Category: Modal Matters
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God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of ‘Contingency’
Fr. Aidan Kimel wants me to comment on his recent series of posts about divine simplicity, freedom, and the contingency of creation. In the third of his entries, he provides the following quotation: As Matthew Levering puts it: “God could be God without creatures, and so his willing of creatures cannot have the absolute necessity that his…
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Is Talk of ‘Possible Worlds’ Wholly Dispensable?
I made a bold claim earlier: If I am right, the patois of possible worlds is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every [modal] point we want to make without engaging in possible worlds talk. What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples. Here is a candidate counterexample…
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Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality
This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal…
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From the Mailbag: Modality and Perfection
Daniel C. writes, A quick remark on your recent possible worlds post. You only mention it in passing but one thing possible worlds talk surely does throw into sharp relief is the issue of the modality of modal statements i.e. if a certain proposition is possibly true is it necessarily possibly true or merely possibly…
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Why Talk of ‘Possible Worlds’?
This from a commenter: I have a question about a tangential matter, in case you care to respond to it. You say [in your discussion of divine simplicity and modal collapse] that you don't need talk of possible worlds. I don't think I find such talk puzzling, but I've never understood the vogue for it.…
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More on Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse
This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response. Tomaszewski presents…
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Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse
Fr. Aidan Kimel would like me to discuss the question whether the doctrine of divine simplicity entails the collapse of modal distinctions. I am happy to take a crack at it. I take my cue from a passage in a paper Fr. Kimel kindly sent me. In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed…
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Is the Wholly Past Now Impossible?
Boston's Scollay Square is an example of a wholly past item. It existed, but it does not now exist. Boston's Copley Square, by contrast, existed and still exists: it has a past but it is not wholly past. In an earlier exercise I gave an anti-presentist argument one of the premises of which is: d) It…
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God, Necessity, and Truth
Jacques e-mails: You think that if God exists, He exists necessarily, and if He does not exist, He does not exist necessarily. But suppose that God does not exist. We agree, I think, that we can't rationally rule out the possibility? For instance, you've often argued that our evidence doesn't settle the question of theism…
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Four Types of Ontological Egalitarianism
There are egalitarians in ontology as there are in political theory. Herewith, four types of ontological egalitarianism: egological, spatial, temporal, and modal. Egological egalitarianism is the view there is a plurality of equally real selves. I take it we are all egological egalitarians in sane moments. I'll assume that no one reading this thinks, solipsistically,…
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On Possibility
David Brightly comments: The view I've arrived at is that sentences involving 'possibility' can be re-written into sentences involving just 'possibly', and that our modal notions arise from our encounter with inference. I'm happy to say, There is the possibility that the bulb will shatter — we say things like that all the time — provided…
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The Necessity of Identity: A Puzzle and a Challenge
The Opponent comments in black; my responses are in blue: Here is the puzzle: how can we establish the necessity of identity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient, or which are not universally valid? The principle of identity (necessarily, a = a) is not sufficient. We agree that necessarily, Hesperus is identical with…
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Identity and Quasi-Epistemic Contingency
The Opponent sends the following puzzle to vex us: Story: there was someone called 'a', and there was someone called 'b'. This is all we have of the story. Let the predicate F be 'The story is consistent with anot being identical with ___'. Then clearly Fa is false, and Fb is true. This is…
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Is the Modal Ontological Argument Compelling?
In a comment, Patrick Toner writes, . . . there is no substantive philosophical position for which there is *better* philosophical support than theism. I'm open to the possibility that at least one other philosophical position–namely, dualism–is at least as well supported by philosophical argument as theism. But nothing's got better support. [. . .]…
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Of Birth and Barcan
The Opponent writes, "Death is not an end to existence, but the process of becoming non-concrete. Birth is the making concrete of something that has existed since the beginning of time and will exist until the end of time." (Reina Hayaki) This is one way of interpreting the Barcan formula (possibly for some x Fx…