Divine Simplicity – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

God as Uniquely Unique

I hit upon 'uniquely unique' a while back as an apt predicate of God. But it is only the formulation that is original; the thought is ancient.

To be unique is to be one of a kind. It will be allowed that nothing counts as God unless it is unique. So at a bare minimum, God must be the one and only instance of the divine kind. (This kind could be thought of as the conjunction of the divine attributes.) Beyond that, it will be allowed that whatever counts as God must be essentially unique: nothing that just happens to be uniquely of the divine kind could count as God. What's more, it will be allowed that nothing counts as God that is not a necessary being. Putting these three allowances together, I say that God is not just essentially, but necessarily unique. (In the patois of 'possible worlds,' God is unique in every metaphysically possible world in which he exists, and he exists in every such possible world. By contrast, Socrates is essentially human, but not necessarily human inasmuch as he does not exist in every metaphysically possible world.)

But some of us want to go further still. We want to say that God is uniquely unique. His uniqueness extends to his mode of being unique. He is unique in a way that no other thing is unique. Suppose there is more than one necessarily unique being. The necessarily unique God would then be just one of many necessarily unique beings. In that case he would not be uniquely unique. He would share the property of being necessarily unique with other items. (Fregean Gedanken and Bolzanian Saetze an sich and other platonica are epistemically possible candidates.)

But then something greater could be conceived, namely, a being that transcends the distinction between kind and instance in terms of which uniqueness is ordinarily defined. If I asked someone such as Alvin Plantinga wherein resides the divine uniqueness, he would presumably say that it resides in the fact that the there is one and only one possible instance of the divine nature: this nature exists in every world and God instantiates it in every world. But then God is just another necessarily unique necessary being.

A truly transcendent God, however, must transcend the ontological framework applicable to everything other than God. So he must transcend the distinction between kind and instance. In a truly transcendent God there cannot be real distinctions of any kind and thus no real distinction between kind and instance, nature and individual having the nature.

Now if God transcends the distinction between instance and kind/nature, and is uniquely unique, unique in a way that no other being is or could be unique, then that is equivalent to maintaining that God is ontologically simple. (See my SEP entry.)

But why think that God is ontologically simple and uniquely unique? Here is where the paths diverge.

Some of us feel impelled to say that a God worth his salt cannot be anything other than the absolute reality, the Absolute. So God cannot be relative to anything or dependent on anything or immanent in anything as he would be if he were just one more being among beings. For then he would be immanent to what I earlier called the Discursive Framework. It is rather the case that God transcends this framework. If God is the Absolute, then he must be simple; otherwise he would depend on properties distinct from himself to be what he is.

Again, if God is the Absolute, then he cannot be one of many; he must be the ONE that makes possible the one and the many. As such he transcends the Discursive Framework in which the one opposes the many. The ONE, however, is the ONE of both the one and many. It cannot be brought into opposition to anything.

"But such a God as you are describing is ineffable! I want a God that that can be addressed in petitionary prayer, a God that is a Thou to my I."

What you want is to stop short at a highest finite object, when the religious-metaphysical quest is animated by dissatisfaction with every finite thing. The truly religious quester is a nihilist with respect to every finite object. A God worthy of our highest quest must be absolute, simple, transcendent, and ineffable.

How Could God be Justice itself?

David Gudeman writes; I reply:

George Berkeley was the first author who really shook my confidence in my existing world view. Before I read Berkeley, I had a Mr. Johnson-style contempt of physical idealism; after reading Berkeley, I realized that I had been naive–not because Berkeley was necessarily right, but because once I suppressed my presuppositions, I found him hard to refute, and came to realize how logically futile Mr. Johnson's refutation was.

Well, no one calls it 'physical idealism.' Stick with 'Berkeleyan idealism.' And of course it cannot be refuted ad lapidem, by kicking a stone. Berkeley was not an eliminativist about material objects. He did not maintain that rocks and trees do not exist; he did not question WHETHER they are; he offered an unusual ontological account of WHAT they are, namely ideas in the divine mind.

I offer this story as evidence of my good faith in the following, because I know I have irritated you before by bringing up topics like this, and very much do not want to do so again. In particular, I do have hopes that there is something to be found here if only I can come to grasp it.

With that, I'd like to ask you if you can explain what you mean by phrases like "God is the measure of Justice. God is Justice itself." (From this entry.)

To me this looks like a couple of category errors. God is a person, a measure of justice is a measure, and justice is a quality. How can these three be equated in any literal sense? [. . .]

Fair questions.

A. I take it that you will grant me that God is a wholly just person. Now assume the following: God is unique; there are non-divine persons; none of the latter are wholly just. You and I are non-divine persons, and neither of us is wholly just, although one of us may be more just than the other. There are degrees of justice in non-divine (created) persons. Now it makes sense to say that God sets the standard with respect to justice or being just. God is the measure of justice in that he is just to the highest degree, and we fail to measure up, to different degrees.

It therefore makes sense to say that God, a person, is the standard, exemplar, measure of justice. There is no category mistake. The second alleged category mistake is harder to deal with, and a wholly satisfactory answer is not possible because when we discuss God, the ultimate source of all being, value, and intrinsic intelligibility, we are at the outer limit of intelligibility. (The Intelligent Source of all intrinsic intelligibility, because it is an Other Mind, cannot be understood with the clarity and completeness with which we understand ordinary objects among objects.) All I can hope to show is that the accusation of category mistake can be turned aside or rationally repelled. So here we go.

B. God is a just person, and he is just to the highest possible degree. Now is God just in virtue of instantiating a property of justice that exists independently of him? You say justice is a quality. I'll play along. Is God just in virtue of instantiating this quality? (Perhaps you are thinking of this quality as a necessarily existent 'abstract object.') If you say yes, then you compromise God's aseity, his from-himself-ness. God is the Absolute. Not an absolute, but the Absolute. As such, he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his existence or nature. You will grant that God cannot have a cause of his existence external to himself. You must also grant that for God to be God he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his nature (essence). So he can't be just in virtue of instantiating your quality, justice. God sets the standard by being the standard: there is no standard of justice outside of God that he needs to conform to.

If so, if God is not an instance of justice, a just entity, then he must be (identically) justice. The Platonist Augustine drew this conclusion, one that entails the divine simplicity, and the Jansenists followed Augustine in this. God is like a self-exemplifying Platonic Form or paradigm. Supreme Wisdom is itself wise; supreme Justice is itself just. God is at once each of his attributes and also their unique instance. God is, but he is not a being among beings. God is (identically) Being itself, but not in a way the detracts from his being a being, or to be precise, the being. For God to be God he must be unique in the highest possible sense: not one of a kind, not necessarily one of a kind, but necessarily such that in him kind and instance are one.

The theist faces a dilemma. Either God is or is not distinct from his attributes. if the former, then God is not God. If the latter, then God is beyond the comprehension of the discursive intellect.

(But is the second horn so bad? A God worth his salt must be transcendent, Transcendence itself. (Otherwise, your god is an idol. Whatever you say about Islam, it at least has a lively sense of the transcendence of God.)

In conclusion, Gudeman's second accusation of category error can be rationally resisted as I have just done. One can cogently argue up to the divine simplicity. The problem, however — and I freely admit it — is that the discursive intellect cannot wrap itself around (cannot understand) how something can be ontologically simple. One is reduced to pointing beyond the discursive sphere.

Here we reach an impasse beyond which we cannot move by philosophical means. But what justifies the conceit that the only way to the ultimate truth is the philosophical way?

Intellectual Integrity and the Appeal to Mystery

Bradley Schneider writes,

. . . while we're on the subject of divine simplicity, I would be interested in your thoughts on the following dilemma. Suppose you are strongly persuaded by philosophical arguments that, if God exists, God must be simple, i.e., some version of DDS must be true. Otherwise, if God were composite, He would not be absolute and therefore would not be God. At the same time, you appreciate the problem of modal collapse. That is, you appreciate that DDS appears to imply modal collapse. Suppose further that you are convinced that modal fatalism cannot be true, i.e,. the world that we inhabit is both ontologically and modally contingent. Question: Can you, with intellectual integrity, believe in or have faith in God's existence in this scenario? It seems to me that you can if you accept the following: (a) DDS is true; (b) DDS does not imply modal collapse; and (c) the reason DDS does not imply modal collapse is a mystery beyond human comprehension.

Is that a reasonable position or an intellectual evasion? Put another way: There are obviously some philosophical assertions that are so demonstrably incoherent or contradictory that one cannot hold them with intellectual integrity, e.g., "There is no truth," "I have no beliefs," etc. Is the belief that [DDS does not imply modal collapse and the reason is a mystery] analogous to such beliefs? When is it reasonable to believe in something that you don't understand?

Well, Bradley, you are asking the right questions. The central question, I take it, is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity.

To affirm mysterianism is to affirm that there are mysteries. But what is a mystery?

Mystery-1: A proposition which, if true, is knowable, presently unknown, and interesting to know, but the interest of which evaporates upon being known. For example, the proposition Jimmy Hoffa's body was fed through a wood chipper is, if true, knowable, unknown, interesting to know but such that, if it came to be known, then the question of the final disposition of Hoffa's body would be settled and would no longer be interesting or a mystery. The aim of scientific research is to banish mysteries in this first sense of 'mystery.' Perhaps we could say that this is the Enlightenment Project in a nutshell: to de-mystify the world. The presupposition that guides the project is that nothing is intrinsically mysterious or impervious in principle to being understood; there are no mysteries in reality. Accordingly, all mystery is parasitic upon our ignorance which, in principle, can be overcome.

Mystery-2: A proposition which, if true, cannot by us in this life be known to be true, and cannot even be known by us in this life to be logically-possibly true, i.e., free of logical contradiction, and is of the highest interest to us, but whose interest would in no way be diminished should we come to know it.

An example of mystery-2 is the doctrine of the Trinity as understood by Roman Catholics (but not just by them). The Trinity is an exclusively revealed truth; hence it cannot be known by us by natural means. What's more, it cannot even be known by us to be free of logical contradiction and thus logically possible. Our finite intellects cannot see into its logical possibility let alone into its actual truth. We cannot understand how it is possible. But what is actual is possible whether or not we have the power to understand how it is possible.

(Compare: motion is possible because actual, whether or not the Zenonian arguments to the contrary can be adequately answered. Someone who is convinced by the Zenonian arguments, but who refuses to deny the reality of motion, is a mysterian about the reality of motion. He is saying: Motion must appear to us as logically impossible; yet motion is actual and therefore possible despite our inability to explain how it is possible. This mysterian could easily grant that the irrefutability ofthe Zenonian arguments is excellent evidence of the unreality of motion but still insist that motion is real. He might say: the considerations of our paltry intellects must give way before the massive evidence of the senses: you can see that I am wagging my finger at you now. The evidence of the senses trumps all arguments no matter how compelling they seem. Similarly, the believer in the triune God could say that God's revelation trumps all merely human animadversions.)

So from the fact that the Trinity appears to us in our present state as contradictory, and thus as logically impossible, it does not follow that it is not true. For it could be like this: given our unalterable ('hard-wired') cognitive architecture, certain revealed truths must appear to us as contradictory when the propositions which must so appear are not only in themselves not contradictory, but are also actually true!

The philosophical mysterian is a person who holds that there are mysteries in the second sense. Is Colin McGinn a mysterian in this sense?

McGinn 'takes it on faith' as a teaching of the scientific magisterium that all mental activity is brain activity. He no more questions this than a believing Catholic questions the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence, etc. It just seems obvious to him and therefore a thesis that cannot be reasonably questioned. Of course mental activity is brain activity! What the hell else could it be? You think and feel with your brain not with some 'spook in the skull' (my coinage) or "ghost in the machine." (Ryle) There is one world, this physical world, and we are physical parts of it. And so consciousness, self-consciousness, qualia, intentionality, conscience must all be reducible without remainder to physical processes and states.

But there are powerful arguments which I have rehearsed many times why qualia and object-directed mental states cannot be physical states. Confronted with these arguments, McGinn goes mysterian. He grants their force and then says something like this:

It is incomprehensible to us how consciousness could be a brain process. But it is a brain process. It is just that our unalterable cognitive architecture makes it impossible for us to see into this truth. It is true and therefore possibly true even though we cannot understand how it is true or even how it could be true due to our cognitive limitations.

As I read McGinn, these limitations are in our human case unalterable. And so I read McGinn as a mysterian in much the same sense that a theological mysterian is a mysterian. What is common to the doctor angelicus and the decidedly less than angelic McGinn is a commitment to the thesis that there are true, non-contradictory propositions that we humans by our very nature are not equipped to understand as either true or non-contradictory. Access denied! We have no access to certain truths because of our cognitive make-up.

This leaves open the possibility for McGinn that there be extraterrestrials who are equipped to grasp mind-brain identity. And it leaves open for Aquinas the possibility that there be angelic intellects who are equipped to grasp and wholly understand Trinity, God-Man identity (the Incarnation) and how Jesus Christ could ascend into heaven soul and body!

But let's return to the doctrine of the Trinity. We are assuming that it is apparently contradictory, and that attempts to relieve the apparent contradictoriness fail. See The Logic of the Trinity Revisited in which I spell out the doctrine, show the (apparent) contradiction, and rebut a couple of quick responses to it. Now consider the following position:

The Trinity doctrine appears contradictory to us (ectypal) intellects, and must so appear in our present state due to cognitive limitations endemic in our sublunary, and presumably fallen, condition. (Sin has noetic consequences.) In reality, however, the doctrine is internally consistent and each of its component propositions is true. It is just that we cannot understand, in our present state, how the doctrine could be true. So, in our present postlapsarian and pre-salvific state, the Trinity must remain a mystery. The claim is not that the Trinity doctrine is a true contradiction; there are no true contradictions, pace Graham Priest and his tiny band of dialetheists. The claim is that the Trinity doctrine is true and non-contradictory, but not such as to be understandable as true and non-contradictory by us in this life. On the contrary, it must appear to us as contradictory and false in this life.

Following Dale Tuggy, we may call the position I have just sketched positive mysterianism. In critique of it, Tuggy says this:

Positive mysterianism must leap this hurdle: if this Dogma [Trinity] resolutely appears contradictory, doesn’t that give us a strong reason to think it false? How then, [can] this admission be part of a defense of the rationality of believing in this Dogma?

The admission is that the doctrine appears contradictory to us. But this admission is not part of the defense of the rationality of believing the doctrine. Presumably, only a latter-day Tertullian would defend the rationality of belief in a doctrine on the ground of the doctrine's appearing absurd, i.e., logically contradictory, or actually being absurd. No one will say, "It is rational for me to believe that p precisely because, after careful and protracted consideration, it appears to me that p is or entails a logical contradiction."

The positive mysterian (PM) is not defending the doctrine on the ground that it appears contradictory. The PM is defending the doctrine on the ground that what appears contradictory might not be contradictory. The PM, in other words, is appealing to the possibility that there are certain non-contradictory truths that must appear to us in our present state as contradictory.

Is that possibility one that can be dismissed at the outset? Can one be objectively certain that there cannot be truths that are reasonable to affirm but must appear to us as contradictory?

The PM can grant to Tuggy that, in general, a doctrine's appearing to be contradictory is a strong reason for thinking it false while insisting that the appearance of contradictoriness does not entail the reality of contradictoriness. A strong reason needn't be a rationally compelling reason. Can Tuggy & Co. be objectively certain that the Trinity doctrine is contradictory and necessarily false simply on the basis of its appearing to be such to us in our present state? No, they can't be certain. So there is the possibility that the doctrine is really true despite being apparently contradictory.

'But then couldn't any old crazy doctrine be defended in this way?"

There are philosophers who take the eliminativist line that consciousness is an illusion. This is a crazy view that refutes itself straightaway: nothing is an illusion except to consciousness; hence, the crazy view presupposes the very thing it proposes to eliminate. Well, could one give a mysterian defense of the crazy view? I don't see how. We have direct Cartesian evidence that consciousness exists and cannot be an illusion.

Philosophy is long, but blog is short. So I need to wrap this up. The question is whether one can reasonably affirm mysterianism, or whether one who affirms mysterianism has succumbed to irrationality and has surrendered his intellectual integrity. My tentative answer is that one may reasonably affirm positive mysterianism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute.

Sound or Unsound on Classical Theism? If Sound, then What?

1) The existence of God is necessary for the existence of creatures: no God, no creatures.

2) The existence of God is not sufficient for the existence of creatures: the existence of God does not entail the existence of creatures.

Therefore

3) God is really distinct from the act whereby he brings creatures into existence.

It is interesting to note that the argument is sound even if God is a contingent being. The premises are commitments of classical theism and are therefore true within classical theism. The conclusion follows from the premises.

So the argument is sound. Does it have any consequences for the doctrine of divine simplicity?

Addendum (3/1)

The argument above is an enthymeme and not formally valid as it stands. The addition of the following auxiliary premise ensures formal validity. ('Formally valid' is a pleonasm but useful for paedagogical purposes.)

2*) If the existence of God is not sufficient for the existence of creatures, then God is really distinct from the act whereby he brings creatures into existence.

Necessary God, Contingent Creatures: Another Round with Novak

In an earlier thread, Lukas Novak writes,

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

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

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

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

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

1) God is simple

2) All created concreta are contingent.

3) No contingent effect has a necessary cause.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse

The Question

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

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

Horn One

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

Horn Two

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

Constraints on a Solution

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

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

William Mann's Solution via Divine Simplicity

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

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

Problem Solved?

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute!

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

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

Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and the Difference Principle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modal Collapse

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

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

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

Steven Nemes' Solution

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

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

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

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

Is the Nemes Solution Satisfactory?

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

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

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

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

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

An Aporia?

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

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

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

An Exchange with Lukas Novak

In an earlier thread, I wrote:

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

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

Dr. Novak responded:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some Questions About Divine Simplicity

This recently over the transom:

Dear Dr. Vallicella, I'm a reader of your blog, and have really enjoyed much of your work. Since you wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the topic of divine simplicity, I thought I might reach out to you to ask your opinions on some things. I am on an e-mail list with a Christian philosopher who is extremely critical toward the idea and I'd like to know what you think of the following:

First, he argues that, while there are some rationally acceptable arguments for divine simplicity, they do not rise to the level of demonstration. Based on some of your recent work, I gather you might agree with this.

BV: I do agree. The doctrine cannot be demonstrated or proven. There are 'good' (rationally acceptable) arguments for the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), but they are not rationally compelling. To my mind this is but a special case of a general thesis: few if any substantive theses in philosophy are demonstrable or provable.

It's the second part I'm curious about. Further to his argument is that divine simplicity rests on questionable metaphysical premises, and that many are far too confident in the position given their familiarity with metaphysics. He is exceptionally critical of James Dolezal, saying that consulting him on the topic "is like going to a bike shop to get your car repaired." He believes that, for one to really understand and engage with the ideas, academic training and great philosophical experience is required (which Dolezal may not possess, not having earned his Ph.D. under recognized philosophers). Since you cite Dolezal multiple times in your article, I assume you would disagree with this at least on some level. While I only have undergraduate philosophical training, I am familiar with the debates on the subject, and the metaphysics involved, to have at least some rational justification for my opinions. (The big exception is questions of simplicity and modal logic—I back off when things go into that territory). So, my actual questions: what level of philosophical training (especially official) is necessary to engage in these debates? And is his evaluation of Dolezal in particular correct?

BV: Dolezal is competent, and your friend's 'bike shop' comment does nothing to show otherwise. You don't really need any 'training' other than what you can provide for yourself by careful study of the literature on the topic, assuming you are above average in intelligence and have a strong desire to penetrate the problem. I don't set much store by training and trappings and academic pedigrees. What matters in philosophy is love of truth, intense devotion to her service, intellectual honesty, and the willingness to follow the arguments whither they lead.

Second, he has a criticism of simplicity I haven't seen anywhere else. I'll have to summarize it as the paper has not been published.

It goes like this: a key premise in the argument for simplicity is that whatever has parts depends on those parts, and so must be composed by something else. God is not dependent/composed by anything else, therefore he must be simple. He questions this idea and puts forward an "individuals first" account, suggesting that parts are in some cases only definable by the wholes of which they are parts, thus actually making the parts dependent on the whole. He provides two possible examples: the notions of necessity and possibility, which are dependent on each other for their definitions; and the doctrine of the Trinity, where Father, Son, and Spirit are exclusively defined in terms of relations among them. This suggests, he argues, that we can conceive of wholes that have parts, the parts all being mutually dependent upon one another and thus not composed by anything else. And so, God might have parts while not being composed by anything else.

What are your thoughts on this idea?

BV: One kind of whole can be called compositely complex, while another can be called incompositely complex. A wall of stacked stones is a complex of the first sort: its parts (the stones) can exist without the whole (the wall) existing, and each stone can exist apart from any other. The parts can exist without the whole, but the whole cannot exist without the parts. Such a whole needs an ontological factor, a 'composer' to ground its unity and to distinguish it from a sheer plurality. The wall is not a sheer manifold, a mere mereological sum of stones, but a unitary entity. It is one entity with many parts. God cannot be complex in this way. For then he would depend for his existence and nature on the logically/ontologically prior existence of his parts including his attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, etc.) if these are assayed as 'parts' or ontological constituents of God.

Now your friend's suggestion seems to be that God is an incompositely complex whole of parts. God has parts, but these parts cannot exist apart from the whole of which they are the parts, and no part can exist apart from any other part. The parts are then mutually dependent and inseparable.

I don't think this works. Consider the 'composition' of essence and existence in a contingent being such as Socrates. The 'parts' — in an extended sense of the term — are mutually inseparable. The existence of Socrates cannot itself exist apart from his essence and the essence of Socrates cannot exist apart from his existence. And neither can exist apart from Socrates, the composite of the two. But Socrates is a creature and God transcends all creatures. His absolute transcendence cannot be accommodated by any scheme that allows God to be in any sense partite, not even if the parts are mutually inseparable. God's absolute transcendence requires that he be absolutely simple. God belongs at the fourth level in the following schema:

Level I. Pure manyness or sheer plurality without any real (as opposed to mentally supplied) principle of unity. Mereological sums. The sum just is its members.

Level II. Composite complexity. A whole of parts the unity of which is contingent, as in the case of the stacked stones. There is one wall composed of many parts, but the parts can exist without the whole. The whole, however, cannot exist without the parts.

Level III. Incomposite Complexity. Wholes the parts of which are mutually inseparable, whether weakly inseparable or strongly inseparable. Suppose a particular cannot exist without having some properties or other, but needn't have the very properties it in fact has, and (first-order) properties cannot exist without being had by some particulars or other, but not necessarily the particulars that in fact have them. We then say that particulars and properties are WEAKLY mutually inseparable. If, however, particulars cannot exist without having the very properties they have, and these properties cannot exist without being instantiated by the very particulars that instantiate them, then particulars and properties are STRONGLY mutually inseparable.

Level IV. Absolute Simplicity. The absolutely simple transcends the distinction between whole and parts. Whereas in Socrates there is a real distinction between essence and existence despite their strong mutual inseparability, in God there is not even this distinction.

In sum, God's absolute transcendence requires absolute simplicity. Your friend's suggestion as you have reported it is stuck at Level III and does not reach Level IV.

A Reader Proposes a Puzzle

This from Cyrus:

Suppose there is a possible world in which only God exists. Further suppose that that world is actual instead of this one. Further suppose divine simplicity. What is the truthmaker for the proposition “God exists, and nothing more” in that world?

If God alone exists, and God is simple, then there are no propositions in that world, and hence no true propositions, and therefore no need for truth-makers. Too quick?

Updated Divine Simplicity Entry Now Online

I am not entirely happy with it, but the updated version passed muster with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy philosophy of religion referees. If it is good enough for them, it is good enough for me, at least for the time being. The older I get, the higher my standards become. I have revised it twice so far.

If you are invited to submit an entry to SEP, it is not a one-off affair. You will be required to keep up with the literature and revise your entry periodically.

Ed Zalta tells me that my entry is scheduled for its next substantive update on or before Feb 27, 2023.

Van Til on Divine Simplicity and the One and the Many

(Edits added 2/10/19)

Cornelius Van Til rightly distinguishes in God between the unity of singularity and the unity of simplicity. The first refers to God's numerical oneness. "There is and can be only one God." (The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed., p. 31) The second refers to God's absolute simplicity or lack of compositeness: ". . . God is in no sense composed of parts or aspects that existed prior to himself." (ibid.) Van Til apparently thinks that divine simplicity is a Biblical doctrine inasmuch as he refers us to Jer. 10:10 and 1 John 1:5. But I find no support for simplicity in these passages whatsoever. I don't consider that a problem, but I am surprised that anyone would think that a doctrine so Platonic and Plotinian could be found in Scripture. What surprises me more, however, is the following:

The importance of this doctrine [simplicity] for apologetics may be seen from the fact that the whole problem of philosophy may be summed up in the question of the relation of unity to diversity; the so-called problem of the one and the many receives a definite answer from the doctrine of the simplicity of God." (ibid.)

That's an amazing claim! First of all, there is no one problem of the One and the Many: many problems come under this rubric. The problem itself is not one one but many! Here is a partial list of one-many problems:

1) The problem of the thing and it attributes.

A lump of sugar, for example, is one thing with many properties. It is white, sweet, hard, water-soluble, and so on. The thing is not identical to any one of its properties, nor is it identical to each of them, nor to all of them taken together. For example, the lump is not identical to the set of its properties, and this for a number of reasons. Sets are abstract entities; a lump of sugar is concrete. The latter is water-soluble, but no set is water-soluble. In addition, the lump is a unity of its properties and not a mere collection of them. When we try to understand the peculiar unity of a concrete particular, which is not the unity of a set or a mereological sum or any sort of collection, we get into trouble right away. The tendency is to separate the unifying factor from the properties needing unification and to reify this unifying factor. Some feel driven to posit a bare particular or bare substratum that supports and unifies the various properties of the thing. The dialectic that leads to such a posit is compelling for some, but anathema to others. The battle goes on and no theory has won the day.

2) The problem of the set and its members.

In an important article, Max Black writes:

Beginners are taught that a set having three members is a single thing, wholly constituted by its members but distinct from them. After this, the theological doctrine of the Trinity as "three in one" should be child's play. ("The Elusiveness of Sets," Review of Metaphysics, June 1971, p. 615)

A set in the mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sense is a single item 'over and above' its members. If the six shoes in my closet form a mathematical set, and it is not obvious that they do, then that set is a one-over-many: it is one single item despite its having six distinct members each of which is distinct from the set, and all of which, taken collectively, are distinct from the set. A set with two or more members is not identical to one of its members, or to each of its members, or to its members taken together, and so the set is distinct from its members taken together, though not wholly distinct from them: it is after all composed of them and its very identity and existence depends on them.

In the above quotation, Black is suggesting that mathematical sets are contradictory entities: they are both one and many. A set is one in that it is a single item 'over and above' its members or elements as I have just explained. It is many in that it is "wholly constituted" by its members. (We leave out of consideration the null set and singleton sets which present problems of their own.) The sense in which sets are "wholly constituted" by their members can be explained in terms of the Axiom of Extensionality: two sets are numerically the same iff they have the same members and numerically different otherwise. Obviously, nothing can be both one and many at the same time and in the same respect. So it seems there is a genuine puzzle here. How remove it? See here for more.

3. The problem of the unity of the sentence/proposition.

The problem is to provide a satisfying answer to the following question: In virtue of what do some strings of words attract a truth-value? A truth-valued declarative sentence is more than a list of its constituent words, and (obviously) more than each item on the list. A list of words is neither true nor false. But an assertively uttered declarative sentence is either true or false. For example,

Tom is tired

when assertively uttered or otherwise appropriately tokened is either true or false. But the list

Tom, is, tired

is not either true or false. And yet we have the same words in the sentence and in the list in the same order. There is more to the sentence than its words whether these are taken distributively or collectively. How shall we account for this 'more'?

There is more to the sentence than the three words of which it is composed. The sentence is a truth-bearer, but the words are not whether taken singly or collectively. On the other hand, the sentence is not a fourth thing over and above the three words of which it is composed. A contradiction is nigh: The sentence is and is not the three words.

Some will say that the sentence is true or false in virtue of expressing a proposition that is true or false. On this account, the primary truth-bearer is not the (tokened) sentence, but the proposition it expresses. Accordingly, the sentence is truth-valued because the proposition is truth-valued.

But a similar problem arise with the proposition. It too is a complex, not of words, but of senses (on a roughly Fregean theory of propositions). If there is a problem about the unity of a sentence, then there will also be a problem about the unity of the proposition the sentence expresses on a given occasion of its use. What makes a proposition a truth-valued entity as opposed to a mere collection (set, mereological sum, whatever) of its constituents?

4) The problem of the unity of consciousness.

Contingency and Composition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rationalistic Fideism, Mysterianism, Misology, and Divine Simplicity

I want to thank the perspicacious Lukas Novak for helping me in my endless quest to know myself. Professor Novak comments:

Is Bill a Gnostic?

Well, I am not sure about the precise meaning of this epithet, but to me Bill appears as a strange amalgam of a rationalist and a fideist. The rationalist comes first and sets up certain rather strict requirements on the contents of faith — so that everything that does not fit in comes out as "incoherent" or "incomprehensible". Then, entre fideist and says that we nevertheless are still justified in believing these contents because we can justifiably assume that our intellect is so incompetent.

To me, this puts too much confidence in our reason in the first stage and too little in the last. It seems to me that Bill is always too eager to conclude that there is an impasse, an insoluble problem, a contradiction etc. in a given particular case. In this, he seems to be putting way too much confidence in his reasonings. The overall, habitual outcome of this is, however, the exact opposite: a significantly diminished confidence in the competence of our intellect as such. (This reminds me of the mechanism of how "misology" is generated, in Plato's Phaedo.)

We were discussing ecclesiology and the Incarnation, but at the moment I am revising my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Divine Simplicity entry, so I want to shift over to this topic since similar structural patterns emerge. What follows is a section I will add to the entry, one on a recent paper by Eleonore Stump of St. Louis University. Professor Stump is a distinguished Aquinas scholar and defender of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS).

4.4 Stump's Quantum Metaphysics

Like Dolezal, Eleonore Stump thinks of God as self-subsistent Being (esse). If God is absolutely simple, and not just simple in the uncontroversial sense of lacking material parts, then God must be self-subsistent Being. God is at once both Being and something that is. He has to be both. If he were Being (esse) but not a being (id quod est), he could not enter into causal relations. He could not do anything such as create the world, intervene in its operations, or interact with human persons. Such a God would be "religiously pernicious." (Stump 2016, 199) Indeed, if God were Being but not a being, then one could not sensibly maintain that God exists. For if Being is other than every being, then Being is not. (It is instructive to note that Martin Heidegger, the famous critic of onto-theology, who holds to the "ontological difference" of Being (Sein) from every being (Seiendes) ends up assimilating Being to Nothing (Nichts).) On the other hand, if God were a being among beings who merely has Being but is not (identically) Being, then he would not be absolutely transcendent, worthy of worship, or ineffable. Such a God would be "comfortingly familiar" but "discomfiting anthropomorphic." (Miller 1996, 3)

The problem, of course, is to explain how God can be both Being and something that is. This is unintelligible to the discursive intellect. Either Being is other than beings or it is not. If Being is other than beings, then Being cannot be. If Being just is beings taken collectively, then God is a being among beings and not the absolute reality. To the discursive intellect the notion of self-subsistent Being is contradictory. One response to the contradiction is simply to deny divine simplicity. That is a reasonable response, no doubt. But might it not also be reasonable to admit that there are things that human reason cannot understand, and that one of these things is the divine nature? "Human reason can see that human reason cannot comprehend the quid est of God." (Stump 2016, 205) As I read Stump, she, like Dolezal, makes a mysterian move, and she, like Dolezal (2011, 210, fn 55), invokes wave-particle duality. We cannot understand how light can be both a wave phenomenon and also particulate in nature, and yet it is both:

What kind of thing is it which has to be understood both as a wave and as a particle? We do not know. That is, we do not know the quid est of light. [. . .] Analogously, we can ask: What kind of thing is it which can be both esse and id quod est? We do not know. The idea of simplicity is that at the ultimate metaphysical foundation of reality is something that has to be understood as esse —but also as id quo est. We do not know what this kind of thing is either. (Stump 2016, 202)

Stump, E., 2016, “Simplicity and Aquinas's Quantum Metaphysics” in Gerhard Krieger, ed. Die Metaphysik des Aristoteles im Mittelalter: Rezeption und Transformation, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 191–210.

Dolezal, J. E., 2011, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God's Absoluteness, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications.

Miller, B., 1996, A Most Unlikely God, Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press.

Now for my apologia.

Novak's characterization of me as both a rationalist and a fideist is basically accurate. And yes, the rationalist comes first with exacting requirements. Let me try to illustrate this with DDS. God is the absolute reality, a stupendously rich reality who transcends creatures not only in his properties, but also in his mode of property-possession, mode of existence, mode of necessity, and mode of uniqueness. God is uniquely unique. Such a being cannot be a being among beings. He is uniquely unique in that he alone is self-subsistent Being. Deus est ipsum esse subsistens.

One can reason cogently to this conclusion. Unfortunately, the conclusion is apparently self-contradictory. The verbal formula does not express a proposition that the discursive intellect can 'process' or 'compute.' It is unintelligible to said intellect. For the proposition the formula expresses appears to be self-contradictory. Stump agrees as do the opponents of DDS.

Now there are three ways to proceed.

1) We can conclude, as many distinguished theists do, that the apparent contradictions are real and that God is not absolutely simple, that DDS is a 'mistake.' See Hasker, William, 2016, “Is Divine Simplicity a Mistake?” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 699-725. For Hasker, DDS involves category mistakes, logical failures, and a dehumanization of God. (One mistake Hasker himself makes is to think that a defender of DDS can only tread the via negativa and must end up embracing radical agnosticism about the nature of God. Stump has some interesting things to say in rebuttal of this notion. See Stump 2016, 195-198.)

In short: God is not reasonably believed to be simple.

2) A second way is the mysterian way. The conjunction of God is esse and God is id quod est is an apparent contradiction. But it is not a real contradiction. Characteristic of the mysterian of my stripe is the further claim that the structure of the discursive intellect makes it impossible for us to see that the contradiction is merely apparent.

In short: God is reasonably believed to be simple despite the ineliminable apparent contradictions that this entails because, as Stump puts it, "Human reason can see that human reason cannot comprehend the quid est of God." (Stump 2016, 205) To put the point more generally, it is reasonable to confess the infirmity of human reason with respect to certain questions, and unreasonable to place an uncritical faith in its power and reach. This is especially unreasonable for those who accept the Fall of man and the noetic consequences of sin.

Besides, if God is not a being among beings, then one might expect the discursive intellect to entangle itself in contradictions when it tries to think the Absolute Reality. God, as Being itself, cannot be subsumed under any extant category of beings.

3) A third way is by maintaining that the apparent contradictions can be shown to be merely apparent by the resources of the discursive intellect. In short: God is reasonably believed to be simple, and all considerations to the contrary can be shown to rest on errors and failures to make certain distinction.

What is my argument against (3)? Simply that the attempts to defuse the contradictions fail, and not just by my lights. Almost all philosophers, theists and atheists alike, judge the notion of a simple God to be contradictory.

What is my argument against (1)? Essentially that those who take this line do not appreciate the radical transcendence of God. This point has been argued most forcefully by Barry Miller (1996). Theists who reject divine simplicity end up with an anthropomorphic view of God.

As for Novak's charge of misology or hatred of reason and argument, I plead innocent. One who appreciates the limits of reason, and indeed the infirmity of reason as we find it in ourselves here below, cannot be fairly accused of misology. Otherwise, Kant would be a misologist. I will turn the table on my friend by humbly suggesting that his doxastic security needs sometimes get the better of him causing him to affirm as objectively certain what is not at all objectively certain, but certain only to him. For example he thinks it is epistemically certain that there are substances. I disagree.

But I want to confess to one charge. Lukas writes, "It seems to me that Bill is always too eager to conclude that there is an impasse, an insoluble problem, a contradiction, etc." It may be that I am too zealous in my hunt for aporiai. But I am deeply impressed by the deep, protracted, and indeed interminable disagreement of philosophers through the ages over every substantive question. My working hypothesis for the metaphilosophy book I am trying to finish is that the core problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble by us. And then I try to figure out what philosophy can and should be if that is the case, whether it should end in mystical silence — that is where Aquinas ended up! — or fuel a Pyrrhonian re-insertion into the quotidian and a living of life adoxastos, or give way to religious faith, or something else.

God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of ‘Contingency’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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