God – Page 14 – Maverick Philosopher

Allan Gotthelf on Ayn Rand on the Existence of God

In January and February of 2009 I wrote a number of posts critical of Ayn Rand. The Objectivists, as they call themselves, showed up in force to defend their master. I want to revisit one of the topics today to see if what I said then still holds up. The occasion for this exercise is my having found Allan Gotthelf's On Ayn Rand (Wadsworth 2000) in a used bookstore. Gotthelf is a professional philosopher who teaches at Rutgers. So I thought that if anyone is able to disabuse me of my extremely low opinion of Ayn Rand he would be the one to do it.

On p. 48 of Gotthelf's book, we find:

The "first cause" (or "cosmological") argument maintains that God is needed as the creator and sustainer of the material universe. But that is to say that existence needs consciousness to create or sustain it. It makes a consciousness — God's consciousness — metaphysically prior to existence. But existence exists. It can have no beginning, no end, no cause. It just is. And consciousness is a faculty of awareness, not of creation. The first cause argument violates both the axiom of existence and the axiom of consciousness.

Now axioms are self-evident truths needing no proof. (37) So if the cosmological argument violates the two axioms mentioned, it is in bad shape indeed! But what exactly are the axioms?

According to the axiom of existence, "Existence exists." Gotthelf takes this to mean that Something exists. (37) If that is what it means, then it is indeed a self-evident truth. For example, it is self-evident (to me) that I exist, which of course entails that something exists. But it is equally self-evident (to me) that I am conscious. For if I were not conscious then I would not be able to know that I exist and that something exists. "That one exists possessing consciousness is the axiom of consciousness, the second philosophic axiom." (38)

The first axiom is logically prior to the second. This is called the primacy of existence and it too is axiomatic though not a separate axiom. "The thesis that existence comes first — that things exist independent of consciousness and that consciousness is a faculty not for the creation of its objects but for the discovery of them — Ayn Rand call the primacy of existence." (39)

Now how does the cosmological argument (CA) violate these axioms? Gotthelf tells us that the argument makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to existence, and therefore violates the axiom of consciousness. But it does no such thing.

'Existence' just means all existing things taken collectively, as Gotthelf points out. (p. 48, n. 6) So if the CA makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to existence, then the CA makes God's consciousness metaphysically prior to all existing things. But this is just false: the CA does not make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to God's existence, nor does it make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to the existence of abstract objects. So the CA does not make the divine consciousness metaphysically prior to all existing things. What it does is make God's consciousness metaphysically prior to some existing things, to contingent beings, including all material beings.

One reason, and perhaps the main reason, why the vast majority of professional philosophers consider Ayn Rand to be a hack is that she argues in an intolerably slovenly way. She gives arguments so porous one could drive a Mack truck through them. It is surprising to me that a philosopher with Gotthelf's credentials could uncritically repeat these arguments in the same slovenly way. Surely he understands the difference between all and some. Surely he can see that the argument of his that I quoted is a bad argument trading as it does on an equivocation on 'existence' as between all existing things and some existing things.

A cosmological arguer could cheerfully grant that the following are self-evident truths: Things exist; consciousness exists; the existence of conscious beings is metaphysically prior to their being conscious. The existence of God is logically consistent with each of these truths and with the three of them taken in conjunction.

One of the problems with Rand is that she smuggles substantive, controversial content into what she calls her axioms. I grant that it is axiomatic that "existence exists" if that means that something exists. But how is it supposed to follow from this that the things that exist "have no beginning, no end, no cause"? My desk exists, but it obviously had a beginning, will have an end, and had a cause.

Or does she and Gotthelf mean that what has no beginning, end, or cause is that something or other exists? That is rather more plausible, but obviously doesn't following from the trivial truth that something exists.

Gotthelf uses retortion to show that it is undeniable that something exists. (37) For if you maintain that nothing exists, you succumb to performative inconsistency. The propositional content of the statement that nothing exists is shown to be false by the existence of the speech act of stating, the existence of the one who speaks, and the existence of the context in which he speaks. But please note that there is nothing performatively inconsistent in stating that the things that exist have a beginning, an end, and a cause.

There are similar 'smuggling' problems with respect to the axiom of consciousness. It is indeed axiomatic and self-evident that conscious beings exist. And it too can be proven retorsively. For if you maintain that no one is conscious, then your performance falsifies the content of your claim. (38) But how is it supposed to follow from conscious beings exist that every consciousness is a consciousness of something that exists independently of the consciousness? For this is what Rand and Gotthelf need to show that "The very concept of 'God' violates the axioms . . . ." (49) They need to show that "to postulate a God as creator of the universe is to postulate a consciousness that could exist without anything to be conscious of." (49)

Rand and Gotthelf are making two rather elementary mistakes. The first is to confuse

1. Every consciousness is a consciousness of something (objective genitive)

with

2. Every consciousness is a consciousness of something that exists. (objective genitive).

(1) may well be true; (2) is obviously false. One who consciously seeks the Fountain of Youth seeks something, but not something that exists. There can be no consciousness without an object, but it does not follow that every intentional object exists.

The second mistake is to think that (2) follows from conscious beings exist. One lands in performative inconsistency if one denies that conscious beings exist. One does not if one denies (2).

It is important not to confuse the subjective and objective genitive construals of (2). (2) is plainly false if the genitive is objective. (2) is trivially true if the genitive is subjective. For it is trivially true that every consciousness is some existing thing's consciousness.

One gets the distinct impression that Rand and Gotthelf are confusing the two construals of (2). They think that because consciousness is always grounded in the existence of something, that every object of consiousness must be an existent object.

Gotthelf's claim that "to postulate a God as creator of the universe is to postulate a consciousness that could exist without anything to be conscious of" (49) is plainly false and deeply confused. For one thing, God is conscious of himself and of all necessarily existent abstract objects. And 'after' the creation of the universe, he has that to be conscious of as well.

What Rand does is simply smuggle the impossibility of a universe-creating conscious being into her axioms. Gotthelf uncritically follows her in this. But that has all the benefits of theft over honest toil, as Russell remarked in a different connection.

I come to the same conclusion via different routes in Existence, God, and the Randians and Peikoff on the Supernatural.

Could God and the Universe be Equally Real?

Not by my lights.

God is self-existent. The universe is not. As Hugh McCann puts it, unexceptionably, "the universe is directly dependent on God for its entire being, as far as time extends." (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Indiana UP, 2012, p. 27.) God is a sustaining causa prima active at every moment of the universe's existence, not a mere cosmic starter-upper. Now if God is self-existent or a se, while the universe depends for its entire being (existence, reality) at each instant of its career on the self-existent creator, then I say that God and the universe cannot be equally real. God is more real, indeed supremely real. The universe is less real because derivatively real. The one has its being from itself, the other from another. I say that there is a difference in their mode of existence: both exist but they exist in different ways. McCann, however, will have none of this:

Existence does not admit of degrees. A world sustained by God is . . . as real as it could [would] be if it sustained itself. (Ibid.)

Let's see if we can sort this out.

0. To keep this short, I will not now worry about the difference, if any, between modes of existence and degrees of existence.

1. The underlying question is whether it is intelligible to posit modes of existence or modes of being. I maintain that it is intelligible and that it is simply a dogma of (most) analytic philosophers to deny the intelligibility of talk of modes of existence. See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge Studies in Metaphysics, forthcoming. But not only is it intelligible to posit modes of existence, in several areas of philosophy it is mandatory. The present subject is one of them.

2. One thing McCann and I will agree on is that there is a sense of 'exist(s)' according to which God and the universe exist in exactly the same way. This is the quantifier sense. Let 'g' be an individual constant denoting God and 'u' an individual constant denoting our universe. We can then write

For some x, x = g

and

For some x, x = u.

Removing the individual constants and replacing them with a free variable yields the predicate expression 'for some x, x = y.' I grant that this predicate is univocal in sense regardless of the value of 'y.' In plain English the predicate is 'Something is identical to ___.' So in the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' God and the universe exist in the same way, or rather in no way: they just exist. In the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' it makes no sense to speak of modes of existence or degrees of existence. Is-identical-with-something-or-other does not admit of degrees. So in the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' It makes no sense to say that God is more real or more existent than the universe.

In the quantifier sense of 'exist(s),' then, existence does not admit of degrees and no distinction of mode or degree can be made between a universe sustained by God and a self-sustaining universe. If this is what McCann is saying, then I agree.

But please note that the quantifier sense presupposes a first-level sense. It is trivially true (if we are not Meinongians) that Socrates exists iff something is identical to Socrates. This presupposes, however, the singular existence of the individual that is identical to Socrates. Now while there cannot be modes of quantifier or general existence, there can very well be modes of singular existence. (The arguments aginst this are all unsound as I argue in my Routledge article.) God and Socrates are both singular and both exist. But they exist in different ways. The same goes for God and the created universe as a whole

That was but an assertion. Now for an argument.

3. McCann tells us that the universe U has the same reality whether it is self-existent or entirely dependent on God for its existence. But then what would be the difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent? The things in it and their properties would be the same, and so would the laws of nature. Perhaps I will be told that in the one case U has the property aseity while in the other case it does not. But what is aseity? Aseity is just the property of being self-existent. Existence, however, is not a quidditative property, and neither is self-existence: they do not pertain to what a thing is. U is what it is whether it exists from itself or from another. It follows that aseity is not a quidditative property. The conclusion to draw is that aseity is a way of existing or a mode of existence.

In sum: there is a difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent (dependent on God). This difference is not a quidditative difference. The nature of U is the same whether it self-exists or not. Nor is it a difference in general or quantifier existence: both are something. The difference is a difference in mode of singular existence. God and the universe exist in different ways or modes. These three questions need to be distinguished: What is it? Is it? How is it?

4. Could one say that the difference between U as self-existent and U as non-self-existent is that in the one case U is related to God but in the other case U is not? This cannot be right since God confers existence upon U. (McCann very plausibly argues that secondary or natural causation is not existence-conferring; primary or divine causation is and must be, as McCann of course maintains.) U is nothing apart from divine existence-conferral. It is not as if God exists and U exists, both in the sdame way, and they are tied by a relation of creation. Creation cannot be a relation logically subsequent to the existence of G and U: U has no existence apart from this relation. It is siply nothing apart from God. But this amounts to saying that U exists is a different way than G. U exists-dependently while G exists-independently. One can abstract from this difference and say that both exist in the general or quantifier sense, but that is a mere abstraction. U and G in their concrete singularity exist in different ways.

5. God is not a being among beings, but Being itself. This is a consequence of the divine simplicity affirmed by McCann in his final chapter. God is self-existent in virtue of being Existence itself. McCann's commitment to the divine simplicity is logically inconsistent with his claim that "A world sustained by God is . . . as real as it could [would] be if it sustained itself."

In his excellent book McCann resurrects and defends certain Thomist themes without realizing that some of these themes are inconsistent with key tenets of analytic orthodoxy, chiefly, the dogma that there are no modes of existence.

From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God

James N. Anderson and Greg Welty have published a paper entitled The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic. Having worked out similar arguments in unpublished manuscripts, I am very sympathetic to the project of arguing from the existence of necessary truths to the necessary existence of divine mind.

Here is a quick sketch of the Anderson-Welty argument as I construe it:

1. There are laws of logic, e.g., the law of non-contradiction.

2. The laws of logic are truths.

3. The laws of logic are necessary truths.

4. A truth is a true proposition, where propositions are the primary truth-bearers or primary vehicles of the truth values.

5. Propositions exist. Argument: there are truths (from 1, 2); a truth is a true proposition (3); if an item has a property such as the property of being true, then it exists. Ergo, propositions exist.

6. Necessarily true propositions necessarily exist. For if a proposition has the property of being true in every possible world, then it exists in every possible world. Remark: in play here are 'Fregean' as opposed to 'Russellian' propositions. See here for an explanation of the distinction as I see it. If the proposition expressed by 'Socrates is Socrates' is Russellian, then it has Socrates himself, warts and all, as a constituent. But then, though the proposition is in some sense necessarily true, being a truth of logic, it is surely not necessarily existent.

7. Propositions are not physical entities. This is because no physical entity such as a string of marks on paper could be a primary truth-bearer. A string of marks, if true, is true only derivatively or secondarily, only insofar as as it expresses a proposition.

8. Propositions are intrinsically intentional. (This is explained in the post which is the warm-up to the present one.)

Therefore

9. The laws of logic are necessarily existent, nonphysical, intrinsically intentional entities.

10. Thoughts are intrinsically intentional.

The argument now takes a very interesting turn. If propositions are intrinsically intentional, and thoughts are as well, might it be that propositions are thoughts?

The following invalid syllogism must be avoided: "Every proposition is intrinsically intentional; every thought is intrinsically intentional; ergo, every proposition is a thought." This argument is an instance of the fallacy of undistributed middle, and of course the authors argue in no such way. They instead raise the question whether it is parsimonious to admit into our ontology two distinct categories of intrinsically intentional item, one mental, the other non-mental. Their claim is that the principle of parsimony "demands" that propositions be constued as mental items, as thoughts. Therefore

11. Propositions are thoughts.

Therefore

12. Some propositions (the law of logic among them) are necessarily existent thoughts. (From 8, 9, 10, 11)

13. Necessarily, thoughts are thoughts of a thinker.

Therefore

14. The laws of logic are the thoughts of a necessarily existent thinker, and "this all men call God." (Aquinas)

A Stab at Critique

Line (11) is the crucial sub-conclusion. The whole argument hinges on it. Changing the metaphor, here is where I insert my critical blade, and take my stab. I count three views.

A. There are propositions and there are thoughts and both are intrinsically intentional.

B. Propositions reduce to thoughts.

C. Thoughts reduce to propositions.

Now do considerations of parsimony speak against (A)? We are enjoined not to multiply entities (or rather types of entity) praeter necessitatem. That is, we ought not posit more types of entity than we need for explanatory purposes. This is not the same as saying that we ought to prefer ontologies with fewer categories. Suppose we are comparing an n category ontology with an n + 1 category ontology. Parsimony does not instruct us to take the n category ontology. It instructs us to take the n category ontology only if it is explanatorily adequate, only if it explains all the relevant data but without the additional posit. Well, do we need propositions in addition to thoughts for explanatory purposes? It is plausible to say yes because there are (infinitely) many propositions that no one has ever thought of or about. Arithmetic alone supplies plenty of examples. Of course, if God exists, then there are no unthought propositions. But the existence of God is precisely what is at issue. So we cannot assume it. But if we don't assume it, then we have a pretty good reason to distinguish propositions and thoughts as two different sorts of intrinsically intentional entity given that we already have reason to posit thoughts and propositions.

So my first critical point is that the principle of parsimony is too frail a reed with which to support the reduction of propositions to thoughts. Parsimony needs to be beefed-up with other considerations, e.g., an argument to show why an abstract object could not be intrinsically intentional.

My second critical point is this. Why not countenance (C), the reduction of thoughts to propositions? It could be like this. There are all the (Fregean) propostions there might have been, hanging out in Frege's Third Reich (Popper's world 3). The thought that 7 + 5 = 12 is not a state of an individul thinker; there are no individual thinkers, no selves, no egos. The thought is just the Fregean proposition's temporary and contingent exemplification of the monadic property, Pre-Personal Awareness or Bewusst-sein. Now I don't have time to develop this suggestion which has elements of Natorp and Butchvarov, and in any case it is not my view.

All I am saying is that (C) needs excluding. Otherwise we don't have a good reason to plump for (B).

My conclusion? The Anderson-Welty argument, though fascinating and competently articulated, is not rationally compelling. Rationally acceptable, but not rationally compelling. Acceptable, because the premises are plausible and the reasoning is correct. Not compelling, because one could resist it without quitting the precincts of reasonableness.

To theists, I say: go on being theists. You are better off being a theist than not being one. Your position is rationally defensible and the alternatives are rationally rejectable. But don't fancy that you can prove the existence of God or the opposite. In the end you must decide how you will live and what you will believe.

McCann, God, and the Platonic Menagerie

I am reviewing Hugh J. McCann's Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press, 2012) for American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly. What follows is an attempt to come to grips with Chapter Ten, "Creation and the Conceptual Order." I will set out the problem as I see it, sketch McCann's solution, and then offer some criticisms of his solution.

I. The Problem

How does God stand to what has been called the Platonic menagerie? All classical theists will agree that divine creative activity is responsible for the existence of concreta. But what about abstracta: properties, propositions, mathematical sets, and such? These are entities insulated from the flux and shove of the real order of space, time, and causation. They belong to an order apart. McCann calls it the conceptual order. Does God create the denizens of the conceptual order? Or are the inhabitants of this order independent of God, forming a framework of entities and truths that he must accept as given, a framework that predelineates both the possibilities of, and the constraints upon, God's creative activity? For example, it is a necessary truth that the area of a circle is equal to pi times its radius squared (my example). Is God constrained by this truth so that he logically cannot create a circle not satisfying it? This question obviously bears upon the sovereignty issue. If God is absolutely sovereign, then neither his will nor his intellect can be constrained by anything at all, and certainly not by a bunch of causally inert abstracta and the necessary truths associated with them. (My slangy way of putting it, not McCann's.)

II. Three Types of Approach to the Problem

As I see it, there are three main positions. But first a preliminary observation. Most abstracta are necessary beings: their nonexistence is broadly logically impossible. Not all: Socrates' singleton, though an abstract object, is as contingent as he is. But I will ignore contingent abstracta since they are not relevant to our problem. By 'abstracta' in this post I mean 'necessary abstracta.'

A. The first view is that God must simply accept abstracta as I must. They form a logically and theologically antecedent framework that predelineates his and my possibilities while constraining his and my actions. He does not create abstracta in any sense. They do not depend on God for either their existence or their nature. Their existence and nature are independent of all minds, including God's. McCann and I both reject this view.

B. The second view is that abstracta depend on God for their existence but not for their essence. The property felinity, for example, though a necessary being, depends for its existence on God in this sense: if, per impossibile, God did not exist, then felinity would not exist. (I see no difficulty with a necessary being depending for its existence on another necessary being. See here and here.) I incline to a view like this. Abstracta are divine thought-accusatives, merely intentional objects of the divine intellect. They have an extramental existence relative to us but not relative to God. They cannot not exist, but their exstence is (identically) their being-objects of the divine intellect. This places a constraint on God's creative activity: he cannot create a cat that is not a mammal, for example, or a triangle that is not three-sided. But this constraint on the divine will does not come from 'outside' God as on (A). For it does not come from a being whose existence is independent of God's existence.

On the second view, God is the ultimate explanation of why the universal felinity exists and why it is exemplified. Felinity exists because it is a merely intentional object of the divine intellect. You could say that God excogitates it. Felinity is exemplified because God willed that there be cats. On the second view, however, God is not the explanation of why this nature has the essence or content it has. The essence necessarily has the content it has independently of the divine will, and it can exist unexemplified independently of the divine will. Thus on (B) the divine will is constrained by the truth that cats are mammals such that God could not create a cat that was not a mammal. The proposition and its constitutive essences (*felinity,* *mammality*) depend for their existence on the divine intellect, but they limit God's power. You could say that the objects of the divine intellect limit the divine will. Accordingly, God is not sovereign over the natures of things or over the conceptual truths grounded in these natures, let alone over the necessary truths of logic and mathematics. Triangularity, for example, necessarily has the content it has and God is 'stuck' with it. Moreover, the being (existence ) of triangularity is not exhausted by its being exemplified — which implies that God has no power over the nature in itself. He controls only whether the nature is or is not exemplified.

C. McCann takes a step beyond (B). On his radical view God is absolutely sovereign. God creates all abstracta and all associated conceptual truths, including all logical and mathematical truths. But it is not as if he first creates the abstracta and then the contingent beings according to the constraints and opportunities the abstracta provide. Creation is not a "two-stage process." (201) God does not plan, then produce. Creation is a single timeless act in which natures and associated necessary truths are "created in their exemplifications." (201) Creating cats, God creates felinity by the same stroke. The creation of cats is not the causing of a previously existing unexemplified nature, felinity, to become exemplified. It is the creation in one and the same act of both the abstractum and the concreta that exemplify it. Another way God can create felinity and triangularity is by creating cat-thoughts and triangle-thoughts. Although my thinking about a triangle is not triangular, my thinking and its object share a common nature, triangularity. This common nature exists in my thinking in a different way than it does in the triangle. More on this in a moment. But for now, the main point is that God does not create according to specifications pre-inscribed in Plato's heaven, specifications that God must take heed of: there are no pre-existing unexemplified essences or unactualized possibilities upon which God operates when he creates. God does not create out of pre-existing possibilities, nor is his creation an actualization of anything pre-existent. The essences themselves are created either by being made to exist in nature or in minds.

III. Some Questions About McCann's Approach and His Use of Thomistic Common Natures

I now turn to critique.

It would seem to follow from McCann's position that before there were cats, there was no felinity, and in catless possible worlds there is no felinity either. It would also seem to follow that before cats existed there was no such proposition as *Cats are mammals* and no such truth as that cats are mammals. (A truth is a true proposition, so without propositions there are no truths.) Or consider triangles. It is true at all times and in all worlds that triangles are three-sided. How then can the essence triangle and the geometrical truths about triangles depend on the contingent existence of triangular things or triangle-thoughts? Surely it was true before there were any triangles in nature and any triangle-thoughts that right triangles are such that the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the remaining sides.

McCann attempts to deal with these fairly obvious objections by reverting to the old Thomistic doctrine of common natures. McCann does not use the phrase 'common nature,' nor does he mention Aquinas in precisely this connection; but what he says is very close to the Thomistic doctrine.

It is surely counterintuitive to say that felinity began to exist with the first cats, lasts as long as there are cats, and ceases to exist when — horribile dictu — cats become extinct. To avoid being committed to such an absurdity, McCann takes the line that felinity in itself has no being or existence at all. It has being only in its instantiations (203) whether in a mind, as when I think about or want or fear a cat, or in extramental reality in actual cats. "Felinity is in itself is not a being but an essence, and to think of it as such is to set aside all that pertains either to actual or to mental existence." (204) Actual existence is what Thomists call esse naturale or esse reale. Mental existence is what they call esse intentionale. Felinity in itself, however, has no esse at all. Now if felinity in itself has no mode of being or existence, then it cannot be said to begin to exist, to continue to exist, to cease to exist, or to exist only at those times at which cats exist. Nor can felinity be said to exist at all times. It is eternal, not sempiternal (everlasting, omnitemporal), says McCann. Substantial universals such as felinity and accidental universals such as whiteness are "timelessly eternal." (203) The eternal is that which is "excluded from the category of the particular." (204)

The objection was this: If God creates felinity by creating cats, then felinity comes into existence with the first cats. But it is absurd that felinity should come into existence or pass out of existence. Ergo, it is not the case that God creates felinity by creating cats.

McCann's response to the objection, in effect, is to deny the major by invoking the Thomistic doctrine of common natures. Felinity in itself neither comes into existence nor passes out of existence nor always exists. So the major is false and the objection fails.

The trouble with this response to the objection is that the doctrine of common natures is exceedingly murky, so murky in fact, that it causes McCann to fall into self-contradiction. I just quoted McCann to the effect that felinity in itself has no being. Now felinity, according to McCann, is a universal. (204). It follows that universals have no being.

But McCann, fearing nominalism, fails to draw this conclusion when he says that "universals do have being . . . ." (204) Now which is it? Do universals have being or not? If they have being then the above objection goes through. But if they do not have being, then they are nothing, which is just as bad. McCann fudges the question by saying that universals have being in their instantiations. This is a fudge because when felinity is instantiated in the real order in cats, felinity is particular, not universal.

Fudging the matter in this way, McCann fails to see that he is contradicting himself. To avoid nominalism, he must say that universals have being or existence. To avoid the above objection, he must say that they lack being or existence. He thinks he can avoid contradiction by saying that felinity has being in its instances. But felinity in its material instances is not universal, but particular, not one, but many. The Thomistic doctrine, derived from Avicenna, is more consistent: common natures such as felinity are, in themselves, neither universal nor particular, neither one nor many. McCann would have done better to take the classical Thomistic tack which accords to common natures a status much like Meinong's Aussersein. McCann does not go this route because he thinks that if universals have no type of being whatsoever, then ". . . we would grasp nothing in thinking of uninstantiated natures like unicornality." (204)

Trouble Even If 'Common Natures' Doctrine is Tenable: Collapse of Modal Distinctions?

I don't believe that the 'common natures' doctrine is tenable, either in McCann's version or in the strict Thomistic version. Suppose I am wrong. The doctrine — which is needed to evade the above objection — still presents problems for absolute divine sovereignty. Even if common natures have no being whatsoever, they nevertheless have or rather are definite natures. Felinity is necessarily felinity and logically could not be, say, caninity. So God is constrained after all: not by an existing nature but by a nonexisting one. He is constrained by the nature of this nature. He has no control over its being what it is. It is, in itself, necessarily what it is, and God is 'stuck' with the fact.

So a further step must be taken to uphold divine sovereignty in its absoluteness. It must be maintained that there are no broadly logical possibilities, impossibilities and necessities that are ontologically prior to divine creation. Prior to God's creation of triangles, there is no triangularity as an existing unexemplified essence or as a nonexisting unexemplified essence, and no possibilities regarding it such as the possibility that it have a different nature than it has, or the necessity that it have the nature it has, or the possibility that it be exemplified or the possiblity that it not be exemplified. (211). The idea is that triangularity and the like are not only beyond being but also beyond modality: it is neither the case that triangularity is necessarily what it is nor that it is not necessarily what it is. The modal framework pertaining to common natures is not ontologically prior to them or to God's will: it is created when they are created, and they are created when things having those natures are created. As McCann puts it, " . . . It is only in what God does as creator that the very possibilities themselves find their reality." (212)

In this way, God is made out to be absolutely sovereign: there is nothing at all that is not freely created and thus subject to the divine will. My worry is that this scheme entails the collapse of modal distinctions. Notionally, of course, there remain distinctions among the senses of 'possible, 'actual,' necessary,' and other modal terms. But if in reality nothing is possible except what is actual, i.e., what God creates, then the three terms mentioned have the same extension: the possible = the actual = the necessary.

The violates our normal understanding of modality according to which the possible 'outruns' the actual, and the actual 'outruns' the necessary. We normally think that there are in reality, and not just epistemically, possbilities that are not actual, and actualities thatare not necessary. We suppose, for example, that there are merely possible state of affairs (including those maximal states of affairs called 'worlds') that God could have actualized, and actual states of affairs that he might have refrained from actualizing. On this sort of scheme, creation is actualization. But on McCann's it is clearly not.

So I am wondering whether McCann's absolute sovereignty scheme entails the collapse of modal distinctions. Might God not have created cats (or a world in which cats evolve)? No. He created what he created and that is all we can say. We can of course conceive of a world other than the world God created, but on McCann's scheme it is not really possible. It is not really possible because there is no modal framework that predelineates what God can and cannot do. Such a framework is inconsistent with absolute sovereignty. God does what he does and that is all we can say. Real modal distinctions collapse. God's creation of the world is neither necessary nor contingent.

I think this collapse of modal distinctions causes trouble for McCann's project. For the project begins in his first chapter with a cosmological argument for a self-existent creator. Such an argument, however, requires as one its premises the proposition that the world of our experience be contingent in reality. (If it is not contingent, then its existence does not require explanation.) I don't see how this proposition is logically consistent with the last sentence of Chapter Ten: "'Could have' has nothing to do with what goes on in creation." (212)

The problem in a nutshell is this: McCann argues a contingentia mundi to a creator whose absolutely sovereign nature is such as to rule out the reality of the very modal framework needed to get the argument to this creator off the ground in the first place. To put it another way, if McCann's God exists, then the world of our experience is not really contingent, and his cosmological argument proceeds from a false premise.

Perhaps Professor McCann can straighten me out on this point.

The Strange World of Simone Weil: God Does and Does Not Exist

In the chapter "Atheism as a Purification" in Gravity and Grace (Routledge 1995, tr. Emma Craufurd from the French, first pub. in 1947), the first entry reads as follows:

A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion. (103)

What are we to make of writing like this? Contradictories cannot both be true and they cannot both be false. By their surface structure, God exists and God does not exist are contradictories. So, obviously, they cannot both be true if taken at face value.

Faced with an apparent contradiction, the time-tested method for relieving the tension is by making a distinction, thereby showing that the apparent contradiction is merely apparent. Suppose we distinguish, as we must in any case, between the concept God and God. Obviously, God is not a concept. This is true even if God does not exist. Interestingly, the truth that God is not a concept is itself a conceptual truth, one that we can know to be true by mere analysis of the concept God. For what we mean by 'God' is precisely a being that does not, like a concept, depend on the possibility or actuality of our mental operations, a being that exists in sublime independence of finite mind.

Now consider these translations:

God does not exist: Nothing in reality falls under the concept God.

God exists: There is an inconceivable reality, God, and it is the target of non-illusory love.

These translations seem to dispose of the contradiction. One is not saying of one and the same thing, God, that he both exists and does not exist; one is saying of a concept that it is not instantiated and of a non-concept that it is inconceivable. That is not a contradiction, or at least not an explicit contradiction. Weil's thesis is that there is a divine reality, but it is inconceivable by us. She is saying that access to the divine reality is possible through love, but not via the discursive intellect. There is an inconceivable reality.

Analogy: just as there are nonsensible realities, there are inconceivable realities. Just as there are realities beyond the reach of the outer senses (however extended via microscopes, etc.), there is a reality beyond the reach of the discursive intellect. Why not?

An objection readily suggests itself:

If you say that God is inconceivable, then you are conceiving God as inconceivable. If you say that nothing can be said about him, then you say something about him, namely, that nothing can be said about him. If you say that there exists an inconceivable reality, then that is different from saying that there does not exist such a reality; hence you are conceiving the inconceivable reality as included in what there is. If you say that God is real, then you are conceiving him as real as opposed to illusory. Long story short, you are contradicting yourself when you claim that there is an inconceivable reality or that God is an inconceivable reality, or that God is utterly beyond all of our concepts, or that no predications of him are true, or that he exists but has no attributes, or that he is real but inconceivable.

The gist of the objection is that my translation defense of Weil is itself contradictory: I defuse the initial contradiction but only by embracing others.

Should we concede defeat and conclude that Weil's position is incoherent and to be rejected because it is incoherent?

Not so fast. The objection is made on the discursive plane and presupposes the non-negotiable and ultimate validity of discursive reason. The objection is valid only if discursive reason is 'valid' as the ultimate approach to reality. So there is a sense in which the objection begs the question, the question of the ultimate validity of the discursive intellect. Weil's intention, however, is to break through the discursive plane. It is therefore no surprise that 'There is an inconceivable reality' is self-contradictory. It is — but that is no objection to it unless one presupposes the ultimate validity of discursive reason and the Law of Non-Contradiction.

Mystic and logician seem to be at loggerheads.

Mystic: "There is a transdiscursive, inconceivable reality."

Logician: "To claim as much is to embroil yourself in various contradictions."

Mystic: "Yes, but so what?"

Logician: "So what?! That which is or entails a contradiction cannot exist! Absolutely everything is subject to LNC."

Mystic: "You're begging the question against me. You are simply denying what I am asserting, namely, that there is something that is not subject to LNC. Besides, how do you know that LNC is a law of all reality and not merely a law of your discursive thinking? What makes your thinking legislative as to the real and the unreal?"

Logician: "But doesn't it bother you that the very assertions you make, and must make if you are verbally to communicate your view, entail logical contradictions?"

Mystic: "No. That bothers you because you assume the ultimate and non-negotiable validity of the discursive intellect. It doesn't both me because, while I respect the discursive intellect when confined to its proper sphere, I do not imperialistically proclaim it to be legislative for the whole of reality. You go beyond logic proper when you make the metaphysical claim that all of reality is subject to LNC. How are you going to justify that metaphysical leap in a non-circular way?"

Logician: "It looks like we are at an impasse."

Mystic: "Indeed we are. To proceed further you must stop thinking and see!"

How then interpret the Weilian sayings? What Weil is saying is logically nonsense, but important nonsense. It is nonsense in the way that a Zen koan is nonsense. One does not solve a koan by making distinctions, distinctions that presuppose the validity of the Faculty of Distinctions, the discursive intellect; one solves a koan by "breaking through to the other side." Mystical experience is the solution to a koan. Visio intellectualis, not more ratiocination.

A telling phrase from GG 210: "The void which we grasp with the pincers of contradiction . . . ."

But of course my writing and thinking is an operating upon the discursive plane. Mystical philosophy is not mysticism. It is, at best, the discursive propadeutic thereto. One question is whether one can maintain logical coherence by the canons of the discursive plane while introducing the possibility of its transcendence.

Or looking at it the other way round: can the committed and dogmatic discursivist secure his position without simply assuming, groundlessly, its ultimate and non-negotiable validity — in which event he has not secured it? And if he has not secured it, why is it binding upon us — by his own lights?

Mature Religion is Open-Ended Too: More Quest Than Conclusions

The following is from an interview with A. C. Grayling who is speaking of the open mind and open inquiry:

It’s a mindset, he reveals, that “loves the open-endedness and the continuing character of the conversation that humankind has with itself about all these things that really matter.”

It’s also a way of thinking that marks a line in the sand between religion and science. The temptation to fall for the former—hook, line, and sinker—is plain to see: “People like narratives, they like to have an explanation, they like to know where they are going.” Weaving another string of thought into his tapestry of human psychology, Grayling laments that his fellow human beings “don’t want to have to think these things out for themselves. They like the nice, pre-packaged answer that’s just handed to them by somebody authoritative with a big beard.”

A. C. Grayling, like many if not most militant atheists, sees the difference between religion and science in the difference between pre-packaged dogmas thoughtlessly and uncritically accepted from some authority and open-ended free inquiry.

That is not the way I see it. For me, mature religion is more quest than conclusions. It too is open-ended and ongoing, subject to revision and correction. It benefits from abrasion with such competing sectors of culture as philosophy and science. By abrasion the pearl is formed.

All genuine religion involves a quest since God must remain largely unknown, and this by his very nature. He must remain latens Deitas in Aquinas' phrase:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quæ sub his figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit, Quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.

(tr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, here.)

But as religion becomes established in the world in the form of churches, sects, and denominations with worldly interests, it becomes less of a quest and more of a worldly hustle. Dogmatics displaces inquiry, and fund-raising faith. The once alive becomes ossified. All human institutions are corruptible, and are eventually corrupted.

Mature religion must be more quest than conclusions. It is vastly more a seeking than a finding. More a cleansing of windows and a polishing of mirrors than a glimpsing. And certainly more a glimpsing than a comfortable resting upon dogmas. When philosophy and religion and mysticism and science are viewed as quests they complement one another. And this despite the tensions among Athens, Jerusalem, Benares, and Alexandria.

The critic of religion wants to pin it down, reducing it to dogmatic contents, so as to attack it where it is weakest. Paradoxically, the atheist 'knows' more about God than the sophisticated theist — he knows so much that he knows no such thing could exist. He 'knows' the divine nature and knows that it is incompatible with the existence of evil — to mention one line of attack. What he 'knows,' of course, is only the concept he himself has fabricated and projected. Aquinas, by contrast, held that the existence of God is far better known than God's nature — which remains shrouded in a cloud of unknowing.

The (immature) religionist also wants religion pinned down and dogmatically spelled out for purposes of self-definition, doxastic security, other-exclusion, worldly promotion, and political leverage. This is a reason why reformers like Jesus are met with a cold shoulder — or worse.

How is it that someone as intelligent as Grayling could have such a cartoonish understanding of religion? The answer is that he and his brethren utterly lack the religious sensibility. They lack it in the same way many scientists lack the philosophical sensibility, many prosaic folk the poetic sensibility, and so on.

This is why debates with militant atheists are a waste of time. To get a taste of the febrile militancy of Grayling's atheism, see here.

Divine Creation, Possibility, and Actuality

This from a reader:

Your latest blog posts on the problem of existence prompted me to question you about one philosophical problem which keeps "nagging" me:

– When we make plans for the future (e.g. when choosing out next move in chess), we analyze different possibilities. Until the moment we decide our move, each possibility is only that: a possibility, and not an actual move. By moving a piece, we irretrievably select one possibility. The irretrieveability is caused by the existence of a world, outside our minds, which is affected by our decision and prevents it from being "taken back".

– God (were He to play chess), would be able to analyze all possible moves to an infinite depth, since He is an infinite mind. What would make one of this possibilities actual? I assume that, like in the case of a finite mind, it would be His decision on what piece to move and when.

I understand that so far, this is not a philosophical problem, but merely an intuition that choosing an actuality amongst infinite possibilities implies acting on something outside oneself (the chessboard in this instance). My problem arises when thinking about the act of creation:

– In a way similar to a chess game, when God created the universe he would have been able to see in full detail all possible universes. He chose one of these, making it be. How does creation (i.e. actual
existence) differ from potential existence in this instance? In everyday life, like in a chess game, actual existence depends on acting one way or the other on something that exists apart from the
mind. How can we think about it in that moment when nothing exists apart from the infinite mind of the Creator? In other words, from the point of view of an infinite mind, what is the difference between a piece of fiction and a piece of non-fiction before the world is created?

I am not sure I have been able to piece my thoughts together in a coherent way. . . At least, everybody with whom I try to discuss this seems to think I am splitting hairs over a non-issue. . .

All the best to you,

Pedro
—
Pedro J. Silva
Associate Professor
Universidade Fernando Pessoa
Porto – Portugal
http://homepage.ufp.pt/pedros/science/science.htm
http://biochemicalmatters.blogspot.com

RESPONSE

Well, Pedro, you are certainly not splitting hairs over a non-issue. The problem is genuine, and if anything, you are not splitting enough hairs. But first we need to state the problem more clearly. I suggest that the problem can be formulated as the problem of giving an account that allows all the following propositions to be true:

1. God creates ex nihilo: creation is not an acting upon something whose existence is independent of God's existence.

2. Creation is actualization: God creates by actualizing a merely possible world. Of course, 'once' (logically speaking) it is actual, it is not merely possible.

3. There is a plurality of broadly logically possible worlds.

4. God is libertarianly free: God could have done otherwise with respect to any world he actualizes. There is no necessity that God create any world at all, and any world he creates is such that he might not have created it. If 'A' is a name (Kripkean rigid designator) of our world, the world that is actual, then 'A is actual' is contingently true, and 'God creates A' is contingently true.

Suppose we give the following account. The divine intellect 'prior' (logically speaking) to creation has before it an infinite array of broadly logically possible worlds. These possible worlds have the status of complex divine thought-accusatives. They exist only as intentional objects of the divine intellect. It follows that they do not exist apart from God. On the contrary, their existence depends on God's existence. The actualization of one of these worlds depends on the divine will: God wills one of the possible worlds to be actual. As it happens, A is the chosen world. This is equivalent to causing our universe, with Socrates and Plato, me and you, etc. to exist extramentally, 'outside' the divine mind, but still in continuous dependence on the divine mind.

On this account, is creation a creation out of nothing? Yes, insofar as it not an acting upon something whose existence is independent of God's existence. God creates out of mere possibilities, which are divine thought-accusatives, not Platonica. So there is a sense in which creation is ex Deo.

Does this commit me to pantheism? See Creatio ex Deo and Pantheism and Creation: Ex Nihilo or Ex Deo? Am I a Panentheist?

On Light

Today I preach on a text from Joseph Joubert:

Light. It is a fire that does not burn. (Notebooks, 21)

Just as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hugs the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas — all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive. This light does not consume, like fire, but allows things to appear. It licks, like flames, but does not incinerate. ('Lambent' from Latin lambere, to lick.)

Light as phenomenon, as appearance, is not something merely physical. It is as much mind as matter. Without its appearance to mind it would not be what it, phenomenologically, is. But the light that allows rocks and coyotes to appear, itself appears. This seen light is seen within a clearing, eine Lichtung, which is light in a transcendental sense. But this transcendental light in whose light both illuminated objects and physical light appear, points back to the onto-theological Source of this transcendental light.

Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source Light upon entering into his "inmost being." Entering there, he saw with his soul's eye, "above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light." He continues:

It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater light of the same kind
. . . Not such was that light, but different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)

'Light,' then, has several senses. There is the light of physics, which is but a theoretical posit. There is physical light as we see it, whether in the form of illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or sources of illumination such as the sun, or the lambent space between them. There is the transcendental light of mind without which nothing at all would appear. There is, above this transcendental light, its Source.

One could characterize a materialist as one who is blind to the light, except in the first of the four senses lately mentioned.

An Evolved Animal With a Higher Origin? Some Theological Speculation

I just remembered this old post from the Powerblogs site, a post relevant to present concerns. Written February 2008.

…………….

I raised the question whether divine revelation is miraculous. I answered tentatively that it is not. Though revelation may be accompanied by miraculous events such as the burning bush of Exodus 3:2, I floated the suggestion that there need be nothing miraculous about revelation as such. So I was pleased to find some support for this notion from another quarter. The following is from an essay by Leo Strauss on Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism:

     Revelation is the continuation of creation since man as the
     rational and moral being comes into being, i.e., is constituted, by
     revelation. Revelation is as little miraculous as creation. (Leo
     Strauss, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, U. of Chicago
     Press, 1983, p. 237.)

This is an extremely interesting suggestion in that it may offer us a way to make sense of the notion that God creates man in his image and likeness but without interfering in the evolutionary processes most of us believe are responsible for man's existence as an animal.

Man as an animal is one thing, man as a spiritual, rational, and moral being is another. The origin of man as an animal came about not through any special divine acts but through the evolutionary processes common to the origination of all animal species. But man as spirit, as a self-conscious, rational being who distinguishes between good and evil cannot be accounted for in naturalistic terms.

As animals, we are descended from lower forms. As animals, we are part of the natural world and have the same general type of origin as any other animal species. Hence there was no Adam and Eve as first biological parents of the human race who came into existence directly by divine fiat without animal progenitors. But although we are animals, we are also spiritual beings, spiritual selves. I am an I, an ego, and this I-ness or egoity cannot be explained naturalistically. I am a person possessing free will and conscience neither of which can be explained naturalistically.

I suggest that what 'Adam' refers to is not a man qua member of a zoological species, but the first man to become a spiritual self. This spiritual selfhood came into existence through an encounter with the divine self. In this I-Thou encounter, the divine self elicited or triggered man's latent spiritual self. This spiritual self did not emerge naturally; what emerged naturally was the potentiality to hear a divine call which called man to his vocation, his higher destiny, namely, a sharing in the divine life. The divine call is from beyond the human horizon.

But in the encounter with the divine self which first triggered man's personhood or spiritual selfhood, there arose man's freedom and his sense of being a separate self, an ego distinct from God and from other egos. Thus was born pride and self-assertion and egotism. Sensing his quasi-divine status, man asserted himself against the One who had revealed himself, the One who simultaneously called him to a Higher Life but also imposed restrictions and made demands. Man in his pride then made a fateful choice, drunk with the sense of his own power: he decided to go it alone. This rebellion was the Fall of man, which has nothing to do with being expelled from a physical garden located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Original Sin was a spiritual event, and its transmission was not by semen, but by some spiritual (socio-cultural) means.

If we take some such tack as the above, then we can reconcile what we know to be true from natural science with the Biblical message. Religion and science needn't compete; they can complement each other — but only if each sticks to its own province. In this way we can avoid both the extremes of the fundamentalists and the extremes of the 'Dawkins gang' (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, et al.)

Returning to Hermann Cohen's suggestion above, as mediated by Leo Strauss, we can say that the divine-human encounter whereby the animal man becomes spirit is God's revelation to man. God's revealing himself is at the same time a creation of man as a spiritual being. In Heideggerian terms, at the moment of encounter moment man becomes Dasein, the Da of Sein, the site where Being (Sein) achieves finite self-understanding. But there is nothing ontically miraculous in this, no contravention of any law of nature.

Revealing himself to man as Being itself — Exodus 3:14 "I am who am" — God creates man as understandor of Being.

Does God Give His Existence Meaning?

Chad McIntosh writes,

Your post We Cannot Be the Source of Our Own Existential Meaning touches on a puzzle that I’ve been wrestling with for several years now. I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts on the following.

Like you, I think meaning is bestowed, or endowed, by agents. However, I may hold a stronger view, which is captured by what I call the Endowment Thesis:

(ET) Any object x has meaning iff x has meaning by virtue of being endowed meaning by one or more agents.

BV: In the post in question I did not endorse the thesis that meaning is bestowed by agents; I made the conditional claim that if existential meaning is bestowed by each upon himself, then the identification of existential meaning with subjectively bestowed meaning collapses into an elimination of existential meaning. But your (ET) is plausible and its consequences are worth exploring.

(In fact, I normally state ET as true of value, not meaning. But I think ET holds for both value and meaning. But I’ll follow your post and state the puzzle with meaning instead of value).

BV: I think existential meaning has both a teleological and an axiological side. Thus a meaningful life is a purpose-driven life, but not every purpose-driven life is meaningful: the purpose must have positive intrinsic value. If someone sets himself as the central task of his life the parsing of every sentence in Moby Dick, his life has purpose; but since the value of such an accomplishment is questionable, the same goes for the meaningfulness of a life consecrated to such a task. See Teleological and Axiological Aspects of Existential Meaning.

The puzzle arises when we stipulate that x is God, God has meaning (or is a meaningful being, has a meaningful existence), and that God is the sole inhabitant of a world. So: God has meaning iff God has meaning by virtue of being endowed meaning by one or more agents.

There are two ways this could work: Either God, as a single agent, endows himself meaning, or God is in some way more than one agent (God is whole of which agents are parts—as agents, the parts can endow each other value, and God has meaning by virtue of each of the parts having meaning).

Now, both possibilities seem to require us to say that God does not have meaning logically prior to being endowed meaning (which leads me to think you may reject ET).

BV: Yes. Neither God nor Socrates can bootstrap himself into existence. And it seems that the same goes for meaningfulness: neither can bootstrap his existence into meaningfulness. So what I argued in my post with respect to finite agents like us holds also for God. It cannot be the case that God gives his existence meaning. Not even God can be a subjectivist about existential meaning!

But the former possibility—where God has meaning by virtue of endowing himself meaning—requires making sense of endowing oneself meaning, which you—as well as I—find problematic. I have my own objections to this possibility, but I’m curious to what you think of it. Assuming (ET) is true, can God sans creation endow himself meaning (or value)? Would your arguments in the post apply to God with equal force here?

BV: Yes, it seems to me that the arguments apply to God with equal probative force.

Also, I hope we can bracket divine simplicity for the sake of the argument. Thoughts?

BV: These considerations seem to add up to an argument against your (ET). The universal quantifier 'any' causes trouble. But surely some (many, most) objects are such that their meaning, value, and purpose are not had by them intrinsically but are bestowed upon them by one or more agents acting individually or collectively. I may assign a rock the purpose of being a paper weight, a purpose that it does not have intrinsically, and to a book that has collectively been assigned a purpose I can add an idiosyncratic purpose such as serving as a door stop or to fuel a fire. I can use a topographical map to swat a fly, and a flyswatter to scratch my back or direct an orchestra. Or consider the value of water. That value, it seems, is not intrinsic to water, but it is also not assigned by me or you or all of us collectively. But it is relative to our physical need for the stuff. Water is not intrinsically valuable, else it would be good for electronic gear, paper, and fires.

So it seems safe to say that some purposes, values, and meanings are relative to agents even if those agents don't have the power to assign them arbitrarily.

As for God, he is a counterexample to (ET). God does not have a purpose because he assigns himself one; he is intrinsically purposive, intrinsically good, intrinsically valuable, intrinsically meaningful. This intrinsicality would be nicely underpinned by the divine simplicity, but it is not clear that one needs that doctrine to underpin it.

Now suppose there is no God. Then human existence is ultimately (as opposed to proximately) meaningless, purposeless, and valueless. But we have the sense that it is none of these. This sense gives us reason to seek God, even though it does not furnish materials for a compelling proof of the existence of God.

I have gone out on a limb here, which will afford you an opportunity to practice your sawing skills.

God, Socrates, and the Thin Theory

I maintain that there are modes of being. To be precise, I maintain that it is intelligible that there be modes of being. This puts me at odds with those, like van Inwagen, who consider the idea unintelligible and rooted in an elementary mistake:

. . . the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge 2001, p. 4)

To clarify the issue let's consider God and creatures. God exists. Socrates exists. God and Socrates differ in their natures. For example, Socrates is ignorant of many things, and he knows it; God is ignorant of nothing. God is unlimited in power; Socrates is not. And so on. So far van Inwagen will agree. But I take a further step: God and Socrates differ in the way they exist: they differ in their mode of being. So I make a three-fold distinction among the being (existence) of x, the nature (quiddity, whatness) of x, and the mode of being of x. At most, van Inwagen makes a two-fold distinction between the being of x and the nature of x. For me, God and Socrates differ quidditatively and existentially whereas for van Inwagen they differ only quidditatively (in respect of their natures).

One difference between God and Socrates is that God does not depend on anything for his existence while Socrates and indeed everything other than God depends on God for his/its existence, and indeed, at every time at which he/it exists. I claim that that this is a difference in mode of existence: God exists-independently while creatures exist-dependently. There would be an adequate rebuttal of my claim if thin translations could be provided of the two independent clauses of the initial sentence of this paragraph. By a thin translation of a sentence I mean a sentence that is logically equivalent to the target sentence but does not contain 'exist(s) or cognates or 'is' used existentially. Translations are easy to provide, but I will question whether they are adequate. Let 'D' be a predicate constant standing for the dyadic predicate ' — depends for its existence on ___.' And let 'g' be an individual constant denoting God.

1. God does not depend on anything for his existence

1-t. (x)~Dgx.

2. Everything other than God depends on God for its existence

2-t. (x)[(~(x = g) –> Dxg].

I will now argue that these thin translations are not adequate.

I begin with the obvious point that the domain of the bound variable 'x' is a domain of existent objects, not of Meinongian nonexistent objects. It is also obvious that the thin translations presuppose that each of these existents exists in the same sense of 'exists' and that no one of them differs from any other of them in respect of mode of existence. Call this the three-fold presupposition.

Now consider the second translation, (2-t) above. It rests on the three-fold presupposition, and it states that each of these existents, except God, stands in the relation D to God. But this is incoherent since there cannot be a plurality of existents — 'existent' applying univocally to all of them — if each existent except God depends on God for its existence. It ought to be obvious that if Socrates depends on God for his very existence at every moment, then he cannot exist in the same way that God exists.

I don't deny that there is a sense of 'exists' that applies univocally to God and Socrates. This is the sense captured by the particular quantifier. Something is (identically) God, and something else is (identically) Socrates. 'Is identical to something' applies univocally to God and Socrates. My point, however, is that the x to which God is identical exists in a different way than the y to which Socrates is identical. That 'is identical to something' applies univocally to both God and Socrates is obviously consistent with God and Socrates existing in different ways.

Here is another way to see the point. To translate the target sentences into QuineSpeak one has to treat the presumably sui generis relation of existential dependence of creatures on God as if it were an ordinary external relation. But such ordinary relations presuppose for their obtaining the existence of their relata. But surely, if Socrates is dependent on God for his very existence, then his existence cannot be a presupposition of his standing in the sui generis relation to God of existential dependence. He cannot already (logically speaking) exist if his very existence derives from God.

The point could be put as follows. The Quinean logic presupposes ontological pluralism which consists of the following theses: everything exists; there is a plurality of existents; each existent exists in the same sense of 'exists.' Ontological pluralism, however, is incompatible with classical theism according to which each thing distinct from God derives its existence from God. On classical theism, everything other than God exists-derivatively and only God exists-underivatively.

On the Quinean scheme of ontological pluralism, the only way to connect existents is via relations that presuppose the existence of their relata. So the relation of existential dependence that is part and parcel of the notion of divine creation must be misconstrued by the Quinean ontological pluralist as a relation that presupposes the logically antecedent existence of both God and creatures.

The ontology presupposed by Quine's logic is incompatible with the theism van Inwagen espouses. One cannot make sense of classical theism without a doctrine of modes of being. One cannot be a classical theist and a thin theorist.

A Theism-Materialism Combo?

If the reality of spirit and the reality of free will cannot be encountered in ourselves, in the depths of our subjectivity, why should we think that they can be encountered outside ourselves — in God, for example?

I don't understand those who attempt to combine theism with materialism about the human mind. I don't deny that it is a logically possible combination. But mere absence of formal-logical contradiction is no guarantee of metaphysical coherence. (I develop the thought in "Could a Classical Theist be a Physicalist?" Faith and Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 2, April 1998, pp. 160-180.)

If reality has a spiritual core we will be able to learn about it only by studying ourselves, by plumbing our subjective depths, not by reducing self to not-self, not by trying to understand spirit and consciousness in material terms. They cannot be understood in those terms, and attempts to do so end up eliminating the very means of access — mind and language — to the material world.

Can Theistic Arguments Deliver More Than Plausibility?

James N. Anderson writes,

. . . a good theistic argument doesn’t have to be irrefutable, but surely we should expect the conclusions of our arguments to rise above the level of mere plausibility. If indeed the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1), and God’s existence can be “clearly perceived” from the creation (Rom. 1:20), it would appear that God has given humans something stronger than “clues” about his existence.

I tend to differ with Professor Anderson on this point. I don't believe theistic arguments can deliver more than plausibility. Here below we are pretty much in the dark. Just as our wills are weak and our hearts divided by disordered and inordinate loves, our minds are clouded. The existence of God is not a plain fact, but the infirmity of reason is. The believer hopes that light will dawn, fitfully and partially in this life, and more fully if not completely in the next. But he doesn't know this, nor can he prove it. That there is Divine Light remains a matter of faith, hope, and yearning. There is light enough in this life to render rational our faith, hope, and yearning. But there is also darkness enough to render rational doubt and perhaps despair. The individual must decide what he will believe and how he will live. He remains free and at risk of being wrong. There are no compelling arguments one way or the other when it comes to God and the soul.

If a black cat jumps on my lap in a well-lit room, I have no doxastic 'wiggle room' as to whether a cat is on my lap. It's not the same with God. I don't believe God's existence can be "clearly perceived" from the existence or order of the natural world. What is "clearly perceived" leaves me quite a lot of doxastic wiggle room.

I develop this thought in Is There Any Excuse for Unbelief? Romans 1: 18-20.

A Review of Barry Miller’s From Existence to God

I have reviewed two of Barry Miller's books. My review of A Most Unlikely God appeared in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (vol. XXXVIII, no. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 614-617). My review of From Existence to God appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (Summer 1993), pp. 390-394, I post a version of the latter here.

Barry Miller, From Existence to God: A Contemporary Philosophical Argument (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. x + 206. $42.50.

Arguments for the existence of God a contingentia mundi usually proceed by way of some version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), where this embraces principles of intelligibility and causality. Professor Miller's book is a bold but rigorous defense of a contingency argument that makes no use of any of these controversial principles. He thus evades the standard objections to PSR-based arguments. The engine driving Miller's argument is Non- Contradiction, a principle he deploys at various stages of his treatment. (cf. pp. 172-174) Accordingly, his central thesis is that there is "a hidden contradiction in claiming both that, say, Fido exists and that God does not." (p. ix)

If so, the existence of God should follow by dint of sheer analysis of what it is for a concrete individual to exist, in the presence of the uncontroversial premise that concrete individuals do in fact exist. By 'God' Miller understands the god of classical theism, a being that is the uncaused sustaining cause of the universe, where "The Universe is everything existing which either is a concrete individual or is individuated by individuals." (p. 131) This uncaused cause is unique, identical with its existence (and thus subsistent existence), metaphysically (not logically) necessary, and an individual only in an analogical sense of this term. (p. 137) Thus the above definition of 'universe' does not imply that God is in the universe. God cannot be an individual in the strict sense since He is not distinct from his existence; but He is nevertheless a concrete entity since capable of causal activity. (p. 126) The 'omni-properties' (omniscience, etc.) are not discussed. Thus Miller starts here below with existing concrete individuals, works his way up to the uncaused cause of their existence, and only then embarks on a discussion of those of the divine attributes relevant to the analysis of existence. This in marked contrast to the usual procedure of beginning with a definition of 'God' and then considering whether anything satisfies the definition.

A central challenge Miller faces is to show that the existence of concrete individuals is not a brute fact, where "a brute fact is by definition one for which any explanation is simply unnecessary." (p. 79) He meets this challenge by arguing that the existence of concrete individuals would harbor a contradiction if taken to be a brute fact. Given this putative contradiction, an inquiry into how it is possible that any such individual exist becomes logically inescapable. It turns out that the contradiction can only be removed if the existence of concrete individuals is not a brute fact but is dependent on something
external to them. (p. 84)

Wherein lies the contradiction? Consider Fido's existing. On Miller's preferred analysis, Fido's existing has two constituents, Fido and Fido's existence. Whereas Fido is a complete entity, one capable of independent existence, Fido's existence is a property-instance and therefore incomplete: incapable of independent existence, it requires a complete entity for its "individuation." (p. 38, n. 22) As constituents, Fido and his existence are ontologically, not chronologically, prior to Fido's existing in the sense that "…Fido's existing must be constructible conceptually from Fido and his existence." (p. 10) But such a construction would make no sense if Fido could not be conceived prior to Fido's existing. Yet chapter 3 ("The Inconceivability of Future Individuals") issues in precisely this conclusion: "Fido could neither be referred to nor conceived of before he existed." (p. 11)

Thus a contradiction emerges at the heart of concrete individuals: Fido's existing is a complex whose ontological constituents are such that one of them (Fido) must be and cannot be conceived prior to Fido's existing. Fido must be independently conceivable if he is to be available for the conceptual construction; but he cannot be so conceivable since "prior to its existing no concrete individual could be conceived of by anyone or in any way." (p. 42)

To establish that there is this contradiction, Miller must first of all develop a constituent ontology of individuals. This he does in chapter 2, "Sense Structure and Ontology." The analysis is pushed further in chapter 4, "Existence is a Real Property." Here he argues (convincingly to my mind) against the dominant Frege-Russell line that 'exists' and cognates are never legitimately predicable of individuals. The upshot is that existence is a first-level property.

Further argument is to the effect that it is a real (as opposed to a 'Cambridge') first-level property. Miller is now in a position to think of Fido's existing as built up from two constituents, Fido and Fido's existence. But what is Fido in distinction from his existence? One way to think of this is in terms of the question, What was Fido before he came to exist? Was he conceivable or referrable-to before he existed?

Chapter 3 defends the thesis that concrete individuals can neither be conceived of nor referred to prior to their existence, not even by God. This implies that, prior to Socrates' coming to exist, there was no de re possibility of his coming to exist. Thus there are no singular propositions about future individuals; all such propositions are general. (p. 42) Further implications are that the coming into existence of an individual is not the actualization of a merely possible individual, or the exemplification of any such exotic property as a Plantingian haecceity.

Now if Fido is inconceivable before he existed, then, "he cannot be conceived of except as existing or as having existed…" (p. 62) If so, how can Fido be a constituent of his existing? The result of chapters 2 and 4 thus contradicts that of chapter 3.

Given the obvious fact that Fido does exist, the contradiction in Fido's existing must be merely apparent. But if the analyses in chapters 2, 3 and 4 are correct, Fido's existing can neither be a brute fact needing no explanation, nor a fact explainable in terms of its constituents. So Fido's existing must be "dependent upon something other than either it or its constituents." (p. 84) This is the thesis of chapter 5, "Why existence? The penultimate answer."

The ultimate answer is provided in chapter 6, where it is argued that nothing is amiss in the idea of a causal regress that terminates necessarily in an uncaused cause. A causal series terminates necessarily if its members are intrinsically such that the series must terminate. (pp. 98-99) I take it that the series of causes that reaches back some 13-15 billion years ago to the Big Bang (assuming the truth of current cosmology) is a contingently terminating series: there is nothing in the nature of an ordinary physical event-cause that necessitates that a series of such causes should terminate, or should not terminate. So if there are no necessarily terminating causal series, there is no hope for a contingency argument that does not apply some version of PSR to an initial event like the Big Bang.

The main challenge Miller faces in showing the possibility of necessarily terminating causal series derives from Hume's contention that in an infinite series of causes each member is wholly explained
by the preceding member without any member being uncaused. If so, there is no a priori reason why a causal regress must terminate. To the objection that this would leave the series itself unexplained, the Humean rejoinder is that the explanation of each member by the preceding member suffices to explain the series as a whole. Miller responds to Hume's challenge by distinguishing five types of causal series. The justice of Hume's remarks is admitted with respect to types I-III. But types IV and V are argued to escape Humean censure.

It is impossible in the short space allotted to summarize Miller's intricate and carefully argued discussion of causal series. But perhaps the gist of it can be rendered as follows.

Miller needs a causal series that is both explanatory and necessarily terminating. But if a series is such that each of its members is caused by that which precedes it and causes that which succeeds it, then that series cannot be necessarily terminating. "Series IV and V, however, are cases of causal series in which each part neither is caused by that which precedes it, nor causes that which succeeds it . . ." (p. 111) How? Let a be the cause of Fido's existing, and suppose (to put it roughly) a is caused to exist by b, b by c, c by d, and d by m. Miller's idea is that when properly formulated, what causes a to exist is not b, but b inasmuch as it is caused to exist by c inasmuch as it is caused to exist by d inasmuch as it is caused to exist by m. (p. 112) Now m must be an uncaused cause, says Miller, on pain of the series' no longer being able to cause anything. (p. 112)

Having thus arrived at the uncaused cause, the remaining chapters consolidate and elaborate this result. Chapter 7, "The Uncaused Cause," argues that the ground of the uncaused cause's status as uncaused is in the lack of "any distinction between itself and its existence" (p. 117) and defends this consequence of the doctrine of divine simplicity against charges of incoherence. Miller also addresses the question whether the universe might be the uncaused cause, and concludes that it cannot since it is distinct from its existence, and what is so distinct can exist only if caused to exist. (p. 135)

Chapter 8 ("Necessary Existence") explains the sense in which God's existence is necessary "in terms of the more basic notion of something's lacking any distinction from its existence." (p. 148)

Chapters 9 and 10 treat, respectively, "Objections to the Contingency Argument" and "The Contingency Argument Misconceived." The book concludes with three appendices in support of chapters 2, 3 and 4 respectively, and a useful index.

The production job is reasonably good, although the quality of the paper inspires little confidence in its ability to resist the onset of yellowing. I note only four typographical errors: p. 1 has 'prologomena' instead of 'prolegomena.' P. 35, line 16 sports 'Fido's existing' in place of 'Fido's blackness.' P. 38, n. 22, line 6 shows 'predicate' where it should have 'property.' And a spot check of the index revealed on p. 202, col. I, line 7 a reference to p. 74 when it should be to p. 76.

Miller's book is a significant contribution not only to philosophical theology, but also to metaphysics and the philosophy of language. He engages a fundamental question ("How ever can it be that the Universe does exist?" (p. 1)) and he does so in a clear and rigorous manner. Equally important, he develops a line of reasoning which has been largely ignored in the theistic renaissance of recent decades. Along the way, a number of dogmas come under fire, among them the dogma held by atheists and theists alike that the doctrine of divine simplicity is incoherent. Miller leaves no doubt that he is historically informed, but does not allow himself to be led down exegetical sidetracks. All in all, an exciting and important work.

I conclude with a couple of critical comments, offered in the spirit of a request for clarification.

Miller's contingency argument is motivated by "the recognition that to accept Fido's existing as a brute fact would be to accept that Fido and hi
s existence were simultaneously both constituents and non-constituents of Fido's existing."(p. 116) Suppose we take a closer look at this putative contradiction. Given that they are constituents, Fido and his existence are ontologically, not chronologically, prior to Fido's existing. (p. 10) But if Fido is ontologically prior to Fido's existing, how is this priority contradicted by the fact, if it is one, that Fido is inconceivable until he exists? Fido's being nothing, not even a possible entity, chronologically prior to his existing seems logically compatible with his being ontologically prior to his existing, and therefore a constituent of his existing. The fact that "…Fido's existing should be conceptually constructible from Fido and his existence" (p. 83) seems consistent with Fido's being "disqualified [from being the starting point of the construction] by being inconceivable until he has completed his existence." (p. 83) A conceptual construction is presumably not a temporal process, despite Miller's talk of "beginning" the construction, moving through its "steps" and "stages," (p. 81) and "finishing" it. (p. 82) This talk is surely to be taken nontemporally. If so, it is not clear why Fido cannot be both ontologically prior and chronologically simultaneous with his existing. Surely Miller is not equivocating on 'prior'?

A second point concern's Miller's oft-made admission that Fido's existing admits of more than one legitimate analysis. (p. 37, n. 18, p. 81) Miller's analysis generates a contradiction; but if there is a legitimate analysis that does not generate a contradiction, would this not undercut Miller's argument? He would not think so, since "The nub of the argument is that a legitimate analysis cannot generate an insoluble paradox." (p. 81) But isn't the fact, assuming it is a fact, that Miller's analysis issues in a contradiction, together with the fact that alternative legitimate analyses are available, prima facie evidence that his analysis is illegitimate? It seems that for Miller's argument to work he must show, or at least render credible, the view that his analysis is the only legitimate analysis.

W. F. Vallicella

Is Every Concrete Being Contingent?

A reader experiences intellectual discomfort at the idea of a being that is both concrete and necessary. He maintains that included in the very concept concrete being is that every such being is concrete. To put it another way, his claim is that it is an analytic or conceptual truth that every concrete being is contingent. But I wonder what arguments he could have for such a view. I also wonder if there are any positive arguments against it.

1. We must first agree on some terminology. I suggest the following definitions:

D1. X is concrete =df x is possibly such that it is causally active/passive. A concretum is thus any item of any category that can enter into causal relations broadly construed.

D2. X is abstract =df X is not concrete. An abstractum is thus any item that is causally inert.

D3. X is necessary =df X exists in all possible worlds.

D4. X is contingent =df X exists in some but not all possible worlds.

The modality in question is broadly logical.

2. Now if this is what we mean by the relevant terms, then I do not see how it could be an analytic or conceptual truth that every concrete being is contingent. No amount of analysis of the definiens of (D1) yields the idea that a concrete being must be contingent. God is concrete by (D1), but nothing in (D1) rules out God's being necessary.

3. Off the top of my head, I can think of three arguments to the conclusion that everything concrete is contingent, none of which I consider compelling.

Everything concrete is physical
Nothing physical is necessary
Ergo
Nothing concrete is necessary
Ergo
Everything concrete is contingent.

The second premise is true, but what reason do we have to accept the first premise?

Whatever we can conceive of as existent we can conceive of as nonexistent
Whatever we can conceive of is possible
Ergo
Everything is such that its nonexistence is possible
Ergo
Everything is contingent
Ergo
Everything concrete is contingent.

One can find the first premise in Hume. I believe it is correct. Everything, or at least everything concrete, is such that its nonexistence is thinkable, including God. By 'thinkable' I mean 'thinkable without logical contradiction.' But what reason do I have to accept the second premise? Why should my ability to conceive something determine what is possible in reality apart from me, my mind, and its conceptual powers? If God is necessary, and exists, then he exists even if I can conceive him as not existing.

Nothing is such that its concept C entails C's being instantiated
A necessary being is one the concept C of which entails C's being instantiated
Ergo
Nothing is necessary.

The first premise is true, or at least it is true for concrete beings. But what reason do we have to accept the second premise? I reject that definition. A necessary being is one the nonexistence of which is possible. The existence of God is not a Fregean mark (Merkmal) of the concept God.

Is there some other argument? I would like to know about it.