Category: Existence
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A Question About God and Existence
A reader asks: You seem to hold that, if God is identical to his existence, then God is Existence itself. Why think that? Why not think instead that, if God is identical to his existence, then he is identical to his 'parcel' of existence, as it were? This is an entirely reasonable question. I will…
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In Defense of Modes of Being: Substance and Accident
The following entry, first posted on February 20, 2011, is relevant to the question whether God is a being among beings. My rejection of this claim requires that there be modes of Being. If talk of modes of Being is unintelligible, or based on an obvious mistake, then the claim that God is not a…
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Again on ‘God + World = God’
The thesis under examination as expressed by Diogenes Allen: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Is this a defensible position? Let's consider both sides of the question. A. First, a crisp little argument against the view. Consider two possible scenarios. In…
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Being Itself: Continuing the Discussion with Dale Tuggy
I admire Dale Tuggy's resolve to continue this difficult discussion despite the manifold demands on his time and energy. (This Gen-X dude is no slacker! If one of us is a slacker, it's this Boomer. Or, if you prefer, I am a man of leisure, otium liberale, in the classical sense.) The core question, you…
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Maimonides on Existence as an Accident and on Divine Simplicity
I'm on a bit of a Jewish jag at the moment, in part under the influence of my Jewish friend Peter who turned me on to Soloveitchik. But Peter should labor under no false expectation that he will convert me to any version of Judaism; it is more likely that I shall get him out…
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Does the Divine Transcendence Require that God not be a Being among Beings?
Herewith, a second response to Aidan Kimel. He writes, The claim that God is a being among beings is immediately ruled out, so it seems to me, by the classical understanding of divine transcendence: if all beings have been created from nothing by the self-existent One, then this One cannot be classified as one of them, as…
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Is it Obvious that God is not a Being Among Beings?
At his weblog Eclectic Orthodoxy, Fr. Aidan Kimel references the discussion Dale Tuggy and I are having about whether God is a being among beings, or Being itself. Fr. Kimel writes, That God, as conceived by Christians (and Iām not really interested in any other God), is not a being among beings is so utterly…
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God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?
This is another round in an ongoing discussion (via face-to-face conversations, podcasts, and weblog posts) with Dale Tuggy on whether or not God is best thought of as a being among beings, albeit the highest being (summum ens), or rather as self-subsistent Being itself (ipsum esse subsistens). In this entry I will respond to just…
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God: A Being among Beings or Being Itself?
Last Wednesday morning, just as Old Sol was peeping his ancient head over the magnificent and mysterious Superstition range, I embarked on a drive down old Arizona 79, past Florence, to a hash house near Oracle Junction where I had the pleasure of another nice long three and one half hour caffeine-fueled discussion with Dale…
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What the Meinongian Means by ‘Has Being’ and ‘Lacks Being’
There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being': ā¦ the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being'…
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Pre-Print: Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology
The following review article is scheduled to appear later this year in Studia Neoscholastica. The editor grants me permission to reproduce it here should anyone have comments that might lead to its improvement. REVIEW ARTICLE William F. Vallicella Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2014, viii + 261 pp. This volume…
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Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism
One of the reasons I gave this weblog the title Maverick Philosopher is because I align neither with the analytic nor with the Continental camp. Study everything, I say, and drink from every stream. Reverting to the camp metaphor, when did the camps become two? In dead earnest this occurred when Heidegger burst onto the…
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Peter van Inwagen, “A Theory of Properties,” Exposition and Critique
This entry is a summary and critique of Peter van Inwagen's "A Theory of Properties," an article which first appeared in 2004 and now appears as Chapter 8 of his Existence: Essays in Ontology (Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 153-182.) Andrew Bailey has made it available on-line. (Thanks Andrew!) I will be quoting from the…
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John Passmore on Entity-Monism and Existence-Monism
The Australian philosopher John Passmore (1914 – 2004) is described in his Telegraph obituary as "an Andersonian radical, swept away, though not to the point of unquestioning devotion, by his Scottish-born philosophy professor, John Anderson . . . ." The influence of Anderson on Passmore is very clear from the latter's Philosophical Reasoning (Basic Books,…
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Arguing with Kripke over Existence
I now have in my hands Saul Kripke's Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures, Oxford UP, 2013. The lectures were given over forty years ago in the fall of 1973. Why did you starve us for 40 years, Saul? It is not as if you did much in those years to improve the lectures…