume in the paper that "God" is a rigid designator, but if it isn't, so much the worse for the opponent of simplicity! That would make the task of showing that the identity statement "God is God's act of creation" is necessary all the more difficult.
I'm not sure how you are getting from what Kripke says and the claims of DDS to "God's act of creation" being a rigid designator. My claim is that "God's act of creation" is a description for God just like "Creator" which is truly predicated of Him only in the worlds where He in fact creates. Whether I'm right about that doesn't seem to me to turn on whether DDS is true or not. That's why the analogy to "Creator" is illustrative.
Thanks again!
Posted by: Christopher Tomaszewski | Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 01:55 AM
You are absolutely correct, Dr. Vallicella.
According to DDS God's existence and His "act of creation" MUST be identical. The "act of creation" is the cause of creation, and thus cannot be a mere descriptor; it must be an ontological thing, which can only be identical to God himself, since He is simple. There is nothing else the "act of creation" could possibly be.
But there's one assumption you haven't justified: that a cause is absolutely determinative of an effect (IOW a sufficient as well as a necessary condition). If this is not true, then you can't equate "act of creation" with "act of creation of this universe" because the latter is not only a description of the cause, but also of the cause and effect.
This creates an ontological randomness in nature, meaning there really is no real explanation as to why this universe exists instead of another one, and actually "God's will" has no real explanatory power for anything. But that's just the bullet that must be bitten.
Posted by: Vince S | Thursday, September 06, 2018 at 09:06 AM
Vince,
In the case of God, his creating U is both necessary and sufficient for U's existence. Are you denying that?
Posted by: BV | Thursday, September 06, 2018 at 11:23 AM