Category: Divine Simplicity
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Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality
This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal…
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From the Mailbag: Modality and Perfection
Daniel C. writes, A quick remark on your recent possible worlds post. You only mention it in passing but one thing possible worlds talk surely does throw into sharp relief is the issue of the modality of modal statements i.e. if a certain proposition is possibly true is it necessarily possibly true or merely possibly…
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More on Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse
This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response. Tomaszewski presents…
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Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse
Fr. Aidan Kimel would like me to discuss the question whether the doctrine of divine simplicity entails the collapse of modal distinctions. I am happy to take a crack at it. I take my cue from a passage in a paper Fr. Kimel kindly sent me. In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed…
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Divine Simplicity and Property Instances
A reader has some questions prompted by his reading of my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the topic. He has three, but for now I will discuss only the first, and indeed only the first three sentences of the first. 1) You write near the end: "God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience."…
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How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?
Chris M writes, If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if…
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Mental Act Nominalism with an Application to Divine Simplicity
This entry continues a discussion with Dan M. begun here. Before we get to the main event, a terminological quibble. A view that denies some category of entity I would call eliminativist, not nominalist. I say this because one can be a nominalist about properties without denying their existence. Tom is a tomato of…
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Again on Divine Simplicity and God’s Knowledge of Contingent Truths
This entry continues yesterday's discussion. The question was: How can an ontologically simple God know contingent truths? Here again is yesterday's aporetic tetrad: 1. God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God. 2. God knows some contingent truths. 3. Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there…
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Divine Simplicity: Is God Identical to His Thoughts?
Theophilus inquires, I've been researching the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) recently and I've had a hard time figuring something out. On DDS, is it the case that God is identical with his thoughts? Surely on the view (as you say in your SEP article) God is identical with his omniscience. But does that also…
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How Could a Simple God be a Person?
The Worthy Opponent writes, And how is the view of divine simplicity and consequent unintelligibility consistent with the view of God as a person? A person has a mind whose thoughts and feelings are distinct and successive. As Hume (1711–76) argued, a being who is simple has ‘no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment,…
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Existence and Divine Simplicity: A Stroll Along the Via Negativa with Maimonides
Here is an important passage from Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), The Guide to the Perplexed, Dover, p. 80: It is known that existence is an accident appertaining to all things, and therefore an element superadded to their essence. This must evidently be the case as regards everything the existence of which is due to some cause:…
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God as Uniquely Unique
I hit upon 'uniquely unique' the other day 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,…
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Thinking and Speaking about the Absolute: Three Views
Univocity. There is an absolute reality. We can speak of it literally and sometimes truly using predicates of ordinary language that retain in their metaphysical use the very same sense they have in their mundane use. For example, we can say of Socrates that he exists, and using 'exists' in the very same sense we…
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William Lane Craig Responds to David Bentley Hart and Edward Feser
A tip of the hat to Karl White for alerting me to this YouTube video that runs about 20 minutes. Professor Craig explains, with characteristic lucidity, why he does not accept the doctrine of divine simplicity and its entailments. See my divine simplicity category and my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the topic. One…