Maverick Philosopher

William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

Vallicella, William F. (2016) "William E. Mann, GOD, MODALITY, AND MORALITY," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 33 : Iss. 3 , Article 8. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil201633368

Available here. A long and meaty review article including a discussion of divine simplicity and Mann's approach thereto.

Can a Necessary Being Depend for its Existence on a Necessary Being?

Brian Bosse raised this question over the phone the other day. This re-post from February 2010 answers it.

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According to the Athanasian Creed, the Persons of the Trinity, though each of them uncreated and eternal and necessary, are related as follows. The Father is unbegotten.  The Son is begotten by the Father, but not made by the Father.  The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.  Let us focus on the relation of the Father to the Son.  When I tried to explain this to Peter the atheist, he balked at the idea of one necessary being begetting another, claiming that the idea makes no sense.  One of his arguments was as follows.  If x begets y, then x causes y to begin to exist.  But no necessary being begins to exist.  So, no necessary being is begotten.  A second argument went like this.  Begetting is a causal notion.  But causes are temporally precedent to their effects.  No two necessary beings are related as before to after.  Therefore, no necessary being begets another.

I first pointed out in response to Peter that the begetting in question is not the begetting of one animal by another, but a begetting in a different sense, and that whatever else this idea involves, it involves the idea of one necessary being depending for its existence on another.  Peter balked at this idea as well.  "How can a necessary being depend for its existence on a necessary being?"  To soften him up, I looked for a non-Trinitarian case in which a necessary being stands in the asymmetrical relation of existential dependency to a necessary being. Note that I did not dismiss his problem the way a dogmatist might; I admitted that it is a genuine difficulty, one that needs to be solved.

So I said to Peter:  Look, you accept the existence of Fregean propositions, items which Frege viewed as the senses of sentences in the indicative mood from which indexical elements (including the tenses of verbs) have been removed and have been replaced with non-indexical elements.  You also accept that at least some of these Fregean propositions, if not all,  are necessary beings.  For example, you accept that the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12' is necessarily true, and you see that this requires that the proposition be necessarily existent.  Peter agreed to that.

You also, I said to him, have no objection to the idea of the God of classical theism who exists necessarily if he is so much as possible.  He admitted that despite his being an atheist, he has no problem with the idea of a necessarily existent God.

So I said to Peter:  Think of the necessarily existent Fregean propositions as divine thoughts.  (I note en passant that Frege referred to his propositions as Gedanken, thoughts.)  More precisely, think of them as the accusatives or objects of divine acts of thinking, as the noemata of divine noeses.  That is, think of the propositions as existing precisely as the  accusatives of divine thinking.  Thus, their esse is their concipi by God.  They don't exist a se the way God does; they exist in a mind-dependent manner without prejudice to their existing in all possible worlds.  To cop a phrase from the doctor angelicus, they have their necessity from another, unlike God, who has his necessity from himself.

So I said to Peter:  Well, is it not now clear that we  have a non-Trinitarian example in which a necessary being, the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12,' depends for its existence on a necessary being, namely God, and not vice versa?  Is this not an example of a relation that is neither merely logical (like entailment) nor empirically-causal?  Does this not get you at least part of the way towards an understand of how the Father can be said to beget the Son?

To these three questions, Peter gave a resounding 'No!' looked at his watch and announced that he had to leave right away in order to be able to teach his 5:40 class at the other end of the Valle del Sol.

If Someone is Walking, is He Necessarily Walking? DDS and Modal Collapse

In an article I am studying by Daniel J. Pedersen and Christopher Lilley, "Divine Simplicity, God's Freedom, and the Supposed Problem of Modal Collapse," (Journal of Reformed Theology 16, 2022, 127-147),  the authors quote Boethius:

. . . if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. (Consolation, v. 6)

They then paraphrase and endorse the point as follows:

That is, supposing a man is walking, so long as he is walking, he must necessarily be walking.

This strikes me as interestingly false. Suppose Tom is walking at time t. Surely he might not have been walking at t. So it is not necessarily, but contingently, the case that Tom is walking at t. For although he is actually walking at t, it is possible that he not be walking at t. Of course, a man cannot walk and not walk at the very same time. For that would violate the law of non-contradiction (LNC). But that is not the issue. The issue is whether the following could be true: Tom is walking at t & it is possible that Tom is not walking at t. And of course it could be true.

Boethius, lately quoted, mentioned knowledge. Is my knowing that Tom is walking at t relevant to the question? Right after the sentence quoted, Boethius writes, "For what a man really knows cannot be otherwise than it is known to be."  Suppose I know (with objective certainty) that Tom is walking at t.  Would it follow that Tom is necessarily walking at t? No. Boethius appears to have committed a modal fallacy.  While it it true that 

1) Necessarily (if S knows that p, then p)

it does not follow that

2) If S knows that p, then necessarily p.

To think otherwise is to commit the modal fallacy of confusing the necessity of the consequence (necessitas consequentiae) with the necessity of the consequent (necessitas consequentis).  (1) is true; (2) is false; hence the inferential move is invalid. Most of the propositions we know are contingent. For example, I know that I was born in California, but this is a contingent fact about me.  I might have been born elsewhere. I might not have been born at all. One cannot know what is false, and so it follows that whatever one knows is true; it does not follow, however, that what one knows is necessarily true.  For again, most of what we know is contingently true.  In the patois of 'possible worlds,' most of what we know is true in some but not all possible worlds.

So we can set aside knowledge that a man is walking as a good reason for believing that a man walking is necessarily walking. Back to walking Tom. He cannot walk and not walk at the same time. But if he is walking at a given time, it is possible that he not be walking at that time, which is to say: Tom's walking at t is contingent, not necessary.  Don't confuse possibly (p & ~p) with p & possibly ~p.  Mind the scope of the modal operator.

The authors do not agree. They follow Boethius, Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles I,  67), and other scholastics. While they grant that  it is not absolutely or unconditionally necessary that a man walk, on the ground that there is nothing in the concept human being or the essence human being  to require that an instance of this concept/essence walk, it is hypothetically or conditionally necessary that a particular man walk on condition that he is in fact walking. I will argue against this distinction in a moment. But first:

Modal collapse and DDS

Why is this so interesting? One reason is because it is relevant to the problem of modal collapse that bedevils classical theism. (Classical theists, by definition, are committed to the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS).)  Here is (one aspect of) the problem in brief compass. God exists of absolute metaphysical (broadly logical) necessity. The ground or source of this necessity is the divine simplicity. On DDS there are no distinctions in God, hence no distinction between God and his creating of our (presumably) contingent universe U.  Since God is omnipotent, his creating of U ex nihilo is efficacious: he cannot fail to 'pull off' what he intends. It is presumably also deterministic: divine efficient agent-causation of U is not probabilistic or 'chancy.'  It would seem to follow that God, his free creating of U, and U itself are all three absolutely necessary.  Now everything is either God or created by God, including so-called abstract  objects. It follows that everything is absolutely necessary and thus that nothing is contingent.  The distinction between necessity and contingency collapses.  The senses of the modal terms, no doubt, remain intact and distinct on the intensional plane; the collapse occurs on the extensional plane. Hence the dreaded modal collapse. This is unacceptable if you believe, as most classical theists do, that creation is contingent, both the action of creating and its effect, the ensemble of creatures. (Note the process-product ambiguity of 'creation.') A separate problem in the immediate vicinity, one that I will not discuss here, concerns whether the contingency of creation requires a libertarian model of divine free agency. 

A response via the distinction between absolute and hypothetical necessity

One among several responses to the threatened collapse of the contingent into the necessary is to say that there is no modal collapse, no reduction of everything to absolute necessity,  because, while God is absolutely necessary, his creatures are not absolutely but only hypothetically necessary.  This distinction is supposed to avert the collapse. I do not believe that this distinction, despite its distinguished pedigree, stands up to close scrutiny.  Let me explain.

If a thing exists necessarily, one may reasonably ask about the ground or source of its necessary existence. In the case of God, if there is such a ground, it would have to be God himself in his ontological simplicity. God is necessary in se, in himself, and not ab alio, from another. This is because God does not and indeed cannot derive his existence from another. In the case of so-called abstract objects such as the number 9 or the set {7, 9} the ground of necessary existence is in God. For abstracta are creatures: they derive their existence from God. Or at least this is a reasonable thing to say. Accordingly, abstracta are necessary ab alio, from another. Given that they too are creatures, they cannot exist in themselves, but are dependent on God for their existence. You might even say that they are hypothetically or conditionally necessary in that they exist only on condition that God create them, and this despite the fact that abstracta exist 'in all possible worlds' in the Leibniz-derived patois of 'possible worlds.' If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then abstract entities would not exist either, and this regardless of the fact that they 'exist in all possible worlds' just as God does.  There is no harm in speaking of abstracta as hypothetically necessary if all this means is that abstracta are necessary beings that are dependent on God for their existence. There is no harm as long as it is realized that God and the number 9, for example, are necessary in the very same sense with the difference being that God exists unconditionally whereas the number exists conditionally or dependently ('hypothetically').  But then there are not two kinds of necessity, absolute and hypothetical, as the authors seem to think, but one kind only, with however two different sources or grounds of the existence of those items that enjoy this one kind of necessity (absolute metaphysical necessity). By my lights, one must distinguish between the question whether a thing exists dependently or independently from the question whether the thing exists necessarily or contingently.  The two distinctions 'cut perpendicular' to each other. Accordingly, God exists independently and necessarily; abstracta exist dependently and necessarily; poor Socrates exists dependently and contingently.  What holds for Socrates holds for every sublunary creature, every concrete item in space and time that is created by God.  If the universe of sublunary items just exists, brute-factually, as Bertrand Russell maintained in his BBC debate with Fr. Copleston, then Socrates exists contingently but not dependently. If a thing is modally contingent, it does not follow straightaway that it is dependent on ('contingent upon') anything.  On my view, then, modal collapse remains a formidable threat to DDS and thus to classical theism which, by definition, includes DDS.  

What our authors want to say, however,  is not merely that abstracta enjoy hypothetical necessity, but that all creatures, including material creatures in time and space, enjoy this "kind" (the authors' word) of necessity. But this is the Boethian mistake all over again. If Tom is walking at t, it does not follow that he is necessarily walking at t. Likewise, if Tom is being sustained in his existence by divine action at t, it does not follow that Tom necessarily exists at t. No, our man contingently exists at t. For God could decide at t or right before to 'pull the plug' on Tom (or on the entire universe of which he is a part) in which case Tom, who had been in existence moments before, would become nothing. Despite God's ongoing creative sustenance of Tom moment by moment, at each moment he remains possibly nonexistent, which is to say, contingent. (To understand what I just wrote, you have to understand that 'possibly' is to be taken ontologically, not epistemically.)

If I am told that Tom and the rest of the denizens of the sublunary are not modally contingent,  but hypothetically necessary, I will repeat my point that there is no such  modality as hypothetical necessity. The notion is an illicit amalgam that elides the distinction between existence and modality. Everything that exists is either necessary or contingent. And everything that exists either exists dependently or independently. Hypothetical necessity is a misbegotten notion.

Linguistically, the qualifier 'hypothetical' in 'hypothetical necessity' is an alienans adjective, one the shifts ('alienates,' 'others') the sense of 'necessity. In this respect it is like 'apparent' in 'apparent heart attack.' A deciduous tree cannot fail to be a tree; an apparent heat attack, however, may fail to be a heart attack.  'Hypothetical necessity' is  unlike 'deciduous tree' and very much like 'apparent heart attack.' Some heart attacks are merely apparent while others  are apparent and real. (And still others, of course, are real but not apparent.) Similarly, some necessary beings are hypothetical in that they depend for their existence on God; other necessary beings are absolute in that they do not depend on anything.

One mistake is to think that the number 9, e.g., is only hypothetically necessary because dependent on God for its existence. No, it is just as modally necessary as God.  Another mistake is to think that if some creatures are non-contingent, then all creatures are, including the denizens of the sublunary, in plain English, those that are material, temporal, and spatial. Socrates -- our representative sublunary critter -- is a modally contingent being despite his creaturely  status.   A third mistake is to think that, because divine productive causation ex nihilo necessitates its effect, that the effect is thereby rendered modally necessary. This mistake is structurally analogous to the logical mistake of confusing the necessity of the consequence with the necessity of the consequent.  Whatever God brings into existence out of nothing cannot fail to exist, but that is not to say that the effect of the bringing-into-existence is modally necessary. No, it remains modally contingent, just as modally contingent as the divine action. If you say that the divine action is absolutely necessary, then of course the effect is modally necessary. But then you have nolens volens accepted modal collapse!

In sum, there is no evading the modal collapse objection to DDS by distinguishing between absolute and hypothetical necessity, and this for the reason that there is no such modality as hypothetical necessity. The phrase 'hypothetical necessity' can only mean that certain entities that are modally necessary, the inmates of what Plantinga has called the "Platonic menagerie," are nevertheless  dependent on God for their existence.  

If God is Simple, How can the World be Contingent?

This entry is an offshoot of the earlier discussion of classical theism and its difference from theistic personalism. These labels have the meaning here than they had in that earlier discussion. Classical theism is committed to all three of the following:

1) God is simple.

2) God freely created the world in the libertarian 'could have done otherwise' sense.

3) There is no absolute necessity that God create our world or any world.

Theistic personalists hold that these three propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.  If they are logically inconsistent, then at least one of them must be either rejected or modified. The theistic personalist will reject (1) on the ground that God is a person and that no person is simple.  This the classical theist will refuse to do on the basis of reasons he finds compelling. So refusing, he must find a way to turn aside the accusation of inconsistency.

Well, why should the triad be thought inconsistent? Here's why. If God is simple, then he is purely actual. If purely actual, then he harbors no potencies or unrealized powers. His power, which is manifested in his creating of the world (the totality of creatures), could then not have gone unrealized. He could not have refrained from creating. If so, his power to create had to be realized, in which case God's creating of the world (the totality of created items)  is necessary, not contingent. It is the necessary action of a necessarily existent agent, and is thus absolutely, as opposed to conditionally necessary. But then it follows that the world exists necessarily and not contingently. This is a consequence that cannot be countenanced by the classical theist. For it  conflicts with the divine aseity which is an entailment  of the divine simplicity, which is a plank in the classical platform. If God is a se, then he is under no necessity to create.  If God is a se, then he is wholly self-sufficient and fully actual whether or not he creates anything.

Can this reasoning be evaded?  I will conclude this entry by considering and rejecting one evasive stratagem.  Nathan Greeley writes,

. . . to say that God's activity of knowing and willing exist necessarily is not to say that created objects of his knowing and willing must also exist necessarily. As long as these created objects are considered really distinct from the acts by which they are known and willed, then the objects in themselves, need not have the same modal status as these acts. [. . .] God, one can then say, necessarily knows and necessarily wills  in an absolute manner, but at least some of the particular objects of his knowledge are contingent. ("Divine Simplicity: A Reply to Philosophical Objections" in The Lord is One: Reclaiming Divine Simplicity, eds. Minich and Kamel, Davenant Press, 2019, p. 237, emphasis added.)

The idea here is that what God necessarily creates, and thus could not have failed to create, can nevertheless be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent. As far as I can see, there is only way this could be true. Suppose that God's creating of a thing simultaneously releases it into ontological independence.  The divine creative act makes the thing exist, but once it exists, it exists on its own, 'by its own power' without divine assistance.  In other words, when God creates a thing, he creates it in such a way that its existence, moment by moment, does not depend on God's ongoing creative sustenance after the initial creative action. If this is the nature of creation, then the created entity could very well be contingent despite the creative act's being necessary. For the created entity to exist in the first place it is necessary that God create it, but after he does so the entity exists contingently. On this scheme, there is creatio originans (originating creation), but no creatio continuans (continuing creation). This allows what is originally caused to exist to be contingent.

Unfortunately, this understanding of creation is foreign to classical theism. On classical theism, creation is both originating and continuing. What's more, classical theism need not insist on the reality of this distinction. For even if the world (the created realm) has an infinite past and always existed, it could nonetheless have creaturely status. If that were the case, then there would be no real distinction between originating and continuing creation. If, on the other hand, the world had a beginning in time, then, on classical theism, it still needs to be kept in being moment by moment. 

I conclude that the stratagem proposed by Greeley above does not allow the proponent of divine simplicity to evade the conclusion that, if the simple God creates, then the product of his creative act necessarily exists. 

Next stop: modal collapse.

It Ain't Necessarily So: On Not Confusing the Modal with the Temporal

If someone says, ‘Houses sell above the asking price around here,’ it is idiomatically correct, if not quite grammatical, to respond, ‘Not necessarily’ or 'It ain't necessarily so.' ‘Not necessarily’ in this context means not always. Its meaning is not modal, but temporal: there are times when the houses sell above asking price, and times when they do not.

 

In ordinary English, the confusion of the temporal ‘always’ with the modal ‘necessarily’ is not often a problem. But in more abstruse contexts, the distinction must be made. Suppose A asks, ‘Why does the universe exist?’ and receives the reply from B, ‘Because it always existed.’ This does not constitute a good reply even if it is true that the universe always existed. The reason is because a thing’s having existed at every past time gives no good answer to the question as to why it exists at all. Even if the past is infinite, the reply is defective. For even if (i) there is no past time at which the universe does not exist, and (ii) no metrically first moment of time, one can still reasonably ask: ‘But why does the universe exist at all?’ ‘Why not no universe?’

If, however, it were said that the universe necessarily exists (cannot not exist), then (assuming the truth of the universe’s necessary existence) that would amount to a good reply to the question as to why it exists. For if X cannot fail to exist, then it makes no clear sense to ask why it exists if one expects an explanans distinct from the explanandum.

Some atheists think themselves quite clever in objecting to theists as follows. ‘You say that God is needed to explain the existence of the universe; but then what explains the existence of God?' The short answer is that God is a necessary being, one that cannot not exist, and that to ask for the explanation of a necessary being makes no sense. This does not end the debate, of course, but it moves it from the sophomoric level up a notch to the ‘junior’ level.

Presentism and Actualism: Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

The analogy between presentism and actualism has often been noted.  An unpacking of the analogy may prove fruitful if it doesn't perplex us further.  Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:

P. Only the (temporally) present exists.

A. Only the actual exists.

Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology.  After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed.  It is clear that the typical presentist does not consider the thesis to be a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the various types of anti-presentism.  Consider the difference between presentism and eternalism. The presentist holds that only present items exist whereas the eternalist holds that past, present, and future items exist.  The disagreement obviously presupposes agreement as to what is meant by 'exists.'   There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms.  This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P).  If not present-tensed, then what?

A similar problem arises for the actualist.  One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual.  If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology.  But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean? 

We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:

DP.  Only present items existed or exists or will exist.

This is equivalent to saying that if x existed or x exists or x will exist, then x presently exists.  And this is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible.  This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:

DA.  Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.

This too is false since the merely possible is not actual.  It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.

We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.'  Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that ever happened or ever will happen is happening right now.  He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now.  The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment. 

Similarly with the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world.  He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual is necessary.  The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary.  The actualist is not a necessitarian.

There is no person like me, but I am not the only person.  There is no place like here, but here is not the only place.  There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.

In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?

To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).   

We can't say, on pain of tautology, that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists.  So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists.  

What do I mean by amodal existence?  Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:

Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds
Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world
Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds
Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds
Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world
Actual being: one that exists in the actual world
Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.

In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:

It was the case that Tom exists
It is now the case that Tom exists
It will be the case that Tom exists. 

My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.

But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty?  This is what we need to examine.  Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudo-problems.

Background to the (Ontological) Problem of the Merely Possible

One commenter seems not to understand the problem as I set it forth here. So let's take a few steps back.  In this entry I explain terminology, make distinctions, and record assumptions.  

1) Everything actual is possible, but the converse does not follow and ought not be assumed. Possible items that are possible, but not actual, are called 'merely possible.'  Mere possibles are also sometimes referred to as 'unrealized possibles' or 'unrealized possibilities.'

2) Don't confuse the reality of a mere possible with its realization (actualization). A mere possible can be real without being realized just as a proposition can exist without being true.  Indeed, if mere possibles are real, then they are precisely not realized; else they would not be mere possibles.

3) Don't confuse the possibility of a mere possible with the possible itself. Mere possibles are presumably many; their possibility (their being-possible) is presumably one and common to them all. Analogy: there are many true propositions, but their truth is presumably one and common to them all.

4) Don't confuse reality with actuality. The reality of mere possibles is obviously not their actuality. Everything actual is real, but the converse does not follow and we ought not assume it.    

5) In (1) above I used 'item.' 'Item' is the most noncommittal word in my philosophical lexicon.  It is neutral with respect to categorial status, modal status, and ontological status.  Are there nonexisting items? My use of 'item' leaves this question open in the way that 'Are there nonexistent existents?' does not.  Even though 'item' should remind you of the Latin idem, my use of 'item' is so liberal and latitudinarian that it does not rule out the self-diverse item, which is a bona fide item in some Meinongian systems.

One must be careful in one's terminological choices to neither beg questions nor bury them.

6) My present concern is with real, not epistemic or doxastic, possibility. Roughly, the  epistemically/doxastically  possible is that which is possible given what I know/believe. The really possible -- which divides into the actual and the merely possible -- is that which is possible whether or not any knowers/believers exist.  The really possible does not depend on our knowledge or ignorance. To go into a bit more detail:

In ordinary English, epistemic uses of 'possible' are rife.   I inquire, "Is Jones in his office?" The secretary replies, "It's possible." I am not being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with the laws of logic, or with the laws of nature; there is no question about the logical or nomological possibility of Jones' being in his office.   I am being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with what the secretary knows: it is not ruled out by anything she knows.  It's possible for all she knows.  Of course, if the secretary knows that Jones is in his office, or knows something that (she knows) entails that he is in his office, then Jones' presence in his office will be logically consistent with what she knows; but in that case she will not say that it is possible that he be there. She will say, "He's there."  So 'possible' in its epistemic use conveys both consistency with what one knows and ignorance. When I say that such-and-such is epistemically possible, I am saying that it is possible for all I know, but I don't know all about the matter in question. Letting 'S' range over states of affairs and 'P' over persons, we define

D1. S is epistemically possible for P =_df (i) S is logically consistent with what P knows; (ii) S is neither known by P nor known to be entailed by anything P knows.

The reason for clause (ii) is that epistemic uses of 'possible' indicate ignorance. 'It's possible that Jones is in his office,' said by the secretary implies that she does not know whether or not he is in his office.  If she knew that he was in his office, and said what she said, then she would not be using 'possible' in the epistemic way it is used in ordinary English.

7) I take it to be a datum that there are real mere possibilities. For example, at the moment there is exactly one cat in my study. But there might have been two or there might have been none.  The latter two states of affairs are both merely possible and real.  They are merely possible because they are not actual. They are really possible because the possibility of these mere possibles is not parasitic upon anyone's knowledge or ignorance.   The possibles are 'out there,' part of the 'furniture of the world.' Again, the possibility or being-possible of a mere possible is not to be confused with the merely possible item itself. 

8) My writing table is now two inches from the wall. But it might have been now three inches from the wall, where 'now' picks out the same time in both of its most recent occurrences. The table might have been infinitely other distances from the wall as well.  How do I know that? This question pertains to the epistemology of modal knowledge and is off-topic. The present topic is the ontology of the merely possible.  This meditation assumes, or rather takes as a datum, the reality of the merely possible.  Notoriously, however, one man's datum is another man's theory.

9) If there are real mere possibles (individuals, states of affairs . . .), then reality is not exhausted by the actual; it includes both the actual and the merely possible.  If it were so exhausted, all would be necessary, and nothing would be contingent.  The modal distinctions would remain on the intensional plane, but would find no purchase in fact. We would have the extensional collapse of the modal distinctions. Can I prove that there is no such collapse? No.

10) 'Possible' has several senses.  Chief among them are the logical, the metaphysical, and the nomological or physical. The following Euler --not Venn! -- diagram shows how they are related:

This is a large topic by itself. I will just say for present purposes that the ontological problem of the merely possible is concerned  with mere possibles the possibility of which is metaphysical, where the metaphysically possible is that which is admissible both by the laws of formal logic and by the laws of metaphysics.  Here is a candidate law of metaphysics: everything that exists has properties. This is not a formal-logical truth inasmuch as its negation -- Something that exists has no properties -- is not a formal-logical contradiction.   

11) The examples I have given above involving cats and rooms and tables and walls are merely possible state of affairs involving actualia. For example, my torso is now covered with a shirt, but it might not now have been covered with that shirt or any shirt.  Torso and shirt are constituents of an actual and of a merely possible state of affairs, respectively.  But there are possibilia that do not involve actualia.  Let n = the number of actual cats at time t.  Could there not have been n + 1 actual cats at time t?  Surely that is possible. Deny it and you are saying that it is necessary that the number of actual cats at t  be n.  Do you want to say that? In this example, the mere possibility does not involve actualia in the way the mere possibility of my cat's sleeping now involve an actual cat.  You might tell me that the actual world is such that it might have now contained one more cat than it in fact now contains, and so the actual world is the actual item involved in the possibility. Maybe, maybe not. How about the possibility that nothing at all exist? I have argued in these pages that there is no such possibility as the possibility of there being nothing at all. But if there is this possibility, then it is not one that is grounded in, or presupposes, any actual item.

12) Now to the problem.  As I wrote earlier,

. . . the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

Steven Nemes comments:

I would think that once you've admitted the reality of the merely possible, contrary to your (c) above, you've answered the question. The merely possible represents an irreducible ontological category and that's that. Why not?

The Nemes solution is to reject (c).  Accordingly, mere possibles are an irreducible category of beings. This is a version of possibilism, as opposed to actualism, in the metaphysics of modality. One response to Nemes is that the mere admission of the reality of the merely possible does not suffice to establish possibilism.  For the actualist too admits the reality of the merely possible but without admitting that mere possibles constitute an irreducible ontological category. The fact that there is a long-standing and ongoing debate between possibilists and actualists shows that one cannot take the reality of the merely possible to settle the question.

Per Impossibile Counterfactual Conditionals

God is a necessary being. That means: given that God exists, it is metaphysically impossible that he not exist. My opening sentence does not imply that God exists. It merely reports on God's modal status. Let us assume both that God exists and that all truth depends on God.

How might this relation of dependence be formulated?  I find the following formulation perfectly intelligible:  if, per impossibile, God did not exist, truth would not exist either.   In fact, Aquinas says essentially this somewhere in De Veritate.  (It is near the beginning but I can't find the passage.)

The italicized sentence is an example of a per impossibile counterfactual. Here is a second:

If, per impossibile, there were no minds, there would be no mere possibilia.

What say you, Dr. Novak?

Notes on Nicholas Rescher, "Nonexistents Then and Now"

0. This entry is relevant to my ongoing dialog with Dr. Novak about reference to the nonexistent. I hope he has the time and the stamina to continue the discussion. I have no doubt that he has the 'chops.' I thank him for the stimulation. We philosophize best with friends, as Aristotle says somewhere. But to the Peripatetic is also attributed the thought that amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. 

 

 

The Rescher text under scrutiny is from a chapter in his Scholastic Meditations, Catholic UP, 2005, 126-148.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work.  I have added comments in brackets in blue. Bolding added, italics in original.  

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours -- the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology.  All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.]  To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis -- assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.]  For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance -- of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](131)

Rescher wants to say about  the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance.  But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation.  The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized.  What cannot be actualized is not possible; it is impossible. Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item.  He is impossible because he is incomplete. Only the complete (completely determinate) is actualizable. Sherlock is incomplete because he is the creation of  a finite fiction writer: Sherlock has all and only the properties ascribed to him by Conan Doyle. Not even divine power could bring about the actualization of the Sherlock of the Conan Doyle stories.   What God could do is bring about the actualization of various individuals with all or some of Sherlock's properties. None of those individuals, however, would be Sherlock. Each of them would differ  property-wise from Sherlock.

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes.  Describing the "medieval mainstream," (129) Rescher lumps mere possibilia and pure ficta together as entia rationis.  For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27)   Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects.  Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is  genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble?  I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1.  Eliminativism.  The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia.  One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.  On this solution we deny the common presupposition of (a) and (b), namely, that there are merely possible individuals and states of affairs. 

S2.  Conceptualism.  Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs.  There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view.  See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3.  Actualism/Ersatzism.  Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs.  One looks for substitute entities -- actual entities -- to go proxy for the mere possibles.  Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs  of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn.  For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated. 

On this version of actualism, the mind-independent reality of the merely possible is identified with the mind-independent reality of certain actual abstract items. In this way one avoids both eliminativism and constructivism.

S4. Extreme Modal Realism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  David Lewis.  There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta.  The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real.  But no world is absolutely actual.  Each is merely actual at itself.   In this world, I am a philosopher. On extreme modal realism, the possibility of my being an electrical engineer instead is understood as various counterparts of me being electrical engineers in various possible worlds.

S5. Theologism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds.   Consider the possibility of there being unicorns.  This is a mere possibility since it is not actual.  But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds.  There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say.  The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.  We could perhaps say that possibilia enjoy esse intentionale in or before the divine intellect, but lack esse reale unless the divine will actualizes them. 

4.  Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity.  For Rescher,  "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems -- a resolution is automatically available."   Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing.  Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can  pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phraseology.  (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses.  He gives essentially the following argument on p. 141.  This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B.  All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C.  No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete?  Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us.  But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible.  He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible.  Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton  married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs.  There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds.  Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds?  I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary.  But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having.  So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals.  But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

5, How solve the triad?  Novak will put God to work and adopt something along the lines of (S5).  I am inclined to say that the problem, while genuine, is insoluble, and that the aporetic triad is a genuine aporia.

Does Everything Contingent Have a Ground of its Existence?

What is it to be contingent?  There are at least two nonequivalent definitions of 'contingency' at work in philosophical discussions.  I will call them the modal definition and the dependency definition.

Modal Contingency.  X is modally contingent =_df x exists in some but not all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds.  

Since possible worlds jargon is very confusing to many, I will also put the definition like this:  

X is modally contingent =_df x is possibly nonexistent if existent and possibly existent if nonexistent.  

For example, I am modally contingent because I might not have existed: my nonexistence is metaphysically possible.  Unicorns, on the other hand, are also modally contingent items because they are possibly existent despite their actual nonexistence.  It take it that this is what Aquinas meant when he said that the contingent is what is possible to be and possible not to be.  If x is contingent, then (possibly x is and possibly x is not). Don't confuse this with the contradictory, possibly (x is and x is not).

Note that the contingent and the actual are not coextensive.  Unicorns are contingent but not actual, and God and the number 9 are actual but not contingent.  If you balk at the idea that unicorns are contingent, then I will ask you:  Are they then necessary beings? Or impossible beings?  Since they can't be either, then they must be contingent.   Everything is either contingent or non-contingent, and everything non-contingent is either necessary or impossible.

Note also that because unicorns are modally contingent but nonexistent, one cannot validly argue from their modal contingency to their having a cause or ground of their existence.  They don't exist; so of course they have no cause or ground of their existence.  

Existential Dependency.  Now for the dependency definition.  

X is dependently contingent =_df there is  some y such that (i) x is not identical to y; (ii) necessarily, if x exists, then y exists; (iii) y is in some sense the ground or source of x's existence.  

We need something like the third clause in the definiens for the following reason.    Any two distinct necessary beings will satisfy the first two clauses.  Let x be the property of being prime and y the number 9.  The two items are distinct and it is necessarily the case that  if being prime exists, then 9 exists.  But we don't want to say that the  the property  is contingently dependent upon the number.

The two definitions of 'contingency' are not equivalent.  What is modally contingent may or may not be dependently contingent. Bertrand Russell and others have held that the universe exists as a matter of brute fact.  (Cf. his famous BBC debate with Fr. Copleston.)  Thus it exists and is modally contingent, but does not depend on anything for its existence, and so is not dependently contingent, contingent on something.  It is not a contradiction, or at least not an obvious contradiction,  to maintain that the universe is modally contingent but not depend on anything distinct from itself. 'Contingent' and 'contingent upon' must not be confused.  On the other hand, Aquinas held that there are two sorts of necessary beings, those that have their necessity from another and those that have their necessity in themselves. God, and God alone, has his necessity in himself, whereas Platonica have their necessity from God. That is to say that they derive their esse from God; they depend for their existence on God despite their modal necessity.  If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then the denizens of the Platonic menagerie would not exist either.    It follows that Platonica are dependently contingent even though modally necessary.

In sum, modal contingency does not straightaway entail existential dependence, and modal necessity does not straightaway entail existential independence.

So  it is not the case that, as some maintain, "the contingent is always contingent on something else."   Or at least that is not obviously the case: it needs arguing.  One who maintains this absent the arguing ought to be suspected of confusing the two senses of 'contingency' and of making things far too easy on himself.  

The following, therefore, is a bad argument as it stands: The universe is contingent; the contingent, by definition, is contingent on something else; ergo the universe is contingent on something else, and this all men call God.  It is a bad argument even apart from the 'this all men call God' part because the existence of the universe might well be a brute fact in which case it would be modally contingent but not dependent on anything distinct from it for its existence.

What have I accomplished in this entry? Not much, but this much: I have disambiguated 'contingent' and I have shown that a certain cosmological argument fails.  In my book, A Paradigm Theory of Existence, I present an onto-cosmological argument that fares somewhat better.  Mirabile dictu, the book is now available in paperback for a reasonable price!  The bums at Kluwer never told me!

A Most Remarkable Prophecy

The Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man whom you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, came into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man or other with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  This is equivalent to saying that there was no individual Socrates before he came into existence. Before he came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  Not even God can do it.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

The Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.'  Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man whom you prophesied?

Does this question make sense?  Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!"  Does this answer make sense?  

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures.  Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, came into existence at or near the time of his conception.  For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis 

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense.  (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.)  What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man or other with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.  This is equivalent to saying that there was no individual Socrates before he came into existence. Before he came into existence there was no merely possible Socrates.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular:  he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being  accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc.  Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general. 

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general?  Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description.  For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist:  the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence.  Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous.  I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity.  I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's  ontological 'assay' or analysis.  What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is.  From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is?  We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates.  Call it Socrateity.   Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above.    Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself.  His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.  

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"?  Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates.  But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity.  This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist.  It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates.  And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world.  By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.  Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational.  If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence.  It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable.  This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.  

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence.  Not even God can do it.  For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual.  Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence.  (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.)  At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess.  To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it.  If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

Existence, Unity, Possibility, and Actuality: Are There Merely Possible Individuals?

Steven Nemes by e-mail:

Here’s a question for you about existence, perhaps one you could discuss on the blog.

In your book, you argue that existence is ontological unity. I think that’s right. But a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such. What then distinguishes merely possible existence from actual existence?

To put it precisely, the existence of a contingent being is the contingent unity of its ontological constituents.  Such a being is appropriately referred to as a this-such or as a concrete individual.  I assume that existence and actuality are the same: to exist = to be actual. I also assume that existence and Being are the same: to exist = to be.  Thus I reject the quasi-Meinongian thesis forwarded by Bertrand Russell in his 1903 Principles of Mathematics (449) according to which there ARE items that do not EXIST. 

It follows from these two assumptions that there are no individuals that are merely possible. For if there were merely possible individuals, they would have Being, but not existence.

Objection.   "This very table that I just finished building, was, before I built it, a merely possible table.  One and the same table went from being merely possible to being actual.  No temporal individual becomes actual unless it, that very individual, was previously possible.  Now the table is actual; hence it, that very individual, had to have been previously a merely possible table. A merely possible table is a table, but one that does not exist."

Reply. "I deny that a merely possible table is a table.  'Merely possible' here functions as an alienans adjective like 'decoy' in 'decoy duck.'  A decoy duck is not a duck, but a hunk of wood made to appear, to a duck, as a duck. A merely possible table is not a table, but the possibility that there come to exist a table that satisfies a certain description. 

The possibility of there coming to exist a table of such-and-such a description could be understood as a set of properties, or as perhaps a big conjunctive property. Either way, the possibility would not be a possible individual.

I deny the presupposition of your question, Steven, namely, that "a merely possible this-such is a unity as much as an actual this-such."  What you are assuming is that there are merely possible individuals. A merely possible individual is a nonexistent individual, and on the view I take in my existence book, there are no nonexistent individuals. 

The next post -- scroll up -- will help you understand the subtlety of this problematic.

Does Divine Immutability Entail Modal Collapse?

That divine simplicity entails modal collapse is a controversial thesis, but one for which there are strong arguments. Does the same hold for divine immutability? I don't think so. That immutability should entail modal collapse strikes me as based on a simple confusion of the temporal with the modal.

Modal Collapse

In the state of modal collapse, there are no contingent propositions, where a contingent proposition is one that is possibly false if true, and possibly true if false, and where there are no contingent beings, where a contingent being  is one that is possibly nonexistent if existent and possibly existent if nonexistent.  So in the dreaded state of modal collapse, every proposition is either necessarily true or necessarily false, and every being is either necessary or impossible.  

Although one philosopher's datum is often another's (false) theory, I take it to be a datum, a Moorean fact, that, for example, I exist contingently and that many of the propositions about me are contingently either true or false. For example, it is contingently true that I am now blogging, and contingently false that I am now riding my bike, where 'now' picks out the same time. 

I take it, then, that we should want to uphold the modal distinctions and that it is an argument against a theory if it should fail to do so.

Divine Immutability 

In a strong form, the immutability doctrine states that God does not undergo any sort of intrinsic change.  We distinguish intrinsic from relational changes. If Hillary becomes furious at Bill's infidelity, that is an intrinsic change in her.  But there needn't be any corresponding intrinsic change in Bill.  He will change, but relationally by becoming the object of Hillary's wrath.  (And perhaps only relationally if Bill is unaware of Hillary's discovery of his infidelity and the onset of her wrath.) If, however, her rage should vent itself in her conking him on the head with a rolling pin, then intrinsic changes will occur in both parties to this famous marriage.

Similarly, if I start and stop thinking about God, I undergo an intrinsic change, but this intrinsic change in me is a merely relational ('merely Cambridge') change in God, and is insofar forth compatible with God's strong immutability.

Strong immutability, then, is the claim that God is not subject to intrinsic change.

Confusing the Temporal with the Modal

If God is strongly immutable, then any intrinsic property that he has at a given time he has at every time.  But if a thing has a property at every time at which it exists, it does not follow that it has that property necessarily. I'm a native Californian. I always was and I always will be. But that is a contingent fact about me: I might have been born in some other state. So the property of being born in California is one I have contingently despite my having it at every moment of my existence.  The same goes for intrinsic properties. Suppose the universe always existed and always will exist.  That is consistent with the universe's being contingent.  What is always the case needn't necessarily be the case.

Now suppose God always wills the existence of our universe. It does not follow that God necessarily wills the existence of our universe. Nor does it follow that what he wills-- our universe -- necessarily exists. This consideration puts paid to the threat of modal collapse.   Tim Pawl in his IEP article puts it like this:

Divine immutability rules out that God go from being one way to being another way. But it does not rule out God knowing, desiring, or acting differently than he does. It is possible that God not create anything. If God hadn’t created anything, he wouldn’t talk to Abraham at a certain time (since no Abraham would exist). But such a scenario doesn’t require that God change, since it doesn’t require that there be a time when God is one way, and a later time when he is different. Rather, it just requires the counterfactual difference that if God had not created, he would not talk to Abraham. Such a truth is neutral to whether or not God changes. In short, difference across possible worlds does not entail difference across times. Since all that strong immutability rules out is difference across times, divine immutability is not inconsistent with counterfactual difference, and hence does not entail a modal collapse. Things could have been otherwise than they are, and, had they been different, God would immutably know things other than he does, all without change . . . .

Three Theses

First, the divine simplicity doctrine entails modal collapse.  This was argued earlier.

Second, divine simplicity is not to be confused with divine immutability. The first entails the second, but the second does not entail the first.

Third,  divine immutability does not entail modal collapse.

Summa Theologica, Q. 19, Art. 3: Whether Whatever God Wills He Wills Necessarily

This is the question we have been discussing. Let us now see if the answer Thomas gives is satisfactory.  The question is not whether, necessarily, whatever God wills, he wills.  The answer to that is obvious and in the affirmative. The question is whether whatever God wills, he wills necessarily. If so, then God's willing creatures into existence is a necessary willing despite the creatures being contingent. If not, then God's willing contingent creatures into existence is itself contingent.  

Objection 4. Further, being that is not necessary, and being that is possible not to be, are one and the same thing. If, therefore, God does not necessarily will a thing that He wills, it is possible for Him not to will it, and therefore possible for Him to will what He does not will. And so the divine will is contingent upon one or the other of two things, and imperfect, since everything contingent is imperfect and mutable.

This 'objection' strikes me more as an argument for the thesis that whatever God wills he wills necessarily than as an objection to it. The gist of the argument is as follows. If it is not the case that whatever God wills he necessarily wills, then the divine will is in some cases contingent. But the divine perfection rules this out. Ergo, etc.

Reply to Objection 4. Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect; owing to a deficiency in the effect, and not in the cause. Even so, the sun's power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause. In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.

This reply takes us to the heart of the matter.  The solar analogy is arguably lame, so let's just ignore it. 

The way I have been thinking is along the following lines. No contingent effect can have a necessary cause. The effect that presently interests us is the contingent existence of (concrete) creatures.  The cause is not God, but God's willing these creatures into existence ex nihilo.  So I'm thinking that the divine willing whereby the concrete universe of creatures was brought into existence out of nothing had to be a contingent willing - - with disastrous consequences for the divine simplicity.  

For if God is a necessary being, and, as simple, identical to his willing creatures into existence, then his willing is necessary. But then one might be forgiven for thinking that creatures are also necessary.  Bear in mind that the divine will is omnipotent and necessarily efficacious. Or else we run the argument in reverse from the contingency of creatures to the contingency of divine willing. Either way there is trouble for classical theism. 

The Thomist way out is to ascribe the contingency of creatures, not to the contingency of the divine will whereby they are brought into existence,  but to their own ontological deficiency and imperfection.  God, willing his own good, wills creatures as manifestations of his own good. As neither self-subsistent nor purely actual, creatures are mutable and imperfect. Moreover, God has no need of them to be all that he is.  The reality of the ens reallissimum and the perfection of the ens perfectissimum are in no way enhanced by the addition of creatures: God + creatures = God. (More on this 'equation' in a later post.)

Are creatures then nothing at all? Has the simple God like Parmenides' Being swallowed the whole of reality? (More on this later.) 

I would like to accept the Thomist solution, but I am afraid I cannot. If God exists in every possible world, and God is identical to his willing creatures in every possible world, then creatures exist in every possible world -- which  contradicts our assumption that creatures are contingent, i.e., existent in some but not all possible worlds.  To say that the contingency of creatures resides in their ontological imperfection seems to involve a fudging of two distinct senses of contingency:

X is modally contingent (to give it a name) iff x is possible to be and possible not to be. (This is equivalent to: existent in some but not all possible worlds.)

X is ontologically contingent (to give it a name) iff x is radically imperfect in its mode of being and not ontologically necessary (not self-subsistent, simple, purely actual, eternal etc.)

Now if creatures exist at all -- which may be doubted if God + creatures = God -- then they must be contingent in both senses, But then our problem is up and running and the Thomist solution avails nothing. Contingency of creatures in the second sense cannot be read back into God, but modal contingency of creatures can be.

Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute.

Necessary God, Contingent Creatures: Another Round with Novak

In an earlier thread, Lukas Novak writes,

. . . God simply does not need any causal acts to mediate his causal power. He is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately. It is only with respect to this causal power which is an aspect of his essence that we call the selfsame essence an "act" (in the sense of activity).

The above is a response to the line I have been taking, which is essentially as follows. 

God necessarily exists. What's more, he is simple. God creates our universe U. U, having been created, exists. (And it wouldn't have existed had it not been created by God.) But U exists contingently, which implies (given that God created U) that God might not have created U.   Now consider God's creating of U.  This creative action is at least notionally distinct both from God and from U.  On the face of it, we must distinguish among God, God's creative action, and the effect of this action, namely, U.

We now ask: Is the divine creative action necessary or contingent?  I will now argue that it is not necessary.  God exists in every possible world. If his creating of U occurred in every possible world, then U would exist in every possible world. But then U would not be contingent (existent in some but not all worlds), but necessary. Therefore, God's creating of U, given that U is contingent, is also contingent: it occurs in all and only those world in which U exists.  

So God's creating U is contingent. But God is necessary. It follows that God cannot be identical to his creating U.  But this contradicts the doctrine of divine simplicity one of the entailments of which is that God is identical to each of his intrinsic properties. So the following propositions constitute an inconsistent triad, or antilogism.

1) God is simple

2) All created concreta are contingent.

3) No contingent effect has a necessary cause.

Given that the limbs of the triad are collectively inconsistent, one of them must be rejected.

A) Reject simplicity. If God is not simple, then we can say that God is really (and not just notionally) distinct from his creative acts, and that, while God exists in every world, he creates only in some.   This solution upholds the contingency of created concreta, and preserves the intuitive notion that a contingent effect cannot have a necessary cause.

B) Retain simplicity but accept the consequence that creatures are necessary beings.  That is, retain simplicity and accept modal collapse.

C) Retain simplicity, but reject the notion that no contingent effect has a necessary cause.  This, I take it, is Novak's way out.  As I quoted him above, ". . . God simply does not need any causal acts to mediate his causal power. He is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately."

The difference between me and Novak is that I consider the above triad to be an aporia, a problem for which there is no satisfactory solution. Novak, however, thinks that there is a satisfactory rational solution by way of rejecting (3). He accepts divine simplicity, and he rejects modal collapse.  He concludes that there is no difference in God corresponding to the difference between the existence of U and the nonexistence of U.  The creation of U is not the realization of a divine potential to create U, and God's refraining from creating anything is not the realization of a divine potential to refrain from creating.  And this for the reason that there is nothing potential in God: God is purely actual.

Novak's solution satisfies him, but it doesn't satisfy me. It sounds like magic to me.   I find the following unintelligible: "He [God] is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately." The words make sense, of course, but I find that they do not express an intelligible proposition.

Here, I think, is where the discussion must end.

The Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse

The Question

God commands all and only the morally obligatory. But does he command it because it is obligatory, or is it obligatory because he commands it? The question naturally arises, but issues in a dilemma. A dilemma is a very specific sort of problem in which there are exactly two alternatives, neither of which is acceptable. Thus we speak of the 'horns' of a dilemma, and of being 'impaled' on its horns.

Bear in mind the following tripartite distinction. For any agent that issues a command, there is (i) the commanding, (ii) that which is commanded (the content of the act of commanding), and (iii) the relevant normative property of the content.   Contents of commands can be either permissible, impermissible, or obligatory.  Note the ambiguity of 'command' as between the act of commanding, and the content commanded. And note that while finite agents sometimes command what is morally impermissible, this is never the case with God. Everything God commands is morally obligatory.  The question is whether the divine commanding makes the action obligatory, or whether it is obligatory independently of God's command.  In the latter case, God is at most the advocate and enforcer of an obligation but not its legislator.

Horn One

If God commands an action because it is obligatory, then the obligatoriness of the action is not due to God's command, but is logically antecedent to it. God is then subject to an independently existing system of norms that are not in his control. He is then an advocate of the moral order and its enforcer, but not its source, with negative consequences for the divine sovereignty.  God is the Absolute, and the Absolute cannot be dependent on anything external to it for its existence, nature, modal status, or anything else, including the justification of its commands.  The sovereign God is the absolute lord of all orders, including the moral order.

Horn Two

If an action is obligatory because God commands it, then the normative quality of the action -- its being obligatory -- derives from a fact, the fact of God's commanding the action. This is puzzling: how can the mere fact that an agent issues a command make the content of the command objectively binding?  Of course, God is not any old agent: he is morally perfect.  So you can be sure that he won't command anything that is not categorically obligatory. Still, the  move from fact to norm is puzzling. The puzzle is heightened if the agent is free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense.  If God is free in this sense, libertarianly free, then he might not have commanded the action, in which case it would not have been obligatory.  This is an unacceptable result.  If it is impermissible to kill babies for sexual gratification, and obligatory to refrain from such an action, normative properties cannot derive from any being's free will.  For that would make morality arbitrary. The normative proposition It is impermissible to kill babies for sexual gratification, if true, is necessarily true. Its truth value cannot then depend on a contingent command even if the one who commands is God.

Constraints on a Solution

We are assuming that God exists, that morality is objective and not up to the whim of any being, and that God is sovereign over the moral order, and indeed, absolute lord of all orders.  So we cannot solve the dilemma by denying that God exists, or by grasping one or the other of the horns, or by limiting divine sovereignty.  We must find a way between the horns.  If we succeed, we will have shown that the dilemma is a false alternative.  

The problem has two sides. First, how do we get from a fact to a norm? To be precise, how do get from the facticity of a commanding to the normativity of the content commanded? Second, how do we ensure that the norm is absolute?  We would have a solution if it could be shown that the fact just is the norm, and the fact could not have been different.

William Mann's Solution via Divine Simplicity

Mann's solution is built on the notion that, with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, God is not free to will otherwise than he wills. In this way the second horn, and arbitrarity, is avoided. But how can God be sovereign over the moral order if he cannot will otherwise than he wills? If I understand the solution, it is that sovereignty is maintained and the first horn is avoided if the constraint on divine freedom is internal to God as it would be if “absolute values are the expression of that [God's] rational autonomy.” (William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality, Oxford UP, 2015,168) Thus God is not free as possessing the liberty of indifference with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, but he is nonetheless  free as the rationally autonomous creative source of necessary truths and absolute values. God then is the source of necessary truths and absolute values, not their admirer or advocate.  God is not subject to the moral order; he is the source of it. Indeed, he is identical to it. Does Mann's solution require the doctrine of divine simplicity? It would seem so. This doctrine implies that knowing and willing are identical in God.  If so, then the truth value and modal status of necessary truths, including necessary moral truths, cannot be otherwise in which case God cannot will them to be otherwise.

On the doctrine of divine simplicity, then, the Euthyphro Dilemma turns out to be false dilemma: the simplicity doctrine allows for a third possibility, a way between the horns.*  God is Goodness itself, not a good being among others. As such, he just is the content of morality.  The moral order is not external to him nor antecedent to him logically or ontologically: he is not subject to it.  Sovereignty is preserved. Arbitrarity is avoided because God cannot will any moral contents other than the ones he wills.

Problem Solved?

If God is absolutely sovereign, as he must be to be God, then he is sovereign over every order including the MODAL order.  It is cogently arguable, however, that the simplicity doctrine entails the collapse of modal distinctions and thus the collapse of the modal order. 

It looks as if we can solve the Euthyphro problem, but only by generating a different problem. The Euthyphro problem is solved by saying that (i) the obligatory is obligatory because God commands it, but (ii) the contents of the divine commands could not have been otherwise. They could not have been otherwise because these contents are contained within the unchangeable divine nature.  Hence  God is neither subject to an external moral order, nor the arbitrary creator of it.  God is the moral order. In God, the facticity of the commanding and the normativity of the contents commanded are one. 

But if God, because he is absolutely sovereign, cannot be subject to a logically prior MORAL order, then he also cannot be subject to a logically prior MODAL order. As absolutely sovereign, God must be sovereign over all orders. It cannot be that the possible and the necessary subsist in sublime independence of God.  It cannot be that creation is the selective actualization of some proper subset of self-subsisting  mere possibles, or the actualization of one among an infinity of possible worlds.   Creation is not actualization. For then God would not be creating out of nothing, but out of possibles the Being of which would be independent of God's Being. 

God, then, cannot be subject to a modal order independent of him. So one might think to import into God the modal distinctions, for example, the distinction between the merely possible and the actual.  This importation would parallel the importation into the divine nature of the various contents of divine commands. Perhaps it is like this. God entertains mere possibles which, as merely possible, subsist only as accusatives of his thinking, but actualizes some of them, super-adding existence to them.  The mere possibles that need an act of divine actualization in order to exist would then contingently exist, which is of course the result we want.  Unfortunately, the contingency of actual creatures (Socrates, for example, as opposed to his merely possible brother Schmocrates)  entails the possibility of no creatures and of other creatures who remain merely possible. But then we have in God a distinction between his actual and his merely possible creative decisions.  This conflicts with DDS and its commitment to God's being purely actual (actus purus).

Conclusion

The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) allows for a solution of the Euthyphro dilemma with the following advantages: it upholds the existence of God, the objectivity of morality, the non-arbitrarity of the divine will, and God's sovereignty over the moral order. But God, to be God, must be the absolute lord of all orders, including the modal order.  The simplicity doctrine, however, needed to solve the Euthyphro dilemma entails the collapse of the modal order in which case it is not there to for God to be sovereign over. The objectivity of the modal distinctions needs to be upheld just as much as the objectivity of morality. But this is impossible if DDS is true. So while God must be simple to be God, he cannot be simple if if he is the creator of our universe, a universe whose contingency is the point of departure for the ascent to the divine absolute.

Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute!

________________________________

* A dilemma is said to be false if there is a third possibility, and thus a way between the horns.  The contemporary Thomist, Edward Feser, maintains that the Euthyphro dilemma is false:

Divine simplicity also entails, of course, that God’s will just is God’s goodness which just is His immutable and necessary existence. That means that what is objectively good and what God wills for us as morally obligatory are really the same thing considered under different descriptions, and that neither could have been other than they are. There can be no question then, either of God’s having arbitrarily commanded something different for us (torturing babies for fun, or whatever) or of there being a standard of goodness apart from Him. Again, the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option that it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him. 

 

Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and the Difference Principle

The question before us is whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) can be upheld without the collapse of modal distinctions. 

In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed Theology 7, 2013, 181-203), R. T. Mullins asks (footnote omitted):

Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’ He could have existed alone. Yet, God did create the universe. If there is a possible world in which God exists alone, God is not simple. He eternally has unactualized potential for He cannot undo His act of creation. He could cease to sustain the universe in existence, but that would not undo His act of creating. One could avoid this problem by allowing for a modal collapse. One could say that everything is absolutely necessary. Necessarily, there is only one possible world—this world. Necessarily, God must exist with creation. There is no other possibility. God must create the universe that we inhabit, and everything must occur exactly as it in fact does. There is no such thing as contingency when one allows a modal collapse. (195-196)

The foregoing suggests to me one version of the problem.  There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentialities. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world, and is pure act in every possible world.  As a necessary being, God exists in every possible world, and as a simple being, he is devoid of act-potency composition in every world in which he exists. 

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. This implies that any universe God creates contingently exists.

The dyad seems logically inconsistent.   If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. Had God created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised.  Had God created a different universe than the one he did create, then his power to create our universe would have gone unexercised. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

In nuce, the problem is to explain how it can be true both that God is simple and that the universe which God created ex nihilo is contingent.  Clearly, the classical theist wants to uphold both. What is unclear, however, is whether he can uphold both.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real.  The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs. 

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity.  I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter.  But how then avoid modal collapse?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible.  If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary.  Modal collapse ushers in what I cill call modal Spinozism. 

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter?  Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures.  Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

Steven Nemes' Solution

If God created our universe U, and U is contingent, then it is quite natural to suppose that God's creative act is as contingent as what it brings into existence, namely, U. But this is impossible on DDS. For on DDS, God is identical to his creative causing.  This being so, U -- the creatively caused -- exists with the same metaphysical necessity as does God.  The reasoning that leads to this unacceptable conclusion, however, rests on an assumption:

DP. A difference in effect presupposes a difference in the cause. (Nemes, 109)

For example, the difference between U existing and no universe existing entails a difference in God between his actualized power to create U and his unactualized, but actualizable, power to refrain from creating anything. 

Nemes proposes that we reject (DP), at least with respect to divine causality.  (110) Accordingly, the contingency of U's existence does not reflect any contingency in God, even though U is wholly dependent on God for its existence at every moment at which it exists.  So if we reject the Difference Principle, then we can maintain both that the created universe is contingent and that there are no unrealized potentialities in God.  But if we don't reject (DP), then "the argument from modal collapse [against the divine simpicity] is successful." (111)

Is the Nemes Solution Satisfactory?

I say it isn't.  It strikes me as problematic as the problem it is proposed to solve. 

Consider an analogy. In a dark room I turn on a flashlight that causes a circular white spot to appear on a wall. When I turn off the light the spot disappears.  Clearly, the beam of light from the flashlight is the cause and the spot on the wall is the effect. We also note that the beam is not only the originating cause of the spot, but a continuing cause of the spot: the spot depends on the beam at every moment at which the spot exists. In this respect beam-spot is analogous to divine creating- universe existing.  Finally, we note that, just as the spot depends for its existence on the  existence of the beam, and not vice versa, the contingency of the spot depends on the contingency of the beam.   If the spot is contingent, then so must be its cause. Suppose that at time t, the light is on and the spot appears.  To say that the spot is contingent is to say that, at t, t might not have existed. But had the spot not existed at t, then the light would not have been on at t.  Surely it would be absurd to say both that the light is on at t and the spot does not exist at t

Similarly, it seems absurd to say both that the creative causing of U is occurring in every possible world and that U does not exist in every possible world.  Bear in mind that divine causing is necessarily efficacious: it cannot fail to bring about its effect. The divine Fiat lux! cannot be followed by darkness (or no light).   

But of course arguments from analogy prove nothing (assuming the rigorous standards of proof that I favor), and so Nemes would be within his rights were he simply to reject my analogy.  He might insist that just as God is sui generis, the creative relation between God and creatures is sui generis and cannot be modeled in any way.  He might insist that divine causality is unique. In this one case, a causal 'process' that occurs in every possible world -- because said process is identical to God who exists in every world -- has an effect that exists in only some possible worlds.

We are now in the following dialectical situation. Nemes would have us accept DDS and reject DP.  But I see no reason to think that this is any better than accepting DP and rejecting DDS.  Either way, the exigencies of the discursive intellect are flouted. 

An Aporia?

It seems that the proponent of divine simplicity faces a nasty problem.  At the moment, I see no satisfactory solution.

The aporetician in me is open to the thought that what we have here is a genuine aporia, a conceptual impasse, a puzzle  that we cannot solve. God must be simple to be God; the created universe is really contingent. We cannot, however, see how both limbs of the dyad can be true and so we must see them as contradictory, even though they are presumably not contradictory in reality.  

It could be like this: the limbs are both true, but our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us to understand how they could both be true.  Mysterianism may be the way to go.  This shouldn't trouble a theologian too much. After all, Trinity, Incarnation, etc. are mysteries in the end, are they not?  Of course, I am not suggesting the doctrine of divine simplicity can be found in the Bible. 

An Exchange with Lukas Novak

In an earlier thread, I wrote:

At best, a cosmological argument takes us from the contingent universe U to a divine creative act that explains the existence of U. Now this creative act is itself contingent: God might not have created anything. If God is simple, then he is identical to the creative act. Since the act is contingent, God is contingent, and therefore not God by the Anselmian criterion. On the other hand, if God is necessary, then the creative act and U are necessary, which is unacceptable. The following cannot all be true:

1) God is simple. 
2) God is noncontingent.
3) God's creative act is contingent. 

Dr. Novak responded:

God's creative act need not be contingent. It only needs to contingently bring about its effect.

God's efficiency is distinct from created efficiency. A created cause is itself changed by causing (by eliciting de novo the productive act as its accidental form), God is not changed by causing (being for eternity identical to any of its timeless creative acts). God would be the same in all respects had He not caused the world into existence. This is the requirement of His perfection.

Novak's first two sentences makes no sense. If the effect is contingent, then the creative act which is its cause must also be contingent. There is a three-fold distinction on the notional plane among God (the agent of the creative act or action), the creative act itself, and the effect of the creative act.  God is a necessary being. Now if God is identical in reality  to the creative act whereby he creates U, as per DDS, then the creative act must also  be necessary, in which case the created universe cannot be contingent.

One source of confusion here is that 'act' can be used in two ways. To say that God is pure act (actus purus) is not to say that God is pure action; it is merely to say that he is devoid of all potency.  Note also that God is not the cause of the existence of U; the cause is God's creative action.

I can agree with the rest of what Novak says, except for the penultimate sentence, but only if he draws the conclusion that follows from it, namely, that the created universe exists of metaphysical necessity.

REFERENCE: Steven Nemes, "Divine Simplicity Does Not Entail Modal Collapse" in Carlos Frederico, et al. eds., Rose and Reasons: Philosophical Essays, Bucharest: Eikon, 2020, 101-119.

 

Intrinsic Intentionality and Merely Possible Thoughts

I claimed earlier that there are no intrinsically intentional items that lack consciousness.  The claim was made in the context of an attempted refutation of the notion that abstract entities, Fregean senses being one subspecies thereof, could be intrinsically intentional or object-directed. One argument I gave was that (i) No abstract entity is conscious; (ii) Only conscious entities are intrinsically intentional; ergo, (iii) No abstract entity is intrinsically intentional. 

David Gudeman demurs, targeting premise (ii):

I may have a counter-example for you, a class of items that 1. Are intrinsically intentional, 2. Are not conscious. The class of things I have in mind is possible thoughts. For example, right now I am thinking about thoughts, but if I had bought that cherry pie earlier today, I would probably be thinking about the cherry pie. My thought of the cherry pie is possible but not actual, so it is not conscious, but it is about the cherry pie, and therefore intrinsically intentional. Also, if there were no actual objects in the universe there would still be possible minds with possible thoughts--intentional objects that exist in a universe without minds.

I take Dave to be arguing as follows:

1) Every thought (thinking) is intrinsically object-directed.

Therefore

2) Every merely possible thought (thinking) is intrinsically object-directed.

3) Some merely possible thoughts (thinkings) are not conscious.

Therefore

4) Some intrinsically object-directed items are not conscious.

A delightfully seductive argument!

I question the inference from (1) to (2) on the ground that there are no merely possible thoughts.  (1) is true, but (2) is false if there are no merely possible thoughts. 

It is of course possible that I think about cherry pie.  But it doesn't follow that there is a possible thought about cherry pie which somehow subsists on its own.   Possibilities are grounded in actual items. I actually exist and have various powers. Among them are powers to think about this or that.  So, from 'Possibly, I am thinking about x' it does not follow that there is a possible thought about x. 

I believe I have said enough to show that Dave's argument, as I have reconstructed it, is not rationally compelling.

Contingency and Composition

Joe, who describes himself as "a high school student with a passion for philosophy of religion and metaphysics," asked me a long series of  difficult questions. Here is one of them:

After reading [Edward] Feser's Five Proofs, I have had difficulties with the concept of sustaining causes. First, Feser argues  that composites require a sustaining cause in order to "hold them together" or keep them conjoined. But this seems to presuppose that all composite things (be it physical composites or metaphysical composites) are contingent.

 

But why suppose that, necessarily, all composites are contingent? What is incoherent about this:

 

X is a necessary being (i.e. X cannot fail to exist). X has metaphysical parts A, B, and C. Each of A, B, and C are also necessarily instantiated in reality, and the relations between A, B, and C are all necessarily instantiated in reality.

 

Why ought we to rule out this epistemic possibility? This seems to be a necessary being which is composite. It would be a counter-example to the assumption that composition entails contingency (where contingency means can fail to exist).

 

If we take composition broadly enough, composition does not entail contingency.  Consider the set, {1, 3, 5}. Assume that numbers are necessary beings. Then of course the set will also be a necessary being.  Furthermore, the relations that hold between the members of this set hold necessarily. For example, necessarily, 3 < 5, and necessarily, 3 > 1.  So if we think of sets as composite entities, then it is not the case that all composites are contingent.

 

But what Feser is concerned with are material particulars, or material substances, to use the Aristotelian-scholastic jargon, e..g., a horse, a statue, a man.  And of course these cannot be taken to be sets of their metaphysical parts.  If I understand Feser, what he is asking is: what makes a contingent being such as Socrates contingent?  The question is not whether he is contingent, but what makes him contingent. What is the ground of his contingency?  The answer is that Socrates is contingent because he is composite.  Composition or rather compositeness is the ground of contingency. His contingency is explained by his compositeness, in particular, his being a composite of essence and existence. So at the root of contingency is the real distinction (distinctio realis) of essence and existence in finite substances.

 

The claim is not that every composite entity is contingent, but that every contingent substance is contingent in virtue of its being composite. 

 

Now if a contingent substance is contingent in virtue of its being composed of essence and existence, then a necessary being, or rather, a necessary being that has its necessity from itself and not from another, is necessary in virtue of its being simple, i.e., absolutely non-partite.  This is how Thomists feel driven to the admittedly strange and seemingly incoherent doctrine of divine simplicity. 

 

If there is to be an ultimate explanation of the existence of contingent beings, this explanation must invoke an entity that is not itself contingent.  The ultimate entity must exist of metaphysical  necessity and have its necessity from itself.  Thomism as I understand it plausibly maintains that the ground of the divine necessity is the divine simplicity. God is necessary because in God essence and existence are one and the same.

Possible Worlds Again: Thomist versus 'Analyst'

Fr. Matthew Kirby by e-mail:

By the way, in thinking about my comments on the [your] SEP entry I realised that I had used the term "possible worlds" in an idiosyncratic way, one non-standard within the analytical school, applying a Thomist twist to it. Unlike standard usage, I do not include a hypothetical transcendent First Cause as an element within any "possible world", but instead define possible worlds in that context as potential concrete totalities that may result from God's choice with respect to creation. Thus God Himself is not an element of any possible world (though His supernatural actions ad extra can be) on this construal, as possible worlds are each a sum of finitised, dependent, created being/s considered across their development.

 

What Fr. Kirby says certainly make sense.  Talk of God existing in every possible world comes naturally to analytical theists who are concerned to affirm the divine necessity. Such talk, however, is bound to sound strange to those of a traditional bent who quite naturally think of God as the transcendent creator of the world, a creator who could have created some other world or no world at all, and its therefore 'outside of' every possible world.

 

Herewith, some comments in clarification.

 

Let's start with the obvious point that 'world' supports a multitude of meanings. (I once cataloged a dozen or so distinct uses of the term.)  If we use 'world' to refer to the totality of what exists, then, if God exists, he is in the world: he is a member of that all-inclusive totality of entities.  If, on the other hand, we use 'world' to refer to the totality of creatures, where a creature is anything at all that is created by God, then God is not in the world.  God, after all, does not create himself: he is the uncreated creator of everything distinct from himself.  So God does not count as a creature.

 

So far, then, two senses of 'world.' World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. God is in the first totality, but not in the second. But a Thomistic theist such as Fr. Kirby might balk at my placing God in the totality of entities.  If God exists or is, however, then God is an entity.  (I define an entity as anything that is or exists.)  To put it in Latin, even if God is esse, he is nevertheless ens, something that is.  God is at once both Being (esse) and ens (being).  Note my careful distinction between the majuscule and miniscule  'B/b.'  In fact, if God is ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent Being, then he can't be other than every being; he must be both Being and being.  God is Being in its prime instance, which is to say: God is both esse and ens, Being and being. More on this later, since Fr. Kirby seems to disagree.

 

Unless one is treading the via negativa with Dionysius the Areopagite and Co., one must admit that God is. 

 

I hasten to add that, while God is both esse and ens, and therefore is, he is not an ens among entia, a being among beings. So I grant that God fits somewhat uneasily within the totality of entities. For while he is an entity, he is the one being that is also identical to Being. (How is this possible? Well, that is the problem  or perhaps mystery of divine simplicity.) Still, God is.

 

I have distinguished two senses of 'world.'  World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. But there is a third sense: world as a maximal state of affairs.  "The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things." (These are the first two propositions of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)  This is pretty close to the main (not the only) analytic understanding of 'world' in talk of possible worlds.

 

Here, then, is one  'analytic' approach. The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things could have been or could be. The actual world is the total way things are, but not the things that are that way. Thus the actual world is not the same as the universe, whether physical or physical plus any nonphysical items there  are.  Why not? 

 

The plausible line to take is abstractist. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions and thus abstract entities or maximal (abstract) states of affairs, as on A. Plantinga's scheme in The Nature of Necessity.  They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace that mad dog extreme modal realist, David Lewis, may his atheist bones rest in peace.  If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings.  So every possible world exists in every possible world.

The actual world is a possible world. This is because everything actual is possible. But of course the actual world is not merely possible. Mere possibility and actuality are mutually exclusive.

There is a plurality of possible worlds. This is because the possible outruns the actual: the set of actualia is a proper subset of the set of possibilia. So if there are possible worlds at all, there are many of them. If you say that there is only one possible world, the actual world, then that leads to the collapse of modal distinctions, or, to put it less dramatically, the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary. This view, call it modal Spinozism, cannot be dismissed out of hand. But I will not here argue for the reality of modal distinctions. That is something we are now presupposing.

What I have just sketched is at odds with Fr. Matt's quite reasonable view that (merely) possible worlds are "potential concrete totalities that may result from God's choice with respect to creation." The actual world would then be the actual concrete totality of creatures.   On this view God is not a member of any possible world.

Fr. Kirby and I will agree that God is a necessary being. An analytic theist will express this by saying  that God exists in all possible worlds.  Given that worlds are maximal propositions, and actuality is truth, to say that God exists in every possible world is to say that God exists according to every world. 'In' therefore means 'according to.'  So no matter which world is actual, God exists.

I see no harm in talking the analytic way.  I see no harm in saying that God, if he exists, exists in every world, and if he does not exist, then he exists in no world.  That is a graphic, Leibnizian way of portraying God's non-contingency where a non-contingent being is one that is either necessary or impossible.  It is just a way of saying that If God exists, then he exists no matter how things are.

Up to a point, then we can achieve a rapprochement between the analytic way of talking and the Thomist way. But only up to a point.  For a Thomist, it is the divine simplicity that is the ground of the divine necessity.  (God is necessary because he is simple; it is not the case that he is necessary because he exists in all possible worlds. Compare: The biographies of Lincoln say he was assassinated because he was; he wasn't assassinated because they say he was.)  And for a Thomist, God cannot be subject to the system of possible worlds; said system must be grounded in the divine intellect.  More needs to be said. But it is Saturday Night and time to punch the clock,  pour myself a drink. and cue up some oldies.

Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford

Here, at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."  Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual.  [. . .]

God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of 'Contingency'

Fr. Aidan Kimel wants me to comment on his recent series of posts about divine simplicity, freedom, and the contingency of creation. In the third of his entries, he provides the following quotation:

As Matthew Levering puts it: “God could be God without creatures, and so his willing of creatures cannot have the absolute necessity that his willing of himself has” (Engaging the Doctrine of Creation, p. 103). That is the fact of the case, as it were. Granted the making of the world by a simple, immutable, and eternal Deity, we have no choice but to accept the apparent aporia:

Indeed, there is no ‘moment’ in God’s eternity in which he does not will all that he wills; there is no God ‘prior’ to God’s will to create. In this sense, God can be said to will necessarily everything that he wills. The potency or possibility stems not from God’s will, but from the contingent nature of the finite things willed; they do not and cannot determine the divine will. (Levering, p. 103)

The problem is to understand how the following  propositions can all be true:

1) There is no absolute necessity that God create: "God could be God without creatures."

2) God created (better: ongoingly creates and sustains) the universe we inhabit.

3) God, being simple or metaphysically incomposite, is devoid of potency-act composition and unexercised powers: God is pure act.

4) The universe we inhabit, and indeed any universe God creates, is modally contingent: it does not exist of metaphysical necessity.

The problem, in brief, is to understand how a universe that is the product of a divine act of willing that is necessary (given God's simplicity) can yet be contingent. Levering's answer does not help at all. In fact, he seems to be confusing two senses of contingency when he says that "the contingent nature of the finite things willed" does not determine the divine will.  That's right, it doesn't and for the simple reason that the finite things willed depend entirely on the divine will and are in this sense contingent upon the divine will; but this is not the relevant sense of 'contingency.' Let me explain.

In the modal sense, a contingent item is one that is possible to be and possible not to be, as Aquinas says somewhere. In 'possible worlds' jargon, x is modally contingent =_df x exists in some but not all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds.  

In the dependency sense, x is dependently contingent =_df there is  some y such that (i) x is not identical to y; (ii) necessarily, if x exists, then y exists; (iii) y is in some sense the ground or source of x's existence. 

It is important to see that an item can be (a) modally contingent without being dependently contingent, and (b) dependently contingent without being modally contingent.

Ad (a). If the universe is a brute fact, as Russell (in effect) stated in his famous BBC debate with Copleston, then the universe exists, exists modally contingently, but has no cause or explanation of its existence.  If the universe is a brute fact, then of course it does not depend on God for its existence.  Its existence is a factum brutum without cause or explanation. It is contingent, but not contingent upon anything. It is modally but not dependently contingent.

Ad (b). Not all necessary beings are "created equal."  That is because one of them, God, is not created at all. The others are creatures, at least for Aquinas. (A creature is anything that is created by God.) The number 7 serves as an example, as does the proposition that 7 is prime.  That proposition is a necessary being. (If it weren't it could not be necessarily true.)  But it has its necessity "from another," namely, from God, whereas God has his necessity "from himself."  The doctor angelicus himself makes this distinction.

These so-called 'abstract objects' -- not the best terminology but the going terminology -- are creatures, and, insofar forth, dependent on God, and therefore contingent upon God, and therefore (by my above definition), dependently contingent. They are dependently contingent but modally necessary. 

Now let's apply the distinction to our problem. The problem, again, is this: How can the product of a necessary creating be contingent? One might think to solve the problem as follows.  God necessarily creates, but what he creates is nonetheless contingent because  what he creates is wholly dependent on God for its existence at every moment. But this is no solution because it involves an equivocation on 'contingent.'

The problem is: How can the product of a modally necessary creating be modally contingent? 

Think of it this way. (I assume that the reader is en rapport with 'possible worlds' talk.) If God is simple, and he creates U in one world, then he creates U in all worlds. But then U exists in every world, in which case U is necessary. But U is contingent, hence not necessary. Therefore, either God does not exist or God is not simple, or U is not a divine creation.  

Fr. Kimel wanted me to comment on his posts. One comment is that they are top-heavy with quotations.  Quote less, argue and analyze more.

Now I would like the good padre to tell me whether he agrees with me.  I think he just might inasmuch as he speaks of an aporia.  We have good reasons to believe that God is simple, and we have good reasons to believe that the created universe is modally contingent. Suppose both propositions are true. Then they must be logically consistent.  But we cannot understand how they could both be true. So what do we do?

One way out is to jettison the divine simplicity. (But then we end having to say that God is a being among beings and neither I nor Kimel will countenance that, and for good reasons.) A second way is by denying that the created universe is contingent, either by maintaining that it is necessary or by denying that there is any real modality, that all (non-deontic) modality is epistemic.  The second way leads to a load of difficulties.

A third way is by arguing that there is no inconsistency. But I have argued that there is both above and in other recent posts dealing with the dreaded 'modal collapse.'  And it seems to me that my argumentation is cogent.

Well suppose it is. And suppose that the relevant propositions are all true. There is yet another way out. We can go mysterian.  The problem is a genuine aporia. It is insoluble by us. God is simple; he freely created our universe; it is modally contingent.  How is this possible? The answer is beyond our ken. It is a mystery.

Now if Fr. Kimel is maintaining something like this, then we agree.

Corrigendum (9/25). A reader points out, correctly, that in the above graphic the gentleman on the left is not Fr. Copleston, but A. J. Ayer.

Is Talk of 'Possible Worlds' Wholly Dispensable?

I made a bold claim earlier:

If I am right, the patois of possible worlds is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every [modal] point we want to make without engaging in possible worlds talk.  What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples. 

Here is a candidate counterexample that I borrow from Barbara Vetter, 'Can' Without Possible Worlds, 22:

(CC) Someone can see us.

This is an alethically or as Vetter would say "dynamically" modal statement. It is modal but not expressive of either epistemic or deontic modality. Interestingly, (CC) is susceptible of being read either de re or de dicto:

(DR) There is a person who can see us.

(DD) It is possible that someone see us.

(DR) commits us to an actual person who is able to see us.  (DD) does not. The first entails the second, but the second does not entail the first. So the two readings are non-equivalent.  Suppose that no actual person can see us. Suppose, that is, that no actual person has both the ability to see us and is positioned in such a way that he can exercise his ability. Even so, it is  'surely' possible that there be such a person. There could have been a person, distinct from every actual person, who sees us. 

So (DD) is a true alethically modal statement whose truth is not grounded in, or made true by, a power or ability of any actual item.

(DD) would thus appear to be a counterexample to Vetter's "potentiality semantics" according to which "all dynamic modality is de re . . . ." (22)  It seems that (DD) expresses a 'free-floating' possibility, one not grounded in any actual concrete thing's power or potentiality. If so, then 'possible worlds' talk might not be wholly dispensable.  

One response to the putative counterexample is rejectionist: Vetter toys with  simply rejecting (DD) as a statement of dynamic modality by suggesting that it is really an example of epistemic possibility (23).

I fail to see, however, how (DD) could be construed as epistemic.  The idea is not that, for all we know, someone can see us, but that it is really possible, apart from our knowledge and ignorance, that there be someone who can see us.  In the actual world, no one can see us now. But 'surely' there is a possible world, very much like the actual world, in which someone can see us now.  If there is this possibility, it is real, not epistemic. 

But there is another line of rejection that Vetter does not clearly distinguish from the first.  And that is simply to say that her topic is dynamic modality, the sort of real modality that we encounter in actual changing things, and not real modality in general.   'Dynamic' is from the Greek dynamis which in Latin is potentia, whence our 'potency' and 'potentiality.' The second way of rejection, then, is to dismiss (DD) as simply off-topic.

But then her thesis is less interesting: it is not the thesis that all alethic modality is de re, but that only the modality of actual concrete things subject to change is de re.  If this is her thesis, then it seems we need possible worlds to accommodate such de dicto possibilities as (DD). 

Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality

This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal collapse if it entails that, for every x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  

In God's Powers and Modality: A Response to Mullins on Modal Collapse (no bibliographical information provided, date, or author's name, but presumably by someone named 'Lenow') we read:

Our problem is not with the notion that God has created the world; it is with the fear that we will be forced by divine simplicity to say that God has created the world necessarily. 

[. . .]

I believe that the recent work of Barbara Vetter offers an account of potentiality and modal grounding capable not only of resisting modal collapse, but of doing so along the traditional Thomist lines Mullins rejects as incoherent. Vetter presents us with the theoretical resources needed to affirm divine simplicity without forcing a breakdown in our modal language, and thus allows us to avoid being cornered into asserting that God creates necessarily or that all creaturely events occur necessarily.

We shall see.

What Vetter calls the “standard conception” of a dispositionalist account of modality runs roughly as follows. Objects possess dispositional properties: a vase, for example, possesses the property of fragility; an electron possesses the property of repelling other particles with a negative charge; I have the ability to learn how to play the violin. (3)

I am well-disposed (pun intended) toward this sort of view. 

I am seated now, but I might not have been. I might have been standing now or in some other bodily posture. What makes this true? What is the ontological ground of the (real, non-epistemic) possibility of my not being seated now?  As useful as possible worlds talk is for rendering modal concepts and relations graphic, it is of no use for the answering of this question if we take an abstractist line on possible worlds as sanity requires that we do. On the other hand, David Lewis' concretist approach is, if I may be blunt, just crazy. 

The best answer invokes my presently unexercised ability to adopt a physical posture other than that of the seated posture, to stand up for example.  Ultimately, the ground of real modality is in the powers, abilities, capacities, dispositions, potencies, tendencies, and the like of the things the modal statements are about.

The typical wine glass is fragile: it is disposed to shatter if struck with moderate force. Fragility is a stock example of a dispositional property.  But fragility comes in degrees.  Think of a spectrum of breakability from the most easily breakable items all the way up to items that are breakable only with great difficulty such as rocks and metal bolts and steel beams. We do not apply 'fragile' to things like steel beams, but they too are breakable. 

Yet Vetter is most interested in the property that characterizes all the objects on
this spectrum: the possibility of being broken, the manifestation that she takes to
individuate this property. This modal property that extends from one end of this spectrum
to the other she calls a potentiality—in this case, the potentiality of a thing’s being
breakable.(4)

Now let's see if Vetter's power theory of modality solves our problem.  The problem can be put as follows without possible worlds jargon. There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.  

1) If God is simple, then he is pure act (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be.  Given that God is simple, there can be no real distinction in him between potency and act. This is necessarily true  because God exists of metaphysical necessity and is essentially pure act.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a  different universe, or no universe at all. Had he created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised.  In that case he would not be pure act: he would harbor an unactualized potential.

The dyad is logically inconsistent. What I called a tension looks to be a contradiction. If (1) is true, then it is impossible that God have unexercised powers such as the never-exercised power to create.  But if (2) is true, it is possible that God have unexercised powers. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

If we hold to (1), then we must reject (2). The upshot is modal collapse. For given that God willed our universe with a will that is automatically efficacious, both the willing and the willed are necessary. And so the existence of Socrates is necessary and the same goes for his being  married to Xanthippe and his being the teacher of Plato, etc.

To what work can we put Vetter’s theory in forestalling the threat of modal collapse? Consider God’s will, using Vetter’s language, as an intrinsic maximal first-order potentiality to will God’s own infinite goodness as the ultimate and perfect end of the divine nature. Let me take each descriptor in turn. First, this potentiality is intrinsic, because it does not depend upon any external circumstances for its manifestation and is not possessed jointly. Second, it is maximal, because God cannot fail to manifest this potentiality. As Vetter argued, something is maximally breakable if it is not possible for it not to break—it will break under any circumstances. Similarly, the willing of God’s goodness as end is a potentiality that can be possessed in degrees: rocks do not seem to possess it at all, demons possess it only to the extent that their wills remain a corrupted version of their original unvitiated creation, humans possess it to a greater extent in that the possibility of redemption remains open to them, angels possess it in the highest created degree as a gift from God; yet God “possesses” this potentiality in qualitatively different fashion, possessing it maximally because it is identical with God’s nature—God cannot fail to will God’s goodness. Third, this is a potentiality simpliciter—that is, a first order iterated potentiality, rather than as a potentiality to acquire some other potentiality; the doctrine of divine simplicity removes the possibility of any such composition. Finally, to avoid the threat of modal collapse, this must be a multi-track potentiality, multiply realizable (as are most potentialities); in effect, this means that God is capable of willing God’s goodness in multiple ways, but that no one instance of such willing is any more or any fuller a manifestation of this potentiality than any other such willing. Defenders of divine simplicity typically hold that God’s life is itself full and infinite goodness, lacking nothing.[ . . .] Consequently, had God willed to exist without creation, God would not have willed a lesser goodness than God has willed in creating the world; similarly, had God willed the creation of a different world, God would not have willed a lesser (or greater) goodness than God has willed in creating this one. Each of these acts of willing would have produced different effects, to be sure—but in each case, the potentiality manifested is the same, the potentiality to will God’s infinite goodness as ultimate end.

What is the argument here? It is none too clear.  But one key notion is that of a maximal potentiality. A maximal potentiality is one that cannot fail to be manifested.  An example of a non-maximal potentiality is that of a wine glass to break into discrete pieces when dropped onto a hard surface or struck. That disposition need never be manifested. (Imagine that the glass ceases to exist by being melted down, or maybe God simply annihilates it.) Or think of all the abilities that people have but never develop.

Breakability looks to be a candidate for the office of maximal potentiality. It cannot fail to be manifested. "As Vetter argued, something is maximally breakable if it is not possible for it not to break—it will break under any circumstances." This is a strange formulation. It is true that some things are such that they must eventually break down. But this is not to say that they will break under any circumstances. But let that pass.

Consider now God's power to will his own goodness. We may grant that this is a power that cannot fail to be exercised or manifested. Since it is not possible for God not to exercise this power, it is no threat at all to the divine simplicity. There is no real distinction between God and his willing his own goodness. God's willing his own goodness just is his power to will his own goodness.  This power is plainly compatible with God's being pure act.

But how does this avoid modal collapse?  

Finally, to avoid the threat of modal collapse, this must be a multi-track potentiality, multiply realizable (as are most potentialities); in effect, this means that God is capable of willing God’s goodness in multiple ways, but that no one instance of such willing is any more or any fuller a manifestation of this potentiality than any other such willing.

The second key idea, then, is that of the multiple realizability of liabilities and potentialities and such. I am not now actually sick, but I am liable to get sick, or I have the potential to get sick, in many different ways.  I can get sick from bad food, or polluted water, or a virus can attack me, etc.  My liability to get sick is multiply realizable. The same goes for active powers and abilities.  My power to express myself is realizable in different ways, in writing, in speech, in different languages, using sign language etc. 

God's power to will his own goodness is realizable by creating our universe, some other universe, or no universe at all. So it too is multiply realizable. Fine, but how does this solve the problem? 

Suppose I will to buy whisky. I go to the liquor story and say, "I want whisky!"  The proprietor says, "Very well, sir, would you like bourbon or scotch or rye or Irish?"  If I insist that I just want whisky, I will learn that whisky is not to be had. One cannot buy or drink whisky without buying or drinking either bourbon or scotch or rye or Irish or . . . .

It is the same with God. He cannot will his own goodness 'in general'; he must will it in some specific way, by willing to create this universe or that universe or no universe.

But then we are back to our problem. For whatever he does, whether he creates or not, is necessary and we have modal collapse.  The modal collapse that we all agree is in the simple God spreads to everything else.

As far as I can see, Lenow's response to Mullins fails.

UPDATE (9/4). Joe Lenow writes,

Hi Bill—I am Spartacus. Thanks for engaging the paper. 

 

This is a version of the argument from a conference presentation a couple of years ago; hadn't realized that the conference papers were public view. I've got a much more carefully worked-out version of the argument presently under review; please find it attached. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on it!

 

Best wishes,

 

Joe Lenow

Resident Assistant Professor of Theology

Creighton University

I will have to study Professor Lenow's latest version. It cannot be reproduced or discussed here, of course, since it is under review.

From the Mailbag: Modality and Perfection

Daniel C. writes,

A quick remark on your recent possible worlds post. 

You only mention it in  passing but one thing possible worlds talk surely does throw into sharp relief is the issue of the modality of modal statements i.e. if a certain proposition is possibly true is it necessarily possibly true or merely possibly possibly true? To the best of my knowledge most pre-modern metaphysicians simply presumed the truth of the Brouwer axiom (Leibniz and Scotus) or of S5. Far be it from me to challenge these venerable principles but as far as I know very few thought of disputing them before the question could be phrased in terms of accessibility relations between worlds.

Your general point is important and correct: possible worlds talk allows for the rigorous formulation of questions about the modal status of modal statements, which in turn hinges on accessibility relations between worlds.  But I hope you are not suggesting that the Brouwer axiom is the same as the characteristic S5 axiom. I am not a logician, but my understanding is that they are not.

 

Brouwer Axiom: p --> Nec Poss p. That is to say, if a proposition is true, then it is necessarily possibly true.

 

Characteristic S5 axiom: Poss p --> Nec Poss p. That is, if a proposition is possibly true, then it is necessarily possibly true.

Also: On the contrary, I say that God's status as a necessary being follows from His perfection rather than simplicity (although the former may entail the latter as Anselm certainly thought).

I take it that a perfect being is one that possesses all perfections. The Plantingian gloss on 'perfection' seems good enough: a perfection is a great-making property. So a perfect being is one that possesses all great-making properties and the maximal degree of those great-making properties that admit of degrees. 

Now A. Plantinga famously denies the divine simplicity while upholding the divine perfection. I take it we all agree that God is a necessary being.  That than which no greater can be conceived cannot be a mere contingent being. But what makes a necessary being greater than a contingent being? On a possible worlds approach, it will presumably be the fact that a being that exists in all worlds is greater than one that exists in some but not all worlds. It is a matter of quantity of worlds.

But then I will press the question: what makes it the case that God exists in all possible worlds?  What grounds this fact? My answer: the divine simplicity, which implies the identity in God of essence and existence.  Divine perfection is not enough. For God could be perfect in Plantinga's sense while harboring a real internal difference between essence and existence. But this leaves open the question as to why God is necessary.

If you say that God is necessary because he exists in all worlds, then you give a bad answer. It is true that God exists necessarily iff all world-propositions say he exists. But it doesn't follow that God is necessary because all world-propositions say he exists. It is the other way around: he exists according to every world-proposition because he is necessary!

Mundane example. Am I seated because the proposition BV is seated is true? No. The proposition is true because I am seated. The truth-maker is what makes the truth true; it is 'bass ackwards' to say that truths make states of affairs exist.  

Same with God. It is the divine necessity that makes it true that God exists in (i.e., according to) every possible world, and not the other way around. But to be necessary in the unique way that God is necessary, a way he does not share with garden-variety necessary beings such as the number 9 and the set of prime numbers, God must be metaphysically simple.

Why Talk of 'Possible Worlds'?

 This from a commenter:

I have a question about a tangential matter, in case you care to respond to it. You say [in your discussion of divine simplicity and modal collapse] that 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.

The notion of possible worlds dates back at least to G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) but the current vogue began roughly in the middle of the 20th century when philosophers and logicians applied themselves to the formal semantics of the different systems of (alethic) modal logic. Now this is a highly technical topic but the technicalities can be avoided for present purposes.  I will assume the S5 axiom set. 

Assumption: reality has a modal structure

I will also assume that reality has a modal structure, that modality is somehow ingredient in extramental reality. Thus modality is not a merely epistemic/doxastic matter.  For example, Hillary could have won in 2016. It was really possible for her to have won. Had she worked harder and smarter, kept her trap shut about the 'deplorables,' etc., then she probably would have won.  Things really could have gone otherwise, and this possibility is not parasitic upon our ignorance of all the factors involved in her losing. 

The utility of talking the talk

As I see it, the utility of 'possible worlds' talk is that it allows for an especially  perspicuous representation of modal relationships in extensional terms.  And it seems to me that one can talk the talk without walking the walk. That is, one can  make use of 'possible worlds' (PW) jargon without taking on too many heavy-duty ontological commitments. What do I mean? One thing I mean is that one can employ PW jargon without buying into David Lewis' extreme modal realism. For Lewis, possible worlds are maximal mereological sums of concreta. One can surely talk the talk without walking that walk. How?

Sketch of an abstractist approach to possible worlds

A much saner way of thinking about possible worlds is as follows. If the Lewisian way is concretist, the following way is abstractist: possible worlds are abstract objects, maximal Fregean propositions on one abstractist approach.

0) The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things could have been or could be. Let that be our intuitive starting point.

The actual world is the total way things are, but not the things that are that way. Thus the actual world is not the same as the universe, whether physical or physical plus any nonphysical items there  are.  Surprised? Think about it!

1) The actual world is a possible world. This is because everything actual is possible. But of course the actual world is not merely possible. Mere possibility and actuality are mutually exclusive.

2) There is a plurality of possible worlds. This is because the possible outruns the actual: the set of actualia is a proper subset of the set of possibilia. So if there are possible worlds at all, there are many of them. If you say that there is only one possible world, the actual world, then that leads to the collapse of modal distinctions, or, to put it less dramatically, the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary. This view, call it modal Spinozism, cannot be dismissed out of hand. But I will not here argue for the reality of modal distinctions. That is something we are now presupposing.

3) There is and can be only one actual world. This follows from the maximality property of worlds. Whatever one's exact conception of a world, worlds are all-inclusive totalities. (So much is built into the very word, 'world.') If a world is an abstract state of affairs, as A. Plantinga maintains, then it must be a maximal state of affairs: one that includes every state of affairs with which it is logically consistent. If a world is a (Fregean) proposition, then it must be a maximal proposition: one that entails every proposition with which it is logically consistent. These maximal objects are so big that, to employ a chemical metaphor, they are 'saturated': adding another member to them would 'precipitate' a contradiction. So there cannot be two or more actual worlds.

4) There must be an actual world. It cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. If every world were merely possible, then that would be the case, actually the case, which implies that the total way things are would include its actually being the case, which implies that there would be, after all, an actual world. So it cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. Think about it.

5) Possibilities come in world-sized packages: necessarily, if state of affairs S is possible, then there is a world W such that W includes S. This amounts to a denial of 'isolated' or 'worldless' possibilities. I am now blogging, but I might have been now sleeping, where both occurrences of 'now' pick out the very same time. Let S = BV's sleeping now. Had S been actual now, everything would have been different in a few major ways and in an infinity of miniscule ways. So if I had been sleeping now a world different from the world that is actual would have been actual.

6) Actuality is absolute, not world-relative. If by #2 there is a plurality of possible worlds, and by #3 there is only one actual world, then there is a distinction between merely possible worlds and that privileged possible world that is the actual world. Although every world is actual at itself, only one world is actual simpliciter, actual period.

Compare: although every time is present at itself, only one time is present simpliciter. This comparison of course assumes (controversially) that the B-theory of time is false, the theory according to which time is exhausted by McTaggart's B-series, the series of events ordered by the relations earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. I am assuming that in addition to the B-relations there are also the monadic A-properties of pastness, presentness, and futurity, and that these properties are instantiated.

'Now' of course is an indexical expression: it picks out the time of its tokening. Tokened at midnight, it picks out midnight, at noon, noon. But is 'actual' an indexical? Does its reference depend on the context of utterance so that, tokened in this world it refers to this world, tokened in another, to that other? That's what David Lewis maintains, but I say 'actual' is not an indexical. When I say that this world, our world, is actual, I mean to ascribe to it the monadic property of actuality, a property which only one world can have.

There are many possible worlds, but only one is actual. Furthermore, the one that is actual might not have been actual. So the one that is actual is contingently actual. If that were not the case, the merely possible worlds would not be possible. For whatever is possible, is possibly actual. The worlds that do not bear the privilege of actuality could have borne it.

7) X exists in/at world W =df were W actual, X would exist.  

8) X is a contingent being =df X exists in some but not all possible worlds. It follows from this definition that something, Pegasus say, can be a contingent being even if it does not actually exist. If the word 'being' throws you, substitute 'item.'

9) X is a necessary being =df X exists in all possible worlds.

10) X is an impossible being =df X exists in no possible world.

11) X is actual =df X exists in the actual world, the one world that happens to be actual.

12) Puzzle: It looks as if, on the one hand, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction. On the other hand, it is surely the case that the actual world might not have been actual. The puzzle is solved by distinguishing two uses of  'the actual world.' It can be used as a Kripkean rigid designator that picks out one particular world, this world, our world, and does so in every possible world. Used in this way, 'The actual world is not actual' is possibly true. But 'the actual world' can also be used as a definite description that applies to whichever world happens to be actual. Used in this second way, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction.

13) But what exactly is a possible world? I take an abstractist line. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions or maximal (abstract) states of affairs. They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace David Lewis. If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings. (See #9 above.) So every possible world exists in every possible world.

If actuality is truth, and individuals cannot be true (in the exact sense in which a proposition can be true), then perhaps there is a problem with #11 above.

14) If worlds are maximal Fregean propositions, then no concretum such as Socrates can exist in any world in the manner of a constitutent. This is because concreta are not among the constituents of Fregean propositions. Therefore, to say that there is a possible world in which Socrates exists but dies in battle, is to say that there is a maximal proposition according to which Socrates dies in battle. 

Restriction to alethic modalities

The concern here is with alethic modality, not deontic or epistemic modality. By alethic modalities I understand the modalities of truth, of existence, and of property-possession.

Truth

It is necessary that 2 is a prime number, impossible that 2 is an an odd number, and contingent that 2 is the number of my cats. In PW jargon: 

Every metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is prime* is true in w.
No metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is odd* is true in w.
Some (but not all) metaphysically possible worlds are such that *2 is the number of my cats* is true in w.

If we quantify over possible worlds, we can understand the modal terms 'necessary,' 'impossible,' and 'contingent' by analogy with the quantifiers of standard, first-order predicate logic: 'every,' 'no,' 'some.'  And we can then set up a modal square of opposition in analogy to the standard square of opposition.

 

Isn't that neat? The modal relationships fairly jump out at you. Necessarily p entails possibly p. Of course. What is true is true in every world is true in some world, but not conversely.

When I say that the PW representation of modal propositions and inferences is extensional, all I mean is that the representation involves quantifying over possible worlds assumed as given.

Existence and Property-Possession

A necessary being is one that exists in all worlds; an impossible being one that exists in no worlds; a contingent being is one that exists in some but not all worlds. If x has a property essentially, then x has the property in every world in which x exists; if x has a property accidentally, then x has it in some but not all of the worlds in which x exists. If a necessary being has a property essentially, we can say that it has the property necessarily in that there is no world in which it does not have the property. Thus the number 7 is necessarily prime and God is necessarily omniscient.  Socrates, by contrast, is essentially human but not necessarily human.

An important Euthyphro-type question

Now let's dig a little deeper.

God is a necessary being. He exists in every world. But does he exist in every world because he is necessary, or is he necessary because he exists in every world?  I say the former.  His metaphysical necessity grounds and thus explains his existence in every world.  He exists according to every maximal proposition because he is metaphysically necessary.  But what grounds the divine necessity? The divine simplicity: existence and essence are one in God.

Now take Socrates. He is a contingent being: he exists in some but not all possible worlds.  But does he exist in some but not all worlds because he is contingent, or is he contingent because he exists in some but not all worlds? I say the former. Only some world-propositions say he exists because he is contingent.  But what makes him contingent? One answer is that he is contingent because there is in him and in all contingent beings that actually exist a real distinction between essence and existence.

Answering the reader's question

The reader asked about the advantage of PW talk.  My answer is that such talk allows for an especially perspicuous representation of modal propositions and relationships.   

If I am right, the patois of PW is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every point we want to make without engaging in PW talk.  What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples. I have one in mind right now. Stay tuned. 

More on Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

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. 

Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

Fr. Aidan Kimel would like me to discuss  the question whether the doctrine of divine simplicity entails the collapse of modal distinctions.  I am happy to take a crack at it.  I take my cue from a passage in a paper Fr. Kimel kindly sent me.  In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed Theology 7, 2013, 181-203), R. T. Mullins asks (footnote omitted):

Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’ He could have existed alone. Yet, God did create the universe. If there is a possible world in which God exists alone, God is not simple. He eternally has unactualized potential for He cannot undo His act of creation. He could cease to sustain the universe in existence, but that would not undo His act of creating. One could avoid this problem by allowing for a modal collapse. One could say that everything is absolutely necessary. Necessarily, there is only one possible world—this world. Necessarily, God must exist with creation. There is no other possibility. God must create the universe that we inhabit, and everything must occur exactly as it in fact does. There is no such thing as contingency when one allows a modal collapse. (195-196)

The foregoing suggests to me one version of the problem.  There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world and is pure act in every possible world.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. Had he created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised. In those possible worlds in which God freely refrains from creating, God has unexercised powers. 

The dyad seems logically inconsistent. If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has  unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real.  The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs. I take the dyad to be inconsistent.

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity.  I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter.  To put it in a cavalier, bloggity-blog way: God is the Absolute, and no decent absolute worth its salt can be a being among beings. We have it on good authority that God is Being itself self-subsisting.  Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Platonic, Plotinian, Augustinian, Aquinian, Athenian. It can be shown that simplicity is logical fallout if God is Being itself.  So it seems I must deny (2) and deny that God could have refrained from creating.  But this seems to lead to modal collapse. How so?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible.  If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary.

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter?  Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would seem to be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures.  Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

An Aporia?

It seems that the proponent of divine simplicity faces a nasty problem.  At the moment, I see no solution.

The aporetician in me is open to the thought that what we have here is a genuine aporia, a conceptual impasse, a puzzle  that we cannot solve. God must be simple to be God; the modal distinctions are based in reality; we cannot see how both limbs of the dyad can be true and so must see them as contradictory.   

It could be like this: the limbs are both true, but our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us to understand how they could both be true.  Mysterianism may be the way to go.  This shouldn't trouble a theologian too much. After all, Trinity, Incarnation, etc. are mysteries in the end, are they not?  Of course, I am not suggesting the doctrine of divine simplicity can be found in the Bible. 

Later I will evaluate an attempt to solve the problem via an approach to real modality via potentialities and dispositions.  

References to relevant literature appreciated. By the end of the year I have to update my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Divine Simplicity entry.  

Is the Wholly Past Now Impossible?

Boston's Scollay Square is an example of a wholly past item. It existed, but it does not now exist. Boston's Copley Square, by contrast, existed and still exists: it has a past but it is not wholly past.

In an earlier exercise I gave an anti-presentist argument one of the premises of which is:

d) It is not the case that Scollay Square is [now] either merely possible or impossible: what passes away does not become merely possible or impossible.

The Ostrich objected:

I didn’t follow the assumption (d) above. Scollay Square  is impossible, having perished. 

The question is this:  When a thing that actually existed passes away and becomes wholly past, does it cease to be actual and become impossible?  Can the passage of time affect an object's  modal status?

I say No; the Ostrich says Yes.  My No, however, will be nuanced by a distinction I shall introduce shortly.

A Concession

I concede to the Ostrich that there is a sense in which Scollay Square, that very item, is now impossible: it cannot be restored to existence. (If you made a copy of it, the copy would not be it.) After the demolition was complete, there was nothing anyone could do to bring back that very item.  In this respect the demolition of the famous square is like a person's loss of virginity. If you lose your virginity at time t, then there is nothing anyone can do after t to undo the loss. (Repairing a girl's hymen would not do the trick. Hymenoplasty is possible but it is not the same as restoration of virginity.) 

Now there is no need to drag the Deity into this debate, but I will do it anyway just to throw the issue into relief. Not even God can restore a virgin or bring back Scollay Square (where many a sailor lost his virginity).  This is because it is the very natures of time and existence that prevent the restoration.  (Now please forget that I even mentioned God, and do not ask me any questions about divine omnipotence.)

Let's consider another example. Our patron Socrates was executed by the Athenian state. That event might not have occurred. That is, his execution was not metaphysically necessary. In the patois of 'possible worlds,'  there are possible worlds in which Socrates is executed and possible worlds in which he is not.  Therefore, his execution was metaphysically contingent and remains sub specie aeternitatis metaphysically contingent despite the fact that the execution cannot be undone.  But if the execution cannot be undone and was impossibly undone from the moment of the event onward, then how can the execution be contingent?  Is it not necessary?  Obviously, we need to make a distinction.

Metaphysical versus Time-Bound Modalities

We have to make a distinction between metaphysical modalities and time-bound modalities.  We can say that Socrates' execution, while metaphysically contingent, nevertheless enjoys necessitas per accidens and its undoing impossibilitas per accidens.  Nothing hinges on this particular terminology, but there is a distinction to be made here.

Someone could say, and the Ostrich perhaps will say, that before Socrates came to be, he was merely possible, that when he came to be he became actual, and that after he passed away he became impossible. If this makes sense, then our man's modal status is time-dependent.

I think the following are logically consistent:

1. It is impossible that an actual being that no longer exists be restored to existence.

2. A metaphysically contingent being that exists in the sense that it existed, exists, or will exist retains its modal status when it passes away. Socrates exists in this disjunctive sense. When Socrates ceased to exist (assuming no immortal soul) he retained his modal status: actual but not necessary.

(1) is a concession to the Ostrich. But (2) is also true. I am inclined to accept  a Growing Block theory of time: as time passes the 'block of reality' gets bigger and bigger. Everything that IS is actual, and everything that WAS is also actual.  The past is not nothing: it is real.  

Socrates is (in the disjunctive sense) an actual being.  This may be the same as saying that he is tenselessly actual. His passing away does not affect his metaphysical modal status. He is no longer temporally present but he is nonetheless metaphysically actual. 

Furthermore, he remains a contingent being after his passing.  He does not become an impossible being.

So I think we can achieve a sort of irenic if not quite Hegelian  synthesis. The Ostrich is speaking from the perspective of the present. (I suspect he is a presentist and I should like him come clean on this.) From the point of view of the present, the wholly past is now impossible in the sense that nothing ANYONE can do can restore the past or bring it back.  I believe I have accommodated, with all due charity, the insight of the Ostrich.

But we also have the power to view things 'from above,' We are time-bound to be sure, but we are also "spectators of all time and existence" as Plato once taught us.  Looking down upon this scene of flux and folly we can 'see' with the eye of the mind the tenseless modal relationships that obtain here below. These are not affected by the passage of time.

For example, no contingent being  is impossible.  Socrates is a contingent being.  Ergo, Socrates is not impossible.  He was not impossible before he became present; he was not impossible when he was present; and he is not impossible now when he is past. He is tenselessly contingent.

The stable view sub specie aeternitatis is just as valid as the view from one's shifting temporal location.

Taking Stock

The question is this: When a thing that actually existed, or an event that actually occurred, passes away and becomes wholly past, does it cease to be actual and become impossible? 

The Ostrich answers in the affirmative.  I think this answer is sustainable only if presentism is true.  Presentism, however, is hard even to formulate (nontrivially), let alone evaluate.  

I must now demand of the Ostrich that he come clean and tell us whether he is indeed a presentist.  If I am not mistaken most if not all of the medieval philosophers he studies are presentists; if so, he may be unaware that there are alternatives to ptesentism.  It may just seem obvious to him when it ought not seem obvious to him. 

God, Necessity, and Truth

Jacques e-mails:

You think that if God exists, He exists necessarily, and if He does not exist, He does not exist necessarily.  But suppose that God does not exist.  We agree, I think, that we can't rationally rule out the possibility?  For instance, you've often argued that our evidence doesn't settle the question of theism versus atheism.  But then, supposing that God doesn't exist, and supposing that He might not exist in the actual world (for all we know), isn't it evident that regardless there are lots of truths?  For instance, even if God does not exist, it would still be true that He does not exist, or that He does not exist necessarily.  I'm not sure that you'd agree with this, but if you would, shouldn't you also agree that if God does not exist, there are some truths?

That is not quite what I said. I accept what I call Anselm's Insight: if God exists, then he exists necessarily; if he does not exist, then necessarily he does not exist.  What does not exist necessarily might be contingent; what necessarily does not exist is impossible. I know you understand the idea; it is just that your formulation suffers from scope ambiguity. Anselm's Insight, then, is that God is either necessary or impossible. He is necessarily non-contingent. (The non-contingent embraces both the necessary and the impossible.) In the patois of possible worlds, either he exists in every, or in no, world. If you wonder why I don't capitalize 'he,' it is because I hold that while piety belongs in religion, it does not belong in philosophy of religion.

Agreed, we cannot rationally rule out the possibility of God's nonexistence. I would say we cannot rationally rule it out or rule it in. "But then, supposing that God doesn't exist, and supposing that He might not exist in the actual world (for all we know), isn't it evident that regardless there are lots of truths? "

I would rewrite your sentence as follows:

It is epistemically possible that God not exist. Nevertheless, it is evident that there are truths.

I agree with the rewrite.  It is evident that there are truths, but for all we can claim to know, God does not exist. But this leaves open how God and truth are related.  Here are five different views:

1) There is truth, but there is no God.

2) There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth.

3) There is truth, there is God, and truth ultimately depends on the existence of God. There is truth because there is God.

4) There is no truth, because there is no God.

5) There is God, but no truth.

Ad (1). This I would guess is the view of  many. There are truths, and among these truths is the truth that God does not exist.  This, I take it, would be the standard atheist view.

Ad (2). This, I take it, would be the standard theist view among analytic philosophers.  Consider a philosopher who holds that God is a necessary being and also holds that it is necessarily the case that there are some truths, but would deny the truth of the subjunctive conditional, If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then truths would not exist either. 

Ad (3). This is the view that I am inclined to accept.  Thus I would affirm the subjunctive conditional lately mentioned. The difference between (2) and (3) is subtle. On both sides it is held that both God and truths are necessary, but the Augustinian -- to give him a name -- holds that God is the ultimate  'source' of all truth and thus all intelligibility, or, if you prefer, the ultimate 'ground' of all truth and intelligibility.

Ad (4). This is Nietzsche's view.  

Ad (5). I have the impression that certain post-Nietzschean POMO-heads hold this. It is view not worth discussing.

I should think only the first three views have any merit.  

Each of the three has difficulties and none of the three can be proven.

I will mention quickly a problem for the admittedly plausible first view.  

Among the truths there are necessary truths such as the laws of logic. Now a truth is a true truth-bearer, a true proposition, say. Nothing can have a property unless it exists. (Call this principle Anti-Meinong). So no proposition can have the property of being true unless the proposition exists. A necessary truth is true in every metaphysically possible world. It follows that a necessarily true proposition exists in every possible world including worlds in which there are no finite minds.  But a proposition is a thought-accusative that cannot exists except for a mind.  If there is no God, every mind is contingent. A contradiction ensues: there is a world W such that, in W, there exists a thought-accusative that is not the thought-accusative of any mind.

Here are some ways an atheist might 'solve' the problem:

a) Deny that there are necessary truths.

b) Deny that truth is any sense a property of propositions.

c) Deny Anti-Meinong.

d) Deny that propositions are thought-accusatives; accept some sort of Platonism about propositions.

But each of these denials involves problems of its own which I would have no trouble unpacking.

 What say you, Jacques?

Related articles

Maverick Philosopher: God, Truth, Reality Denial: A Response to Some Questions

Maverick Philosopher: Lukáš Novák on Use and Mention

Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism

There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory.

Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal.

Egological egalitarianism is the view  there is a plurality of equally real selves.  I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically, that he alone is real and that others, if they exist at all, exist only as merely intentional objects for him. The problem of Other Minds may concern us, but that is an epistemological problem, one that presupposes that there are other minds/selves. On ontological egalitarianism, then, no self enjoys ontological privilege.

Spatial egalitarianism is the that there is a plurality of equally real places.  Places other than here are just as real as the place picked out by a speaker's use of 'here.'  I take it we are all spatial egalitarians.  No one, not even a Manhattanite, thinks that the place where he is is the only real place.  Here is real but so is yonder.  No place enjoys ontological privilege. All places are equal. 

Temporal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real times.  Times other than the present time are just as real as the present time. No time enjoys ontological privilege, which implies that there is nothing ontologically special about the present time. All times are equal. No time is present, period.  This is called the B-theory of time. Here is a fuller explanation.

Modal egalitarianism is the view that there is a plurality of equally real possibilities.  Possibilities other than those that are actual are just as real as those that are actual. It is plausible to think of possibilities as coming in maximal or 'world-sized' packages.  Call them possible worlds.  On modal egalitarianism, then, all possible worlds are equally real.  No world enjoys ontological privilege.  Our world, the world we take to be actual, is not absolutely actual; it is merely actual for us, or rather, actual at itself.  But that is true of every world: each is actual at itself. No world is actual, period.  In respect of actuality, all possible worlds are equal. 

What is curious about these four types of ontological egalitarianism is that, while the first two are about as close to common sense as one is likely to get, the second two are not.  Indeed, the fourth will strike most people as crazy. Was David Lewis crazy?  I don't know, but I hear he was a bad driver. 

Related: Philosophers as Bad Drivers?

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What is Potentiality? An Exploration

On Possibility

 David Brightly comments:

The view I've arrived at is that sentences involving 'possibility' can be re-written into sentences involving just 'possibly', and that our modal notions arise from our encounter with inference. I'm happy to say, There is the possibility that the bulb will shatter -- we say things like that all the time -- provided it's understood to mean, Possibly, the bulb will shatter. I certainly don't want to commit myself to things called possibilities, unless they can be seen as constructions out of sentences, roughly, Possibly, S ≡ The truth value of sentence S cannot be determined from what we currently know together with deduction from known principles.

Can you persuade me otherwise? A 'big topic' I would imagine!

Let B be an ordinary light bulb. Light bulbs are typically fragile: they are disposed to shatter if suitably struck or dropped from a sufficient height onto a hard surface. I take Brightly to be saying two things.  He is maintaining, first, that there is no more to the possibility of B's shattering in circumstances C than the truth of the sentence, 'Possibly, B will shatter in C.' Second, he is offering an analysis of 'possibly' in such sentences.

First Claim

I take Brightly to be saying that there is nothing in B, and thus nothing in reality, that could be called B's disposition to shatter. In general, unrealized possibilities have no ontological status. But then what makes the sentence 'Possibly, B shatters in C' true? Presumably, Brightly will say that nothing makes it true: it is just true.  He would not, I take it, say the same about 'B exists.'  He would not say that nothing makes 'B exists' true, that the sentence is just true.  I would guess that he would say that it is B itself, or perhaps the existence of B, that makes 'B exists' true.  So there is something in reality that 'B' names, and this item is, or is part of, the truth-maker of 'B exists.'  

But if he says this, should he not also admit that there is something in reality that make 'B is disposed to shatter in C' true? 

To appreciate the point one must see that a disposition and its manifestation are different.  B is disposed to shatter at every time at which it exists.  But it needn't ever shatter.  It might remain intact throughout its career.  Therefore, the reality of a disposition cannot be identified with its actual manifestation.  The same goes for powers and potentialities.  If a man has a power he never exercises, it does not follow that he does not have the power.  The potentiality of a seed to sprout in the right conditions is something real even if the seed remains on a shelf and its potentiality is never actualized.  

There is an epistemological question that I want to set aside lest it muddy the waters. The question is: How does one know de re, of a particular light bulb, that it is disposed to shatter if it never does?  I am not concerned here with the epistemology of modal knowledge, but with the ontology of the merely possible, which includes the ontology of unmanifested dispositions.

A disposition, then, is real whether or not it is ever manifested. But doesn't this just beg the question against Brightly? I maintain that unmanifested dispositions are real.  Brightly denies this. If I understand him, he is eliminating unmanifested dispositions in favor of the truth of possibility sentences.

My objection to this invokes the Truth-Maker Principle: truths need truth-makers.  Or at least many classes of truths need truth-makers, one of these being the class of truths about the powers, potentialities, dispositions, and the like of concrete individuals. (I am not a truth-maker maximalist.) My point against Brightly is that the sentence, 'Possibly, B shatters in C,' if true, is true in virtue of or because of something external to this sentence, namely, the unmanifested disposition in B to shatter.

My view is consistent with the view that unmanifested dispositions reduce to the so-called 'categorical' features of things like light bulbs. Unmanifested dispositions can be real without being irreducibly real. What I have said above does not commit me to irreducibly real dispositions.  It commits me only to the reality of unmanifested dispositions, whether reducible or not.

Second Claim

" Possibly, S ≡ The truth value of sentence S cannot be determined from what we currently know together with deduction from known principles."

S in Brightly's example is 'The bulb will shatter.' True or false? I grant that the truth value cannot be known from what we currently know together with what we can deduce from known principles.  But this cannot be what the possibility that the glass will shatter consists in. Brightly is making the very real possibility that the glass shatter, the bomb explode, the round fire, the cat scratch, Hillary throw a lamp at Bill, etc., depend on our ignorance.  But then real possibility is eliminated in favor of epistemic possibility.

Suppose Sally knows that Tom is in Boston now and believes falsely that Scollay Square still exists.  I ask Sally: is it possible that Tom is in Scollay Square now?  She replies, "Yes, it is possible." But of course this is a mere epistemic possibility sired by Sally's ignorance. It is possible for all Sally knows. It is not really possible that Tom is in Scollay Square now given that the place no longer exists.

I don't think we should say that the possibility of the bulb's shattering consists in our igntrance as to whether or not 'The bulb will shatter' is true or false. Consider also that long before minded organisms arose in our evolutionary history, and thus long before there was knowledge or ignorance,  there we seeds and such with real potencies some of which were actualized and some of which were not.  

Related articles

Bertrand Russell: Empiricism is Self-Refuting. Is He Right?

Nothing is Written in Stone

Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

Invention of the Light Bulb

The Necessity of Identity: A Puzzle and a Challenge

The Opponent comments in black; my responses are in blue:

Here is the puzzle: how can we establish the necessity of identity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient, or which are not universally valid? The principle of identity (necessarily, a = a) is not sufficient. We agree that necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Hesperus. That planet could not be numerically different from itself in any circumstance. But the question is whether necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus. You will object that if H = P, then necessarily, H = P, because necessarily, H = H. is H. I reply: this begs the question. Under what law of logic or reasoning does nec (H = H) imply nec (H = P)? The principle of identity is insufficient on its own to establish necessity of identity.

BV:  This seems correct.  There is no immediate valid inference from the principle of identity to the necessity of identity.  The inference would seem to be  valid only in the presence of auxiliary 'mediating' premises.

But let me play the role of advocatus diaboli.  We know empirically that H = P. And we know a priori about the identity relation. We know that it is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric, transitive). We also know that it is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals  (InId) which states that for any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa.  InId is not a principle external to the notion of (numerical) identity, but part of what we mean by 'identity.'  Obviously, if two putatively distinct items are one item, i.e., are identical, then whatever is true of the one is true of the other, and vice versa.  We would never apply the concept of identity to any thing or thing that violated InId.

So if we know that H = P, then we know that in reality (i.e., extralinguistically, and extramentally) there is just one thing where H and P are.  Call this one thing 'V.'   We know from the principle of identity that necessarily, V = V.  Now suppose, for reductio, that it is not the case that necessarily, H = P.  Suppose, in other words that possibly, ~(H = P).  One would then be supposing that the identity of H and P is contingent.  But that is to suppose that the identity of V with itself is contingent, which is absurd. Therefore, the necessity of identity holds.

So it appears that I have validated the inference from the the principle of identity to the necessity of identity by adducing premises that are well-nigh self-evident.  One of my supplementary premises is that we know some such truths as that H = P.  I also assumed that if x = y, then there are not two things denoted by 'x' and 'y,' but one thing.  I also assumed that when we use terms like 'H' and 'P' we are referring to things in reality with all their properties and relations and not to items like sense data or Husserlian noemata or Castanedan guises or any sort of incomplete object or epistemic deputy.  I am assuming that our thought and talk about planets and such reaches right up to the thing itself and does not stop short at some epistemic/doxastic intermediary.

And now back to the Opponent:

What if ‘Hesperus’ means exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? This is the principle of Semantic Identity. Then it certainly follows that nec (H = H) implies nec(H = P), because both statements mean exactly the same thing. But does ‘Hesperus’ mean exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? Surely not. When the names were given, when those planets were dubbed, people understood the meaning of both names perfectly. But while they understood that H=H, they did not understand that H=P. The names cannot have meant the same. So the assumption of semantic identity does not hold.

BV:  That's right.  The names do not have the same Fregean sense (Sinn). This is why 'H = H' and 'H = P' do not have the same Fregean cognitive value (Erkenntniswert).  To know one is to know an instance of the principle of identity.  It is to know a logical truth.  To know the other is to know a non-logical truth, one that is synthetic a posteriori in Kant's sense.

Finally, let’s try the principle of substitutivity, which states that Fa and a = b implies that Fb. Then let F be ‘nec (a = --)’. The principle of identity says that nec(a = a), i.e. Fa. Then if a = b, the principle of substitutivity says that Fb, i.e. nec(a = b). This is valid, but is the principle of substitutivity valid? There are many counterexamples to this, so we cannot assume it is valid. You will object that the principle of substitutivity may be invalid for a type of necessity known as ‘epistemic necessity’, but valid for a type of necessity known as ‘metaphysical necessity’. I reply: under what assumption or principle can you justify that substitutivity is valid for metaphysical necessity, when it is clearly not valid for other types of necessity. You object: we shall define metaphysical necessity as that type of necessity for which substitutivity is valid. I reply: how do you know that anything whatsoever fits that definition? You need to establish that the principle of substitutivity holds for some kind of necessity, without assuming the principle of substitutivity itself. But of course you can’t. If this were possible, Marcus and Quine would have been able to prove the necessity of identity without having to assume substitutivity. But they couldn’t.

BV:  it is true that there are counterexamples to the principle of substitutivity in the 'wide open' formulation that the Opponent provides. Sam can believe that Hesperus is a planet, not a star, without believing that Phosphorus is a planet, not a star, despite the fact that Hesperus = Phosphorus.  So the following is a non sequitur:

Hesperus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.
Hesperus = Phosphorus.
Ergo
Phosphorus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.

This example is also a counterexample to the Indiscernibility of Identicals which is presumably equivalent to the substitutivity principle.  I think that should worry us a bit.

To appreciate the dialectical lay of the land it may help to set forth the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

A. InId:  For any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and conversely.
B. Hesperus = Phosphorus.
C. It is true of Hesperus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.
D. It is not true of Phosphorus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.

The tetrad is inconsistent: any three limbs entail the negation of the fourth.  One could solve the problem by rejecting InId in its wide-open or unrestricted formulation.  What speaks against this solution is that InId in its unrestricted formulation is part and parcel of what we mean by '=.'  If you were trying to explain to a student what relation '=' stands for, you couldn't just say that it stands for an equivalence relation since not every such relation is picked out by '=.'  You would have to bring in InId.

A second way to solve the tetrad is by denying (B).  It can be true that H is the same as P without it being the case that H = P.  Note that '=' is not a bit of ordinary language; it is a terminus technicus.  One can't just assume that the only type of sameness is the sameness denoted by '=.'  Suppose we distinguish between formal identity statements of the form a = a and material identity statements of the form a =* b.  While both are equivalence relations, the former are necessary while the latter are contingent.  We can then say that H and P are materially identical and thus contingently the same.  Because they are contingently the same, they are not one and the same.  H and P are together in reality but are nonetheless distinct items.  If so, (C) and (D) can both be true in the presence of InId/Substitutivity.

At this point I ask the Opponent whether his denial of the necessity of identity amounts to an affirmation of the contingency of the relation picked out by '=,' or whether it amounts to a rejection of the relation picked out by '=.'  It seems to me that if you admit that there is a relation picked out by '=,' then you must also admit that it holds noncontingently in every case in which it holds.

One could hold the following view.  There is a relation picked out by '=.' Call it formal identity.  It holds of everything.  But no synthetic identity statement is noncontingently true if true.  No such statement is reducible to the form a = a. All are contingently true if true.  So 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is contingently true, and what the names refer to are distinct items.  They refer directly to these items.  But these items are something like Castaneda's ontological guises or Butchvarov's objects.   

My problem is therefore that we cannot establish the identity of necessity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient (the principle of identity) or which are not universally valid (the principles of semantic identity and substitutivity). We could of course assume it as a sort of bedrock, a truth which is obviously true in its own right, a per se nota principle which requires no further demonstration. But I am not sure it is such a truth. It’s not obvious to me, for a start.

So my challenge to Bill and others is to demonstrate necessity of identity by appeal to principles of reasoning which are stronger than the ones given above, or by demonstrating its self-evidence. Neither will work, in my view.

BV:  It seems to me I gave a reductio-type demonstration in my first comment. The paradigm cases of the relation picked out by '=' are the cases of the form a = a.  Now if 'H' and 'P' designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a.  Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily a = a.  The assumption that the identity of H and P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by '=' holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

Note that I didn't use Substitutivity/Inid or Semantic Identity in this reductio.   But I did assume that there is a relation picked out by '=' -- which is not obvious! -- and that it is this relation that the 'is' expresses in the synthetic truth 'H is P.'  Which is also not obvious!

Identity and Quasi-Epistemic Contingency

The Opponent sends the following puzzle to vex us:

Story: there was someone called 'a', and there was someone called 'b'.

This is all we have of the story. Let the predicate F be 'The story is consistent with a
not being identical with ___'. Then clearly Fa is false, and Fb is true. 

This is the case even if a, in fact, is identical with b.

Is there a puzzle here?  It may be only a malformed attempt at a puzzle. We are presented with a very short story consisting of exactly two claims.  We are given no information as to whether the person called 'a' is the same as or different from the person called 'b.'  So the story allows for the possibility that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.'  This is the case even if, in fact, outside the story, it is not the case that a = b.

It is not clear that there is a puzzle here since the following propositions are logically consistent:

A. Within the story, it is possible that the person called 'a' is not the same as the person called 'b.' 
B.  It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.  (Kripke's Necessity of Identity thesis)

It is the presence of the story operator in (A) that saves the triad from inconsistency.

Suppose 'Axwell' and 'Buswell' are the two names in the story and that both refer to an existing man, the same man.  That a = b is no part of the story.  Given only what we know from the story it is possible that a not be identical to b.  But this possibility is something like an epistemic possibility which, as such, cannot be used to show the real (non-epistemic) possibility that a not be identical to b in reality.

So on this New Year's Day I tax the Noble Opponent with a metabasis eis allo genos (μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος), which is something like a Rylean category mistake: he shifts illicitly from a story-immanent perspective to a story-transcendent perspective. Within the story there is a story-immanent contingency as to both the identity and the difference of the referents of the names.  But this is a sort of epistemic contingency consequent upon the fact that literary fiction leaves much indeterminate: the literary characters have all and only the properties assigned to them in the story.  

So it looks as if the Opponent may be conflating a sort of epistemic contingency with real contingency.  He does not have the makings of a sound argument for the claim  that real-world identities are contingent, contra Kripke.

By contrast, the following triad is plainly inconsistent.  This is the case whether we take names to be Kripkean rigid designators or Russellian definite descriptions in disguise. 

A*. Possibly, it is not the case that a = b.
B. It is the case that a = b.
C. For any x, y, if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.   

Related articles

Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism

Modal Axioms

Maverick Philosopher: Contingent and Necessary

Tropes as Truth-Makers? Or Do We Need Facts?

Nothing is Written in Stone

Bertrand Russell: Empiricism is Self-Refuting. Is He Right?

The Decline of the Culture of Free Discussion and Debate

Is the Modal Ontological Argument Compelling?

In a comment, Patrick Toner writes,

. . . there is no substantive philosophical position for which there is *better* philosophical support than theism. I'm open to the possibility that at least one other philosophical position--namely, dualism--is at least as well supported by philosophical argument as theism. But nothing's got better support.

[. . .]

That said, I find St. Thomas's second way indubitable. I also find the modal ontological argument compelling. The kalam cosmological argument seems pretty much irrefutable.

In another comment in the same thread, Toner writes,

But we still do (or can) know God and the soul with certainty through the use of natural human reason. (emphasis added)

What interests me in this entry is Toner's explicit claim that the modal ontological argument is (rationally) compelling, and his implicit claim that this argument delivers (objectively) certain knowledge of the existence of God.  While I consider the argument in question to be a good argument, I don't find it to be compelling.  Nor do I think that it renders its conclusion certain. My view is that no argument for or against theism is rationally compelling.  No such argument resolves the issue.  I think it would be wonderful if there were a compelling argument for the existence of God.  The metaphysical knowledge generated by such an argument would be the most precious knowledge that one could possess.  So I would be much beholden to Toner if he could show me the error of my ways.  

Perhaps there is a theistic argument that is rationally compelling. If there is I should like to know what it is.  I am quite sure, however, that the following argument does not fill the bill.

A Modal Ontological Argument

'GCB' will abbreviate 'greatest conceivable being,' which is a rendering of Anselm of Canterbury's "that than which no greater can be conceived."  'World' abbreviates 'broadly logically possible world.' 'OA' abbreviate 'ontological argument.'

1. Either the concept of the GCB is instantiated in every  world or it is instantiated in no world.

2. The concept of the GCB is instantiated in some world.  Therefore:

3. The concept of the GCB is instantiated in every world.  (1, 2 by Disjunctive Syllogism) 

4. The actual world is one of the worlds. Therefore:

5. The concept of the GCB is instantiated in the actual world. (3, 4 ) Therefore:

6. The GCB exists. (5)

This is a valid argument: it is correct in point of logical form.  Nor does it commit any informal fallacy such as petitio principii, as I argue in Religious Studies 29 (1993), pp. 97-110.  Note also that this version of the OA does not require the controversial assumption that existence is a first-level property, an assumption that Frege famously rejects and that many read back (with some justification) into Kant.  (Frege held that the OA falls with that assumption, cf. Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, sec. 53; he was wrong: the above version is immune to the Kant-Frege objection.)

(1) expresses what I call Anselm's Insight.  He appreciated, presumably for the first time in the history of thought, that a divine being, one worthy of worship, must be noncontingent, i.e., either necessary or impossible.  I consider (1) nonnegotiable.  If your god is contingent, then your god is not God. There is no god but God.  God is an absolute, and no absolute worth its salt is contingent.  End of discussion.  (If, however, (1) is reasonably disputable, then this only strengthens my case against compellingness.)

It is premise (2) -- the key premise -- that ought to raise eyebrows.  What it says -- translating out of the patois of possible worlds -- is that it it possible that the GCB exists.

Whereas conceptual analysis of 'greatest conceivable being' suffices in support of (1), how do we support (2)?  Why should we accept it?  How do we know that (2) is true?  Some will say that the conceivability of the GCB entails its possibility.  But I deny that conceivability entails possibility.  

Conceivability Does not Entail Possibility

The question is whether conceivability by finite minds like ours entails real possibility.  A real possibility is one that has a mind-independent status.  Real possibilities are not parasitic upon ignorance or on our (measly) powers of conception.  Thus they contrast with epistemic/doxastic possibilities.  Since what is epistemically possible for a person might be really impossible (whether broadly-logically or nomologically), we should note that 'epistemic' in 'epistemically possible' is an alienans adjective: it functions like 'decoy' in 'decoy duck.'  Ducks don't come in two kinds, real and decoy.  Similarly, there are not two kinds of possibility, epistemic and real.  To say that a state of affairs is epistemically/doxastically possible for a subject S is to say that the obtaining of the state of affairs is logically compatible with what S knows/believes.  For example, is it possible that my State Farm insurance agent Tim be working his office during normal business hours today ?  Yes, epistemically: it is not ruled out by anything I know.  But if Tim unbeknownst to me 'bought the farm' last night, then it is not really possible that Tim be working in his office today.

By 'conceivability' I mean thinkability by us without apparent logical contradiction.  

First Argument

Why should the fact that a human being can conceive something without apparent logical contradiction show that the thing in question can exist in reality? Consider the FBI: the floating bar of iron. If my thought about the FBI is sufficiently abstract and indeterminate, then it will seem that there is no 'bar' to its possibility in reality. (Pun intended.) If I think the FBI as an object that has the phenomenal properties of iron but also floats, then those properties are combinable in my thought without contradiction. But if I know more about iron, including its specific gravity, and I import this information into my concept of iron, then the concept of the FBI will harbor a contradiction. The specific gravity of iron is 7850 kg/cu.m, which implies that it is 7.85 times more dense than water, which in turn means that it will sink in water.

The upshot is that conceivability without contradiction is no sure guide to (real) possibility. Conceivability does not entail possibility.

Second Argument

Both the existence and the nonexistence of God are conceivable, i.e., thinkable by us without apparent logical contradiction.  So if conceivability entails possibility, then both the existence and the nonexistence of God are possible.  If so, God is a contingent being.  But this contradicts the Anselmian Insight according to which God is noncontingent.  So if the Anselmian Insight is true, then conceivability-entails-possibility is false and cannot be used to support premise (2) of the modal OA.  The argument can be put in the form of a reductio:

a. Conceivability entails possibility.  (assumption for reductio)

b. It is conceivable that God not exist. (factual premise)

c. It is conceivable that God exist.  (factual premise)

d. God is a noncontingent being. (true by Anselmian definition)

Ergo

e. It is possible that God not exist and it is possible that God exist.  (a, b, c)

Ergo

f. God is a contingent being. (e, by definition of 'contingent being')

Ergo

g. God is a noncontingent being and God is a contingent being. (d, f, contradiction)

Ergo

~a. It is not the case that conceivability entails possibility. (a-g, by reductio ad absurdum) 

Or, if you insist that conceivability entails possibility, then you must give up the Anselmian Insight.  But the modal OA stands and falls with Anselmian insight.  

 

Is Conceivability Nondemonstrative Evidence of Possibility?

 

We don't need to discuss this in any depth.  Suppose it is.  This won't help Toner's case.  For if it is not certain, but only probable that (2) is true, then this lack of certainty will be transmitted to the conclusion, which will be, at most, probable but not certain. In that case, the argument will not be compelling.  I take it that an argument is compelling if and only if it renders its conclusion objectively certain.

Are There Other Ways to Support the Possibility Premise?

I can think of one other way.  It has been suggested that the possibility premise can be supported deontically:

A. A maximally perfect being ought to exist.
B. Whatever ought to exist, is possible.
Therefore
C. A maximally perfect being is possible.

I discuss this intriguing suggestion in a separate post  wherein I come to the conclusion that the deontically supercharged modal OA is also not compelling.

What is it for an Argument to be Compelling? 

My claim on the present occasion is that the modal OA provides no demonstrative knowledge of the truth of theism. Demonstrative knowledge is knowledge produced by a demonstration.  A demonstration in this context is an argument that satisfies all of the following conditions:

1. It is deductive
2. It is valid in point of logical form
3. It is free of such informal fallacies as petitio principii
4. It is such that all its premises are true
5. It is such that all its premises are known to be true
6. It is such that its conclusion is relevant to its premises.

To illustrate (6).  The following argument satisfies all of the conditions except the last and is therefore probatively worthless:

Snow is white
ergo
Either Obama is president or he is not.

On my use of terms, a demonstrative argument = a probative argument = a proof = a rationally compelling argument.  Now clearly there are good arguments (of different sorts) that are not demonstrative, probative, rationally compelling.  One type is the strong inductive argument. By definition, no such argument satisfies (1) or (2).  A second type is the argument that satisfies all the conditions except (5). 

And that is the problem with the modal OA. Condition (5) remains unsatisfied.  While the possibility premise may be true for all we know, we do not know it to be true.  So while the modal OA is a good argument in that it helps render theism rational, it is not a compelling argument. 

Related articles

Soloveitchik on Proving the Existence of God

Modality, Possible Worlds, and the Accidental-Essential Distinction

Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?

Of Birth and Barcan

The Opponent writes,

"Death is not an end to existence, but the process of becoming non-concrete. Birth is the making concrete of something that has existed since the beginning of time and will exist until the end of time." (Reina Hayaki)

This is one way of interpreting the Barcan formula (possibly for some x Fx implies for some x possibly Fx).  If the formula is true, there are no ‘contingent objects’, i.e. no objects that exist in some worlds but not others.

My position is that there are contingent entities (as well as contingent identities). I imagine you will be less sympathetic to this, however. Interested in your thoughts.

The Opponent is misrepresenting Professor Hayaki's view.  On a careful reading of her article, the quotation above is not her view but expresses a temporal analog of the modal view of Linsky and Zalta that she is opposing.

Be that as it may.  Let's consider the Barcan formula by itself.

The formula is that Possibly, something is F implies Something is possibly F.  The modality in question is 'broadly logical' in Plantinga's sense.  Some call it 'metaphysical.'   

By my modal intuitions, the formula is false.  A trio of  'possible' counterexamples.

A. Sally wants a baby.  But there is no actual baby such that Sally wants it.  Sally wants to have a baby, i.e, give birth to a baby, her own baby, one that does not yet exist.  What Sally wants is possible. So, possibly, some baby is such that Sally wants it.  But it doesn't follow that some actual baby is possibly such that Sally wants it. For every actual baby is such that Sally does not want it.

B. It is possible that there be a sinless man.  But it does not follow that one of the men who exist is possibly sinless.  

 

C. Possibly, some sloop satisfies Ortcutt's exacting specifications.  (It is possible that there be such a sloop.)  But it doesn't follow that some existing sloop (without modifications) is possibly such as to satisfy Ortcutt's exacting specifications.  For it could be that every sloop that exists fails to satisfy our man.

I am assuming actualism: there are no merely possible objects.  The truth of Possibly, something is F does not commit us to the existence of a merely possible individual that is F. 'Possibly, something is a matter transmitter,' for example, does not commit us to the existence of a merely possible matter transmitter.  I should think it commits us only to the existence of a conjunctive property that is possibly instantiated.

The Barcan formula may hold for necessary beings such as the number 7.  But it fails for contingent beings.

Of course I hold that there are contingent beings.  Whether there are contingent identities is another topic entirely.  One topic at a time. 

Contingent and Necessary

That we exist is contingent, that we won't necessary.

(To spoil the aphorism by translating it into the patois of 'possible worlds':  we exist in some but not all possible worlds; but we are mortal in every world in which we exist.)

Related articles

Docendo Discimus

Courage

Maverick Philosopher: Time Balm

Free Speech: Is It Always Right to Say What One has a Right to Say?

Contingent Existence Without Cause? Not Possible Says Garrigou-Lagrange

A reader claims that "to affirm that there are contingent beings just is to affirm that they have that whereby they are, namely, a cause." This implies that one can straightaway infer 'x has a cause' from 'x is contingent.' My reader would agree with Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange who, taking the traditional Thomist position, maintains the following Principle of Causality (PC):

. . . every contingent thing, even if it should be ab aeterno, depends on a cause which exists of itself.  (Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, tr. Patrick Cummins, O. S. B., Ex Fontibus 2012, p. 62)

So even if the physical universe always existed, and therefore never came into existence, it would nonetheless require a cause of its existence simply in virtue of its being contingent.  I find myself questioning both my reader and Garrigou-Lagrange.  For it seems to me to be conceivable that an item be contingent but have no cause or ground of its existence.  This is precisely what Garrigou-Lagrange denies: "contingent existence . . . can simply not be conceived without origin, without cause . . . ." (p. 63)

But it all depends on what we mean by 'conceivable' and 'contingent.'  Here are my definitions:

D1. An individual or state of affairs x is conceivable =_df x is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction.

Examples.  It is conceivable that there be a mountain of gold and a tire iron that floats in (pure or near-pure) water.  It is conceivable that I jump straight out of my chair, turn a somersault in the air, and then return to my chair and finish this blog post.  It is inconceivable that I light a cigar and not light a cigar at exactly the same time.  As for formal-logical contradiction, here is an example:  Some cats are not cats.  But Some bachelors are married is not a formal-logical contradiction.  Why not? Because its logical form has both true and false substitution instances.

D2. An individual or state of affairs x is contingent =_df x is possibly nonexistent/nonobtaining if it exists/obtains, and possibly existent/obtaining if it does not exist/obtain.

The contingent is that which has a certain modal status: it is neither necessary nor impossible.  For example, me and my cigar are both contingent beings: neither is necessary and neither is impossible.  My smoking the cigar now is an example of a contingent state of affairs: it is neither necessary nor impossible that I smoke a cigar now.  The type of modality we are concerned with is broadly logical, not nomological.

Now is it conceivable that something exist contingently without a cause?  It seems so!  The nonexistence of the physical universe is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction.  The physical universe is contingent: it exists, but not necessarily.  Its nonexistence is possible.  Do I encounter a formal-logical contradiction when I think of the universe as existing without a cause or explanation? No.  An uncaused universe is nothing like  a non-triangular triangle, or a round square, or a married bachelor, or an uncaused effect. Necessarily, if x is an effect, then x has a cause.  It is an analytic truth that every effect has a cause.  The negation of this proposition is: Some effects do not have causes.  While this is not a formal-logical contradiction, it can be reduced to one by substituting synonyms for synonyms.  Thus, Some caused events are not caused.

Contrary to what Garrigou-Lagrange maintains, it is conceivable that the universe exist uncaused, despite its contingency.   If one could not conceive the uncaused existing of the universe, then one could not conceive of the universe's being a brute fact.  And 'surely' one can conceive of the latter.  That is not to say that it is possible.  There is a logical gap between the conceivable and the possible.  My point is merely that the 'brutality' of the universe's existence is conceivable in the sense of (D1). To put it another way, my point is that one cannot gain a a priori insight into the necessity of the universe's having a cause of its existence.  And this is because the Principle of Causality, if true, is not analytically true but synthetically true.

Of course, if one defines 'contingency' in terms of 'existential dependence on a cause' then  a thing's being contingent straightaway implies its being caused.   But then one has packed causal dependency into the notion of contingency when contingency means only what (D2) says it means.  That has all the benefits of theft over honest toil as Russell remarked in a different connection.

Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that one violates the Law of Non-Contradiction if one says of a contingent thing that it is both contingent and uncaused.  He thinks this is equivalent to saying:

A thing may exist of itself and simultaneously not exist of itself. Existence of itself would belong to it, both necessarily and impossibly. Existence would be an inseparable predicate of a being which can be separated from existence. All this is absurd, unintelligible. (p. 65)

Suppose that a contingent existent is one that is caused to exist by a self-existent existent.  If one then went on to say that such an existent is both contingent and uncaused, then one would embrace a logical contradiction.  But this presupposes that contingency implies causal dependency.

And therein lies the rub.  That the universe is contingent I grant.  But how does one get from contingency in the sense defined by (D2) supra to the universe's causal dependence on a causa prima?  If one simply packs dependency into contingency then one begs the question.  What is contingent needn't be contingent upon anything.

Related articles

Woody Allen, Meet Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Aquinas and Why the New Atheists are Right

Again on 'God + World = God'

Two Senses of 'Contingency' and a Bad Cosmological Argument

Divine Simplicity, the Formal Distinction, and the Real Distinction

Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: Review of W. E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

Review

William F. Vallicella

William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2015), ix + 369 pp.

This is a book philosophers of religion will want on their shelves. It collects sixteen of William E. Mann's previously published papers and includes “Omnipresence, Hiddenness, and Mysticism” written for this volume. These influential papers combine analytic precision with historical erudition: in many places Mann works directly from the classical texts and supplies his own translations. Mann ranges masterfully over a wealth of topics from the highly abstract (divine simplicity, aseity, sovereignty, immutability, omnipresence) to the deeply existential (mysticism, divine love, human love and lust, guilt, lying, piety, hope). As the title suggests, the essays are grouped under three heads, God, Modality, and Morality.

A somewhat off-putting feature of some of these essays is their rambling and diffuse character. In this hyperkinetic age it is a good writerly maxim to state one's thesis succinctly at the outset and sketch one's overall argument before plunging into the dialectic. Mann typically just plunges in. “The Guilty Mind,” for example, begins by juxtaposing the Matthew 5:28 commandment against adultery in the heart with the principle of mens rea from the criminal law. From there we move to a certain view of intentional action ascribed to a character Mann has invented. This is then followed with a rich and penetrating discussions of lying, strict criminal liability, the doctrine of Double Effect (307-9) and other topics illustrated with a half-dozen or so further made-up characters. One realizes one is in the presence of a fertile mind grappling seriously with difficult material, but after a couple of dense pages, one asks oneself: where is this going? What is the thesis? Why is the author making me work so hard? Some of us need to evaluate what we study to see if we should take it on board; this is made difficult if the thesis or theses are not clear.

I had a similar difficulty with the discussion of love in “Theism and the Foundations of Ethics.”

Central to Christian moral teaching are the two greatest commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:35-40) Mann raises the question whether love can be reasonably commanded. Love is an emotion or feeling. As such it is not under the control of the will. And yet we are commanded to love God and neighbor. How is this possible? An action can be commanded, but love is not an action. If love can be commanded, then love is an action, something I can will myself to do; love is not an action, not something I can will myself to do, but an emotional response; ergo, love cannot be commanded.

One way around the difficulty is by reinterpreting what is meant by 'love.' While I cannot will to love you, I can will to act benevolently toward you. And while it makes no sense to command love, it does make sense to command benevolent behavior. "You ought to love her" makes no sense; but "You ought to act as if you love her" does make sense. There cannot be a duty to love, but there might be a duty to do the sorts of things to and for a person that one would do without a sense of duty if one were to love her. One idea, then, is to construe "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" as "Thou shalt act towards everyone as one acts toward those few whom one loves" or perhaps "Thou shalt act toward one's neighbor as if one loved him." The above is essentially Kant's view as Mann reports it (236 ff.) .

As for love of God, to love God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul is to act as if one loves God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul. But how does one do that? One way is by acting as if one loves one's neighbor as oneself. So far, so good. Mann, however, rejects this minimalist account as he calls it. And then the discussion becomes murky for this reviewer despite his having read it four or five times carefully. The murkiness is not alleviated by a segue into a rich and detailed discussion of eros, philia, and agape.

“Modality, Morality, and God” is written in the same meandering style but is much easier to follow. It also has the virtue of epitomizing the entire collection of essays. Its topic is the familiar Euthyphro dilemma: Does God love right actions because they are right, or are they right because God loves them? On the first horn, God is reduced to a mere spokesman for the moral order rather than its source, with negative consequences for the divine sovereignty. On the second horn, the autonomy of the moral order is compromised and made hostage to divine arbitrarity. If the morally obligatory is such because God commands it, then, were God to command injustice, it would be morally obligatory. And if God were to love injustice that would surely not give us a moral reason for loving it. Having set up the problem, Mann should have stated his solution and then explained it. Instead, he makes us slog through his dialectic. Mann's solution is built on the notion that with respect to necessary truths and absolute values God is not free to will otherwise than he wills. In this way the second horn is avoided. But how can God be sovereign over the conceptual and moral orders if he cannot will otherwise than he wills? If I understand the solution, it is that sovereignty is maintained and the first horn is avoided if the constraint on divine freedom is internal to God as it would be if “absolute values are the expression of that [God's] rational autonomy.” (168) Thus God is not free as possessing the liberty of indifference with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, but he is free as the rationally autonomous creative source of necessary truths and absolute values. Thus God is the source of necessary truths and absolute values, not their admirer. Does Mann's solution require the doctrine of divine simplicity? I dont think so. But it is consistent with it. If knowing and willing are identical in God, then the truth value and modal status of necessary truths cannot be otherise in which case God cannot will them to be otherwise.

Divine Simplicity

At the center of Mann's approach to God is the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). But as Mann wryly observes, “The DDS is not the sort of doctrine that commands everyone's immediate assent.” (260) It is no surprise then that the articulation, defense, and application of the doctrine is a recurrent theme of most of the first thirteen essays. Since DDS is the organizing theme of the collection, a critical look at Mann's defense of it is in order.

One of the entailments of the classical doctrine of divine simplicity is that God is what he has. (Augustine, The City of God, XI, 10.) Thus God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. And similarly for the other divine attributes. The Platonic flavor of this is unmistakable. God is not an all-knowing being, but all-knowing-ness itself; not a good being, or even a maximally good being, but Goodness itself; not a wise being or the wisest of beings, but Wisdom itself. Neither is God a being among beings, an ens among entia, but ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent Being. To our ordinary way of thinking this sounds like so much nonsense: how could anything be identical to its attributes? It seems obvious that something that has properties is eo ipso distinct from them. But on another way of thinking, DDS makes a good deal of sense. How could God, the absolute, self-sufficient reality, be just one more wise individual even if the wisest? God is better thought of as the source of all wisdom, as Wisdom itself in its prime instance. Otherwise, God would be dependent on something other than himself for his wisdom, namely, the property of being wise. As Mann points out, the Platonic approach as we find it is the Augustinian and Anselmian accounts of DDS leads to difficulties a couple of which are as follows:

D1. If God = wisdom, and God = life, then wisdom = life. But wisdom and life are not even extensionally equivalent, let alone identical. If Tom is alive, it doesn't follow that Tom is wise. (23)

D2. If God is wisdom, and Socrates is wise by participating in wisdom, then Socrates is wise by participating in God. But this smacks of heresy. No creature participates in God. (23)

Property Instances

Enter property instances. It is one thing to say that God is wisdom, quite another to say that God is God's wisdom. God's wisdom is an example of a property instance. And similarly for the other divine attributes. God is not identical to life; God is identical to his life. Suppose we say that God = God's wisdom, and God = God's life. It would then follow that God's wisdom = God's life, but not that God = wisdom or that wisdom = life.

So if we construe identity with properties as identity with property instances, then we can evade both of (D1) and (D2). Mann's idea, then, is that the identity claims made within DDS should be taken as Deity-instance identities (e.g., God is his omniscience) and as instance-instance identities (e.g., God's omniscience is God's omnipotence), but not as Deity-property identities (e.g., God is omniscience) or as property-property identities (e.g., omniscience is omnipotence). Support for Mann's approach is readily available in the texts of the doctor angelicus. (24) Aquinas says things like, Deus est sua bonitas, "God is his goodness."

But what exactly is a property instance? If the concrete individual Socrates instantiates the abstract property wisdom, then two further putative items come into consideration. One is the (Chisholmian-Plantingian as opposed to Bergmannian-Armstrongian) state of affairs, Socrates' being wise. Such items are abstract, i.e., not in space or time. The other is the property instance, the wisdom of Socrates. Mann rightly holds that they are distinct. All abstract states of affairs exist, but only some of them obtain or are actual. By contrast, all property instances are actual: they cannot exist without being actual. The wisdom of Socrates is a particular, an unrepeatable item, just as Socrates is, and the wisdom of Socrates is concrete (in space and/or time) just as Socrates is. If we admit property instances into our ontology, then the above two difficulties can be circumvented. Or so Mann maintains.

Could a Person be a Property Instance?

But then other problems loom. One is this. If the F-ness of God = God, if, for example, the wisdom of God = God, then God is a property instance. But God is a person. From the frying pan into the fire? How could a person be a property instance? The problem displayed as an inconsistent triad:

a. God is a property instance.

b. God is a person.

c. No person is a property instance.

Mann solves the triad by denying (c). (37) Some persons are property instances. Indeed, Mann argues that every person is a property instance because everything is a property instance. (38) God is a person and therefore a property instance. If you object that persons are concrete while property instances are abstract, Mann's response is that both are concrete. (37) To be concrete is to be in space and/or time. Socrates is concrete in this sense, but so is his being sunburned.

If you object that persons are substances and thus independent items while property instances are not substances but dependent on substances, Mann's response will be that the point holds for accidental property instances but not for essential property instances. Socrates may lose his wisdom but he cannot lose his humanity. Now all of God's properties are essential: God is essentially omniscient, omnipotent, etc. So it seems to Mann that "the omniscience of God is not any more dependent on God than God is on the omniscience of God: should either cease to be, the other would also." (37) This is scarcely compelling: x can depend on y even if both are necessary beings. Both the set whose sole member is the number 7 and the number 7 itself are necessary beings, but the set depends on its member both for its existence and its necessity, and not vice versa. Closer to home, Aquinas held that some necessary beings have their necessity from another while one has its necessity in itself. I should think that the omniscience of God is dependent on God, and not vice versa. Mann's view, however, is not unreasonable. Intuitions vary.

Mann's argument for the thesis that everything is a property instance involves the notion of a rich property. The rich property of an individual x is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all and only the essential and accidental properties, some of them temporally indexed, instantiated by x throughout x's career. (38) Mann tells us that for anything whatsoever there is a corresponding rich property. From this he concludes that "everything is a property instance of some rich property or other." (38) It follows that every person is a property instance. The argument seems to be this:

A. For every concrete individual x, there is a corresponding rich property R. Therefore,

B. For every concrete individual x, x is a property instance of some rich property or other. Therefore,

C. For every concrete individual x, if x is a person, then x is a property instance.

I am having difficulty understanding this argument. The move from (A) to (B) smacks of a non sequitur absent some auxiliary premise. I grant arguendo that for each concrete individual x there is a corresponding rich property R. And I grant that there are property instances. Thus I grant that, in addition to Socrates and wisdom, there is the wisdom of Socrates. Recall that this property instance is not to be confused with the abstract state of affairs, Socrates' being wise. From what I have granted it follows that for each x there is the rich property instance, the R-ness of x. But how is it supposed to follow that everything is a property instance? Everything instantiates properties, and in this sense everything is an instance of properties; but this is not to say that everything is a property instance. Socrates instantiates a rich property, and so is an instance of a property, but it doesn't follow that Socrates is a property instance. Something is missing in Mann's argument. Either that, or I am missing something.

There is of course no chance that Professor Mann is confusing being an instance of a property with being a property instance. If a instantiates F-ness, then a is an instance of the property F-ness; but a is not a property instance as philosophers use this phrase: the F-ness of a is a property instance. So what do we have to add to Mann's argument for it to generate the conclusion that every concrete individual is a property instance? How do we validate the inferential move from (A) to (B)? Let 'Rs' stand for Socrates' rich property. We have to add the claim that there is nothing one could point to that could distinguish Socrates from the property instance generated when Socrates instantiates Rs. Rich property instances are a special case of property instances. Socrates cannot be identical to his wisdom because he can exist even if his wisdom does not exist. And he cannot be identical to his humanity because there is more to Socrates that his humanity, even though he cannot exist wthout it. But since Socrates' rich property instance includes all his property instances, why can't Socrates be identical to this rich property instance? And so Mann's thought seems to be that there is nothing that could distinguish Socrates from his rich property instance. So they are identical. And likewise for every other individual. But I think this is mistaken. Consequently, I think it is a mistake to hold that every person is a property instance. I give three arguments.

Rich Properties and Haecceity Properties

Socrates can exist without his rich property; ergo, he can exist without his rich property instance; ergo, Socrates cannot be a rich property instance or any property instance. The truth of the initial premise is fallout from the definition of 'rich property.' The R of x is a conjunctive property each conjunct of which is a property of x. Thus Socrates' rich property includes (has as a conjunct) the property of being married to Xanthippe. But Socrates might not have had that property, whence it follows that he might not have had R. (If R has C as a conjunct, then necessarily R has C as a conjunct, which implies that R cannot be what it is without having exactly the conjuncts it in fact has. An analog of mereological essentialism holds for conjunctive properties.) And because Socrates might not have had R, he might not have had the property instance of R. So Socrates cannot be identical to this property instance.

What Mann needs is not a rich property, but an haecceity property: one that individuates Socrates across every possible world in which he exists. His rich property, by contrast, individuates him in only the actual world. In different worlds, Socrates has different rich properties. And in different worlds, Socrates has different rich property instances. It follows that Socrates cannot be identical to, or even necessarily equivalent to, any rich property instance. An haecceity property, however, is a property Socrates has in every world in which he exists, and which he alone has in every world in which he exists. Now if there are such haecceity properties as identity-with-Socrates, then perhaps we can say that Socrates is identical to a property instance, namely, the identity-with-Socrates of Socrates. Unfortunately, there are no haecceity properties as I and others have argued.¹ So I conclude that concrete individuals cannot be identified with property instances, whence follows the perhaps obvious proposition that no person is a property instance, not God, not me, not Socrates.

The Revenge of Max Black

Suppose we revisit Max Black's indiscernible iron spheres. There are exactly two of them, and nothing else, and they share all monadic and relational properties. (Thus both are made of iron and each is ten meters from an iron sphere.) There are no properties to distinguish them, and of course there are no haecceity properties. So the rich property of the one is the same as the rich property of the other. It follows that the rich property instance of the one is identical to the rich property instance of the other. But there are two spheres, not one. It follows that neither sphere is identical to its rich property instance. So again I conclude that individuals are not rich property instances.

If you tell me that the property instances are numerically distinct because the spheres are numerically distinct, then you presuppose that individuals are not rich property instances. You presuppose a distinction between an individual and its rich property instance. This second argument assumes that Black's world is metaphysically possible and thus that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not metaphysically necessary. A reasonable assumption!

The Revenge of Josiah Royce

Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin. Now it is a fact that I love myself. But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally. For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do. But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil. Suppose God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go. I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' So I don't love Phil equally even though he has all the same properties that I have. I prefer myself and love myself just because I am myself. My Being exceeds my being a rich property instance.

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties. For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other. This would make no sense if the Being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties. In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also as a unique existent individual who cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual. And the same goes for Phil: he loves himself as a unique individual. Each of us loves himself as a unique individual numerically distinct from his indiscernible twin.

Classical theism is a personalism: God is a person and we, as made in the image and likeness of God, are also persons. God keeps us in existence by knowing us and loving us. God is absolutely unique and each of us is unique as, and only as, the object of divine love. The divine love penetrates to the very ipseity and haecceity of me and my indiscernible twin, Phil. God loves us as individuals, as essentially unique (Josiah Royce). But this is not possible if we are reducible to rich property instances. I detect a tension between the personalism of classical theism and the view that persons are property instances.

The Dialectic in Review

One of the entailments of DDS is that God is identical to his attributes, such defining properties as omniscience, omnipotence, etc. This view has its difficulties, so Mann takes a different tack: God is identical to his property instances. This implies that God is a property instance. But God is a person and it is not clear how a person could be a property instance. Mann takes the bull by the horns by boldly arguing that every concrete individual is a property instance -- a rich property instance -- and that therefore every person is a property instance, including God. The argument was found to be uncompelling for the three reasons given. Mann's problems stem from an attempt to adhere to a non-constituent ontology in explication of a doctrine that was developed within, and presumably only makes sense within, a constituent ontology. Too much indebted to A. Plantinga's important but wrong-headed critique of DDS in Does God Have a Nature?, Mann thinks that a shift to property instances will save the day while remaining within Plantinga's nonconstituent ontological framework.² But God can no more be identical to a concrete property instance than he can to an abstract property.

1 William F. Vallicella, A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series #89, 2002, pp. 99-104. See also Hugh J. McCann, Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Indiana UP, 2012, pp. 86-87.  See my review article, "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 149-161.

2 See my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Divine Simplicity,” section 3.

 

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Two Senses of 'Contingency' and a Bad Cosmological Argument

Fr. Aidan Kimel asked me to comment on a couple of divine simplicity entries of his.  When I began reading the first, however, I soon got bogged down in a preliminary matter concerning wonder at the existence of the world, its contingency, and whether its contingency leads us straightaway to a causa prima.  So I will offer some comments on these topics and perhaps get around to divine simplicity later.

Fr. Kimel writes, 

Why is it obvious to [David Bentley] Hart, when it is not obvious to so many modern theologians and philosophers, that a proper understanding of divinity entails divine simplicity? Earlier in his book Hart invites us to consider with wonder the very fact of existence. “How odd it is, and how unfathomable,” he muses, “that anything at all exists; how disconcerting that the world and one’s consciousness of it are simply there, joined in a single ineffable event. … Every encounter with the world has always been an encounter with an enigma that no merely physical explanation can resolve” (pp. 88-89). The universe poses the question “why?” and in so posing this question, it reveals to us its absolute contingency. The universe need not have been. [Emphasis added.]“Nothing within the cosmos contains the ground of its existence” (p. 92):

All things that do not possess the cause of their existence in themselves must be brought into existence by something outside themselves. Or, more tersely, the contingent is always contingent on something else. This is not a difficult or rationally problematic proposition. The complications lie in its application. Before all else, however, one must define what real contingency is. It is, first, simply the condition of being conditional: that is, the condition of depending upon anything external or prior or circumambient in order to exist and to persist in being. It is also mutability, the capacity to change over time, to move constantly from potential to actual states, and to abandon one actual state in favor of another. It is also the condition of being extended in both space and time, and thus of being incapable of perfect “self-possession” in some absolute here and now. It is the capacity and the tendency both to come into and pass out of being. It is the condition of being composite, made up of and dependent upon logically prior parts, and therefore capable of division and dissolution. It is also, in consequence, the state of possessing limits and boundaries, external and internal, and so of achieving identity through excluding—and thus inevitably, depending upon—other realities; it is, in short, finitude. (pp. 99-100)

And now some comments of mine.

1.  Strictly speaking, the universe does not pose any questions; we pose, formulate, and try to answer questions.  I share with Hart, Wittgenstein, et al. the sense of wonder that anything at all exists.  But this sense of wonder is ours, not the universe's. We sometimes express this sense of wonder in a grammatically interrogative sentence, 'Why does/should anything at all exist?'
2. But please note that this expression of wonder, although grammatically interrogative, is not the same as the explanation-seeking why-question, Why does anything at all exist? And again, this is a question we ask; it is not one that the universe asks.
3. Nor does the universe reveal to us its absolute contingency by asking this question: it does not ask the question.  We ask the explanation-seeking why-question, and in asking it we presuppose that the universe is contingent, that it "need not have been," that it is not necessary.  For if the universe were necessary, it would make little or no sense to ask why it exists.
4. But is the universe contingent?  Its contingency does not follow from the fact that we presuppose it to be contingent.  But for the sake of this discussion I will just assume that the universe is contingent.  It is, after all, a reasonable assumption.
5. But what is it to be contingent?  There seems to be two nonequivalent definitions of 'contingency' at work above.  I will call them the modal definition and the dependency definition.
6. X is modally contingent =df x exists in some but not all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds.  But since possible worlds jargon is very confusing to many, I will also put the definition like this:  X is modally contingent =df x is possibly nonexistent if existent and possibly existent if nonexistent.  For example, I am modally contingent because I might not have existed: my nonexistence is metaphysically possible.  Unicorns, on the other hand,  are also modally contingent items because they are possibly existent despite their actual nonexistence.  This is what Aquinas meant when he said that the contingent is what is possible to be and possible not to be.  Note that the contingent and the actual are not coextensive.  Unicorns are contingent but not actual, and God and the number 9 are actual but not contingent.  If you balk at the idea that unicorns are contingent, then I will ask you:  Are they then necessary beings?  Or impossible beings?  Since they can't be either, then they must be contingent.  
7. Now for the dependency definition.  X is dependently contingent =df there is  some y such that (i) x is not identical to y; (ii) necessarily, if x exists, then y exists; (iii) y is in some sense the ground or source of x's existence.  We need something like the third clause in the definiens for the following reason.    Any two distinct necessary beings will satisfy the first two clauses.  Let x be the property of being prime and y the number 9.  The two items are distinct and it is necessarily the case that  if being prime exists, then 9 exists.  But we don't want to say that the  the property  is contingently dependent upon the number.
8. The two definitions of 'contingency' are not equivalent.  What is modally contingent may or may not be dependently contingent.  Bertrand Russell and others have held that the universe exists as a matter of brute fact.  (Cf. his famous BBC debate with Fr. Copleston.)  Thus it exists and is modally contingent, but does not depend on anything for its existence, and so is not dependently contingent, contingent on something.  It is not a contradiction, or at least not an obvious contradiction,  to maintain that the universe is modally contingent but not depend on anything distinct from itself. 'Contingent' and 'contingent upon' must not be confused.  On the other hand, Aquinas held that there are two sorts of necessary beings, those that have their necessity from another and those that have their necessity in themselves. God, and God alone, has his necessity in himself, whereas Platonica have their necessity from God. That is to say that they derive their esse from God; they depend for their existence of God despite their metaphysical necessity.  If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then the denizens of the Platonic menagerie would not exist either.    It follows that Platonica are dependently contingent.
9. So I would urge that it is not the case that, as Hart says, "the contingent is always contingent on something else."   Or at least that is not obviously the case: it needs arguing.  Hart appears to be confusing the two senses of 'contingency' and making things far too easy on himself.  The following is a bad argument: The universe is contingent; the contingent, by definition, is contingent on something else; ergo the universe is contingent on something else, and this all men call God.  It is a bad argument because it either equivocates on 'contingency,' or else the second premise is false.  I am not sure that Hart endorses this argument.  I am sure, however, that it is a bad argument.

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Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford

W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."  Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible worlds, there is exactly one actual world and that this world of me and my world mates is the world that happens to be actual.  (Think of the actual world as the total way things are, and of a merely possible world as a total way things might have been.  For a quick and dirty primer, see Some Theses on Possible Worlds.)

But not only do I have insufficient evidence for these two beliefs, it looks as if I have no evidence at all.  And yet I feel wholly entitled to my acceptance of them and in breach of no plausible ethics of belief, assuming there is such a subject as the ethics of belief.

Consider the following argument that I adapt from D. M. Armstrong, who borrowed it from Donald C. Williams:

1. Exactly one of the infinity of possible worlds is actual.

2. This world of me and my mates is a possible world.

Therefore, very probably,

3. This world of me and my mates is merely possible.

This is an inductive argument, but a very strong one.  While it does not necessitate its conclusion, it renders the conclusion exceedingly likely.  For if there is an infinity of worlds, how likely is it that mine is the lucky one?

And yet the conclusion is absurd, or to be precise: manifestly false.  Is it not perfectly obvious that this world of ours and everything in it is actual?  I am convinced that I am actual, and that all this stuff I am interacting with is actual.  I am sitting in an actual chair in an actual room which is lit by an actual sun, etc. 

But how do I know this?  What is my evidence?  There are no facts known to me that are better known than the fact that I am actual (that I actually exist).  So my evidence cannot consist of other facts.  Is it self-evident that I am actual?  You could say this, but how do I know, given the above argument, that my actuality is objectively self-evident as opposed to merely subjectively self-evident?  Subjective self-evidence is epistemically worthless, while objective self-evidence is not to be had in the teeth of the above argument.  No doubt I seem to myself to be actual.  But that subjective seeming does not get the length of objective self-evidence.  I now argue as follows:

4. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe anything on no evidence.

5. I have no evidence that me and my world are actual.

6. It is not wrong to believe what is obviously true.

7. It is obviously true that I am actual.

Therefore, contra Clifford,

8.  There are some things it is not wrong to believe on insufficient evidence.

This is not a compelling argument, but it is a very powerful one.  Not compelling because the Cliffordian extremist could bite the bullet by denying (7).  He might say that the ethics of belief enjoins us to suspend belief on the question whether one is actual.  

Now this is psychologically impossible, for me anyway.  But apart from this impossibility, it is surely better known that I am actual than that Clifford's extreme thesis is true.

There are other obvious problems with the thesis.  Any tyro in philosophy should see right away that it is self-vitiating.  If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe Clifford's thesis on insufficient evidence.  But what conceivable evidence could one have for it?  None that I can see.  It is not only a normative claim, but one stuffed with universal quantifiers.  Good luck!  If you say that the thesis needn't be taken as applying to itself, then other problems will arise that you can work out for yourself.  Why do I have to do all the thinking?

Note also that if you take Clifford's thesis to heart you will have to suspend belief on all sorts of questions outside of religion, questions in ethics, politics, economics, climatology, etc., questions you have extremely firm opinions about.  The practical upshot, if one were consistent, would probably be a full retreat into Skeptic ataraxia.  At least until the political authorities came to put you in prison.  Then you would begin believing that some things are just and some are not, etc., and damn the insufficiency or nonexistence of the evidence for the contentious beliefs.

Our doxastic predicament is a bitch, ain't she?  Well, what do you want for a Cave?

Modality, Possible Worlds, and the Accidental-Essential Distinction

This from a reader:

The Stanford Encyclopedia notes in its article on Essential vs. Accidental Properties, "A modal characterization of the distinction between essential and accidental properties is taken for granted in nearly all work in analytic metaphysics since the 1950s.”  Personally, I find modal definitions of this type very hand wavy.  Ed Feser states my objection more eloquently than I can: 

 

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view, the possible worlds analysis of essence has things backwards: we need to know what the essence of a thing is, before we can know what it would be like in various possible worlds; talk of possible worlds, if legitimate at all, must get explained in terms of essence, not essence in terms of possible worlds ( Aquinas, iBooks edition, page 90).  

 

I think the modal characterization will be a dead end for us.

Response

Two points.  First, I do not understand how one could characterize the essential versus accidental distinction except modally.  Second, a modal characterization need not be in terms of so-called 'possible worlds.'  One should not suppose that a characterization is modal if and only if it is in terms of possible worlds.

First point first.  I am a blogger and a native Californian.  I might not have been either.  So being a blogger and being a native Californian are accidental properties of me.  I could have existed without possessing these properties.  But I could not have existed without being human.  So being human is an essential property of me.  Generalizing, if P is an essential property of x, then x must have P, it cannot not have P.  If P is an accidental property of x, then x need not have P, it could lack P.  And conversely in both cases.

Note that I had to use modal words to characterize the distinction: 'might,' 'could,' 'must,' 'need not,' 'cannot.'  I conclude that the accidental-essential distinction is irreducibly modal: it cannot be made except modally.  It is indeed essentially modal!

To appreciate this, consider the first two accidental properties I mentioned.  I was not always a blogger: speaking tenselessly, there are times at which I am not a blogger.  But I was always and will always be a native Californian.  Speaking tenselessly again, there are no times at which I am not a native Californian.*  It follows that we cannot define an essential (accidental) property of x as a property x has (does not have) at every time at which it exists.  The distinction cannot be made in temporal terms; one needs to employ modal language.

If a thing has a property essentially, then it has the property at every time at which it exists.  But not conversely:  if a thing has a property at every time at which it exists, it does not follow that it has the property essentially.  So again it should be clear that the distinction in question is ineliminably modal.

I should make it clear that the modality in question here is non-epistemic/non-doxastic.  Suppose Tom died an hour ago, unbeknownst to me.  I ask you, "Is Tom teaching now?"  You say, "Could be!"  But of course it can't be that he is teaching now if he is dead now.  You are not saying that it is (really) possible that he be teaching now; you are saying that his teaching now is logically consistent with what you know or believe, that it is not ruled out by what you know/believe. 

Second point second.  From what I have written it should be clear that we don't need the jargon of possible worlds to talk modally.   But it is a very useful and graphic way of talking.  Accordingly,

D1. P is an accidental property of x =_df there are possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P.

D2. P is an essential property of x =_df there are no possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P.

We can add a third definition:

D3. P is a necessary property of x =_df there are no possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P, and x exists in every possible world.  Example:  Omniscience is a necessary property of God: he has it in every world in which he exists, and, since he is a necessary being, he exists in every world.  Non-theological example: Being prime is a necessary property of the number 7:  7 has it in every metaphysically possible world in which it exists, and it exists in every such world.

The above definitions do not sanction the reduction of the modal to the non-modal.  For modal terms appear on both sides of the biconditionals.  Nor could we say that the right-hand sides explicates or analyzes the left-hand sides.  So I agree with Feser as quoted above.  What is first in the order of metaphysical explanation is a thing's being essentially thus and so or accidentally thus and so.  We can then go on to represent these states of affairs in possible worlds terms, but we need not do so.

Jenner and Dolezal.  Is Jenner essentially male?  I should think so.  Being male is a biological determination.  It can be spelled out in terms of sex chromosomes.   They are different in males and females.  Jenner as he is today is a sort of super-transvestite: he is not just a male in women's clothing, but a male who has had his body surgically altered to have female anatomical features.  But he is still male.  How could he be a woman?  You can't be a woman without first being a girl, and he was never a girl.

If you deny that Jenner is essentially biologically male, will you also deny that he is essentially biologically human?  If not, why not?  If literal sex change is possible, is species change possible? 

Is Rachel Dolezal essentially Caucasian?  Well, of course.  Race, like sex, is biologically based.  It is not something you choose.  Nor is it a social construct.  Barack Obama thinks that we Americans have racism in our DNA.  That's bullshit, of course.  There is nothing biological about being a racist.  But there is something biological about race.  You can be a traitor to your country, but not to your race.

Biology matters!  And so does clear thinking and honest talk.  Obama take note.

______________________

*Ignoring the fact, if it is a fact, that I existed pre-natally.  If this wrinkle troubles you, I can change my example.

 

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Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism

The following is an excerpt of an e-mail from the Barcelona lawyer, Daniel Vincente Carillo.  As I mentioned to him in a private e-mail, I admire him for tackling these great questions, and doing so in a foreign language.  The pursuit of these questions ennobles us while humbling us at the same time.  Carillo writes,

In the contest between theism and metaphysical naturalism we have only four possible scenarios:

 

1st. An uncaused and necessary universe: It doesn't exist by another being and it cannot cease to exist (absolute and eternal universe).

 

BV:  This is indeed a doxastic possibility.  (By calling the possibility doxastic, I leave it open whether it is a real possibility.)  But one ought to distinguish between omnitemporality and eternality.    The omnitemporal exists at every time, and is therefore 'in time.'  The eternal does not exist 'in time.'  A universe that cannot cease to exist is in time and therefore not eternal. This could be a merely terminological matter.

 

2nd. A caused and necessary universe: It exists by another being but it cannot cease to exist (infinite series of universes).

 

BV: It is true that what is caused to exist is caused by another, since nothing can cause itself to exist,  not even God.  To say that God is causa sui, then, does not mean that he causes himself; it  means that he is not caused by another.  'Causa sui,' shall we say, is a privative expression.  So far, so good.

 

But Carillo may be conflating the necessary with the omnitemporal.  To say that a universe is necessary is to make a modal claim, one that is much stronger than the merely temporal claim that the universe in question exists at every time.  Suppose time is actually infinite in both past and future directions and that the universe (or a universe) exists at every time.  Then the universe is omnitemporal: it exists at every time.  But it doesn't follow that the universe is necessary.  Metaphysical necessity is a modal, not temporal notion.  The necessary is that which cannot not exist.  An omnitemporal universe could well be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent.

 

In the jargon of 'possible worlds,' a necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds.  An omnitemporal being is one that exists at every time in a world in which there is time.  Clearly, if x is omnitemporal, it does not follow that x is necessary. 

 

3rd. An uncaused and contingent universe: It doesn't exist by another being but it can cease to exist (universe from nothing).

 

BV: But even if an uncaused universe could NOT cease to exist, it might still be contingent.  Suppose that there is an uncaused universe U which is such that: if it exists, then it cannot cease to exist.  U's being contingent is not ruled out.  If it is necessary that U continue to exist if it does exist,it does not follow that U necessarily exists.  For there might not have been that universe at all.

 

4th. A caused and contingent universe: It exists by another being and it can cease to exist (created universe).

 

BV:  But again, if U exists ab alio, this is logically consistent with U's never ceasing to exist.  Suppose God creates a universe which has the essential property of being  omnitemporal.  He creates a universe out of nothing that exists at every time.  Since it exists at every time, there is no time at which it does not exist.  And because there is no time at which U does not exist, it never ceases to exist.  (If x ceases to exist, then there are two times, t and t*, t < t*, such that x exists at t but does not exist at t*.)  So a universe can depend for its existence on God even if it cannot cease to exist.

 

The first three options characterize atheism/naturalism, while the last one is peculiar to theism. But are they equally rational? Definitely not.

 

BV: A minor point is that atheism and naturalism are not the same.  The latter entails the former, but the former does not entail the latter. (The case of McTaggart, atheist but non-naturalist).

 

Despite my criticism above, the three naturalist options Carillo lists do seem to exhaust the possibilities if we assume that a metaphysical naturalist is also a metaphysical realist, an assumption which is quite 'natural.'  But if one were a naturalist and some sort of anti-realist or idealist, that would be a further option.

Now how does Carillo exclude the third option?  He writes:

It looks like the 3rd possibility is the weakest, since nothingness cannot create anything at all. The act of creation, like any other act of producing something, presupposes that the creator and the creature exist simultaneously at least in some moment. However, by its very notion, nothingness cannot exist simultaneously with the universe at any moment. Therefore, a universe from nothing is impossible . . . .

This is entirely too quick.  True, nothingness cannot create anything.  But someone who holds that the universe just exists as a matter of brute fact, i.e., contingently without cause or reason, is not committed to maintaining that nothingness has creative power.  As I recall from Russell's debate with Copleston, Russell ends up saying that the universe just exists and that is all!  That is not a good answer, in my opinion, but one cannot refute it by pointing out that nothingness cannot create anything.  The whole point of naturalism is that there are neither creatures nor creator.

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Modal Axioms

Man is a metaphysical animal.  We philosophers ought to encourage this tendency in our fellow mortals.  This morning's mail brings me a long disquisition by a Spanish lawyer (abogado), Daniel Vincente Carillo, entitled "A New Argument on the Existence of God."  It consists of numerous definitions, axioms, and theorems. I don't have time to comment on the whole thing, which can be found here, but I will remark critically, and I hope helpfully,  on his modal axioms.

Axiom 1

 

An opposite of what is impossible is either possible and not necessary, impossible or necessary (what is impossible is opposed to everything).

 

Better: What is not impossible is either possible but not necessary, or possible and necessary.

 

Example:  I am not impossible because I am possible but not necessary.  God and the number 7 are possible and necessary.

 

Axiom 2

 

An opposite of what is possible and not necessary is either possible and not necessary or impossible (what is possible is opposed to everything, except to what is necessary).

 

Incoherent as it stands.  

 

The possible is the opposite of the impossible.  That is, x is possible iff x is not impossible.  The possible divides into the necessary and the contingent.  The contingent divides into the actual but possibly nonexistent and the nonactual but possibly existent.

 

For example, I am contingent and so is a talking donkey.  The difference is that I am actual but possibly nonexistent while the talking donkey is not actual but possibly existent.

 

Of course, the modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.

 

Axiom 3

 

An opposite of what is necessary is impossible (what is necessary is concomitant with what is possible and what is necessary, and only is opposed to what is impossible).

 

Incorrect.  What is not necessary is either impossible or contingent.  Possibility and impossibility are opposites.  Necessity and impossibility are not opposites.  Why not?  Because the contingent is neither necessary nor impossible. 

 

In the patois of 'possible worlds':  the contingent is that which exists (or is true in the case of propositions) in some but not all possible worlds, whereas the necessary exists or else is true in all worlds and the impossible in none.

 

This patois is a very useful façon de parler for rendering modal relationships graphic. 

 

Axiom 4

 

What is not necessary is contingent.

 

Incorrect.  What is not necessary is either contingent or impossible.  For example, I am not necessary because I am contingent.  A round square is not necessary because it is impossible. 

 

Axiom 5

 

What is contingent is either possible or impossible.

 

Incorrect.  What is contingent is possible but not necessary. The impossible exists or else is true in no possible world whereas the contingent exists or else is true in some but not all possible worlds.

 

Or think of it this way.  The contingent is either actual or unactual, and if actual, then possibly nonexistent, and if unactual, then possibly existent.  For example, your humble correspondent is contingent and actual, hence possibly nonexistent, while a flying armadillo is contingent and unactual, hence possibly existent.

 

Axiom 6

 

What is not impossible is possible.

 

Correct!

 

Axiom 7

 

Everything that exists does so by itself or by another being.

 

Correct!

 

Axiom 8

 

God, the universe, and nothingness, if possible, are the only possible beings.

 

Incorrect or at least highly controversial.  Many philosophers maintain, with good reason, that there are so-called 'abstract objects,' all or most of which are necessary beings.  (Candidates: properties, propositions, numbers, sets.)  Now everything necessary is possible.  So these abstract objects are possible beings.  Therefore, there are possible beings that are distinct from God and the universe.

 

Second, nothing is in no sense a being.  Hence it cannot be a possible being.  It is, however, at least a question whether there could have been nothing at all.  I examine this question in the entry referenced below.

 

UPDATE 2/26:  David Gordon writes,

 

You are of course right that nothing is both contingent and impossible; but this does not show that Axiom 5 is incorrect. "What is contingent is possible" is true; and from this "What is contingent is either possible or impossible" follows. If, as I gather from your account, Carillo denies that the class of impossible contingent things is empty, he is mistaken, but his axiom isn't. One can object to it that it isn't an axiom, as its truth depends on the truth of "What is contingent is possible." This is probably too trivial a point to have written to you about, but I pass it along anyway.

 

The problem is the ambiguity  of Carillo's formulation.  I took him to be saying that some contingent beings are possible while other are impossible -- which is surely false.

 

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Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

As a matter of fact, things exist. But suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all.  Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness?  Is this thought thinkable?  Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all?  And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all?  Could there have been nothing at all?  If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which respectively imply that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists: □(∃x)(x exists).

2. Something necessarily exists:   (∃x)□(x exists). 

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely.  If you confuse them you will be justly taxed with an operator shift fallacy.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea.  Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old.  (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!)  I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself.  One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling,  I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything.  Then only God would exist.  And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all."  At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later.  The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all -- is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

I am torn between two positions. On the one it is provable that necessarily something exists.  On the other, it is not provable.

Here is one sort of argument for the thesis that necessarily something exists and that it is therefore impossible that there be nothing at all.  The argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.

1. There are no propositions.  (Assumption for reductio)

2. (1) is either true or false.

3. Whatever is either true or false is a proposition.  (This is by definition.  Propositions are truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values.  They are whatever it is that is appropriately characterizable as either true or false.)

Therefore

4. If (1) is true, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)

Therefore

5. If (1) is false, then there is at least one proposition.  (2, 3)

Therefore

6. Necessarily, there is at least one proposition.

Therefore

7. (1) is necessarily false.

Therefore

8. It is not possible that nothing exists. 

Skeptical Rejoinder

I don't buy it.  Had there been nothing at all, there would not have been any propositions, any states of affairs, any way things are, any properties, any truth, any Law of Non-Contradiction or Law of Excluded Middle or Principle of Bivalence, any distinction between true and false, any distinctions at all.  There would have been just nothing at all.  Your proof that this is impossible begs the question by assuming or presupposing the whole interconnected framework of propositions, truth and falsehood, etc., including your modal principles and other logical principles. 

You can't prove that there must be something if you presuppose that there must be something.  Circular arguments are of course valid, but no circular argument is a proof.  

At the very most, what you demonstrate is that WE cannot operate without presupposing the Logical Framework -- to give it a name.   At the very most, you demonstrate that the Logical Framework (LF) is a transcendental presupposition of OUR discursive activities, in roughly the Kantian sense of 'transcendental.' You do not succeed in demonstrating that Being itself or any being exists independently of us.  Your proof may have transcendental import, but it fails to secure ontological import.  Why do you think that Being itself, independently of us, is such that necessarily something exists?

For example, you think that there must be a total way things are such that, if there were nothing at all, then that would be the way things are, in which case there would, in the end, be a way things are. But how do you know that?  How do you know that your presupposition of a way things are is more than a merely transcendental presupposition as opposed to a structure grounded in the very Being of things independently of us?

I grant you that the LF is necessary, but its necessity is conditional: it depends on us, and we might not have existed.  For all you have shown, there could have been nothing at all.

Why does it matter?  What's at stake?

Now this is a highly abstract and abstruse debate.  Does it matter practically or 'existentially'? 

If there could have been nothing at all, then all is contingent and no Absolute exists.    An Absolute such as God must be a necessary being. An Absolute functions as the real-ground of the existence, intelligibility, and value of everything distinct from it. If there is no Absolute, then existence is absurd, i.e., without ultimate ground (source and reason), without sense and intelligibility.  Now if existence is absurd, then human existence is absurd.  So if there could have been nothing at all, then human existence is absurd.  This is why our question matters.  It matters because it matters whether our existence is absurd.

Mike Valle on Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

Could everything have come into being without a cause?  Mike Valle tells me about an annoying interlocutor who thinks it certain that this is impossible because it is certain that ex nihilo nihil fit: from nothing nothing comes.  Mike, if I understand him, doubts the certainty of the principle.  He reasons: had there been nothing at all, then there would have been nothing to prevent something from arising.  In particular, had there been nothing at all, there would have been no such truth as ex nihilo nihil fit.

Mike's reasoning presupposes that it is possible that there be nothing at all.  So his suggestion comports well with the Skeptical Rejoinder above.

As for myself, I am left with the thought that is reasonable to hold that there must be something -- after all I argued the matter out rigorously -- but also reasonable to hold the opposite.  This seems to suggest that here we have a question that reason cannot decide.  So how do we decide it?  By personal decision? By mystical intuition? By acceptance of divine revelation?  In some other way?  In no way?

Related articles

Nothing is Written in Stone

On Conceiving that God does not Exist

In a recent post you write:

The Humean reasoning in defense of (3) rests on the assumption that conceivability entails possibility.  To turn aside this reasoning one must reject this assumption.  One could then maintain that the conceivability by us of the nonexistence of God is consistent with the necessity of God's existence.

I’m not convinced this is right. Conceivability has a close analogue with perception. If it seems to S that p, then S is prima facie justified in believing that (actually) p. So consider cases of perceptual seemings. Care must be taken to distinguish two forms of negative seemings:

1. It does not seem that p.
2. It seems that ~p.

Clearly, (1) is not properly a seeming at all; it is denying an episode of seeming altogether. If I assert (1), me and a rock are on epistemic par with respect to it seeming to us that p. (2) also faces an obvious problem: how could ~p, a lack or the absence or negation of something, appear to me at all? Photons do not bounce off of lacks. There are ways around this, but for now I just want to register the distinction between (1) and (2) and the prima facie difficulties with them that do not attend to positive seemings.

 

BV:  Excellent so far, but I have one quibble.  Suppose I walk into a coffee house expecting to encounter Pierre.  But Pierre is not there; he is 'conspicuous by his absence' as we say.  There is a sense in which I perceive his absence, literally and visually, despite the fact that absences are not known to deflect photons.  I see the coffee house and the people in it and I see that not one of them is identical to Pierre. So it is at least arguable that I literally see, not Pierre, but Pierre's absence.

 

Be this as it may.  You are quite right to highlight the operator shift as between (1) and (2).

So now consider conceivability. The analogue: If it is conceivable to S that p, then S is prima facie justified in believing that possibly p. Now for our two negative conceivablility claims:

1’. It is not conceivable that p.
2’. It is conceivable that ~p.

Again, (1’) is trivial; it is (2’) we’re interested in. Does (2’) provide prima facie evidence for possibly ~p? It depends. What we do when we try to conceive of something is imagine "in our mind’s eye" a scenario—i.e., a possible world—in which p is the case.  So really (2’) translates:

2’’. I can conceive of a possible world in which ~p.

 

BV:  Permit me a second quibble.  Although 'conceive' and 'imagine' are often used, even by philosophers, interchangeably, I suggest we not conflate them.  I can conceive a chliagon, but I cannot imagine one, i.e., I cannot form a mental image of a thousand-sided figure.  We can conceive the unimaginable.  But I think we also can imagine the inconceivable. If you have a really good imagination, you can form the mental image of an Escher drawing even though what you are imagining is inconceivable, i.e., not thinkable without contradiction.

 

More importantly,  we should avoid bringing possible worlds into the discussion.  For one thing, how do you know that possibilities come in world-sized packages?  Possible worlds are maximal objects.  How do you know there are any?  It also seems question-begging to read (2') as (2'') inasmuch as the latter smuggles in the notion of possibility.

 

Given that the whole question is whether conceivability either entails or supplies nondemonstrative evidence for possibility, one cannot help oneself to the notion of possibility in explication of (2').  For example, I am now seated, but it is conceivable that I am not now seated: I can think this state of affairs witout contradiction.  The question, however, is how I move from conceivability to possibility.  How do I know that it is possible that I not be seated now?

 

It is obvious, I hope, that one cannot just stipulate that 'possible' means 'conceivable.'

 

(2'') seems innocent enough, but whether it gives us prima facie evidence for possibly ~p will depend on what p is; in particular, whether p is contingent or necessary. Consider:

3. There is a possible world in which there are no chipmunks.
4. There is a possible world in which there are no numbers.

(3) seems totally innocent. I can conceive of worlds in which chipmunks exist and others in which they don’t.

 

BV:  It seems you are just begging the question.  You are assuming that it is possible that there be no chipmunks.  The question is how you know that.  By conceiving that there are no chipmunks?

 

(4), on the other hand, is suspect. This is because numbers, unlike chipmunks, if they exist at all exist necessarily; that is, if numbers do not exist in one world they do not exist in any. Thus, what (4) really says is

(4*) There is no possible world in which there are numbers.

 

BV:  (4) and (4*) don't say the same thing; I grant you, however, that the first entails the second.

With its conceivability counterpart being

(4’) I cannot conceive of a possible world in which there are numbers.

which looks a lot like the above illicit negative seemings: negations or absences of an object of conceivability. But my not conceiving of something doesn't entail anything! But suppose we waive that problem, and instead interpret (4’) as a positive conceiving:

(4’’) It is conceivable to me that numbers are impossible

The problem now is that (4’’) is no longer a modest claim that warrants prima facie justification. In fact, (4*) has a degree of boldness that invites further inquiry: presumably there is some obvious reason—a contradiction, category mistake, indelible opacity—etc. apparent to me that has led me to think numbers are impossible. But if that’s so, then surely my critic will want to know what exactly I’m privy to that he isn’t.

Mutatis mutandis in the case of God qua necessary being.

Thoughts?

 

BV:  You lost me during that last stretch of argumentation.  I am not sure you appreciate the difficulty.  It can be expressed as the following reductio ad absurdum:

 

a. Conceivability entails possibility.  (assumption for reductio)

b. It is conceivable that God not exist. (factual premise)

c. It is conceivable that God exist.  (factual premise)

d. God is a necessary being. (true by Anselmian definition)

Ergo

e. It is possible that God not exist and it is possible that God exist.  (a, b, c)

Ergo

f. God is a contingent being. (e)

Ergo

g. God is a necessary being & God is a contingent being. (d, f, contradiction)

Ergo

~a. It is not the case that conceivability entails possibility. 

 

Is short, as John the Commenter has already pointed out, it seems that the Anselmian theist ought to reject conceivability-implies-possibility.

Related articles

An Anselmian Antilogism

 

An Anselmian Antilogism

Philosophy is its problems, and they are best represented as aporetic polyads.  One sort of aporetic polyad is the antilogism.  An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true.  The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible.  If they are more than  plausible, if they are self-evident or undeniable, then we are in the presence of an aporia in the strict sense.  (From the Greek a-poros, no way.)  Aporiai are intellectual impasses, or, to change the metaphor, intellectual knots that we cannot  untie.  Here is a candidate:

1.  God is a perfect being.

2.  A perfect being is one that exists necessarily if it exists at all.

3.   Whatever exists  exists contingently.

It is easy to see that the members of this trio are collectively inconsistent.  So the trio is an antilogism.  Now corresponding to every antilogism there are three valid syllogisms. (A syllogism is deductive argument having exactly two premises.)  Thus one can argue validly from any two of the propositions to the negation of the remaining one.  Thus there are three ways of  solving the antilogism:

A. Reject (1).  The price of rejection is high since (1)  merely unpacks the meaning of 'God'  if we think of God along Anselmian lines as "that than which no greater can be conceived," or as the greatest conceivable being.  It seems intuitively clearly that an imperfect being could not have divine status.  In particular, nothing imperfect could be an appropriate object of worship.  To worship an imperfect being would be idolatry.

B. Reject (2).  The price of rejection is steep here too since (2) seems merely to unpack the meaning of  'perfect being.'  Intuitively, contingent existence is an imperfection.

C.  Reject (3).  This is a more palatable option, and many will solve the antilogism in this way.  If ~(3), then there are noncontingent beings.  A noncontingent being is either necessary or impossible. So if God is noncontingent, it does not follow that God is necessary.  He could be impossible.

Unfortunately, the rejection of (3) is not without its problems.

According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion)  I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon:  no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing.  This includes God.  

Try it for yourself.  Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing.  Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score.  The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction. 

The Humean reasoning in defense of (3) rests on the assumption that conceivability entails possibility.  To turn aside this reasoning one must reject this assumption.  One could then maintain that the conceivability by us of the nonexistence of God is consistent with the necessity of God's existence.

The price of rejecting (3) is that one must deny that conceivability entails possibility.

Is our antilogism an aporia in the strict sense?  I don't know. 

Related articles

Existence and Essence: An Aporetic Dyad

A Being-Knowledge Antilogism

Are All Genuine Problems Soluble? A Metaphilosophical Antilogism

A Tension in My Thinking: Hume Meets Parmenides

The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity

Some Notes on Rescher's "Nonexistents Then and Now"

A reader inquires:

Have you read Nicholas Rescher's Nonexistents Then and Now? I read it recently and thought I'd bring it to your attention because it's relevant to your recent posts on fiction. If I understand the article, Rescher would agree with you that a fictional man is not a man, but he would say the same of a merely possible man (denying premise 6 in your post More on Ficta and Impossibilia): he argues that because nonexistents are necessarily incomplete, they are not individuals but schemata for individuals. In response to your post Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization Rescher would probably say that the "table" before your mind is not an individual table but a schema for an individual table, a "schema to which many such individuals might answer" (p. 376). As your concluding apory implies, the argument against the possibility of actualizing Hamlet might apply to any nonexistent. Rescher seems to think it does. It would be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Rescher's essay, but I do see that you're now considering a different problem.

I was aware of this article, but hadn't studied it carefully until today.  I thank the reader  for reminding me of it.  What he says about it is accurate.  Herewith, some preliminary comments.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work.  I have added comments in red.

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours -- the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology.  All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.]  To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis -- assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.]  For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance -- of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](364, emphasis added)

As my reader is aware, Rescher wants to say about  the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance.  But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation.  The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized.  He is an impossible item.  I am tempted to say that not even divine power could bring about his actualization, any more than it could restore a virgin.  But the merely possible is precisely -- possibly actual!  The merely possible is intrinsically such as to be apt for existence, unlike the purely fictional which is intrinsically such as to be barred from actuality. 

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes.  Describing the "medieval mainstream," (362) Rescher lumps mere possibillia and pure ficta together as entia rationis.  For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27)   Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects.  Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is is genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble?  I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1.  Eliminativism.  The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia.  One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.

S2.  Conceptualism.  Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs.  There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view.  See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3.  Actualism/Ersatzism.  Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs.  One looks for substitute entities to go proxy for the mere possibles.  Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs  of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn.  For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated. 

S4. Extreme Modal Realism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  David Lewis.  There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta.  The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real.  But no world is absolutely actual.  Each is merely actual at itself. 

S5. Theologism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds.   Consider the possibility of there being unicorns.  This is a mere possibility since it is not actual.  But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds.  There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say.  The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power. 

4.  Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity.  For Rescher,  "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems -- a resolution is automatically available." (371)  Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing.  Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can  pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phaseology.  (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses.  He gives essentially the following argument on p. 378.  This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B.  All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C.  No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete?  Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us.  But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible.  He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible.  Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton  married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs.  There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds.  Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds?  I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary.  But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having.  So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals.  But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

Related articles

The Fictional and the Merely Possible

An Untenable Analysis of 'Sherlock Holmes is a Purely Fictional Character'

More on Ficta and Impossibilia

More on C. J. F. Williams on Existence

My Existence and My Possible Nonexistence

A Catalog of Possible Types of Response to 'Why Is There Anything At All?'

Existence and Essence: An Aporetic Dyad

Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

A Tension in My Thinking: Hume Meets Parmenides

More on Ficta and Impossibilia

As an ornery aporetician, I want ultimately to say that an equally strong case can be made both for and against the thesis that ficta are impossibilia.  But here I only make (part of) the case for thinking that ficta are impossibilia.

Preliminaries

Every human being is either right-handed or not right-handed.  (But if one is not right-handed, it doesn't follow that one is left-handed.  One could be ambidexterous or ambisinistrous.)  What about the fictional character Hamlet?  Is he right-handed or not right-handed?  I say he is neither: he is indeterminate with respect to the property of righthandedness.  That makes him an incomplete object, one that violates the law of Excluded Middle (LEM), or rather one to which LEM does not apply.

Hamlet (the character, not the play) is incomplete because he has all and only the properties ascribed to him by the author of the play, and the author left Hamlet's handedness unspecified.  It is worth noting that Hamlet the play is complete and this holds for each written token of the play, the type of which they are tokens, and each enactment of the play.  This is because the play and its enactments are actualia.

But don't we say that Hamlet the play is fictional?  We do, but what we mean is not that the play is an object of fiction, but that the people and events depicted therein are fictional.  The play is not fictional but entirely real. Of course, there could be a play that is a  mere object of fiction: a play within a play.  The same holds for novels.  My copies of Moby Dick are each of them complete and actual, hence full-fledged citizens of the real, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto; but Ishmael, Queequeg, and Ahab are not.  They are objects of fiction; those books are not.  And presumably the type of which they are tokens, though an abstract object, is also actual and complete.  A person's reading or 'enactment' of the novel is typically a long, interrupted process; but it too is complete and actual and resident in the real order.

Back to the character Hamlet: he is an incomplete object, having all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play (together with, perhaps, entailments of these properties).  London Ed balks at this:

I don't follow this at all. I don't agree with the second sentence "He has all and only ….". Of course Shakespeare said that there was a person called ‘Hamlet’ who had certain properties (e.g. he said that Hamlet was a prince of Denmark. It doesn’t follow that there is someone who has or had such a property. For example, legend says that there was a horse called ‘Pegasus’ that flew. It doesn’t follow that there are or were flying horses.

This objection shows misunderstanding.  I did not say or imply that there exists in actuality, outside the mind, a man named 'Hamlet.'  The point is rather that when I read the play there appears before my mind a merely intentional object, one that I know is fictional, and therefore, one that I know is merely intentional.  If Ed denies this, then he denies what is phenomenologically evident. And, as a matter of method, we must begin with the phenomenology of the situation.

Suppose I write a two-sentence novel:

It was a dark and rainy night. Shakey Jake, life-long insomniac, deciding he needed a nightcap, grabbed his flashlight and his raincoat and headed for the Glass Crutch bar and grill, a local watering hole a half a mile from his house.

Now I couldn't have written that, and you can't understand it, without  thinking about various intentional objects that do not exist.  Am I saying that there exist objects that do not exist?  No, that would be a contradiction.  Nor am I committed to saying  that there are objects that have mind-independent being but not existence.  Furthermore, I am not committed to Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein.

All I am doing is holding fast to a phenomenological datum: when I create a fictional character as  I just did when I created Shakey Jake the insomniac, I bring before my mind an intentional object.  (The act-object schema strikes me as having pretty good phenomenological credentials, unlike the adverbial schema.)  What can we say about this merely intentional object?  First, it is no part of the acts through which I think it.  My acts of thinking exist in reality, but Shakey Jake does not exist in reality.  (This point goes back to Twardowski.)   When I think about Hamlet or Don Quixote or Shakey Jake, I am not thinking about my own mind or any state of my mind.  I am not thinking about anything real.  But it doesn' t follow that I am not thinking of anything.

If Ed denies that there are merely intentional objects, then he is denying what is phenomenologically evident.  I take my stand on the terra firma of phenomenological givenness.  So for now, and to get on with it, I simply dismiss Ed's objection.  To pursue it further would involve us a in a metaphilosophical discussion of the role of phenomenological appeals in philosophical inquiry.

Ficta are Impossibilia

Let us confine ourselves to purely fictional objects and leave out of consideration real individuals who are partially fictionalized in fables, legends, apocryphal stories, so-called historical novels that blend fact and fiction, and the like.  One of my theses is that purely fictional objects cannot exist and thus are broadly logically impossible.  They are necessarily nonexistent, where the modality in question is broadly logical.  It does not follow, however, that pure ficta have no ontological status whatsoever.  They have a mode of being that could be called existential heteronomy.   On this point I agree with Roman Ingarden, a philosopher who deserves more attention in the Anglosphere than he receives here.

Earlier I gave an argument from incompleteness: the incomplete cannot exist and so are impossible.  But now I take a different tack.

Purely fictional objects are most plausibly viewed as made up, or constructed, by novelists, playwrights, et al.  It may be that they are constructed from elements that are not themselves constructed, elements such as properties or Castaneda's ontological guises.  Or perhaps fictional objects  are constructed ex nihilo.  Either way, they have no being at all prior to their creation or construction.  There was no Captain Ahab before Melville 'cooked him up.'  But if Ahab were a merely possible individual, then one could not temporally index his coming to be; he would not come to be, but be before, during, and after Melvlle's writing down his description.

The issue could be framed as follows.  Are novels, plays, etc.  which feature logically consistent pure ficta, something like telescopes that allow us to peer from the realm of the actual into the realm of the merely possible, both realms being realms of the real?  Or are novels, etc. more like mixing bowls or ovens in which ficta are 'cooked up'?  I say the latter.  If you want, you can say that Melville is describing something when he writes about Ahab, but what he is describing is something he has made up: a merely intentional object that cannot exist apart from the acts of mind trained upon it.   He is not describing something that has ontological status apart from his mind and the minds of his readers.   He is also not descrbing some real feature or part of himself as subject.  So we could say that in describing Ahab he is  describing an item that is objectively but not subjectvely mind-dependent.

 Here is an Argument from Origin:

1. Pure ficta are made up or constructed via the mental acts and actions of novelists, playwrights, et al.

2. Ahab is a pure fictum.

Therefore

3. Ahab came into being via the mental activity of a novelist or playwright.  (from 1,2)

4. No human being comes into being via the mental activity of novelists, et al., but via the uniting of human sperm and human egg.

5. Ahab is not a human being. (from 3, 4)

6. A merely possible human being is a human being, indeed a flesh-and-blood human being, though not an actual flesh-and-blood human being. 

Therefore

7. Ahab is not a merely possible human being, but a fictional human being where 'fictional' unlike 'merely possible' functions as an alienans adjective.

This argument does not settle the matter, however, since it is not compelling.  A Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian could, with no breach of logical propriety, run the argument in reverse, denying (7) and denying (1). One man's modus ponens, etc.

Related articles

The Fictional and the Merely Possible

Do Merely Intentional Objects Have Being of Their Own? With a Little Help from Ingarden

Phenomenon and Existence

Fiction vs. Reality in Hamlet

Another Example of Metaphysical Impossibility without Internal Inconsistency

John  e-mails:

I wanted to say as well that I enjoyed your recent post on fictional vs. possible objects. You point out that being internally contradictory is not a necessary condition on being metaphysically impossible. This seems to me exactly right. Another way to make this point is to think about, for example, a necessarily existing unicorn. There is nothing internally contradictory about the idea that a unicorn might exist in every possible world. Yet such a being is surely impossible. Otherwise, if it were possible, then there would actually exist a necessarily existing unicorn. This follows by the modal reasoning we find in Plantinga's modal ontological argument and, in particular, the distinctive axiom of S5 modal logic. In order to avoid Gaunilo-style parodies of the modal ontological argument, we must deny that being internally contradictory is a necessary condition on being metaphysically impossible.

I accept John's example and his reasoning.  Ain't agreement grand?  We philosophers must enjoy it when it comes and while it lasts.    And so we can add the necessarily existent unicorn and his colleagues to the list of metaphysical impossibilia whose impossibility does not derive from internal contradictoriness  along with internally consistent fictional objects such as Hamlet.  Are there any other categories of metaphysical impossibilia? 

Many scholastics would add extramental universals and privations to the list of metaphysical impossibilia despite their lack of internal contradictoriness.  Thus humanity cannot exist outside the mind.  Nor can blindness.

Related articles

Logical Versus Metaphysical Modality

Possible Worlds