Category: Modal Matters
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Contingent and Necessary
That we exist is contingent, that we won't necessary. (To spoil the aphorism by translating it into the patois of 'possible worlds': we exist in some but not all possible worlds; but we are mortal in every world in which we exist.) Related articles Docendo Discimus Courage Maverick Philosopher: Time Balm Free Speech: Is It…
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Contingent Existence Without Cause? Not Possible Says Garrigou-Lagrange
A reader claims that "to affirm that there are contingent beings just is to affirm that they have that whereby they are, namely, a cause." This implies that one can straightaway infer 'x has a cause' from 'x is contingent.' My reader would agree with Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange who, taking the traditional Thomist position, maintains the…
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Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: Review of W. E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality
Review William F. Vallicella William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2015), ix + 369 pp. This is a book philosophers of religion will want on their shelves. It collects sixteen of William E. Mann's previously published papers and includes “Omnipresence, Hiddenness, and Mysticism” written for this volume. These influential papers combine…
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Two Senses of ‘Contingency’ and a Bad Cosmological Argument
Fr. Aidan Kimel asked me to comment on a couple of divine simplicity entries of his. When I began reading the first, however, I soon got bogged down in a preliminary matter concerning wonder at the existence of the world, its contingency, and whether its contingency leads us straightaway to a causa prima. So I…
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Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford
W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible…
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Modality, Possible Worlds, and the Accidental-Essential Distinction
This from a reader: The Stanford Encyclopedia notes in its article on Essential vs. Accidental Properties, "A modal characterization of the distinction between essential and accidental properties is taken for granted in nearly all work in analytic metaphysics since the 1950s.” Personally, I find modal definitions of this type very hand wavy. Ed Feser states my objection…
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Theism Meets Metaphysical Naturalism
The following is an excerpt of an e-mail from the Barcelona lawyer, Daniel Vincente Carillo. As I mentioned to him in a private e-mail, I admire him for tackling these great questions, and doing so in a foreign language. The pursuit of these questions ennobles us while humbling us at the same time. Carillo writes,…
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Modal Axioms
Man is a metaphysical animal. We philosophers ought to encourage this tendency in our fellow mortals. This morning's mail brings me a long disquisition by a Spanish lawyer (abogado), Daniel Vincente Carillo, entitled "A New Argument on the Existence of God." It consists of numerous definitions, axioms, and theorems. I don't have time to comment…
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Could There Have Been Nothing at All?
As a matter of fact, things exist. But suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all. Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness? Is this thought thinkable? Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all? And if it is, does it show that it is…
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On Conceiving that God does not Exist
In a recent post you write: The Humean reasoning in defense of (3) rests on the assumption that conceivability entails possibility. To turn aside this reasoning one must reject this assumption. One could then maintain that the conceivability by us of the nonexistence of God is consistent with the necessity of God's existence. I’m not…
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An Anselmian Antilogism
Philosophy is its problems, and they are best represented as aporetic polyads. One sort of aporetic polyad is the antilogism. An antilogism is an inconsistent triad: a set of three propositions that cannot all be true. The most interesting antilogisms are those in which the constitutent propositions are each of them plausible. If they are more…
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Some Notes on Rescher’s “Nonexistents Then and Now”
A reader inquires: Have you read Nicholas Rescher's Nonexistents Then and Now? I read it recently and thought I'd bring it to your attention because it's relevant to your recent posts on fiction. If I understand the article, Rescher would agree with you that a fictional man is not a man, but he would say…
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More on Ficta and Impossibilia
As an ornery aporetician, I want ultimately to say that an equally strong case can be made both for and against the thesis that ficta are impossibilia. But here I only make (part of) the case for thinking that ficta are impossibilia. Preliminaries Every human being is either right-handed or not right-handed. (But if one…
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Another Example of Metaphysical Impossibility without Internal Inconsistency
John e-mails: I wanted to say as well that I enjoyed your recent post on fictional vs. possible objects. You point out that being internally contradictory is not a necessary condition on being metaphysically impossible. This seems to me exactly right. Another way to make this point is to think about, for example, a necessarily…
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The Fictional and the Merely Possible
"To be or not to be, that is the question." Or at least that is one question. Another is whether Hamlet, that very individual, might have been actual. It is a mistake to conflate the fictional and the merely possible. Hamlet, for example, is a fictional individual, the central character and eponym of the Shakespearean …