Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Atheism and Ontological Simplicity: A Retraction and a Repair

Chad McIntosh spotted the sloppiness in something I posted the other day.  A retraction is in order. And then a repair.

A Retraction

I wrote,

The simple atheist — to give him a name — cannot countenance anything as God that is not ontologically simple.  That is, he buys all the arguments classical theists give for the divine simplicity.  It is just that he finds the notion of an ontologically simple being incoherent.  He accepts, among others, all of Plantinga's arguments on the latter score.  His signature argument runs as follows:

1. If God exists, then God is simple.
2. Nothing is or can be simple.
Therefore
3. God does not exist.

First of all, one could be a simple atheist (simplicity atheist) as I have defined him without holding that nothing is ontologically simple.  Surely there is nothing in the nature of atheism to require that an atheist eschew every ontologically simple item.  And the same goes for the character I called the ontic theist, Dale Tuggy being an example of one.  Surely there is nothing in the nature of ontic theism, according to which God is not ontologically simple, to require that an ontic theist eschew every ontologically simple item. 

Second, while Alvin Plantinga does argue against the divine simplicity in Does God Have a Nature? (Marquette UP, 1980)  he does not (as I recall without checking) argue that nothing is ontologically simple.

There is no little irony in my sloppiness inasmuch as in my SEP entry on the divine simplicity I adduce tropes as ontologically simple items to soften up readers for the divine simplicity:

We have surveyed some but not all of the problems DDS faces, and have considered some of the ways of addressing them. We conclude by noting a parallel between the simplicity of God and the simplicity of a popular contemporary philosophical posit: tropes.

Tropes are ontologically simple entities. On trope theory, properties are assayed not as universals but as particulars: the redness of a tomato is as particular, as unrepeatable, as the tomato. Thus a tomato is red, not in virtue of exemplifying a universal, but by having a redness trope as one of its constituents (on one version of trope theory) or by being a substratum in which a redness trope inheres (on a second theory). A trope is a simple entity in that there is no distinction between it and the property it ‘has.’ Thus a redness trope is red , but it is not red by instantiating redness, or by having redness as a constituent, but by being (a bit of) redness. So a trope is what it has. It has redness by being identical to (a bit of) redness. In this respect it is like God who is what he has. God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. Just as there is no distinction between God and his omniscience, there is no distinction in a redness trope between the trope and its redness. And just as the simple God is not a particular exemplifying universals, a trope is not a particular exemplifying a universal. In both cases we have a particular that is also a property, a subject of predication that is also a predicable entity, where the predicable entity is predicated of itself. Given that God is omniscience, he is predicable of himself. Given that a redness trope is a redness, it is predicable of itself. An important difference, of course, is that whereas God is unique, tropes are not: there is and can be only one God, but there are many redness tropes.

Not only is each trope identical to the property it has, in each trope there is an identity of essence and existence. A trope is neither a bare particular nor an uninstantiated property. It is a property-instance, an indissoluble unity of a property and itself as instance of itself. As property, it is an essence; as instance, it is the existence of that essence. Because it is simple, essence and existence are identical in it. Tropes are thus necessary beings (beings whose very possibility entails their actuality) as they must be if they are to serve as the ontological building blocks of everything else (on the dominant one-category version of trope theory). In the necessity of their existence, tropes resemble God.

If one can bring oneself to countenance tropes, then one cannot object to the simple God on the ground that (i) nothing can be identical to its properties, or (ii) in nothing are essence and existence identical. For tropes are counterexamples to (i) and (ii).

A Repair

Matters are quickly set right if I 'simply' ascribe to the simplicity atheist the following less committal argument:

1. If God exists, then God is simple.
2*. God cannot be simple.
Therefore
3. God does not exist.

To the ontic theist we may ascribe:

2*. God cannot be simple.
~3. God exists.
Therefore
~1. It is not the case that if God exists, then God is simple.

Question 1: Has anyone ever argued along the lines of the simplicity atheist?  Have I stumbled upon a new argument here? 

Question 2:  Can you think of any non-divine ontologically simple items other than tropes?

Related articles
The Simple Atheist, the Classical Theist, and the Ontic Theist
Evil as it Appears to Theists and Atheists
God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?

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3 responses to “Atheism and Ontological Simplicity: A Retraction and a Repair”

  1. camcintosh Avatar
    camcintosh

    “Can you think of any non-divine ontologically simple items other than tropes?”
    Many think souls are simple (cf. Descartes’ argument to that effect). I don’t know if you’d consider such Cartesian substances divine. Or how about Leibnizian monads? Are those divine? Or can the naturalist just say “I don’t know what the most basic stuff of reality is, but there’s got to be mereological simples at bottom”?

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  2. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    You appear to be equivocating on ‘simple.’
    In discussions of the simplicity of the soul, the thesis of the simplicity of the soul is the thesis that the soul is a substance, but not one compounded of substances. This does not require that a simple soul be such that its existence and nature are identical, or that it and its properties are identical, or that there is no distinction between potency and act in it. For Descartes, a res cogitans is a simple substance but not identical to any of its cogitationes.
    If God creates a res cogitans, then that res is simple even though there is a real distinction in it between essence and existence.
    There are two senses of ‘simple’ in play here.

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  3. camcintosh Avatar
    camcintosh

    Yes, we might do well to distinguish different notions of ‘simple’ at play here. Bonaventure distinguished quantitative simplicity from constitutive simplicity, the former being absence of quantitative parts (i.e., what philosophers nowadays call ‘mereological simples’) and the latter being absence of constitutive parts (where by “constitutive parts” I think it is meant something like “any conceptually distinct element.” So an entity, like a human soul, whose existence is distinct from its essence might be quantitatively but not constitutively simple.
    At any rate, here’s an argument against God as a constitutive simple that isn’t Plantingian in spirit.
    That in virtue of which something is valuable is organic unity, the unification—in more or less degrees of tightness—of a diversity of elements. When multiple things come together to form a coherent, structured, and harmonious whole, a necessary condition for value is met. Robert Nozick gives a thorough defense, and documents the impressive historical pedigree of this view in Philosophical Explanations. So we have the following argument:
    (1) If x is valuable, x is an organic unity.
    (2) God is valuable.
    (3) Therefore, God is an organic unity.
    (4) If God is constitutively simple, then God is not an organic unity.
    (5) Therefore, God is not constitutively simple.
    The main premise is clearly (1). Here’s a quick and dirty Nozickian defense. A good painting unites a diversity of form, textures, colors, tones, etc. into a single, beautiful image. A musical symphony does the same, unifying across time a diversity of sounds into a single, beautiful score. A good novel will tie together various themes, plots, and characters into a single, meaningful narrative. In fact, as Robert Nozick points out “the English word ‘good’ stems from a root, ‘Ghedh’, meaning ‘to unite, join, fit, to bring together’”. But the intrinsic goodness of certain imagines, sounds, and narratives doesn’t come from their being mere collections of arbitrary elements; particular elements are united in a particular way that achieves harmony, which is a function of the degree of unity brought to the degree of diversity found in the thing. Value increases when more diversity is brought into a tighter unity. Theories that unify a diversity of phenomena in their explanations have a high degree of theoretical value; they are often described as elegant and beautiful. So are friendships and romantic relationships, where we see distinct personal narratives join in intimate ways to create shared experience. Such is also the value of knowledge and understanding. Beliefs that just happen to be true are of little intrinsic value. We value knowledge for its own sake, where justification or warrant brings truth and belief into a proper unity; the deeper the truth known, the deeper under-standing one has.

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