Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia

On deism, God starts the universe existing, but then he takes it easy, allowing it to exist on its own in virtue of its 'existential inertia.' The latter is an analog of inertia in physics. Newton's First Law states that a body at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion continues in its state of rest or motion unless acted upon by an external force. Analogously, what could be called the First Law of Deistic Metaphysics states that an existing thing continues to exist on its own without external assistance unless acted upon by an external annihilatory force.  This is but a rough and preliminary formulation of the thesis of existential inertia.  Continuing to exist is the 'default.'  Suppose I bring a primitive table into existence by placing a board on a stump.  The thought behind 'existential inertia' is that the compound object that just came to be does not need something to keep it from blinking out of existence a nanosecond, microsecond, millisecond . . . later.

On classical theism, by contrast with deism, God is no mere cosmic starter-upper: creatures need God not only to begin to exist but to continue existing moment by moment.  A defense of classical theism against deism must therefore include a rejection of existential inertia.

Steven Nemes offers a rejection of existential inertia in his article Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia. He solicits my comments. I am happy to oblige.

He defines the phrase as follows:

Let’s say that the existence of a thing is “inertial” if and only if it continues to exist over time, in the absence of annihilating factors, without the assistance of anything outside of it.

He gives the example of a cat which, "once in existence, continues to exist over time, so long as nothing intervenes to destroy it, without anything outside of the cat helping it or sustaining it in existence." But surely the cat cannot continue to exist without air, water, food, a tolerable range of temperatures, and so on, factors clearly external to the cat.   Note also that Nemes' definition presupposes that only temporal items are existentially inertial which is not obvious: on a classically theistic scheme even so-called 'abstract objects' are going to have to be existentially inertial.  But I won't worry this second point in this entry.

Here is a better way to convey the notion of existential inertia. Suppose a deistic god creates exactly one iron sphere and nothing else.  In this world there is nothing to cause the sphere to rust or otherwise corrode away into nonexistence.  Nor does it, like a living organism, require anything external to it to continue to exist.  It doesn't need oxygen or water like Nemes' cat. And it has no internal mechanism to self-destruct.  The sphere exists inertially iff its 'default setting' is continued existence which is to say: it has no intrinsic tendency to cease to exist. 

The sphere is of course a contingent being. Hence there is no necessity that it continue to exist.  But while there is no necessity that it continue to exist, it will continue to exist absent some external annihilatory force. The deistic god could zap it out of existence, but if he doesn't, it will continue to exist on its own 'steam.'  He needn't do anything to keep it in existence, and of course he can't if he is truly deistic.

And the same goes for the cat, despite the cat's need for materials in its environment such as oxygen and food.  It too will continue to exist if those things are supplied without the need for a special metaphysical factor to keep it from sliding into nonbeing.  The critter's natural default is to existence.

Nemes's Argument against Existential Inertia

1) The real existence of the cat does not show itself as one of its properties.

2) "The real existence of the cat is thus not a part of that total complex of individuated properties which make up the particular cat which we experience. "

3) "The unexperienceable real existence of the experienceable cat must therefore be something that is somehow “outside” of the cat, and yet “pointed at it” in such a way that the cat exists."

4) "This is easy to understand if we say that the existence of the cat consists in its standing on the receiving end of an existence-endowing relation to “something else.” ". . . a “something else” that is not itself an individual thing with properties but rather pure existence itself. And this “pure existence itself,” according to classical theists, is God."

(1) is true. (2) appears merely to unpack (explicate) (1); if so, it too is true.  The transition to (3), however, is a non sequitur. The real existence of the cat might be hidden within it or an empirically inaccessible feature of it.  Absent further premises, one cannot conclude that the real existence is 'outside' the cat.

Of course, I am not endorsing existential inertia; I am merely pointing out that the above argument, as it stands, is invalid. Perhaps with further work it can be made valid. 

Comments

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

The cat seems to be a normal cat, one that can be described, in all of its needs, by biology. Unless its needs are met, it will perish. Let's call it the scientific cat. We could imagine a metaphysical cat that has no needs, but rather than doing so, let's turn to the iron sphere.

You say it will continue to exist because nothing else exists in this world of the iron sphere. There is no oxygen, so no rust. This is, as was the cat, a scientific object, specifically a sphere. It might have no needs, but it is internally unstable, for it is composed not of iron through and through, but of protons, neutrons, and electrons. A level lower down, one enters the quantum realm, with quarks of various types.

There is a degree of scientific instability, in that there is a chance of decay on various levels. A photon might suddenly be lost, never to return. These losses can pile up. The iron sphere becomes some other stuff than iron. So the scientific sphere fails as an analogy, I think, much as does the scientific cat. We need a metaphysical iron sphere, one of iron through and through, at every level, ironically.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

[Jacob]

Hi Dr. Vallicella,

I read Nemes' article earlier yesterday, and I had a thought that you could bring some insight into. I think his article is actually an implicit example of Nemes' desire to synthesize Husserlian phenomenology with Thomism, which I have read you express doubts about. You note here in your article that Nemes' explains that existence cannot be one of the properties of the cat among its other properties, because unlike the rest of the cat's properties, the cat's existence is not given within experience, and so the cat's real existence is unexperienceable. But, if this is the case, then I don't see what justifies the jump from that to the metaphysics of the cat's existence. Wouldn't a proper phenomenology take the unexperienceable to be meaningless due to its unaccessibility? I do not know much about phenomenology at all, but it seems like his jump from phenomenology to his metaphysics seems unwarranted. I'd love your thoughts!

[Steven Nemes]

Bill,

Thanks for the comments!

For the sake of clarity: in my view, the whole cat is an intuitable object. More specifically, the cat is a complex or composite object that is in principle intuitable in every respect. It is in principle something that can show itself to consciousness with nothing left over. But because its existence does not appear in any intuition, therefore it does enter into its constitution.

[BV]

Jeff,

Good comments! I neglected the scientific points you make, so I must concede that the iron sphere is not much of an improvement over the cat when it comes to explaining existential inertia. But you may be missing the thrust of the doctrine of existential inertia (EI).

EI claims that once a thing exists, it will continue to exist on its own unless something acts to destroy it whether that be external such as a lightning bolt or something internal like cancer. There is more than one way to 'skin' a cat! EI is not the claim that once a thing exists it will never cease to exist. EI is the claim that, once a thing exists, nothing apart from its empirical needs is needed to keep it in existence. As opposed to what? As opposed to the claim that, at each moment, a thing that exists needs, in addition to its empirical needs, a metaphysical cause of its continuing to exist.

Alles klar?

[BV]

Steven,

You can't possibly mean that the whole cat (front, back, outer features, internal organs, etc, with all properties and relations, etc.) is intuitable by you at one blow on one occasion. That would certainly be above the paygrade of an intellectus ectypus!

You want to say that 'in principle,' over time a finite consciousness can become directly (intuitively) aware of everything about your cat. Quantum indeterminacy poses a problem, but leave that aside. And so you want to say that, because existence cannot be intuited, existence does not enter into the constituion of the cat.

I argue in reverse:

1. The existence of a cat is quite obviously the cat's existence, unique to it and belonging to it.

2. The existence of a cat is not intuitable. (For example, it is not sense-perceivable like the furriness of the cat.)

Therefore

3. A cat is not a complex intuitable in every respect.

[BV]

Jacob,

Thanks for the comments. You ask, >>Wouldn't a proper phenomenology take the unexperienceable to be meaningless due to its unaccessibility?<

Nemes and I agree that the real existence of a concrete particular such as a cat is not phenomenologically given. I can see that the cat is white, but not that it exists. This leaves us with three possibilities.

A. There is no real existence; there is only existence as the coherence of appearances. This is what a strict phenomenologist would have to say, It leads to transc, idealism.

B. There is real existence, but it is inaccessible and hidden within the thing.

C. There is real existence, but it not the existence of any concrete particular such as a cat; it is outside the cat as Nemes says.

[Steven Nemes]

Bill,

The existence can still belong to the cat without being constitutive of it if the existence of the cat is an external "existentializing" relation, i.e. its being caused to exist by God. Consider the example of an image being protected onto a screen: the being-projected is not itself a part of the content of the image. In my view, the cat is the image, which can be projected onto the screen or not, and its existence is the being-projected.

You say that the existence of the cat is something hidden. I say: there is nothing hidden about the cat. If there were, I could have no reason for positing it, since it wouldn't show itself.

With respect to the question of the properly "phenomenological" nature of my argumentation: being a philosopher means thinking for yourself. I certainly don't claim to be a philosopher, but in the end I am more interested in making sense of things as they seem to me than in sticking steadfast to one or another intellectual tradition. I would also note that in the present case, it would not even be a matter of sticking to the phenomenological tradition, since this is diverse and many later figures go in different directions, but to Husserl, at least as interpreted by Bill -- and why would that matter? It is no argument against what I am doing that Husserl wouldn't approve.

[Dmitri]

BV

Please try to clarify: is the notion of existence in the expression "the real existence of a concrete particular such as a cat is not phenomenologically given" comparable to the notion of one in "the fact that there is only one cat" in the identical context is not phenomenologically given? Is one outside the cat just like existence?

[BV]

Dmitri,

It is not quite clear what you are asking. But here goes.

When I look at my cat Max Black, I see the cat and I see his blackness, but I don't see (or otherwise sense-perceive) his existing. His blackness is given, but not his existing.

You may be asking this: Is the fact that there is/exists exactly one cat before me given?

My answer is No. For this equivalence holds: Max exists iff there exists an x such that x = Max. So if it is not given that Max exists, then it is not given that there exists an x such that x = Max.

[Dmitri]

You understood my question better that I was able to word it BV. I did wonder whether, in your reply in this discussion, the notion of existence is not given in sense perception in the same way in which the number of cats (one) is not given. If I understood your clarification, one and existence (and I guess blackness as a property and cat as a class) are not given (perceived) in the act of sense perception of Max Black the particular cat at a particular time. Right?

[BV]

The blackness of the cat is given. I know that the cat is black by seeing black/blackness at the cat. But how do I know that the cat exists given that I do not see (or otherwise sense-perceive) the existence of the cat? That is one of the problems in the vicinity.

[BV]

Steven sez:

>>The existence can still belong to the cat without being constitutive of it if the existence of the cat is an external "existentializing" relation, i.e. its being caused to exist by God. Consider the example of an image being protected onto a screen: the being-projected is not itself a part of the content of the image. In my view, the cat is the image, which can be projected onto the screen or not, and its existence is the being-projected.<<

But then each concrete particular would have the same existence -- which doesn't do justify to the fact that each such particular has its own existence. Your suggestion leads to monism

[Steven Nemes]

Bill,

That is a good objection.

In a paper I wrote on divine simplicity and modal collapse, -- you have read it, I think, -- I argue that the primary object of God's causality is the entire possible world and only secondarily the particular thing. The projection metaphor can accommodate that point. The world is like a movie whose existence is its being-projected by God. Not everything in the movie is identical to everything else, although it is a single act of projection which is responsible for the being-projected of each part.

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Fast alles. I think I understand existential inertia. It reminds me somehow of Lavoisier's Law of Conservation of Mass. But that's just another bad example.

I suppose only stuff that is simple stuff through and through would possess existential inertia. Any compound stuff would have a tendency to break down to simpler stuff.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

[BV]

Jeff,

I don't think you understand what is meant by 'existential inertia.'

Suppose God creates ex nihilo a cat. He brings it into existence. Now the question concerns the way it exists. Does it exist in such a way that it will continue to exist on its own without divine assistance? Or does it exist in such a way that it needs God's creative activity to sustain it in existence at every moment subsequent to the moment of its creation?

Do you understand that there is a difference between these two conceptions of creation? The first is deistic; the second is classically theistic.

On the first, we have existential inertia of creatures; on the second we do not have existential inertia of creatures.

>>I suppose only stuff that is simple stuff through and through would possess existential inertia. Any compound stuff would have a tendency to break down to simpler stuff.<<

No.

Suppose you have a non-partite item. One that is simple, not compound. Suppose that, having come into existence, it lasts for ever more. There remains the question whether it exists inertially or whether it need's divine sustenance moment by moment.

Now consider a partite entity, a house of cards say. It lasts for let's say one minute until a blast of air blows it apart and brings about its nonexistence. There remains the question whether, during the short time it existed, it existed inertially or non-inertially, i.e., in such a way that moment by moment it needed divine sustenance.

The inertial-non-inertial issue cuts perpendicular to the simple-compound issue.

Let me know whether you find this clear. I think my earlier expositions were less than clear.

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

Bill, I think that I understand, but something puzzles me. The God of Deism brings a thing into existence.That thing continues to exist by existential inertia. Some time later, another created thing annihilates it.

The act of creation was a metaphysical act. Existential inertia is a metaphysical concept. The event of annihilation has a physical cause.

Here is my puzzlement: some thing with a metaphysical cause is annihilated in a physical event.

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

[Mariel Casanova]

Mr Bill, have you ever thought of writing/responding more about the EI objection? (Especially Joe Schmid formulation that has been popular lately)
The most common objection is that it doesn't work once one considers the distinction between existence and essence. I know that people in the Thomistic tradition like Nemes, Kerr or Wippel believe that it can be made before establishing God's existence, but it seems like others like Owens, Knasas and Maritains maintained that this comes after. So what do you think of the objections of the latter regarding that? If the distinction isn't done before, do they fall prey to EI?

[BV]

Mariel,

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I have.

I have Wippel, Owens, and Maritain in my library. Do you have some references for me?

[Mariel Casanova]

Bill,
Owens probably mentioned something about it in some of his commentaries about Aquinas' De Ente. But more explicit references probably are "Stages and Distinction in De Ente: A Rejoinder" and "Quiddity and the Real Distinction" (both from Owens, of course).
I haven't read all of this, but I understand that the controversy is mentioned in Wippel's "The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas", and "Aquinas’s Route to the Real Distinction" (I suppose he explains his position in both).
The controversy is that it's believed by some that in Aquinas' De Ente he gets into the real distinction before establishing the existence of God, and others consider that He is a necessary condition to do so (Wippel is part of the former group while Owens is from the latter).
The rest of Existential Thomists that I mentioned seem to have shared a similar thought with Owens.
PS: Sorry for my bad english.