Maverick Philosopher

What are Modes of Being?

The following has been languishing in my unpublished archives since December 2009. Time to clean it up and send it out. If it triggers a bit of hard thinking in a few receptive heads, and therewith, the momentary bliss of the sublunary bios theoretikos, then it has done its job. 

Don't comment unless you understand the subject-matter. 

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Many contemporary philosophers are not familiar with talk of modes of being. So let me try to make this notion clear. I will use 'being' and existence' interchangeably in this entry. I begin by distinguishing four questions:

Q1. What is meant by 'mode of being'?
Q2. Is the corresponding idea intelligible?
Q3. Are there (two or more) modes of being?
Q4. What are the modes of being?

My present concern is with the first two questions only. Clearly, the first two questions are logically prior to the second two. It is possible to understand what is meant by 'mode of being' and grant that the notion is intelligible while denying that there are (two or more) modes of being. And if two philosophers agree that there are (two or more) modes of being, they might yet disagree about what these modes are.

With respect to anything at all, we can ask the following different and seemingly intelligible questions. What is it? Does it exist? How (in what way or mode) does it exist? This yields a tripartite distinction between quiddity (in a broad sense to include essential and accidental, relational and nonrelational properties), existence, and mode of existence.  There is also a fourth question, the Why question: why does anything at all, or any particular thing, exist? The Why question is not on today's agenda. 

My claim is that the notion that there are modes of being is intelligible, not that it is unavoidable. But we might decide that the costs of avoiding it are prohibitively high.  'Intelligible' means understandable.

What might motivate a MOB (modes-of-being) doctrine? I will sketch two possible motivations.

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A. Suppose you have two theist philosophers. They agree that God exists and they agree as to the nature of God. But one claims that God exists necessarily while the other claims that he exists contingently. What are they disagreeing about? That there is a being having such-and-such divine properties is not in dispute. Nor is the nature of God in dispute. One might argue that the disagreement centers on God's Seinsweise, or modus essendi, or way of being, or mode of being. Those are four different phrasings of one and the same thought, the MOB thought, if you will.  The one philosopher says that God exists necessarily while the other says that God exists contingently. They are both talking about God himself, and not about a proposition about God. The one is saying that God exists in the necessary way while the other is saying that God exists in the contingent way.  Neither need deny that there is the proposition God exists, and neither need deny that an alethic modality attaches to the proposition. Thus the one philosopher needn't deny that the proposition God exists is necessarily true, and the other needn't deny that the proposition is contingently true. But both will insist that the alethic modality of the proposition needs an ontic ground, and that the ontic ground in in the being/existence of God.

A contemporary analytic philosopher who rejects the MOB doctrine can accommodate the difference between necessary and contingent beings by saying that a necessary being such as God exists in all possible worlds whereas a contingent being such as  Socrates exists in some but not all possible worlds. So instead of saying that God exists in a different way than Socrates, he will say that God and Socrates exist in the same way, which is the way that everything exists, but that God exists in all worlds whereas Socrates exists only in some. The modal difference is reinterpreted as a difference in logical quantity! Whether an item is necessary or contingent becomes a question of the number of worlds in which it exists.  But this move involves quantification over possible worlds and raises difficult questions as to what possible worlds are. These are questions that cannot be evaded. 

(It is worth noting that a modes-of-being theorist can reap the benefits of possible worlds talk as a useful and graphic façon de parler without incurring the ontological costs. One can talk the talk without walking the walk.)

Presumably no one here will embrace the extreme modal realism of David Lewis, as set forth in his seminal On the Plurality of Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1986) according to which all worlds are on an ontological par as maximal mereological sums of concreta. So one will be sorely tempted to take some sort of abstractist line (as Plantinga and van Inwagen do) and construe worlds as maximal abstracta of one sort or another, say, as maximal (Fregean not Russellian) propositions. (Plantinga speaks of abstract Chisholmian states of affairs in his The Nature of Necessity (Oxford UP, 1974), but that is a wrinkle we may here ignore.) But then difficult questions arise about what it is for an individual to exist in a world.  

What is it for Socrates to exist in a possible world if worlds are maximal (Frege-style) propositions? Answer: to exist in a world is to be represented as existing by that world. So Socrates exists in the actual world in that Socrates is represented as existing by the actual world which, on the abstractist approach, is the one true maximal proposition. (By definition, a proposition is maximal if and only if it entails every proposition with which it is consistent. It is clear, I hope, that whatever we take  possible worlds to be, they must be maximal: that much is built into the very notion of a world.) As for God, if he is a necessary being, then he exists in all possible worlds in the sense that all maximal propositions represent him as existing.  That is to say: no matter which one of the maximal propositions is true, that proposition represents God as existing.  

On the abstractist conception, then, worlds are maximal (Frege-like, and thus abstract) propositions, and the actual world is the maximal proposition that is true. Actuality is reduced to truth. On the 'mad dog' modal concretism of Lewis, every possible world is actual-at-itself, but no world is actual, simpliciter.  The abstractist world-conception avoids this unpalatable consequence,  but is itself  hard to swallow.  Why do I say that?

Veritas sequitur esse, truth follows being, so I am inclined to say that the abstractist approach has it backwards: the necessity of God's existence is the ground of each maximal proposition's representing him as existing; the necessity of God's existence cannot be grounded in the logically posterior fact that every maximal proposition represents him as existing.

To appreciate the issue, consider a simpler example. Does Milo exist because the proposition Milo exists is true? Or is the proposition true because Milo exists? By my lights, the latter! The truth-maker of Milo exists is existing Milo. He is the ontic ground of the proposition's being true. Is that not blindingly obvious?  But if that is obvious, then it should also be obvious that the contingency of the truth of Milo exists is grounded in the contingency  of Milo's existence.  Whence it follows that Milo's existing is in the mode of contingency, which implies that there are modes of existing/existence/be-ing/being.

Back to God.  The ground of the divine necessity, I say, is God's unique mode of being which is not garden-variety metaphysical necessity but aseity. God alone exists from himself and has his necessity from himself unlike lesser necessary beings (numbers, etc.) which have their necessity from God. The divine aseity is in turn grounded in the divine simplicity which latter I try to explain in my SEP article.

Summing up this difficult line of thought that I have just barely sketched: if we dig deep into the 'possible worlds' treatment of metaphysical necessity and contingency, we will be led back to an ontology that invokes modes of being.  It is because Milo exists-contingently that a proposition that says that he so exists is contingently true, and not the other way around. And similarly for God, mutatis mutandis. 

But I don't want to paper over the difficulties inherent in the position that I am sketching. Don't forget: I am an aporetician, first and foremost. My intellectual honesty requires it of me. On the line of thinking that I am sketching, metaphysical necessity, thought through, issues in a commitment to the divine simplicity, a notion which -- gulp!-- teeters on the borderline of incoherence (to the discursive intellect), if it does not topple over into incoherence. It issues in mysticism, not that that issuance is any refutation of it. But now we are in too deep to continue in this direction in this installment.

B. Consider now this thing on the desk in front of me. What is it? A coffee cup with such-and-such properties both essential and accidental. For example, it is warm and full of coffee. These are accidental properties, properties the thing has now but might not have had now, properties the possession of which is not necessary either for its identity or for its existence. No doubt the coffee cup exists. But it is not so clear in what mode it exists. One philosopher, an idealist, says that its mode of being is purely intentional: it exists only as an intentional object, which means: it exists only relative to (transcendental) consciousness. The other philosopher, a realist, does not deny that the cup is (sometimes) an intentional object, but denies that its being is exhausted by its being an intentional object. He maintains that it exists mind-independently.

What I have just done in effect is introduce two further modes of being. We can call them esse intentionale and esse reale, purely intentional being and real being. It seems that without this distinction between modes of being we will not be able to formulate the issue that divides the idealist and the realist. No one in his right mind denies the existence of coffee cups, rocks, trees, and 'external' items generally. Thus Berkeley and Husserl and other idealists do not deny that there exist trees and such; they are making a claim about their mode of existence.

Suppose you hold to a thin conception of being, one that rules out modes of existence. On the thin conception, an item either exists or it does not and one cannot distinguish between different ways, modes, kinds, let alone degrees of existence. How would an adherent of the thin conception formulate the idealism/realism controversy?

I will leave you with this question. For more on this topic, seem my Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis in Novotny and Novak eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, 45-75.

Artifacts, Organisms, and Modes of Existence

Hello Dr. Vallicella, greetings from Germany!

I have been revisiting your paper "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge, 2014, pp. 45-75.  One of the most intriguing arguments you give against the opponent of modes of being/existence is the argument at the end against Peter van Inwagen's semantic claim that 'exist(s)' is univocal in sense and the corresponding ontological claim that there are no modes of being/existence. On p. 67 you present the following aporetic pentad and argue that it is best solved by the rejection of (5).  

1. The house exists.
2. The bricks exist.
3. The house is composed of the bricks, all of them, and of nothing else and is therefore not something distinct from them or  in addition to them.
4. Since the bricks can exist without the house but the house cannot exist without the bricks, the house is distinct from the bricks.
5. “Exist(s)” is univocal in (1) and (2), and there are no modes of existence.

The house doesn't exist apart from the bricks arranged house-wise, and yet if we reject mereological nihilism,  there must be something not identical to the bricks that makes up the house. Did I broadly capture the idea?

BV:  Broadly, yes. The five propositions are individually plausible to a very high degree, and yet they are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. So we have a problem if we wish to uphold the law of non-contradiction. And we certainly want to hold onto said law if at all possible. One way to solve the problem is by rejecting the least plausible proposition. That, I claim, is (5). Van Inwagen would instead reject (1) and (4).  He and I will accept (2) and (3)  as the most plausible of the five propositions.  Of course, you have to understand that this is a 'toy example,' so to speak. After all, each brick is an artifact so that, if the house does not exist because it is an artifact, as per van Inwagen's teaching, then neither do the bricks. In the spirit of the 'toy example,' think of the bricks as atoms in the etymological sense: as really indivisible or non-partite. 

What (3) says is that the house is not something 'over and above' its parts. It is not an entity in addition to them. So if the house is composed of 50,000 bricks, then there are 50,000 entities in the place where the bricks are, not 50,001.  The house just is the bricks. (Mereology is ontologically innocent.) To appreciate the plausibility of this, suppose that the Wise Pig has just finished building his brick house, and you say to him, "I see all the bricks, Mr. Pig, but where is the house?" He will respond, "You, sir, are committing the fallacy of hypostatization: the house just is the bricks; it is not something 'above and beyond it.'"

As for (4), I think it is obviously true.  While I grant that the house is not something 'over and above' the bricks, it is also not just the bricks, but the house-wise arrangement of the bricks, an arrangement that is not nothing, but something real that makes the house distinct from the bricks. 

And so I reject (5) and say that, while house and bricks both exist, they exist in different ways.  By my lights, this is more intellectually palatable than the strange doctrine that there are no artifacts.  

I want to propose a way to strengthen the argument however. Despite your qualms with it, I see the appeal of mereological nihilism for artifacts, since it's questionable whether the "house" as distinct from the bricks is really needed here, or whether it can be eliminated for the mere arrangement of bricks.

BV:  It seems to me that the house must be distinct from the bricks for the simple reason that the bricks can exist without constituting a house, whereas the house cannot exist without the bricks.  A pile of bricks does not make a house. I would also insist that the house-wise arrangement of the bricks is not nothing. It is not nothing because it makes the difference between bricks that can shelter the pig and bricks that cannot.  The house is of course a dependent entity in that it depends for its existence on the bricks, but it does so without being identical to the bricks. That is why I say that the house exists in a different way than the constituent bricks, contrary to van Inwagen's claim that there are no ways or modes of existence. 

As long as there is no telos the house would have that can't be identified with the mere arrangement of bricks, the question is valid. Obviously if we look at something complex and goal directed like the immune system, the reduction here to the mere arrangement of the most basic particles sounds almost preposterous.

BV: Granted, the bricks taken collectively do not have an in-built telos or a nisus towards actualization; nevertheless, the house cannot be reductively identified with the bricks. The bricks can survive the demolition of the house, and at any time t at which the bricks form a house, the bricks might not have formed a house at t. The house is doubly contingent: it is contingent on the bricks and it is contingent on their proper arrangement. Or so it seems to me.

The question thus doesn't seem to arise when we're concerned with biological entities and their complex actions. Mereological nihilism for animals is not a view worth discussing and van Inwagen explicitly rejects it, instead opting for a kind of non-reductionism while still holding onto a view he identifies as materialism ("A Materialist Ontology of Human Persons" 2007). What I dispute, given your initial argument above, however is the compatibility of this position with his rejection of modes of being. If your aporia is correct and the opponent would have to embrace mereological nihilism for artifacts, doesn't that expand into the biological realm as well? It seems so, at least I don't see why it should be invalid [should not so expand.]

BV: I'm not sure I follow you here.  Van Inwagen is clearly not a nihilist with respect to organisms. (I am not a nihilist with respect to artifacts or organisms.) Are you asking whether his non-reductionism with respect to organisms commits him to the MOB doctrine? (MOB = modes of being.)

So let's reformulate your pentad:

1. The dog exists.
2. The atoms exist (atom designating a fundamental, simple physical and no relevant scientific theory)
3. The dog is composed of its atoms, all of them and of nothing else and is therefore not something distinct from them or in addition to them.
4. Since the atoms can exist without the dog,  but the dog can't exist without the atoms, the dog is distinct from its atoms.
5. “Exist(s)” is univocal in (1) and (2), and there are no modes of existence.

What do you think? If your argument can be reformulated this way we either show that non-reductionism and a rejection of modes of beings are contrarians [logical contraries? or logical contradictories?], so that one must be false. Or the interlocutor is forced to adopt an additional thesis that is at best questionable within a materialist/post-Cartesian ontology, e.g. that the particles are only virtually present in the human, but I doubt van Inwagen has any space in his theory for such positions of Aristotelians like David Oderberg.

Thanks for your time.

BV: I take it you are asking whether van Inwagen's views about living things commit him to the acceptance of modes of being/existence.  To answer that question I would have to pull Material Beings from the shelf and devote hours to re-reading the relevant portions, and for that I do not have time at present. 

Holes and Their Mode of Being

A tight little entry of 708 words over at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

Nominalism, Existence, and Subsistence

Here are five versions of nominalism by my current count:

Mad-Dog Nominalism: No word has an extra-linguistic referent, not even proper names such as 'Peter' and 'Paul.' 

Extreme Nominalism: The only words that have existing referents are proper names like 'Peter' and Paul'; nothing in reality corresponds to such predicates as 'blond.' And a fortiori nothing corresponds to copulae and logically connective words such as 'and' and 'or.'

Nominalism Proper: Particulars (unrepeatables) alone exist: there are no universals (repeatables). This view allows that something in reality corresponds to predicates such as 'blond' as in 'Peter is blond.' It is just that what this predicate denotes is not a universal but a particular, a trope say, or an Aristotelian accident. What I am calling nominalism proper also allows for abstract particulars where an item is abstract just in case it is non-spatio-temporal and causally inert. Mathematical sets, for example are abstract particulars. The set: {x: x is a prime number and x is less than 1o} is abstract because it has no spatiotemporal location and is causally inert. It is particular because it is unrepeatable which is equivalent to saying that it is not possibly such as to be instantiated. Sets have members -- the null set aside -- but no instances. (Quiz for the reader: tell me the cardinality of the set just mentioned.)

Reistic Nominalism: Attach the codicil 'There are no abstract items' to nominalism proper and the result is reistic nominalism.  On this view only particulars exist, and all particulars are concrete (non-abstract).  Franz Brentano is his later years was a reist.  See the SEP entry, Reism.

Methodological Nominalism: This is the view that we ought never assume that for each word there is a corresponding entity.

I hope no one is crazy enough to be a mad-dog nominalist, and that everyone is sane enough to be a methodological nominalist. The three middle positions, however, are subject to reasonable controversy. They are not obviously false and they are not obviously true. What I am calling extreme nominalism has little to recommend it, but I think nominalism proper is quite a reasonable position.  As it seems to me, there has to be something extra-linguistic (and extra-mental) corresponding to the predicate in 'Peter is blond,' but it is not obvious that it must be a universal.  

Thomas Beale sent me to a blog post of his that begins as follows:

Nominalism is a philosophical doctrine usually understood to entail a rejection of universals, in favour of the belief that only the concrete exists. Universals are understood as instantiable entities, i.e. something like types. Another flavour of nominalism involves rejection of abstracta, such as mathematical entities, propositions, fictional entities (including possible worlds). 

I personally think that most nominalist arguments are straightforwardly wrong, but not for the usual reasons that universals and/or abstracta are said by realists to exist, but for the opposite reason: types and abstracta are just there, even if they don’t ‘exist’, in the sense of being spatio-temporally concretised. The real problem is that we misuse the word exists at least half the time in philosophy. The way we should talk is to say things like: there are universals . . . .

So that’s why nominalists are wrong. There are universals, but they don’t exist. 

First of all, it is no misuse of 'exist/exists' to use these expressions interchangeably with 'is/are.' It is standard English to use them interchangeably. Examples: I am; I exist. God is; God exists. Island volcanoes exist; there are island volcanoes. Unicorns do not exist; unicorns are not; there exist no unicorns; there are no unicorns.  Scollay Square once existed; Scollay Square once was.  Socrates would never have come to be had his parents never met; Socrates would never have come to exist had his parents never met. And so on.

Nevertheless, we are not the slaves of ordinary language and one is free to distinguish between existence and being as Bertrand Russell did in Principles of Mathematics. 

Now if existence is the mode of being enjoyed by all and only spatiotemporal items, then abstracta and transcendent universals do not exist. (A transcendent universal is one that needn't be instantiated to be. An immanent universal is one that cannot be unless it is instantiated.) If transcendent universals are, but do not exist, then they enjoy the mode of being called subsistence. This seems to be what Mr Beale is telling us. 

Here is an interesting question. Suppose with David Armstrong that universals are immanent --ones-in-many, not ones-over many -- and that first-order immanent universals are constituents of thick spatio-temporal particulars. Would not these universals be "spatio-temporally concretised" in Beale's words?  Suppose universal U is a constituent of a, b, and c -- concrete existing spatiotemporal particulars -- and is wholly present in each without prejudice to its unity as a universal. Would U then not be "spatio-temporally concretised" and therefore existent?

One more question. If there were a good argument for either nominalism proper and/or reistic nominalism, would  that not also be a good argument against universals and abstracta that are but do not exist?  He who fights shy of multiplying entities beyond necessity does not care whether the entities exist or subsist.

Finally, aren't there good objections to the notion that there are modes of being?

On the Status of Thomistic Common Natures

Aquinas says that any given nature can be considered in three ways: in respect of the esse it has in concrete singulars; in respect of the esse it has in minds; absolutely, in the abstract, without reference to either material singulars or minds, and thus without reference to either mode of esse.  The two modes are esse naturale (esse reale) and esse intentionale.  We can speak of these in English as real existence (being) and intentional existence (being).  Real existence is existence 'outside' the (finite) mind. Intentional existence is existence 'in' or 'before' the mind.  The mentioned words are obviously not to be taken spatially.  Esse is the Latin infinitive, to be.  Every human mind is a finite mind, but don't assume the converse.

According to Schopenhauer, the medievals employed but three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass.  Who am I to deviate from a tradition at once so hoary and noble?  So take Socrates.  Socrates is human.  The nature humanity exists really in him, and in Plato, but not in the ass.  The same nature exists intentionally in a mind that thinks about or knows Socrates.  For Aquinas, there are no epistemic deputies standing between mind and thing: thought reaches right up to and grasps the thing itself.   There is an isomorphism between knowing mind and thing known.  The ground of this isomorphism is the natura absoluta, the nature considered absolutely.  Call it the common nature (CN).  It is so-called because it is common to both the knower and the known, informing both, albeit in different ways.  It is also common to all the  singulars of the same nature and all the thoughts directed to the same sort of thing.  So caninity is common to all doggy thoughts, to all dogs, besides linking the doggy thoughts to the dogs.

Pause to appreciate how attractive this conception is. It secures the intrinsic intelligibility of the world while avoiding the 'gap problem' that bedevils post-Cartesian thought.

I need to know more, however, about  the exact ontological status of the common nature (CN) which is, as it were, amphibious as between knowing mind and thing known. 

With the help of Anthony Kenny, I realized that there are four possible views, not three as I stated in earlier forays:

A. The CN really exists as a separate, self-subsistent item.

B. The CN exists only intentionally in the mind of one who abstracts it from concrete extramental singulars and mental acts.  (Note: a mental act is a concrete singular because in time, though not in space.)

C. The CN has Meinongian Aussersein status: it has no mode of being whatsoever, and yet is is something, not nothing.  It actually has properties, it does not merely possibly have them, but is property-incomplete (and therefore in violation of the Law of Excluded Middle) in that it is neither one nor many, neither universal nor particular, neither intentionally existent nor really existent.

D. The CN exists intentionally in the mind of God, the creator.

(A) is a nonstarter and is rejected by both me and Lukas Novak.  (B) appears to be Novak's view.  (C) is the interpretation I was tentatively suggesting in earlier entries..  My thesis was that the CN must have Aussersein status, but then it inherits -- to put it anachronistically -- all the problems of Meinongianism.  The doctor angelicus ends up in the jungle with a  Meinongian monkey on his back. 

Let me now try to explain why I reject (B), Novak's view, and incline toward (C), given that (A) cannot possibly be what Aquinas had in mind. 

Consider a time t before there were any human animals and any finite minds, and ask yourself: did the nature humanity exist at t?  The answer has to be in the negative if there are only two modes of existence, real existence in concrete extramental singulars and intentional existence in finite (creaturely) minds.  For at t there were no humans and no finite minds.  But surely it is true at t that man is rational, that humanity includes rationality.  This implies that humanity at t cannot be just nothing at all.  For if it were nothing at all at t, then 'Man is rational'' at t would lack a truth-maker.  Furthermore, we surely don't want to say that 'Man is rational' first becomes true when the first human being  exists.  In some sense, the common nature must be prior to its existential realization in concrete singulars and in minds.  The common nature cannot depend on these modes of realization.  Kenny quotes Aquinas (Aquinas on Being, Oxford 2002, p. 73):

Socrates is rational, because man is rational, and not vice versa; so that even if Socrates and Plato did not exist, rationality would still be a characteristic of human nature.

Socrates est rationalis, quia homo est rationalis, et non e converso; unde dato quod Socrates et Plato non essent, adhuc humanae naturae rationalitas competeret. (Quodl. VIII, I, c, 108-110)

Aquinas' point could be put like this.  (i) At times and in possible worlds in which humans do not exist, it is nevertheless the case that rationality is included in humanity, and (ii)  the metaphysical ground of humans' being rational is the circumstance that rationality is included in humanity, and not vice versa.

Now this obviously implies that the common nature humanity has some sort of status independent of real and intentional existence.  So we either go the Meinongian route or we say that comon natures  exist in the mind of God.  Kenny:

Aquinas' solution is to invoke the divine mind.  There are really four, not three ways of considering natures: first, as they are in the mind of the creator; second, as they are in the abstract; third, as they are in individuals; and finally, as they are in the human mind. (p. 74)

This may seem to solve the problem I raised.  Common natures are not nothing because they are divine accusatives.  And they are not nothing in virtue of being ausserseiend. This solution avoids the three options of Platonism, subjectivism (according to which CNs exist only as products of abstraction), and Meinongianism.

The problem with the solution is that it smacks of deus ex machina: God is brought in to solve the problem similarly as Descartes had recourse to the divine veracity to solve the problem of the external world.  Solutions to the problems of universals, predication, and intentionality ought to be possible without bringing God into the picture. 

I  think about deus ex machina objections in philosophy in Deus ex Machina: Leibniz Contra Malebranche.

But if we don't bring God into the picture then we may face a trilemma:  either Platonism, or subjectivism, or Meinongianism.

Related articles

A Question About God and Existence

Genuine Inquiry and Two Forms of Pseudo-Inquiry: Sham Reasoning and Fake Reasoning

Senses of 'Abstract' with a Little Help from Hegel

The Grand Central Conundrum in the Philosophy of Fiction

In Defense of Modes of Being: Substance and Accident

The following entry, first posted on February 20, 2011, is relevant to the question whether God is a being among beings.  My rejection of this claim requires that there be modes of Being.  If talk of modes of Being is unintelligible, or based on an obvious mistake, then the claim that God is not a being among beings, but Being itself, is unintelligible, or based on an obvious mistake.  Herewith, something in defense of the MOB doctrine.

To ward off misunderstanding, I am  not saying that the 'relation' of God to the world of creatures is the 'relation' of a substance to its accidents or modes.  Creatures do not inhere in God.   They are not accidents. They are derivative substances in their own right, difficult as it may be to make sense of this.  Christian metaphysics must somehow navigate between the Scylla of Spinozism and Charybdis of the sort of radical ontological pluralism to which my friend Dale Tuggy 'succumbs' (to put it tendentiously).

On second thought, since Spinozism sucks everything into itself, I should have written 'Charybdis of Spinozism.'  Charybdis was a sea nymph transmogrified by Zeus into a whirlpool.

In his History of Philosophy Hegel jokes that due to the all-consumptiveness of the Spinozistic Absolute, it is in some sense fitting that Spinoza should die of consumption.  As the story goes, Spinoza the lens-grinder died of what used to be called consumption (tuberculosis) from breathing in the glass dust. 

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The 'thin' conception of Being or existence, lately explained, entails that there are no modes of Being. Most analytic philosophers accept the thin conception and reject modes of Being. Flying in the face of analytic orthodoxy, I maintain that the modes-of-Being doctrine is defensible. Indeed, I should like to say something stronger, namely, that it is indispensable for metaphysics.
 
My task in this series of posts is not to specify what the modes of Being are, but the preliminary one of defending the very idea of there being different modes of Being. So I plan to look at a range of   examples without necessarily endorsing the modes of Being they  involve.  Against van Inwagen (see post linked above), I maintain that no mistake is made by partisans of the thick conception.  They do not, pace van Inwagen, illicitly transfer what properly belongs to the nature of a thing to its existence.

This post focuses on substances and accidents and argues that an accident and a substance of which it is the accident differ in their very mode of Being, and not merely in their respective natures.

1. Intuitively, some items exist on their own while others are dependent in their existence on items that exist on their own. Smiles, grimaces, frowns, white caps, and carpet bulges are items that exist, but not on their own. They need -- as a matter of metaphysical necessity -- faces, waves, and carpets to exist in. This suggests some definitions:

D1. S is a (primary) substance =_df S is metaphysically capable of independent existence.

D2. A is an accident =_df A is not metaphysically capable of independent existence, but exists, if it exists, in a substance.

By 'metaphysically' I mean broadly logically in Plantinga's sense. So if a particular statue is a substance, then it is broadly logically possible that it exist even if nothing else exists. And if the smoothness or color of the statue are accidents, then it is broadly logically impossible that they exist (i) apart from some substance or other and indeed (ii) apart from the very substance of which they are the accidents.

The second point implies that accidents are particulars, not universals. Accidents cannot be shared. They are not 'repeatable' in the manner of universals. Nor can they 'migrate' from one substance to   another. You can't catch my cold if my cold is an accident of me as substance. Your cold is your numerically distinct cold. Socrates' whiteness is his whiteness and is as such numerically distinct from   Plato's whiteness. The connection between a substance and its accidents is a peculiarly intimate one.

2. Now suppose there is a substance S and an accident A of S. I do not deny that there is a sense of 'exist' according to which both S and A  exist.  There is a sense -- the quantificational sense -- in which both items exist and exist univocally: each is something and not nothing.  Both are there to be talked about and referred to.  We can write '(∃x)(x = S)' and '(∃x)(x = A)':  'Something is (identically) S' and 'Something is (identically) A.'  The symbol for the particular quantifier -- '(∃x)(. . . x . . .)' -- has exactly the same sense in both occurrences.

3. The issue, however, is this: Does what I said in #2 exhaust what there is to be said about the Being or existence of S and A? On the thin conception, that is all there is to it. To be is to be something or other. If there are substances and accidents then both are in the same sense and in the same mode. ('Sense' is a semantic term; 'mode' is an ontological term.) Since S and A both exist in the same way on the thin conception, they are not distinguished by their mode of Being.  They are distinguished by their respective natures alone.

4. In order to see what is wrong with the thin conception, let us ask how the two entities S and A are related. Indeed, can one speak of a relation at all? Traditionally, one speaks of inherence: A inheres in S. Inherence cannot be an external relation since if a and b are externally related, then a and b can each exist apart from the relation. But A cannot exist apart from the inherence 'relation' to S. The whiteness of Socrates cannot exist apart from Socrates.  On the other hand, if S and A were internally related, then neither  could exist without the other. But S can exist without A.  Socrates' needn't be white.  Since S can exist without A, but A cannot exist without S, A is existentially  dependent on S, dependent on S for its very existence, while S is capable of independent existence. But this is just to say that A  exists in a different way than S exists. Thus S and A differ in their  modes of Being. One cannot make sense of inherence without  distinguishing substantial and accidental modes of Being.

5. In sum: Talk of substances and their accidents is intelligible. But it is intelligible only if there are two modes of Being, substantial and accidental. Therefore, talk of modes of being is intelligible. Since the thin conception of Being entails that there cannot be modes of Being, because the very idea is unintelligible, the thin conception ought to be rejected.

Related articles

Being Itself: Continuing the Discussion with Dale Tuggy

Realism, Idealism, and Classical Theism

World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World 'Relation'

Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms? Reply to a Comment

Dr. James Anderson writes,

I appreciated your recent post with the above title. However, I note that you didn't connect your comments there with your ongoing discussion with Dale Tuggy. From point 3 of your post:

Ryan seems to think that to believe in God is to believe that there is a special object in addition to the objects we normally take to exist. But this is not what a sophisticated theist maintains.

 

And:

People like Ryan, Russell, Dawkins, and Dennett who compare God to a celestial teapot betray by so doing a failure to understand, and engage, the very sense of the theist's assertions. To sum up. [...] (iii) God is not a being who simply exists alongside other beings.

Yet Tuggy apparently affirms [the negation of] (iii) and thus agrees with Ryan et al. on that point at least. So should we conclude that Tuggy isn't really a theist? Or that he isn't a sophisticated theist? Neither seems fair! But then if Tuggy (and his fellow non-classical theists) can be appropriately categorized as theists, it seems your analysis of "theist-atheist debates" needs some qualification.

Just some more grist for the mill!

REPLY

Thanks, James.  The entry in question is an old post from six or seven years ago. That explains the lack of reference to my present conversation with Dale Tuggy.  So let me now bring Tuggy into the picture.

Let us first note that 'God is a being among beings' does not imply the existence of God.  It is a claim about how God exists should he exist.  It is like the claim 'Chairs are not (subjective) concepts.'  That is true whether or not there are any chairs.  It says something about how chairs exist should any exist, namely, extramentally.  The same goes for 'God is not a concept,' which is true whether or not God exists. 

A second point to note is that  'God is a being among beings' is not equivalent to 'God is a physical thing among physical things.'  Maybe Yuri Gagarin believed in that equivalence, and maybe Dawkins does, but surely it would be uncharitable in the extreme to impute such a belief to Russell despite his comparison of God to a teapot.  That wasn't the point of the comparison.  And of course Tuggy does not hold to the equivalence.

Is Dale a sophisticated theist?  Well, he is sophisticated, holding a Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University, and he is a theist.  So he is a sophisticated theist. But it doesn't follow that his theism is sophisticated.  I say it isn't.  A sophisticated X-ist can hold to an unsophisticated X-ism.

God, if he exists, is not just one more thing that exists having properties that distinguish him from everything else that exists.  God is the ultimate source, the absolute ground, of the existence, properties, intelligibility, and value  of everything distinct from himself.  As such, he cannot be just one more thing that exists, one more item in the ontological inventory.  Why not?  Here is one argument.

God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing, everything (or at least every contingent thing) distinct from himself.  So everything distinct from God depends on God for its existence, while God does not depend on anything for his existence.  The Being of creatures is their Being-created-by-God while the Being of God is not his Being-created-by-God.  Therefore, there are two very different modes of Being in play here, one pertaining to God, the other to creatures.  Since God and creatures exist in different ways (modes), God is not a being among beings.  For when we say that God is a being among beings part of what we mean is that God exists or is in the very same way that everything else is or exists.

Is this not a good argument?  It is not a compelling argument, but then no argument for any substantive claim in philosophy is compelling.

Rather than say more in defense of the above sketch of an argument, I will enable Comments and let my esteemed and astute readers poke holes in the argument if they can.

God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?

This is another round in an ongoing discussion (via face-to-face conversations, podcasts, and weblog posts) with Dale Tuggy  on whether or not God is best thought of as a being among beings, albeit the highest being (summum ens),  or rather as self-subsistent Being itself (ipsum esse subsistens).  In this entry I will respond to just a bit of Dale's first weblog response to my post.  Dale writes,

God and I (and you) all exist. Does it follow that we all three of us exist in the same way? Well, we all satisfy the concept existing, but God also satisfies the concept necessarily existing, which is just to say that he exists, and it is absolutely impossible for him to not exist. (In the jargon which is so common: he exists “in all possible worlds.”) We all exist, yes, but God necessarily exists (which entails his existing). So I think it can be misleading to say that “God is in the same way that creatures are.” This suggests that God and creatures aren’t importantly different as respects their existence. But creatures can not exist, whereas God can’t not exist. That’s a big difference.

Let me first point out that what we have here is an intramural dispute among theists who agree about quite a bit.  Thus we agree that God exists (in the sense in which naturalistic atheists* deny that God exists), has the standard omni-attributes, is unique, is in some sense a necessary being, is transcendent of creation, possesses aseity, and so on.  But we differ on questions like these: how exactly are the divine necessity, the divine uniqueness, and the divine transcendence to be understood?  To put it roughly, we who side with Thomas subscribe to a radical necessity, uniqueness, and transcendence, whereas those on Dale's side hold to less radical readings of these terms.  For example, Dale thinks of God as transcendent, but not so transcendent as to prevent the univocal (not equivocal, not analogical) application of the predicate '___ is a person' to both God and Socrates. For Dale, God is transcendent all right, but not Maimonides-transcendent or Thomas-transcendent.  (I trust my meaning is clear, or clear enough for now; I plan to blog further on these options later.)

A second preliminary observation is that in a discussion like this we cannot avoid the deepest questions of metaphysics.  In the deepest depths of the deep lurks the question: What is existence?  A question about which your humble correspondent wrote a book.  One cannot adequately tackle the God question while just presupposing some theory of existence such as the Frege-Russell-Quine theory.  To put it gnomically, no thin theory of existence for a thick God.  What's more, one cannot just presuppose some general-metaphysical framework such as 'relation' versus 'constituent' ontology.  (This terminology, from Wolterstorff, though current, leaves something to be desired.)

Let's now get down to the nuts and bolts.

Is Existence a Concept?

Dale says in effect that God and Socrates both "satisfy the concept existing."  Right here I must object.  I maintain that existence (existing) cannot be a concept, whether subjective or objective.  Subjective concepts are mental items: no minds, no concepts.  Of course, we can also speak of objective concepts, but I think Dale understands by 'concept' subjective concepts.  Dispositionally viewed, subjective concepts are classificatory powers grounded in minds like ours: I have the concept triangle in that I have the power to classify items given in experience as either triangular or not triangular.  Occurrently viewed, the concept triangle is the mind-dependent content of such a classificatory  power.  The main thing, though, is this: no minds, no (subjective) concepts.

Now existence is that which makes an existing item exist.  It is that which determines it as existent.  It is that without which a thing would be nothing at all.  We assume pluralism: there are many existents.  But they  all have something in common: they exist.  It follows that existence cannot be identified with existents either distributively or collectively.  Existence is not identical to any one existent, nor to the whole lot of them.  Existence is different from existents.  Given the commonality of existence, and its difference from existents, one may be tempted to think of existence as a concept abstractly common to existing items or existents.  Dale apparently succumbs to this temptation.  He thinks of existence as common in the manner of an abstract concept.  But this can't be right.  Existence is not a concept.  The existing of things is not their falling under any concept, not even the putative concept, existence.

Argument 1. Things existed long before there were concepts.  Therefore, the existence of these things cannot be identified with their falling under any concept, let alone the putative concept, existence.

Note: if Dale wants a concept, existence, I'll give it to him.  But then I will go on to show that this concept is not existence, that it is not the gen-u-ine article (stamp the foot, pound the lectern). 

Argument 2. The modal analog of the foregoing temporal argument is this.  Much of what exists now would have existed now had no concepts existed now. For example, the Moon would have existed now had no concept-users and concepts existed now. Therefore, the existence of these things cannot be identified with their falling under any concept, let alone the putative concept, existence.

Argument 3.  Necessarily, if an individual x falls under a concept C, then both x and C exist.  So it cannot be the case that x exists in virtue of falling under any concept, including the putative concept, existence.  You move in an explanatory circular if you try to account for the existence of x by saying that x exists in virtue of falling under a concept when nothing falls under a concept unless it exists.  Note that this third argument works for both subjective and objective concepts.

So I say about existence what I say about God: neither can be a concept.  It is clear, I hope, that God is not a concept.  There is of course the concept, God, but this concept is not God.  The concept God is no more God than the concept chair is a chair.  One can sit on a chair; one cannot sit on a concept.  Suppose there were no chairs.  It would still be the case that the concept chair is not a chair.  (And if all chairs were suddenly to cease to exist, they would not at that moment become concepts.)  Likewise, even if there is no God, it is still the case that the concept God is not God.  You haven't grasped the concept God if you think that God is a mind-dependent item or that God is abstract or that God can have items instantiating it or falling under it.  To understand the concept God is to understand that whatever satisfies it, if anything, cannot be a concept.

Now if existence is not a concept, then necessary existence is not a concept either.

There is a way Dale might agree with part of the foregoing.  He might say, "OK, existence in its difference from existents cannot be a concept.  But I deny that there is  in reality, outside the mind, anything  called 'existence.'  There are existents, but no existence.  There is nothing different from existents that makes them exist.  There is just the manifold of existents.  In your jargon, I subscribe to radical ontological pluralism: (ROP) In reality, existence divides without remainder into existents."

This is not the place for a full-scale response, but I need to say something.  There cannot, in reality, be a manifold of existents unless there is something in reality common to them all that makes them a manifold of existents, as opposed to a sheer manyness.  When this is properly appreciated then it will be appreciated that existence cannot divide without remainder into existents.  Outside the mind, the Existential Difference, the difference between existence and existents, remains. 

Are Necessity and Contingency Ways of Existing?

For Dale, God is a being among beings in the sense I defined earlier. I infer from this that for Dale God is in the same way that creatures are.  Dale seeks to block this inference by pointing out that God  is a necessary being while creatures are contingent beings.  This is of course a big difference as Dale says.  But it needn't be taken to imply  a difference in ways of existing, and it cannot be so taken unless Dale wants to abandon his scheme.  For the difference between metaphysical necessity and metaphysical contingency  is logically consistent with God and creatures existing in the very same way, as would not be the case if God is not a being among beings, but Being itself.  So I hold to my claim that for Dale, God is in the same way that creatures are.

To appreciate this, note that 'exists' across the following two sentences is univocal in sense:

a. Necessarily, God exists.

b. It is not the case that necessarily, Socrates exists.

This univocity gives us no reason to think that God and Socrates differ in their way of existing.  This becomes even clearer if we explicate (a) and (b) in 'possible worlds' terms:

a*.  God exists in all possible worlds.

b*.  Socrates exists in some but not all possible worlds.

This suggests that the difference between necessity and contingency is not a difference in ways of existing, but a difference in the number of worlds quantified over, whether all or some.  So Dale by his own lights cannot maintain that the necessity-contingency difference is a difference in ways of existing.  He fails to block my inference above.

Now suppose we ask:  why does God exist in all worlds?  Answer: because he is necessary; he cannot not exist.  But why cannot he not exist?  What is it about God that distinguishes him from Socrates in this respect?  Why can't Socrates not exist?  Is it just a brute fact that God exists in all worlds, but Socrates only in some?  What is the ground of the divine metaphysical necessity?  I say:  the divine necessity is grounded in the divine simplicity.  The latter accounts for the former.  It is because God is (identical to) his existence, that he cannot not exist.  And it is because Socrates is not (identical to) his existence that he can not exist.  Now this answer does imply that there are different ways of existing.  Thus:

a**. God exists-necessarily.

b**. Socrates exists-contingently.

Note that in this last pair there is no univocity on the side of the predicate as there is in the first two pairs.

Summary

I aim at clarity, not agreement.  I aim to clarify our differences, not secure agreement with my views.  Clarity is an attainable goal in a philosophical discussion; I rather doubt that agreement is. 

I deny the analytic dogma according to which there are no modes of Being or ways of existing.  (See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak, eds. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge, 2014, pp. 45-75)  Dale apparently subscribes to the dogma.  Thus for me the divine modal status, broadly logical or metaphysical necessity, is grounded in and accounted for by the divine simplicity, while for Dale the same modal status is left ungrounded and unaccounted for.  Dale does not answer the question:  Why is God such that he cannot not exist?  Nor does he answer the question: Why is Socrates such that he can not exist? 

This is equivalent to saying that for Dale, God and Socrates do not differ as to mode of Being or way of existing.  For me, however, an ontologically simple being, one that is (identical to) its existence cannot be said to exist in the same way as one that is not (identical to) to its existence.

______________________

*I take a naturalistic atheist to be one whose atheism is a logical consequence of his naturalism.  If one holds, as D. M. Armstrong does, that reality is exhausted by the space-time system, then it follows straightaway that there is no God as Dale and I are using 'God.'     

Related articles

God: A Being among Beings or Being Itself?

Just Say 'No' to 'No Self'

John Passmore on Entity-Monism and Existence-Monism

The Australian philosopher John Passmore (1914 - 2004) is described in his Telegraph obituary as "an Andersonian radical, swept away, though not to the point of unquestioning devotion, by his Scottish-born philosophy professor, John Anderson . . . ."  The influence of Anderson on Passmore is very clear from the latter's Philosophical Reasoning (Basic Books, 1969; orig. publ. 1961).  The Andersonian Chapter Three, "The Two-Worlds Argument," is the cynosure of my current interest, in particular, the distinction Passmore makes between what he calls entity-monism and what he calls existence-monism. (Anderson, as far as I know does not use these terms and, as far as I know, they have found no resonance among the epigoni.   The terms are not found in the index of A. J. Baker's Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson, Cambridge UP, 1986.  And Quentin Gibson, The Existence Principle, Kluwer, 1998, p. 14, dismisses 'existence-monism' as a misleading label for Anderson's view.)

In this entry I will present the distinction and then comment critically upon it.

Passmore tells us that

Entity-monism is the doctrine that 'ultimately' there is only one real entity. What we normally regard as distinct things -- whether they be chairs, or musical compositions, or human being -- are, all of them, appearances of this one entity. (38)

[. . .]

Existence-monism is difficult to define in general terms.  But we might put it thus: when we say that something exists, or that things of a certain kind exist, this exist or exists has an invariant meaning whatever the 'something' or the 'kind' may be, i.e. there are not sorts, or  levels, or orders of existence.  More accurately, what is asserted by 'X exists' can always be asserted by a proposition which contains an 'is' which has, in this sense, an invariant meaning.  Existence-monism, unlike entity-monism, does admit of varieties.  Philosophers might say, and have said, that to exist is to be perceived, or to be in process, or to be spatiotemporal, or to be a possible subject for physical investigation, or to be a thing with properties, and do on. (39, bolding added)

I have two criticisms.

1. There is first of all a slide from a semantic thesis, a thesis about meaning, to an ontological thesis, a thesis about being.  Passmore conflates the semantic claim that 'exists' and cognates have an invariant meaning or sense with the ontological claim that there are no sorts or kinds or levels or orders or modes or ways of being/existence.  But as I see it, one can consistently maintain both that (i) 'exists' and cognates is univocal in sense across all its uses and that (ii) there are different modes of existence.  For this reason, (i) and (ii) are distinct theses.

Let me give a quick illustration.  Carpets exist and bulges in carpets exist.  In the sentence immediately preceding 'exist' is invariant in sense across both occurrences (both tokenings).  And yet it makes good sense to say that carpets and bulges exist in different ways.  A carpet can exist with or without a bulge; but no carpet bulge can exist without a carpet whose bulge it is.  If a substance is defined as an entity logically capable of independent existence, then a carpet is a substance.  But surely no bulge in a carpet is a substance.  For no carpet bulge is logically capable of independent existence. It is rather an accident of the carpet as substance.  Carpet and bulge exist in different ways: the carpet exists in itself; the bulge in another.  Or: the carpet exists independently; the bulge dependently.  To think of carpet and bulge as Humean "distinct existences" strains credulity.  What we have here are not two Hume-distinct items that stand in a causal relation.  Nor do they stand in a logical relation if such relationsd are defined over propositions.  What we have here is irreducible existential dependence: the bulge depends in its existence upon the carpet, but not vice versa.  To make sense of this example we need to speak of two different modes of existence.

Suppose you accept this.  Surely the acceptance is logically consistent with saying that both carpets and bulges exist in the same sense of  'exist.'  And what sense is that?   It is the sense expressed by the so-called existential quantifier.  A better name for it is 'particular quantifier.'  In 'Some items are carpets' and 'Some items are bulges,' the predicate 'Some items are ___' has the same sense.  And yet carpets and bulges, like faces and smiles, exist in different ways.  Or at least one can with no breach of logical consistency maintain this ontological thesis while also holding to the semantic univocity of 'exists' and cognates.  Just don't confuse the ontological with the semantic.  Don't confuse ways of existing with senses of 'exists.'

Well, I hope you followed that.  Now on to the second criticism where the going gets tougher.

2. Passmore clearly sees that one could not sensibly maintain that to be = to be water. "Nobody could now win credence who asserted that to be is to be a quantity of water, however plausible that doctrine might have looked to Thales." (39)  And the reason would not be that we now know that water is not an element, or that there are stuffs other than water.  The reason lies deeper.  If to exist is to be water, then 'Water exists' would be equivalent to the tautology 'Water is water,'  when it  obviously isn't.

It seems clear that there is no kind of thing or kind of stuff that we could invoke to give descriptive content to existence in general.  There is no K such that it will come out true that to be = to be a K or a quantity of K.  No one will maintain that to be is to be a lump of coal or to be a cat or to be a quantity of hydrogen.  There are two problems here.  First, if to be = to be a K, then only Ks could exist.  If to be is to be a cat, then only cats could exist: everything would be a cat.  Not good!  Second, even if there is some K that everything is, being K and existing are not the same.  For to say that Ks exist is not to say that Ks are Ks.

What about: to be is to be spatiotemporal?  One problem with this naturalist proposal is that it is circular.  A thing cannot be spatiotemporal unless it exists in space-time.  But then the proposal comes to this: for x to exist is for x to be spatiotemporal and exist.  This point about circularity is equivalent to the second point I just made.  To say of a spatiotemporal thing that exists is not to say that it is spatiotemporal.  To give it a modal twist: it is necessary that spatiotemporal items be spatiotemporal, but contingent that any exist.

So it comes as a surprise when Passmore says, with respect to "To be is to have a place in Space-Time," that "this sort of difficulty does not arise," namely the difficulty in the water example.  Why not? Because, "Space-Time is not the sort of thing to which existence is ascribed or which is used to distinguish one thing from another." (39)  But surely we do ascribe existence to spacetime.  And it is question-begging to say that spatiotemporality does not distinguish one thing from another: it distinguishes concrete things from abstract things.  Granted, it does not distinguish items in space time, but neither does being a cat distinguish cats from one another.

So is seems to me that 'To be is to be water' and 'To be is to be spatiotemporal' are on a par.  The only difference is that 'water' picks out a natural stuff-kind while 'spatiotemporal pickls out a mode of being.

Pace Anderson and Passmore, being cannot be identified with being spatiotemporal.

What then becomes of existence-monism?  Existence-monism amounts to the claim that there is a single way of being or existence as opposed to two or more ways.  Thus existence-monism is taken by Andersonians to rule out Plato's two-world theory according to which Forms exist atemporally while the phenomenal particulars that participate in them exist in a temporal way.  But as I pointed out in my first criticism, one cannot validly infer a single way of being from a single use of 'exists.'  Univocity at the level of sense doesn't entail modal sngleness at the level of being.

What reason, then, do we have to think that there is a single way of being? Well, you might say that it is evident to the senses that there are things in space and time.  Fine, but that doesn't show that there is a way of being that is their way of being, even with the addition of the premise that everything that exists exists in space and time.  That is, it does not show that we must distinguish between nature, existence, and mode of existence.  Why can't we eke by with just nature and existence?

Besides, if there is exactly one way of being, and spatiotemporal items, which we know to exist, exist in that way, does it not follow that to be = to be spatiotemporal, that existence reduces to spatiotemporality?  But we saw above under #2 that that can't be right: there is no F such that to exist = to be F. (Wel, there is one case, but it is a very specila one idneed!)

I suspect that we cannot speak of a way of being at all unless we speak of two or more ways of being.  For what could motivate the tripartite distinction among nature, existence, and mode, if not examples like that of the carpet and the bulge where it is highly plausible to say that the items distinguished exist in diferent ways?  I am assuming that one has not made the mistake exposed in #1 above, namely, the mistake of confusing senses and modes and sliding illicitly from the univocity of 'exists' to the singleness of mode of being.

There are three positions that want distinguishing:

Existence-Monism:  There is exactly one mode of being.

Existence-Pluralism: There are two or more modes of being.

Existence-Nihilism: There are no modes of being.

The real debate is between the pluralists and the nihilists.  The monist position of the Andersonians is the result of confusion.  Or at least that is the way it looks at the moment.  But we press on.

Related articles

John Anderson on Levels of Reality

Clive James on John Anderson; Anderson and Rand

Anderson Against Modes of Being: The Case of Berkeley

John Anderson, Heraclitus the Obscure, and the Depth of Change

Amazon Pricing

Levels of Reality and the Essence of Religion

Reading John Anderson has enhanced my sense of the centrality of the question of levels of reality for those of us who view philosophy as a quest for the Absolute and a project of self-transformation.  Of course it was more or less obvious to me all along, Plato's Allegory of the Cave being the richest depiction we have of the two-world theme.

Essential to religion is the belief that there is what William James calls an "unseen order" (Varieties of Religious Experience, 53), a higher order, above or behind the phenomenal order of time and change, doubt and confusion, mendacity and evil.

The unseen order is to be affirmed without the phenomenal order being denied.  So there are two levels of reality.  How exactly they are related is the problem, or one problem.  We will pursue the problem in due course in connection with John Passmore's discussion of the "Two-Worlds Argument" in his Philosophical Reasoning.

God as an Ontological Category Mistake

John Anderson's rejection of God is radical indeed. A. J. Baker writes:

Anderson, of course, upholds atheism, though that is a rather narrow and negative way of describing his position given its sweep in rejecting all rationalist conceptions of essences and ontological contrasts in favour of the view that whatever exists is a natural occurrence on the same level of existence as anything else that exists.  From that position it follows, not merely that the traditional 'proofs' of the existence of God can be criticised, but that the very conception of a God or a supernatural way of being is an illogical conception -- God is an ontological category mistake as we may say. (Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson, Cambridge UP, 1986, 118-119)

If someone said that the average thought has such-and-such a volume, you would not say that he was factually incorrect; you would say that he had committed a category mistake inasmuch as a thought is not the sort of item that could have a volume: it is categorially disbarred from having a volume.  Someone who says that God exists is saying that there exists something whose mode of being is unique to it and that everything  other than God has a different mode of being.  But the idea that there are two or more modes of being or two or more levels of reality, according to Anderson, is 'illogical" and ruled out by the exigencies of rational discourse itself.  To posit God, then, is to involve oneself in a sort of ontological category mistake, in the words of A. J. Baker.

Let's see if we can understand this. (This series of entries is booked under Anderson, John.)

The Andersonian thesis is an exceedingly strong one: the very concept of God is said to be illogical.  It is illogical because it presupposes the notion, itself illogical, that there are levels of reality or modes of existence or ways of being.  What makes the argument so interesting is the implied claim that the very nature of being rules out the existence of God.  So if we just understand what being is we will see that God cannot exist!  This is in total opposition to the tack I take in A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002) wherein I argued from the nature of existence to (something like) God, and to the tack taken by those who argue from truth to God.

The Andersonian argument seems to be as follows:

1. There is a single way of being.

2. The single way of being is spatiotemporal or natural being.

3. If God exists, then his way of being is not spatiotemporal or natural.

Therefore

4. God does not exist.

Note that the argument extends to any absolute such as the One of Plotinus or the Absolute of F. H. Bradley or the Paradigm Existent of your humble correspondent. Indeed, it extends to any non-spatiotemporal entity.

The crucial premise is (1).  For if  'way of being' so much as makes sense, then surely (3) is true. And anyone who accepts (1) ought also to accept (2) given that it is evident to the senses that there are spatiotemporal items.  So the soundness of the argument pivots on (1).  But what is the argument for (1)? 

Note that (1) presupposes that 'way of being' makes sense.  This is not obvious.  To explain this I first disambiguate 'There are no ways of being.'   Someone who claims that there are no ways of being could mean either

A. There are no ways of being because there is a single way of being.

or

B. There are no ways of being because the very idea of a way of being, whether one or many, either makes no sense or rests on some fallacious reasoning:  either a thing exists or it does not.  There is no way it exists.  We can distinguish between nature (essence) and existence but not among nature, existence and way of existence.  What is said to belong to the way a thing exists really belongs on the side of its nature. A drastic difference such as that between a rock and a number does not justify talk of spatiotemporal and non-spatiotemporal ways of being: the drastic difference is just a difference in their respective natures.

Many philosophers have championed something like (B).  (See Reinhard Grossmann Against Modes of Being. Van Inwagen, too, takes something like the (B)-line.)  If (B) is true, then Anderson's argument collapses before it begins.  But I reject (B).  So I can't dismiss the argument in this way.

Anderson's view  is (A).  The problem is not with the concept of a way of being; the problem is with the idea that there is more than one way of being.  This is clear from his 1929 "The Non-Existence of Consciousness," reprinted in Studies in Empirical Philosophy, wherein we read, "If theory is to be possible, then, we must be realists; and that involves us in . . . the assertion of a single way of being (as contrasted with 'being ultimately' and 'being relatively') [a way of being] which the many things that we thus recognise have." (SEP 76)  Thus what Anderson opposes is a duality, and indeed every plurality, of ways of being, and not the very notion of a way of being.  One could say that Anderson is a monist when it comes to ways of being, not a pluralist.  To invoke a distinction made by John Passmore, one to be discussed in a later entry, Anderson is an existence-monist but not an entity-monist.

Now what's the argument for (1)? As far as I can tell the argument is something like this:

5. Truth is what is conveyed by the copula 'is' in a (true) proposition.

6. There is no alternative to 'being' or 'not being': a proposition can only be true or false. 

Therefore

7. There are are no degrees or kinds of truth: no proposition is truer than any other, and there are no different ways of being true. (5, 6)

8. (True) propositions are concrete facts or spatiotemporal situations:  propositions are not intermediary entities between the mental and the extramental.  They are not merely intentional items, nor are they Fregean senses.  The proposition that the cat is on the mat just is the concrete fact of the cat's being on the mat.  And the same goes for the cat: the cat is identical to a proposition.  Anderson's student, Armstrong, holds that a thick particular such as a cat is a proposition-like entity, a state of affairs; but Anderson holds the more radical view that a cat is not merely proposition-like, but is itself a proposition.  But if a cat is a proposition, then

9. Being (existence) = truth.

Therefore

1. There is a single way of being. (from 7, 9)

Therefore, by the first argument above,

4. God does not exist.

Critique

A full critique is beyond the scope of this entry especially since brevity is the soul of blog, as some wit once said.  But what I am about to say is, I think, sufficient to refute the Andersonian argument.

If everything exists in the same way, what way is that? Anderson wants to say: the spatiotemporal way.  He is committed to the proposition that

A. To be is to be spatiotemporally

where this is to be construed as an identification of being/existence with spatiotemporality.  Good classical metaphysician that he is, Anderson is telling us that the very Being of beings, das Sein des Seienden, is their being spatiotemporal.

Now there is a big problem with this.  A little thought should convince you that (A) fails as an indentification even if it succeeds as an equivalence: one cannot reduce being/existence to spatiotemporality.  For one thing, (A) is circular.  It amounts to saying that to exist is to exist in space and time.  Now even if everything that exists exists in space and time, the existence of that which exists cannot be identified with being in space and time.  So even if (A) is true construed as telling us what exists, it cannot be true construed as telling us what existence is.  A second point is that, while it is necessary that a rock be spatiotemporal, there is no necessity that a rock exist, whence it follows that the existence of a rock cannot be identified with its being spatiotemporal.

Now if (A) fails as an identification, it might still be true contingently as an equivalence. It might just happen to be the case that, for all x, x exists iff x is spatiotemporal.  But then it cannot be inscribed in the nature of Being (as a Continental philosopher might say) that whatever is is in space and time.  Nor can it be dictated by "the nature and possibility of discourse" (SEP 2) or by the possibility of "theory" (SEP 76).  Consequently, the Andersonian battle cry "There is only a single way of being!" cannot be used to exclude God.

For any such exclusion of God as an "ontological category mistake" can only proceed from the exigencies of Being itself.  What Anderson wants to say is that the very nature of Being logically requires the nonexistence of God.  But that idea rests on the confusion exposed above.  For his point to go through, he needs (A) to be an identification when at most it is an equivalence.

Related articles

Anderson Against Modes of Being: The Case of Berkeley

John Anderson, Heraclitus the Obscure, and the Depth of Change

Anderson Against Modes of Being: The Case of Berkeley

I'm on a John Anderson jag at the moment and I'm having a blast. (Whatever else you say about philosophy it is a marvellous and marvellously reliable source of deep pleasure, at least to those to whom she has revealed herself and who have become her life-long acolytes.)  Anderson (1893-1962) is a fascinating character both as a man and as a philosopher.  More importantly, if he is right, I am wrong.  For I am committed to modes of being both by these pages and by my published writings, chiefly, my 2002 book on existence.  Central to Anderson's position, however, is that there are no levels of reality or modes of being.  So intellectual honesty requires that I see if I can meet the Andersonian challenge. My first Anderson entry is here.  Read that for some background.

Here is an Anderson-type argument against a Berkeley-type position.

Suppose it is maintained that there are two different modes of being or existence.  There is, first, the being of perceptual objects such as the tree in the quad.  For such things, esse est percipi, to be = to be perceived.  And of course perceivedness is not  monadic but relational: to be perceived is to be perceived by someone or by something that does the perceiving.  These perceivers or knowers exist too, but in a different mode.  For their being cannot be identified with their being perceived.  Clearly, not everything can be such that its being is its being perceived.  Such a supposition is scotched  by the vicious infinite regress it would ignite.  For if the being of God were his being perceived, then there would have to be something apart from God that pereceived him.  And so on infinitely and viciously.  So if the being of some items is perceivedness, then there must be at least two modes of being.

But of course knower and known stand in relation to each other.  So the Andersonian begins his critique by asking  about the concrete situation in which I know a tree, or God knows a tree.  (Cf. A. J. Baker, Australian Realism, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 26) What mode of being does this situation have?  Does this situation or state of affairs exist by being perceived or by perceiving?  Neither.  The fact that I see a tree exists. But the existence of this fact is not  its being perceived.  The existence of the fact it not its perceiving either.  The fact exists in neither way.  It has neither mode of being.  Therefore, the Andersonian concludes, the dualism of two modes of being breaks down.  There is only one mode of being, that of situations. As A. J. Baker puts it, "that situation and its ingredients all have 'being' of the same single kind." (26)

The above argument is a non sequitur.  It goes like this:

1. There is the relational fact of my seeing a tree.

2.  The being of this fact is not its being perceived.

3. The being of this fact is not perceiving.

Therefore

4. There are not two modes of being, the being of objects of perception and the being of subjects of perception.

Therefore

5. There is only one mode of being, that of facts or situations.

Both inferences are non sequiturs.

To get to the desired conclusion one needs the premises of the following argument, premises that are far from self-evident:

 6. The smallest unit of existence is the situation (state of affairs, concrete fact).

Therefore

7. Nothing exists except as a constituent of a situation. 

8. Situations are not represented by true propositions; they are true propositions.

Therefore

9. Existence = truth.

10. There are neither degrees nor modes of truth.

Therefore

11. There are neither degrees nor modes of existence.

Therefore

12. Knowers and things known exist in the same way.

John Anderson on Levels of Reality

Call it the MOB doctrine: there are modes of being, ways of existing, levels of reality.  I have defended the MOB in these pages and in print, chiefly in "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, 45-75.  But I have yet to come to grips with John Anderson's attack on levels of reality.  I begin to do so in this entry.  The Scot Anderson (1893-1962) is not much read today, but his teaching activity in Australia was highly influential.  Central ideas in David M. Armstrong come from Anderson.  One is naturalism.  The other is the notion that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts.

1. According to Anderson, the contention that there are different kinds or degrees of truth and reality" is what distinguishes rationalism from empiricism.  Empiricism "maintains that there only one way of being." (Studies in Empirical Philosophy, p. 1.  From a 1927 article, "Empiricism." SEP was originally published in 1962 together with a helpful introduction by John Passmore.)

This is a very interesting ontological as opposed to epistemological way of distinguishing rationalism from empiricism.  I am not sure that it is adequate. (Granted, an empiricist must eschew levels of reality; but must a rationalist embrace them?  Not clear.  Many do of course.  But all?) This demarcation issue is not my concern in this entry.

2. ". . . any postulation of different orders of being is illogical." (SEP 2)

This is a very strong claim.  It is to the effect that anyone who postulates different orders of being or levels of reality embraces either a formal-logical contradiction or some sort of broadly logical incoherence.  What arguments could Anderson have that would generate such a strong conclusion?

 3. Anderson gives a couple of question-begging arguments on p. 2. (a) Nothing can transcend existence. (b) Only empirical facts exist.  These are worthless.  One blatantly begs the question if one identifies the existent with the spatiotemporal or the empirically factual and then announces that nothing can exist in any other way.

4. Anderson's main argument, however, cannot be dismissed out of hand: "The very nature and possibility of discourse" rule out any theory of higher or lower orders of being or of truth.  That there should be different levels of being is "unspeakable." (SEP 2)  Why?

The proposition is primary.  Whatever we think about or speak about we do so using propositions.  Our only epistemic access to anything is via propositions.  Therefore, ". . . we are concerned with a single way of being: that, namely, which is conveyed when we say that a proposition is true." (SEP 3, emphasis in original)

The idea seems to be that whatever is, is propositional.  Therefore, there is nothing supra-propositional and nothing infra-propositional.  There is no Absolute, but also no "mere data, not yet propositionalized."  Armstrong holds that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts, where facts are not propositions, but proposition-like entities.  Anderson's position is more radical: facts are propositions.  So, strictly speaking, we do not access the world via propositions; propositions are what we access.  In Armstrong there is a distinction between truth-bearers and truth-makers; in his teacher Anderson this distinction is not made.  Now if everything that exists is a true proposition, then to be (to exist) = to be true.  Since there are no degrees or modes of truth, there are no degrees or modes of being.

A proposition for Anderson is not a Fregean sense or a merely intentional object.  Just what it is I am still trying to figure out.

5. But isn't Anderson's a rationalist scheme? Anderson is maintaining that reality must conform to discourse and discursive reason.  We think in propositions and cannot do otherwise; therefore (?!) reality is propositional.  Nothing is real except what conforms to the way we must think if we are to think at all. Facts are propositions; for a fact to exist is for it to be true.  Since there is only one way for a proposition to be true, there is only one way to be.

And isn't there something idealist about Anderson's approach?  The only world is the world as it is for us.  Whether you pull the world into the mind, or push the mind out into the world by reifying propositions, the result is the same.  I am merely sounding a theme to be pursued in future entries.  Elaboration and clarification can wait.

There is no "getting behind the proposition to something  either lower or higher . . . ." (3)  One can neither ascend to the Absolute not descend to the raw data of sensation uncooked by categories.  Think of Kant's sinnliche Mannigfaltikeit, the sensory manifold that provides the matter that is then worked up by the categories, the forms of understanding.  Anderson's scheme rules out the sensory manifold as much as the One of Plotinus or Mr Bradley's Absolute, not to mention the simple God of Aquinas and the 'unspeakable' Tao of Lao Tzu.

6.  Let's see if we can beat Anderson's argument into a more formal and rigorous shape.  Here is one possible reconstruction:

a. Truth is what is conveyed by the copula 'is' in a proposition.
b. Propositions can only be true or if not true then false.
Therefore
c. There are no degrees or kinds of truth.
d. Propositions are facts.
e. Truth = existence.
Therefore
f. There are no degrees or kinds or levels or modes of existence, being or reality.

Right now I am merely trying to understand what Anderson is maintaining.  Evaluation can wait. 

Anderson, I think it is fair to say, is an enemy of the ineffable.  What we mean cannot outrun what we can say.  There is nothing ineffable or inexpressible.  Contrast this with the position of the Tractarian Wittgenstein.  For Wittgenstein, the Higher, home to our ethical and religious concerns,  is, but it is the Inexpressible, das Unaussprechliche.  Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche.  There is the Unspeakable.  For Anderson, what is unspeakable is nothing at all.  Reality is exhausted by the propositional.

7.  Anderson holds that to distinguish among modes of being is "illogical." (SEP 4)  Perhaps one can argue for this as follows:

g. Law of Excluded Middle: a proposition is either true, or if not true, then false.
h. Truth = existence (being).
Therefore
i. To postulate different modes of being is to violate LEM, a law of logic, and to be "illogical."

We shall continue with this.  It is Christmas Eve, boys and girls.  Time  to punch the clock and enjoy some holiday cheer.  In moderation of course.  As I always say:

Moderation in all things, including moderation.