Modal Matters – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

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 following Principle of Causality (PC):

. . . every contingent thing, even if it should be ab aeterno, depends on a cause which exists of itself. (Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, tr. Patrick Cummins, O. S. B., Ex Fontibus 2012, p. 62)

So even if the physical universe always existed, and therefore never came into existence, it would nonetheless require a cause of its existence simply in virtue of its being contingent. I find myself questioning both my reader and Garrigou-Lagrange. For it seems to me to be conceivable that an item be contingent but have no cause or ground of its existence. This is precisely what Garrigou-Lagrange denies: "contingent existence . . . can simply not be conceived without origin, without cause . . . ." (p. 63)

But it all depends on what we mean by 'conceivable' and 'contingent.' Here are my definitions:

D1. An individual or state of affairs x is conceivable =_df x is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction.

Examples. It is conceivable that there be a mountain of gold and a tire iron that floats in (pure or near-pure) water. It is conceivable that I jump straight out of my chair, turn a somersault in the air, and then return to my chair and finish this blog post. It is inconceivable that I light a cigar and not light a cigar at exactly the same time. As for formal-logical contradiction, here is an example: Some cats are not cats. But Some bachelors are married is not a formal-logical contradiction. Why not? Because its logical form has both true and false substitution instances.

D2. An individual or state of affairs x is contingent =_df x is possibly nonexistent/nonobtaining if it exists/obtains, and possibly existent/obtaining if it does not exist/obtain.

The contingent is that which has a certain modal status: it is neither necessary nor impossible. For example, me and my cigar are both contingent beings: neither is necessary and neither is impossible. My smoking the cigar now is an example of a contingent state of affairs: it is neither necessary nor impossible that I smoke a cigar now. The type of modality we are concerned with is broadly logical, not nomological.

Now is it conceivable that something exist contingently without a cause? It seems so! The nonexistence of the physical universe is thinkable without formal-logical contradiction. The physical universe is contingent: it exists, but not necessarily. Its nonexistence is possible. Do I encounter a formal-logical contradiction when I think of the universe as existing without a cause or explanation? No. An uncaused universe is nothing like a non-triangular triangle, or a round square, or a married bachelor, or an uncaused effect. Necessarily, if x is an effect, then x has a cause. It is an analytic truth that every effect has a cause. The negation of this proposition is: Some effects do not have causes. While this is not a formal-logical contradiction, it can be reduced to one by substituting synonyms for synonyms. Thus, Some caused events are not caused.

Contrary to what Garrigou-Lagrange maintains, it is conceivable that the universe exist uncaused, despite its contingency. If one could not conceive the uncaused existing of the universe, then one could not conceive of the universe's being a brute fact. And 'surely' one can conceive of the latter. That is not to say that it is possible. There is a logical gap between the conceivable and the possible. My point is merely that the 'brutality' of the universe's existence is conceivable in the sense of (D1). To put it another way, my point is that one cannot gain a a priori insight into the necessity of the universe's having a cause of its existence. And this is because the Principle of Causality, if true, is not analytically true but synthetically true.

Of course, if one defines 'contingency' in terms of 'existential dependence on a cause' then a thing's being contingent straightaway implies its being caused. But then one has packed causal dependency into the notion of contingency when contingency means only what (D2) says it means. That has all the benefits of theft over honest toil as Russell remarked in a different connection.

Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that one violates the Law of Non-Contradiction if one says of a contingent thing that it is both contingent and uncaused. He thinks this is equivalent to saying:

A thing may exist of itself and simultaneously not exist of itself. Existence of itself would belong to it, both necessarily and impossibly. Existence would be an inseparable predicate of a being which can be separated from existence. All this is absurd, unintelligible. (p. 65)

Suppose that a contingent existent is one that is caused to exist by a self-existent existent. If one then went on to say that such an existent is both contingent and uncaused, then one would embrace a logical contradiction. But this presupposes that contingency implies causal dependency.

And therein lies the rub. That the universe is contingent I grant. But how does one get from contingency in the sense defined by (D2) supra to the universe's causal dependence on a causa prima? If one simply packs dependency into contingency then one begs the question. What is contingent needn't be contingent upon anything.

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 analytic precision with historical erudition: in many places Mann works directly from the classical texts and supplies his own translations. Mann ranges masterfully over a wealth of topics from the highly abstract (divine simplicity, aseity, sovereignty, immutability, omnipresence) to the deeply existential (mysticism, divine love, human love and lust, guilt, lying, piety, hope). As the title suggests, the essays are grouped under three heads, God, Modality, and Morality.

A somewhat off-putting feature of some of these essays is their rambling and diffuse character. In this hyperkinetic age it is a good writerly maxim to state one's thesis succinctly at the outset and sketch one's overall argument before plunging into the dialectic. Mann typically just plunges in. “The Guilty Mind,” for example, begins by juxtaposing the Matthew 5:28 commandment against adultery in the heart with the principle of mens rea from the criminal law. From there we move to a certain view of intentional action ascribed to a character Mann has invented. This is then followed with a rich and penetrating discussions of lying, strict criminal liability, the doctrine of Double Effect (307-9) and other topics illustrated with a half-dozen or so further made-up characters. One realizes one is in the presence of a fertile mind grappling seriously with difficult material, but after a couple of dense pages, one asks oneself: where is this going? What is the thesis? Why is the author making me work so hard? Some of us need to evaluate what we study to see if we should take it on board; this is made difficult if the thesis or theses are not clear.

I had a similar difficulty with the discussion of love in “Theism and the Foundations of Ethics.”

Central to Christian moral teaching are the two greatest commandments. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:35-40) Mann raises the question whether love can be reasonably commanded. Love is an emotion or feeling. As such it is not under the control of the will. And yet we are commanded to love God and neighbor. How is this possible? An action can be commanded, but love is not an action. If love can be commanded, then love is an action, something I can will myself to do; love is not an action, not something I can will myself to do, but an emotional response; ergo, love cannot be commanded.

One way around the difficulty is by reinterpreting what is meant by 'love.' While I cannot will to love you, I can will to act benevolently toward you. And while it makes no sense to command love, it does make sense to command benevolent behavior. "You ought to love her" makes no sense; but "You ought to act as if you love her" does make sense. There cannot be a duty to love, but there might be a duty to do the sorts of things to and for a person that one would do without a sense of duty if one were to love her. One idea, then, is to construe "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" as "Thou shalt act towards everyone as one acts toward those few whom one loves" or perhaps "Thou shalt act toward one's neighbor as if one loved him." The above is essentially Kant's view as Mann reports it (236 ff.) .

As for love of God, to love God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul is to act as if one loves God with one's whole heart, mind, and soul. But how does one do that? One way is by acting as if one loves one's neighbor as oneself. So far, so good. Mann, however, rejects this minimalist account as he calls it. And then the discussion becomes murky for this reviewer despite his having read it four or five times carefully. The murkiness is not alleviated by a segue into a rich and detailed discussion of eros, philia, and agape.

“Modality, Morality, and God” is written in the same meandering style but is much easier to follow. It also has the virtue of epitomizing the entire collection of essays. Its topic is the familiar Euthyphro dilemma: Does God love right actions because they are right, or are they right because God loves them? On the first horn, God is reduced to a mere spokesman for the moral order rather than its source, with negative consequences for the divine sovereignty. On the second horn, the autonomy of the moral order is compromised and made hostage to divine arbitrarity. If the morally obligatory is such because God commands it, then, were God to command injustice, it would be morally obligatory. And if God were to love injustice that would surely not give us a moral reason for loving it. Having set up the problem, Mann should have stated his solution and then explained it. Instead, he makes us slog through his dialectic. Mann's solution is built on the notion that with respect to necessary truths and absolute values God is not free to will otherwise than he wills. In this way the second horn is avoided. But how can God be sovereign over the conceptual and moral orders if he cannot will otherwise than he wills? If I understand the solution, it is that sovereignty is maintained and the first horn is avoided if the constraint on divine freedom is internal to God as it would be if “absolute values are the expression of that [God's] rational autonomy.” (168) Thus God is not free as possessing the liberty of indifference with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, but he is free as the rationally autonomous creative source of necessary truths and absolute values. Thus God is the source of necessary truths and absolute values, not their admirer. Does Mann's solution require the doctrine of divine simplicity? I dont think so. But it is consistent with it. If knowing and willing are identical in God, then the truth value and modal status of necessary truths cannot be otherise in which case God cannot will them to be otherwise.

Divine Simplicity

At the center of Mann's approach to God is the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). But as Mann wryly observes, “The DDS is not the sort of doctrine that commands everyone's immediate assent.” (260) It is no surprise then that the articulation, defense, and application of the doctrine is a recurrent theme of most of the first thirteen essays. Since DDS is the organizing theme of the collection, a critical look at Mann's defense of it is in order.

One of the entailments of the classical doctrine of divine simplicity is that God is what he has. (Augustine, The City of God, XI, 10.) Thus God has omniscience by being (identical to) omniscience. And similarly for the other divine attributes. The Platonic flavor of this is unmistakable. God is not an all-knowing being, but all-knowing-ness itself; not a good being, or even a maximally good being, but Goodness itself; not a wise being or the wisest of beings, but Wisdom itself. Neither is God a being among beings, an ens among entia, but ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent Being. To our ordinary way of thinking this sounds like so much nonsense: how could anything be identical to its attributes? It seems obvious that something that has properties is eo ipso distinct from them. But on another way of thinking, DDS makes a good deal of sense. How could God, the absolute, self-sufficient reality, be just one more wise individual even if the wisest? God is better thought of as the source of all wisdom, as Wisdom itself in its prime instance. Otherwise, God would be dependent on something other than himself for his wisdom, namely, the property of being wise. As Mann points out, the Platonic approach as we find it is the Augustinian and Anselmian accounts of DDS leads to difficulties a couple of which are as follows:

D1. If God = wisdom, and God = life, then wisdom = life. But wisdom and life are not even extensionally equivalent, let alone identical. If Tom is alive, it doesn't follow that Tom is wise. (23)

D2. If God is wisdom, and Socrates is wise by participating in wisdom, then Socrates is wise by participating in God. But this smacks of heresy. No creature participates in God. (23)

Property Instances

Enter property instances. It is one thing to say that God is wisdom, quite another to say that God is God's wisdom. God's wisdom is an example of a property instance. And similarly for the other divine attributes. God is not identical to life; God is identical to his life. Suppose we say that God = God's wisdom, and God = God's life. It would then follow that God's wisdom = God's life, but not that God = wisdom or that wisdom = life.

So if we construe identity with properties as identity with property instances, then we can evade both of (D1) and (D2). Mann's idea, then, is that the identity claims made within DDS should be taken as Deity-instance identities (e.g., God is his omniscience) and as instance-instance identities (e.g., God's omniscience is God's omnipotence), but not as Deity-property identities (e.g., God is omniscience) or as property-property identities (e.g., omniscience is omnipotence). Support for Mann's approach is readily available in the texts of the doctor angelicus. (24) Aquinas says things like, Deus est sua bonitas, "God is his goodness."

But what exactly is a property instance? If the concrete individual Socrates instantiates the abstract property wisdom, then two further putative items come into consideration. One is the (Chisholmian-Plantingian as opposed to Bergmannian-Armstrongian) state of affairs, Socrates' being wise. Such items are abstract, i.e., not in space or time. The other is the property instance, the wisdom of Socrates. Mann rightly holds that they are distinct. All abstract states of affairs exist, but only some of them obtain or are actual. By contrast, all property instances are actual: they cannot exist without being actual. The wisdom of Socrates is a particular, an unrepeatable item, just as Socrates is, and the wisdom of Socrates is concrete (in space and/or time) just as Socrates is. If we admit property instances into our ontology, then the above two difficulties can be circumvented. Or so Mann maintains.

Could a Person be a Property Instance?

But then other problems loom. One is this. If the F-ness of God = God, if, for example, the wisdom of God = God, then God is a property instance. But God is a person. From the frying pan into the fire? How could a person be a property instance? The problem displayed as an inconsistent triad:

a. God is a property instance.

b. God is a person.

c. No person is a property instance.

Mann solves the triad by denying (c). (37) Some persons are property instances. Indeed, Mann argues that every person is a property instance because everything is a property instance. (38) God is a person and therefore a property instance. If you object that persons are concrete while property instances are abstract, Mann's response is that both are concrete. (37) To be concrete is to be in space and/or time. Socrates is concrete in this sense, but so is his being sunburned.

If you object that persons are substances and thus independent items while property instances are not substances but dependent on substances, Mann's response will be that the point holds for accidental property instances but not for essential property instances. Socrates may lose his wisdom but he cannot lose his humanity. Now all of God's properties are essential: God is essentially omniscient, omnipotent, etc. So it seems to Mann that "the omniscience of God is not any more dependent on God than God is on the omniscience of God: should either cease to be, the other would also." (37) This is scarcely compelling: x can depend on y even if both are necessary beings. Both the set whose sole member is the number 7 and the number 7 itself are necessary beings, but the set depends on its member both for its existence and its necessity, and not vice versa. Closer to home, Aquinas held that some necessary beings have their necessity from another while one has its necessity in itself. I should think that the omniscience of God is dependent on God, and not vice versa. Mann's view, however, is not unreasonable. Intuitions vary.

Mann's argument for the thesis that everything is a property instance involves the notion of a rich property. The rich property of an individual x is a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are all and only the essential and accidental properties, some of them temporally indexed, instantiated by x throughout x's career. (38) Mann tells us that for anything whatsoever there is a corresponding rich property. From this he concludes that "everything is a property instance of some rich property or other." (38) It follows that every person is a property instance. The argument seems to be this:

A. For every concrete individual x, there is a corresponding rich property R. Therefore,

B. For every concrete individual x, x is a property instance of some rich property or other. Therefore,

C. For every concrete individual x, if x is a person, then x is a property instance.

I am having difficulty understanding this argument. The move from (A) to (B) smacks of a non sequitur absent some auxiliary premise. I grant arguendo that for each concrete individual x there is a corresponding rich property R. And I grant that there are property instances. Thus I grant that, in addition to Socrates and wisdom, there is the wisdom of Socrates. Recall that this property instance is not to be confused with the abstract state of affairs, Socrates' being wise. From what I have granted it follows that for each x there is the rich property instance, the R-ness of x. But how is it supposed to follow that everything is a property instance? Everything instantiates properties, and in this sense everything is an instance of properties; but this is not to say that everything is a property instance. Socrates instantiates a rich property, and so is an instance of a property, but it doesn't follow that Socrates is a property instance. Something is missing in Mann's argument. Either that, or I am missing something.

There is of course no chance that Professor Mann is confusing being an instance of a property with being a property instance. If a instantiates F-ness, then a is an instance of the property F-ness; but a is not a property instance as philosophers use this phrase: the F-ness of a is a property instance. So what do we have to add to Mann's argument for it to generate the conclusion that every concrete individual is a property instance? How do we validate the inferential move from (A) to (B)? Let 'Rs' stand for Socrates' rich property. We have to add the claim that there is nothing one could point to that could distinguish Socrates from the property instance generated when Socrates instantiates Rs. Rich property instances are a special case of property instances. Socrates cannot be identical to his wisdom because he can exist even if his wisdom does not exist. And he cannot be identical to his humanity because there is more to Socrates that his humanity, even though he cannot exist wthout it. But since Socrates' rich property instance includes all his property instances, why can't Socrates be identical to this rich property instance? And so Mann's thought seems to be that there is nothing that could distinguish Socrates from his rich property instance. So they are identical. And likewise for every other individual. But I think this is mistaken. Consequently, I think it is a mistake to hold that every person is a property instance. I give three arguments.

Rich Properties and Haecceity Properties

Socrates can exist without his rich property; ergo, he can exist without his rich property instance; ergo, Socrates cannot be a rich property instance or any property instance. The truth of the initial premise is fallout from the definition of 'rich property.' The R of x is a conjunctive property each conjunct of which is a property of x. Thus Socrates' rich property includes (has as a conjunct) the property of being married to Xanthippe. But Socrates might not have had that property, whence it follows that he might not have had R. (If R has C as a conjunct, then necessarily R has C as a conjunct, which implies that R cannot be what it is without having exactly the conjuncts it in fact has. An analog of mereological essentialism holds for conjunctive properties.) And because Socrates might not have had R, he might not have had the property instance of R. So Socrates cannot be identical to this property instance.

What Mann needs is not a rich property, but an haecceity property: one that individuates Socrates across every possible world in which he exists. His rich property, by contrast, individuates him in only the actual world. In different worlds, Socrates has different rich properties. And in different worlds, Socrates has different rich property instances. It follows that Socrates cannot be identical to, or even necessarily equivalent to, any rich property instance. An haecceity property, however, is a property Socrates has in every world in which he exists, and which he alone has in every world in which he exists. Now if there are such haecceity properties as identity-with-Socrates, then perhaps we can say that Socrates is identical to a property instance, namely, the identity-with-Socrates of Socrates. Unfortunately, there are no haecceity properties as I and others have argued.¹ So I conclude that concrete individuals cannot be identified with property instances, whence follows the perhaps obvious proposition that no person is a property instance, not God, not me, not Socrates.

The Revenge of Max Black

Suppose we revisit Max Black's indiscernible iron spheres. There are exactly two of them, and nothing else, and they share all monadic and relational properties. (Thus both are made of iron and each is ten meters from an iron sphere.) There are no properties to distinguish them, and of course there are no haecceity properties. So the rich property of the one is the same as the rich property of the other. It follows that the rich property instance of the one is identical to the rich property instance of the other. But there are two spheres, not one. It follows that neither sphere is identical to its rich property instance. So again I conclude that individuals are not rich property instances.

If you tell me that the property instances are numerically distinct because the spheres are numerically distinct, then you presuppose that individuals are not rich property instances. You presuppose a distinction between an individual and its rich property instance. This second argument assumes that Black's world is metaphysically possible and thus that the Identity of Indiscernibles is not metaphysically necessary. A reasonable assumption!

The Revenge of Josiah Royce

Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin. Now it is a fact that I love myself. But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally. For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do. But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil. Suppose God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go. I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' So I don't love Phil equally even though he has all the same properties that I have. I prefer myself and love myself just because I am myself. My Being exceeds my being a rich property instance.

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties. For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other. This would make no sense if the Being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties. In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also as a unique existent individual who cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual. And the same goes for Phil: he loves himself as a unique individual. Each of us loves himself as a unique individual numerically distinct from his indiscernible twin.

Classical theism is a personalism: God is a person and we, as made in the image and likeness of God, are also persons. God keeps us in existence by knowing us and loving us. God is absolutely unique and each of us is unique as, and only as, the object of divine love. The divine love penetrates to the very ipseity and haecceity of me and my indiscernible twin, Phil. God loves us as individuals, as essentially unique (Josiah Royce). But this is not possible if we are reducible to rich property instances. I detect a tension between the personalism of classical theism and the view that persons are property instances.

The Dialectic in Review

One of the entailments of DDS is that God is identical to his attributes, such defining properties as omniscience, omnipotence, etc. This view has its difficulties, so Mann takes a different tack: God is identical to his property instances. This implies that God is a property instance. But God is a person and it is not clear how a person could be a property instance. Mann takes the bull by the horns by boldly arguing that every concrete individual is a property instance — a rich property instance — and that therefore every person is a property instance, including God. The argument was found to be uncompelling for the three reasons given. Mann's problems stem from an attempt to adhere to a non-constituent ontology in explication of a doctrine that was developed within, and presumably only makes sense within, a constituent ontology. Too much indebted to A. Plantinga's important but wrong-headed critique of DDS in Does God Have a Nature?, Mann thinks that a shift to property instances will save the day while remaining within Plantinga's nonconstituent ontological framework.² But God can no more be identical to a concrete property instance than he can to an abstract property.

1 William F. Vallicella, A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series #89, 2002, pp. 99-104. See also Hugh J. McCann, Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Indiana UP, 2012, pp. 86-87. See my review article, "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 149-161.

2 See my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry, “Divine Simplicity,” section 3.

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 will offer some comments on these topics and perhaps get around to divine simplicity later.

Fr. Kimel writes,

Why is it obvious to [David Bentley] Hart, when it is not obvious to so many modern theologians and philosophers, that a proper understanding of divinity entails divine simplicity? Earlier in his book Hart invites us to consider with wonder the very fact of existence. “How odd it is, and how unfathomable,” he muses, “that anything at all exists; how disconcerting that the world and one’s consciousness of it are simply there, joined in a single ineffable event. … Every encounter with the world has always been an encounter with an enigma that no merely physical explanation can resolve” (pp. 88-89). The universe poses the question “why?” and in so posing this question, it reveals to us its absolute contingency. The universe need not have been. [Emphasis added.]“Nothing within the cosmos contains the ground of its existence” (p. 92):

All things that do not possess the cause of their existence in themselves must be brought into existence by something outside themselves. Or, more tersely, the contingent is always contingent on something else. This is not a difficult or rationally problematic proposition. The complications lie in its application. Before all else, however, one must define what real contingency is. It is, first, simply the condition of being conditional: that is, the condition of depending upon anything external or prior or circumambient in order to exist and to persist in being. It is also mutability, the capacity to change over time, to move constantly from potential to actual states, and to abandon one actual state in favor of another. It is also the condition of being extended in both space and time, and thus of being incapable of perfect “self-possession” in some absolute here and now. It is the capacity and the tendency both to come into and pass out of being. It is the condition of being composite, made up of and dependent upon logically prior parts, and therefore capable of division and dissolution. It is also, in consequence, the state of possessing limits and boundaries, external and internal, and so of achieving identity through excluding—and thus inevitably, depending upon—other realities; it is, in short, finitude. (pp. 99-100)

And now some comments of mine.

Strictly speaking, the universe does not pose any questions; we pose, formulate, and try to answer questions. I share with Hart, Wittgenstein, et al. the sense of wonder that anything at all exists. But this sense of wonder is ours, not the universe's. We sometimes express this sense of wonder in a grammatically interrogative sentence, 'Why does/should anything at all exist?'
But please note that this expression of wonder, although grammatically interrogative, is not the same as the explanation-seeking why-question, Why does anything at all exist? And again, this is a question we ask; it is not one that the universe asks.
Nor does the universe reveal to us its absolute contingency by asking this question: it does not ask the question. We ask the explanation-seeking why-question, and in asking it we presuppose that the universe is contingent, that it "need not have been," that it is not necessary. For if the universe were necessary, it would make little or no sense to ask why it exists.
But is the universe contingent? Its contingency does not follow from the fact that we presuppose it to be contingent. But for the sake of this discussion I will just assume that the universe is contingent. It is, after all, a reasonable assumption.
But what is it to be contingent? There seems to be two nonequivalent definitions of 'contingency' at work above. I will call them the modal definition and the dependency definition.
X is modally contingent =df x exists in some but not all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds. But since possible worlds jargon is very confusing to many, I will also put the definition like this: X is modally contingent =df x is possibly nonexistent if existent and possibly existent if nonexistent. For example, I am modally contingent because I might not have existed: my nonexistence is metaphysically possible. Unicorns, on the other hand, are also modally contingent items because they are possibly existent despite their actual nonexistence. This is what Aquinas meant when he said that the contingent is what is possible to be and possible not to be. Note that the contingent and the actual are not coextensive. Unicorns are contingent but not actual, and God and the number 9 are actual but not contingent. If you balk at the idea that unicorns are contingent, then I will ask you: Are they then necessary beings? Or impossible beings? Since they can't be either, then they must be contingent.
Now for the dependency definition. X is dependently contingent =df there is some y such that (i) x is not identical to y; (ii) necessarily, if x exists, then y exists; (iii) y is in some sense the ground or source of x's existence. We need something like the third clause in the definiens for the following reason. Any two distinct necessary beings will satisfy the first two clauses. Let x be the property of being prime and y the number 9. The two items are distinct and it is necessarily the case that if being prime exists, then 9 exists. But we don't want to say that the the property is contingently dependent upon the number.
The two definitions of 'contingency' are not equivalent. What is modally contingent may or may not be dependently contingent. Bertrand Russell and others have held that the universe exists as a matter of brute fact. (Cf. his famous BBC debate with Fr. Copleston.) Thus it exists and is modally contingent, but does not depend on anything for its existence, and so is not dependently contingent, contingent on something. It is not a contradiction, or at least not an obvious contradiction, to maintain that the universe is modally contingent but not depend on anything distinct from itself. 'Contingent' and 'contingent upon' must not be confused. On the other hand, Aquinas held that there are two sorts of necessary beings, those that have their necessity from another and those that have their necessity in themselves. God, and God alone, has his necessity in himself, whereas Platonica have their necessity from God. That is to say that they derive their esse from God; they depend for their existence of God despite their metaphysical necessity. If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then the denizens of the Platonic menagerie would not exist either. It follows that Platonica are dependently contingent.
So I would urge that it is not the case that, as Hart says, "the contingent is always contingent on something else." Or at least that is not obviously the case: it needs arguing. Hart appears to be confusing the two senses of 'contingency' and making things far too easy on himself. The following is a bad argument: The universe is contingent; the contingent, by definition, is contingent on something else; ergo the universe is contingent on something else, and this all men call God. It is a bad argument because it either equivocates on 'contingency,' or else the second premise is false. I am not sure that Hart endorses this argument. I am sure, however, that it is a bad argument.

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 worlds, there is exactly one actual world and that this world of me and my world mates is the world that happens to be actual. (Think of the actual world as the total way things are, and of a merely possible world as a total way things might have been. For a quick and dirty primer, see Some Theses on Possible Worlds.)

But not only do I have insufficient evidence for these two beliefs, it looks as if I have no evidence at all. And yet I feel wholly entitled to my acceptance of them and in breach of no plausible ethics of belief, assuming there is such a subject as the ethics of belief.

Consider the following argument that I adapt from D. M. Armstrong, who borrowed it from Donald C. Williams:

1. Exactly one of the infinity of possible worlds is actual.

2. This world of me and my mates is a possible world.

Therefore, very probably,

3. This world of me and my mates is merely possible.

This is an inductive argument, but a very strong one. While it does not necessitate its conclusion, it renders the conclusion exceedingly likely. For if there is an infinity of worlds, how likely is it that mine is the lucky one?

And yet the conclusion is absurd, or to be precise: manifestly false. Is it not perfectly obvious that this world of ours and everything in it is actual? I am convinced that I am actual, and that all this stuff I am interacting with is actual. I am sitting in an actual chair in an actual room which is lit by an actual sun, etc.

But how do I know this? What is my evidence? There are no facts known to me that are better known than the fact that I am actual (that I actually exist). So my evidence cannot consist of other facts. Is it self-evident that I am actual? You could say this, but how do I know, given the above argument, that my actuality is objectively self-evident as opposed to merely subjectively self-evident? Subjective self-evidence is epistemically worthless, while objective self-evidence is not to be had in the teeth of the above argument. No doubt I seem to myself to be actual. But that subjective seeming does not get the length of objective self-evidence. I now argue as follows:

4. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe anything on no evidence.

5. I have no evidence that me and my world are actual.

6. It is not wrong to believe what is obviously true.

7. It is obviously true that I am actual.

Therefore, contra Clifford,

8. There are some things it is not wrong to believe on insufficient evidence.

This is not a compelling argument, but it is a very powerful one. Not compelling because the Cliffordian extremist could bite the bullet by denying (7). He might say that the ethics of belief enjoins us to suspend belief on the question whether one is actual.

Now this is psychologically impossible, for me anyway. But apart from this impossibility, it is surely better known that I am actual than that Clifford's extreme thesis is true.

There are other obvious problems with the thesis. Any tyro in philosophy should see right away that it is self-vitiating. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe Clifford's thesis on insufficient evidence. But what conceivable evidence could one have for it? None that I can see. It is not only a normative claim, but one stuffed with universal quantifiers. Good luck! If you say that the thesis needn't be taken as applying to itself, then other problems will arise that you can work out for yourself. Why do I have to do all the thinking?

Note also that if you take Clifford's thesis to heart you will have to suspend belief on all sorts of questions outside of religion, questions in ethics, politics, economics, climatology, etc., questions you have extremely firm opinions about. The practical upshot, if one were consistent, would probably be a full retreat into Skeptic ataraxia. At least until the political authorities came to put you in prison. Then you would begin believing that some things are just and some are not, etc., and damn the insufficiency or nonexistence of the evidence for the contentious beliefs.

Our doxastic predicament is a bitch, ain't she? Well, what do you want for a Cave?

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 more eloquently than I can:

From an Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view, the possible worlds analysis of essence has things backwards: we need to know what the essence of a thing is, before we can know what it would be like in various possible worlds; talk of possible worlds, if legitimate at all, must get explained in terms of essence, not essence in terms of possible worlds ( Aquinas, iBooks edition, page 90).

I think the modal characterization will be a dead end for us.

Response

Two points. First, I do not understand how one could characterize the essential versus accidental distinction except modally. Second, a modal characterization need not be in terms of so-called 'possible worlds.' One should not suppose that a characterization is modal if and only if it is in terms of possible worlds.

First point first. I am a blogger and a native Californian. I might not have been either. So being a blogger and being a native Californian are accidental properties of me. I could have existed without possessing these properties. But I could not have existed without being human. So being human is an essential property of me. Generalizing, if P is an essential property of x, then x must have P, it cannot not have P. If P is an accidental property of x, then x need not have P, it could lack P. And conversely in both cases.

Note that I had to use modal words to characterize the distinction: 'might,' 'could,' 'must,' 'need not,' 'cannot.' I conclude that the accidental-essential distinction is irreducibly modal: it cannot be made except modally. It is indeed essentially modal!

To appreciate this, consider the first two accidental properties I mentioned. I was not always a blogger: speaking tenselessly, there are times at which I am not a blogger. But I was always and will always be a native Californian. Speaking tenselessly again, there are no times at which I am not a native Californian.* It follows that we cannot define an essential (accidental) property of x as a property x has (does not have) at every time at which it exists. The distinction cannot be made in temporal terms; one needs to employ modal language.

If a thing has a property essentially, then it has the property at every time at which it exists. But not conversely: if a thing has a property at every time at which it exists, it does not follow that it has the property essentially. So again it should be clear that the distinction in question is ineliminably modal.

I should make it clear that the modality in question here is non-epistemic/non-doxastic. Suppose Tom died an hour ago, unbeknownst to me. I ask you, "Is Tom teaching now?" You say, "Could be!" But of course it can't be that he is teaching now if he is dead now. You are not saying that it is (really) possible that he be teaching now; you are saying that his teaching now is logically consistent with what you know or believe, that it is not ruled out by what you know/believe.

Second point second. From what I have written it should be clear that we don't need the jargon of possible worlds to talk modally. But it is a very useful and graphic way of talking. Accordingly,

D1. P is an accidental property of x =_df there are possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P.

D2. P is an essential property of x =_df there are no possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P.

We can add a third definition:

D3. P is a necessary property of x =_df there are no possible worlds in which x exists but does not instantiate P, and x exists in every possible world. Example: Omniscience is a necessary property of God: he has it in every world in which he exists, and, since he is a necessary being, he exists in every world. Non-theological example: Being prime is a necessary property of the number 7: 7 has it in every metaphysically possible world in which it exists, and it exists in every such world.

The above definitions do not sanction the reduction of the modal to the non-modal. For modal terms appear on both sides of the biconditionals. Nor could we say that the right-hand sides explicates or analyzes the left-hand sides. So I agree with Feser as quoted above. What is first in the order of metaphysical explanation is a thing's being essentially thus and so or accidentally thus and so. We can then go on to represent these states of affairs in possible worlds terms, but we need not do so.

Jenner and Dolezal. Is Jenner essentially male? I should think so. Being male is a biological determination. It can be spelled out in terms of sex chromosomes. They are different in males and females. Jenner as he is today is a sort of super-transvestite: he is not just a male in women's clothing, but a male who has had his body surgically altered to have female anatomical features. But he is still male. How could he be a woman? You can't be a woman without first being a girl, and he was never a girl.

If you deny that Jenner is essentially biologically male, will you also deny that he is essentially biologically human? If not, why not? If literal sex change is possible, is species change possible?

Is Rachel Dolezal essentially Caucasian? Well, of course. Race, like sex, is biologically based. It is not something you choose. Nor is it a social construct. Barack Obama thinks that we Americans have racism in our DNA. That's bullshit, of course. There is nothing biological about being a racist. But there is something biological about race. You can be a traitor to your country, but not to your race.

Biology matters! And so does clear thinking and honest talk. Obama take note.

______________________

*Ignoring the fact, if it is a fact, that I existed pre-natally. If this wrinkle troubles you, I can change my example.

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,

In the contest between theism and metaphysical naturalism we have only four possible scenarios:

1st. An uncaused and necessary universe: It doesn't exist by another being and it cannot cease to exist (absolute and eternal universe).

BV: This is indeed a doxastic possibility. (By calling the possibility doxastic, I leave it open whether it is a real possibility.) But one ought to distinguish between omnitemporality and eternality. The omnitemporal exists at every time, and is therefore 'in time.' The eternal does not exist 'in time.' A universe that cannot cease to exist is in time and therefore not eternal. This could be a merely terminological matter.

2nd. A caused and necessary universe: It exists by another being but it cannot cease to exist (infinite series of universes).

BV: It is true that what is caused to exist is caused by another, since nothing can cause itself to exist, not even God. To say that God is causa sui, then, does not mean that he causes himself; it means that he is not caused by another. 'Causa sui,' shall we say, is a privative expression. So far, so good.

But Carillo may be conflating the necessary with the omnitemporal. To say that a universe is necessary is to make a modal claim, one that is much stronger than the merely temporal claim that the universe in question exists at every time. Suppose time is actually infinite in both past and future directions and that the universe (or a universe) exists at every time. Then the universe is omnitemporal: it exists at every time. But it doesn't follow that the universe is necessary. Metaphysical necessity is a modal, not temporal notion. The necessary is that which cannot not exist. An omnitemporal universe could well be contingent, i.e., possibly nonexistent.

In the jargon of 'possible worlds,' a necessary being is one that exists in all possible worlds. An omnitemporal being is one that exists at every time in a world in which there is time. Clearly, if x is omnitemporal, it does not follow that x is necessary.

3rd. An uncaused and contingent universe: It doesn't exist by another being but it can cease to exist (universe from nothing).

BV: But even if an uncaused universe could NOT cease to exist, it might still be contingent. Suppose that there is an uncaused universe U which is such that: if it exists, then it cannot cease to exist. U's being contingent is not ruled out. If it is necessary that U continue to exist if it does exist,it does not follow that U necessarily exists. For there might not have been that universe at all.

4th. A caused and contingent universe: It exists by another being and it can cease to exist (created universe).

BV: But again, if U exists ab alio, this is logically consistent with U's never ceasing to exist. Suppose God creates a universe which has the essential property of being omnitemporal. He creates a universe out of nothing that exists at every time. Since it exists at every time, there is no time at which it does not exist. And because there is no time at which U does not exist, it never ceases to exist. (If x ceases to exist, then there are two times, t and t*, t < t*, such that x exists at t but does not exist at t*.) So a universe can depend for its existence on God even if it cannot cease to exist.

The first three options characterize atheism/naturalism, while the last one is peculiar to theism. But are they equally rational? Definitely not.

BV: A minor point is that atheism and naturalism are not the same. The latter entails the former, but the former does not entail the latter. (The case of McTaggart, atheist but non-naturalist).

Despite my criticism above, the three naturalist options Carillo lists do seem to exhaust the possibilities if we assume that a metaphysical naturalist is also a metaphysical realist, an assumption which is quite 'natural.' But if one were a naturalist and some sort of anti-realist or idealist, that would be a further option.

Now how does Carillo exclude the third option? He writes:

It looks like the 3rd possibility is the weakest, since nothingness cannot create anything at all. The act of creation, like any other act of producing something, presupposes that the creator and the creature exist simultaneously at least in some moment. However, by its very notion, nothingness cannot exist simultaneously with the universe at any moment. Therefore, a universe from nothing is impossible . . . .

This is entirely too quick. True, nothingness cannot create anything. But someone who holds that the universe just exists as a matter of brute fact, i.e., contingently without cause or reason, is not committed to maintaining that nothingness has creative power. As I recall from Russell's debate with Copleston, Russell ends up saying that the universe just exists and that is all! That is not a good answer, in my opinion, but one cannot refute it by pointing out that nothingness cannot create anything. The whole point of naturalism is that there are neither creatures nor creator.

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 on the whole thing, which can be found here, but I will remark critically, and I hope helpfully, on his modal axioms.

Axiom 1

An opposite of what is impossible is either possible and not necessary, impossible or necessary (what is impossible is opposed to everything).

Better: What is not impossible is either possible but not necessary, or possible and necessary.

Example: I am not impossible because I am possible but not necessary. God and the number 7 are possible and necessary.

Axiom 2

An opposite of what is possible and not necessary is either possible and not necessary or impossible (what is possible is opposed to everything, except to what is necessary).

Incoherent as it stands.

The possible is the opposite of the impossible. That is, x is possible iff x is not impossible. The possible divides into the necessary and the contingent. The contingent divides into the actual but possibly nonexistent and the nonactual but possibly existent.

For example, I am contingent and so is a talking donkey. The difference is that I am actual but possibly nonexistent while the talking donkey is not actual but possibly existent.

Of course, the modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.

Axiom 3

An opposite of what is necessary is impossible (what is necessary is concomitant with what is possible and what is necessary, and only is opposed to what is impossible).

Incorrect. What is not necessary is either impossible or contingent. Possibility and impossibility are opposites. Necessity and impossibility are not opposites. Why not? Because the contingent is neither necessary nor impossible.

In the patois of 'possible worlds': the contingent is that which exists (or is true in the case of propositions) in some but not all possible worlds, whereas the necessary exists or else is true in all worlds and the impossible in none.

This patois is a very useful façon de parler for rendering modal relationships graphic.

Axiom 4

What is not necessary is contingent.

Incorrect. What is not necessary is either contingent or impossible. For example, I am not necessary because I am contingent. A round square is not necessary because it is impossible.

Axiom 5

What is contingent is either possible or impossible.

Incorrect. What is contingent is possible but not necessary. The impossible exists or else is true in no possible world whereas the contingent exists or else is true in some but not all possible worlds.

Or think of it this way. The contingent is either actual or unactual, and if actual, then possibly nonexistent, and if unactual, then possibly existent. For example, your humble correspondent is contingent and actual, hence possibly nonexistent, while a flying armadillo is contingent and unactual, hence possibly existent.

Axiom 6

What is not impossible is possible.

Correct!

Axiom 7

Everything that exists does so by itself or by another being.

Correct!

Axiom 8

God, the universe, and nothingness, if possible, are the only possible beings.

Incorrect or at least highly controversial. Many philosophers maintain, with good reason, that there are so-called 'abstract objects,' all or most of which are necessary beings. (Candidates: properties, propositions, numbers, sets.) Now everything necessary is possible. So these abstract objects are possible beings. Therefore, there are possible beings that are distinct from God and the universe.

Second, nothing is in no sense a being. Hence it cannot be a possible being. It is, however, at least a question whether there could have been nothing at all. I examine this question in the entry referenced below.

UPDATE 2/26: David Gordon writes,

You are of course right that nothing is both contingent and impossible; but this does not show that Axiom 5 is incorrect. "What is contingent is possible" is true; and from this "What is contingent is either possible or impossible" follows. If, as I gather from your account, Carillo denies that the class of impossible contingent things is empty, he is mistaken, but his axiom isn't. One can object to it that it isn't an axiom, as its truth depends on the truth of "What is contingent is possible." This is probably too trivial a point to have written to you about, but I pass it along anyway.

The problem is the ambiguity of Carillo's formulation. I took him to be saying that some contingent beings are possible while other are impossible — which is surely false.

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 possible that there be nothing at all? Could there have been nothing at all? If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which respectively imply that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists: □(∃x)(x exists).

2. Something necessarily exists: (∃x)□(x exists).

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely. If you confuse them you will be justly taxed with an operator shift fallacy.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea. Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!) I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself. One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything. Then only God would exist. And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all." At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later. The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

I am torn between two positions. On the one it is provable that necessarily something exists. On the other, it is not provable.

Here is one sort of argument for the thesis that necessarily something exists and that it is therefore impossible that there be nothing at all. The argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.

1. There are no propositions. (Assumption for reductio)

2. (1) is either true or false.

3. Whatever is either true or false is a proposition. (This is by definition. Propositions are truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values. They are whatever it is that is appropriately characterizable as either true or false.)

Therefore

4. If (1) is true, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)

Therefore

5. If (1) is false, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)

Therefore

6. Necessarily, there is at least one proposition.

Therefore

7. (1) is necessarily false.

Therefore

8. It is not possible that nothing exists.

Skeptical Rejoinder

I don't buy it. Had there been nothing at all, there would not have been any propositions, any states of affairs, any way things are, any properties, any truth, any Law of Non-Contradiction or Law of Excluded Middle or Principle of Bivalence, any distinction between true and false, any distinctions at all. There would have been just nothing at all. Your proof that this is impossible begs the question by assuming or presupposing the whole interconnected framework of propositions, truth and falsehood, etc., including your modal principles and other logical principles.

You can't prove that there must be something if you presuppose that there must be something. Circular arguments are of course valid, but no circular argument is a proof.

At the very most, what you demonstrate is that WE cannot operate without presupposing the Logical Framework — to give it a name. At the very most, you demonstrate that the Logical Framework (LF) is a transcendental presupposition of OUR discursive activities, in roughly the Kantian sense of 'transcendental.' You do not succeed in demonstrating that Being itself or any being exists independently of us. Your proof may have transcendental import, but it fails to secure ontological import. Why do you think that Being itself, independently of us, is such that necessarily something exists?

For example, you think that there must be a total way things are such that, if there were nothing at all, then that would be the way things are, in which case there would, in the end, be a way things are. But how do you know that? How do you know that your presupposition of a way things are is more than a merely transcendental presupposition as opposed to a structure grounded in the very Being of things independently of us?

I grant you that the LF is necessary, but its necessity is conditional: it depends on us, and we might not have existed. For all you have shown, there could have been nothing at all.

Why does it matter? What's at stake?

Now this is a highly abstract and abstruse debate. Does it matter practically or 'existentially'?

If there could have been nothing at all, then all is contingent and no Absolute exists. An Absolute such as God must be a necessary being. An Absolute functions as the real-ground of the existence, intelligibility, and value of everything distinct from it. If there is no Absolute, then existence is absurd, i.e., without ultimate ground (source and reason), without sense and intelligibility. Now if existence is absurd, then human existence is absurd. So if there could have been nothing at all, then human existence is absurd. This is why our question matters. It matters because it matters whether our existence is absurd.

Mike Valle on Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

Could everything have come into being without a cause? Mike Valle tells me about an annoying interlocutor who thinks it certain that this is impossible because it is certain that ex nihilo nihil fit: from nothing nothing comes. Mike, if I understand him, doubts the certainty of the principle. He reasons: had there been nothing at all, then there would have been nothing to prevent something from arising. In particular, had there been nothing at all, there would have been no such truth as ex nihilo nihil fit.

Mike's reasoning presupposes that it is possible that there be nothing at all. So his suggestion comports well with the Skeptical Rejoinder above.

As for myself, I am left with the thought that is reasonable to hold that there must be something — after all I argued the matter out rigorously — but also reasonable to hold the opposite. This seems to suggest that here we have a question that reason cannot decide. So how do we decide it? By personal decision? By mystical intuition? By acceptance of divine revelation? In some other way? In no way?

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 convinced this is right. Conceivability has a close analogue with perception. If it seems to S that p, then S is prima facie justified in believing that (actually) p. So consider cases of perceptual seemings. Care must be taken to distinguish two forms of negative seemings:

1. It does not seem that p.
2. It seems that ~p.

Clearly, (1) is not properly a seeming at all; it is denying an episode of seeming altogether. If I assert (1), me and a rock are on epistemic par with respect to it seeming to us that p. (2) also faces an obvious problem: how could ~p, a lack or the absence or negation of something, appear to me at all? Photons do not bounce off of lacks. There are ways around this, but for now I just want to register the distinction between (1) and (2) and the prima facie difficulties with them that do not attend to positive seemings.

BV: Excellent so far, but I have one quibble. Suppose I walk into a coffee house expecting to encounter Pierre. But Pierre is not there; he is 'conspicuous by his absence' as we say. There is a sense in which I perceive his absence, literally and visually, despite the fact that absences are not known to deflect photons. I see the coffee house and the people in it and I see that not one of them is identical to Pierre. So it is at least arguable that I literally see, not Pierre, but Pierre's absence.

Be this as it may. You are quite right to highlight the operator shift as between (1) and (2).

So now consider conceivability. The analogue: If it is conceivable to S that p, then S is prima facie justified in believing that possibly p. Now for our two negative conceivablility claims:

1’. It is not conceivable that p.
2’. It is conceivable that ~p.

Again, (1’) is trivial; it is (2’) we’re interested in. Does (2’) provide prima facie evidence for possibly ~p? It depends. What we do when we try to conceive of something is imagine "in our mind’s eye" a scenario—i.e., a possible world—in which p is the case. So really (2’) translates:

2’’. I can conceive of a possible world in which ~p.

BV: Permit me a second quibble. Although 'conceive' and 'imagine' are often used, even by philosophers, interchangeably, I suggest we not conflate them. I can conceive a chliagon, but I cannot imagine one, i.e., I cannot form a mental image of a thousand-sided figure. We can conceive the unimaginable. But I think we also can imagine the inconceivable. If you have a really good imagination, you can form the mental image of an Escher drawing even though what you are imagining is inconceivable, i.e., not thinkable without contradiction.

More importantly, we should avoid bringing possible worlds into the discussion. For one thing, how do you know that possibilities come in world-sized packages? Possible worlds are maximal objects. How do you know there are any? It also seems question-begging to read (2') as (2'') inasmuch as the latter smuggles in the notion of possibility.

Given that the whole question is whether conceivability either entails or supplies nondemonstrative evidence for possibility, one cannot help oneself to the notion of possibility in explication of (2'). For example, I am now seated, but it is conceivable that I am not now seated: I can think this state of affairs witout contradiction. The question, however, is how I move from conceivability to possibility. How do I know that it is possible that I not be seated now?

It is obvious, I hope, that one cannot just stipulate that 'possible' means 'conceivable.'

(2'') seems innocent enough, but whether it gives us prima facie evidence for possibly ~p will depend on what p is; in particular, whether p is contingent or necessary. Consider:

3. There is a possible world in which there are no chipmunks.
4. There is a possible world in which there are no numbers.

(3) seems totally innocent. I can conceive of worlds in which chipmunks exist and others in which they don’t.

BV: It seems you are just begging the question. You are assuming that it is possible that there be no chipmunks. The question is how you know that. By conceiving that there are no chipmunks?

(4), on the other hand, is suspect. This is because numbers, unlike chipmunks, if they exist at all exist necessarily; that is, if numbers do not exist in one world they do not exist in any. Thus, what (4) really says is

(4*) There is no possible world in which there are numbers.

BV: (4) and (4*) don't say the same thing; I grant you, however, that the first entails the second.

With its conceivability counterpart being

(4’) I cannot conceive of a possible world in which there are numbers.

which looks a lot like the above illicit negative seemings: negations or absences of an object of conceivability. But my not conceiving of something doesn't entail anything! But suppose we waive that problem, and instead interpret (4’) as a positive conceiving:

(4’’) It is conceivable to me that numbers are impossible

The problem now is that (4’’) is no longer a modest claim that warrants prima facie justification. In fact, (4*) has a degree of boldness that invites further inquiry: presumably there is some obvious reason—a contradiction, category mistake, indelible opacity—etc. apparent to me that has led me to think numbers are impossible. But if that’s so, then surely my critic will want to know what exactly I’m privy to that he isn’t.

Mutatis mutandis in the case of God qua necessary being.

Thoughts?

BV: You lost me during that last stretch of argumentation. I am not sure you appreciate the difficulty. It can be expressed as the following reductio ad absurdum:

a. Conceivability entails possibility. (assumption for reductio)

b. It is conceivable that God not exist. (factual premise)

c. It is conceivable that God exist. (factual premise)

d. God is a necessary being. (true by Anselmian definition)

Ergo

e. It is possible that God not exist and it is possible that God exist. (a, b, c)

Ergo

f. God is a contingent being. (e)

Ergo

g. God is a necessary being & God is a contingent being. (d, f, contradiction)

Ergo

~a. It is not the case that conceivability entails possibility.

Is short, as John the Commenter has already pointed out, it seems that the Anselmian theist ought to reject conceivability-implies-possibility.

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 than plausible, if they are self-evident or undeniable, then we are in the presence of an aporia in the strict sense. (From the Greek a-poros, no way.) Aporiai are intellectual impasses, or, to change the metaphor, intellectual knots that we cannot untie. Here is a candidate:

1. God is a perfect being.

2. A perfect being is one that exists necessarily if it exists at all.

3. Whatever exists exists contingently.

It is easy to see that the members of this trio are collectively inconsistent. So the trio is an antilogism. Now corresponding to every antilogism there are three valid syllogisms. (A syllogism is deductive argument having exactly two premises.) Thus one can argue validly from any two of the propositions to the negation of the remaining one. Thus there are three ways of solving the antilogism:

A. Reject (1). The price of rejection is high since (1) merely unpacks the meaning of 'God' if we think of God along Anselmian lines as "that than which no greater can be conceived," or as the greatest conceivable being. It seems intuitively clearly that an imperfect being could not have divine status. In particular, nothing imperfect could be an appropriate object of worship. To worship an imperfect being would be idolatry.

B. Reject (2). The price of rejection is steep here too since (2) seems merely to unpack the meaning of 'perfect being.' Intuitively, contingent existence is an imperfection.

C. Reject (3). This is a more palatable option, and many will solve the antilogism in this way. If ~(3), then there are noncontingent beings. A noncontingent being is either necessary or impossible. So if God is noncontingent, it does not follow that God is necessary. He could be impossible.

Unfortunately, the rejection of (3) is not without its problems.

According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing. This includes God.

Try it for yourself. Think of God together with all his omni-attributes and then think of God as not existing. Our atheist pals have no trouble on this score. The nonexistence of God is thinkable without logical contradiction.

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.

The price of rejecting (3) is that one must deny that conceivability entails possibility.

Is our antilogism an aporia in the strict sense? I don't know.

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 the same of a merely possible man (denying premise 6 in your post More on Ficta and Impossibilia): he argues that because nonexistents are necessarily incomplete, they are not individuals but schemata for individuals. In response to your post Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization Rescher would probably say that the "table" before your mind is not an individual table but a schema for an individual table, a "schema to which many such individuals might answer" (p. 376). As your concluding apory implies, the argument against the possibility of actualizing Hamlet might apply to any nonexistent. Rescher seems to think it does. It would be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Rescher's essay, but I do see that you're now considering a different problem.

I was aware of this article, but hadn't studied it carefully until today. I thank the reader for reminding me of it. What he says about it is accurate. Herewith, some preliminary comments.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work. I have added comments in red.

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours — the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology. All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.] To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis — assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.] For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance — of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](364, emphasis added)

As my reader is aware, Rescher wants to say about the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance. But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation. The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. He is an impossible item. I am tempted to say that not even divine power could bring about his actualization, any more than it could restore a virgin. But the merely possible is precisely — possibly actual! The merely possible is intrinsically such as to be apt for existence, unlike the purely fictional which is intrinsically such as to be barred from actuality.

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes. Describing the "medieval mainstream," (362) Rescher lumps mere possibillia and pure ficta together as entia rationis. For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27) Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects. Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional. And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality. But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual? Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c. Whatever is real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true. Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is is genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble? I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1. Eliminativism. The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia. One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.

S2. Conceptualism. Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs. There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view. See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3. Actualism/Ersatzism. Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs. One looks for substitute entities to go proxy for the mere possibles. Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn. For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated.

S4. Extreme Modal Realism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. David Lewis. There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta. The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real. But no world is absolutely actual. Each is merely actual at itself.

S5. Theologism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds. Consider the possibility of there being unicorns. This is a mere possibility since it is not actual. But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds. There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say. The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.

4. Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity. For Rescher, "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems — a resolution is automatically available." (371) Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing. Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phaseology. (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses. He gives essentially the following argument on p. 378. This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B. All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C. No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete? Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us. But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible. He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible. Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs. There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds. Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds? I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary. But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having. So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals. But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

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 is not right-handed, it doesn't follow that one is left-handed. One could be ambidexterous or ambisinistrous.) What about the fictional character Hamlet? Is he right-handed or not right-handed? I say he is neither: he is indeterminate with respect to the property of righthandedness. That makes him an incomplete object, one that violates the law of Excluded Middle (LEM), or rather one to which LEM does not apply.

Hamlet (the character, not the play) is incomplete because he has all and only the properties ascribed to him by the author of the play, and the author left Hamlet's handedness unspecified. It is worth noting that Hamlet the play is complete and this holds for each written token of the play, the type of which they are tokens, and each enactment of the play. This is because the play and its enactments are actualia.

But don't we say that Hamlet the play is fictional? We do, but what we mean is not that the play is an object of fiction, but that the people and events depicted therein are fictional. The play is not fictional but entirely real. Of course, there could be a play that is a mere object of fiction: a play within a play. The same holds for novels. My copies of Moby Dick are each of them complete and actual, hence full-fledged citizens of the real, with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto; but Ishmael, Queequeg, and Ahab are not. They are objects of fiction; those books are not. And presumably the type of which they are tokens, though an abstract object, is also actual and complete. A person's reading or 'enactment' of the novel is typically a long, interrupted process; but it too is complete and actual and resident in the real order.

Back to the character Hamlet: he is an incomplete object, having all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play (together with, perhaps, entailments of these properties). London Ed balks at this:

I don't follow this at all. I don't agree with the second sentence "He has all and only ….". Of course Shakespeare said that there was a person called ‘Hamlet’ who had certain properties (e.g. he said that Hamlet was a prince of Denmark. It doesn’t follow that there is someone who has or had such a property. For example, legend says that there was a horse called ‘Pegasus’ that flew. It doesn’t follow that there are or were flying horses.

This objection shows misunderstanding. I did not say or imply that there exists in actuality, outside the mind, a man named 'Hamlet.' The point is rather that when I read the play there appears before my mind a merely intentional object, one that I know is fictional, and therefore, one that I know is merely intentional. If Ed denies this, then he denies what is phenomenologically evident. And, as a matter of method, we must begin with the phenomenology of the situation.

Suppose I write a two-sentence novel:

It was a dark and rainy night. Shakey Jake, life-long insomniac, deciding he needed a nightcap, grabbed his flashlight and his raincoat and headed for the Glass Crutch bar and grill, a local watering hole a half a mile from his house.

Now I couldn't have written that, and you can't understand it, without thinking about various intentional objects that do not exist. Am I saying that there exist objects that do not exist? No, that would be a contradiction. Nor am I committed to saying that there are objects that have mind-independent being but not existence. Furthermore, I am not committed to Meinong's doctrine of Aussersein.

All I am doing is holding fast to a phenomenological datum: when I create a fictional character as I just did when I created Shakey Jake the insomniac, I bring before my mind an intentional object. (The act-object schema strikes me as having pretty good phenomenological credentials, unlike the adverbial schema.) What can we say about this merely intentional object? First, it is no part of the acts through which I think it. My acts of thinking exist in reality, but Shakey Jake does not exist in reality. (This point goes back to Twardowski.) When I think about Hamlet or Don Quixote or Shakey Jake, I am not thinking about my own mind or any state of my mind. I am not thinking about anything real. But it doesn' t follow that I am not thinking of anything.

If Ed denies that there are merely intentional objects, then he is denying what is phenomenologically evident. I take my stand on the terra firma of phenomenological givenness. So for now, and to get on with it, I simply dismiss Ed's objection. To pursue it further would involve us a in a metaphilosophical discussion of the role of phenomenological appeals in philosophical inquiry.

Ficta are Impossibilia

Let us confine ourselves to purely fictional objects and leave out of consideration real individuals who are partially fictionalized in fables, legends, apocryphal stories, so-called historical novels that blend fact and fiction, and the like. One of my theses is that purely fictional objects cannot exist and thus are broadly logically impossible. They are necessarily nonexistent, where the modality in question is broadly logical. It does not follow, however, that pure ficta have no ontological status whatsoever. They have a mode of being that could be called existential heteronomy. On this point I agree with Roman Ingarden, a philosopher who deserves more attention in the Anglosphere than he receives here.

Earlier I gave an argument from incompleteness: the incomplete cannot exist and so are impossible. But now I take a different tack.

Purely fictional objects are most plausibly viewed as made up, or constructed, by novelists, playwrights, et al. It may be that they are constructed from elements that are not themselves constructed, elements such as properties or Castaneda's ontological guises. Or perhaps fictional objects are constructed ex nihilo. Either way, they have no being at all prior to their creation or construction. There was no Captain Ahab before Melville 'cooked him up.' But if Ahab were a merely possible individual, then one could not temporally index his coming to be; he would not come to be, but be before, during, and after Melvlle's writing down his description.

The issue could be framed as follows. Are novels, plays, etc. which feature logically consistent pure ficta, something like telescopes that allow us to peer from the realm of the actual into the realm of the merely possible, both realms being realms of the real? Or are novels, etc. more like mixing bowls or ovens in which ficta are 'cooked up'? I say the latter. If you want, you can say that Melville is describing something when he writes about Ahab, but what he is describing is something he has made up: a merely intentional object that cannot exist apart from the acts of mind trained upon it. He is not describing something that has ontological status apart from his mind and the minds of his readers. He is also not descrbing some real feature or part of himself as subject. So we could say that in describing Ahab he is describing an item that is objectively but not subjectvely mind-dependent.

Here is an Argument from Origin:

1. Pure ficta are made up or constructed via the mental acts and actions of novelists, playwrights, et al.

2. Ahab is a pure fictum.

Therefore

3. Ahab came into being via the mental activity of a novelist or playwright. (from 1,2)

4. No human being comes into being via the mental activity of novelists, et al., but via the uniting of human sperm and human egg.

5. Ahab is not a human being. (from 3, 4)

6. A merely possible human being is a human being, indeed a flesh-and-blood human being, though not an actual flesh-and-blood human being.

Therefore

7. Ahab is not a merely possible human being, but a fictional human being where 'fictional' unlike 'merely possible' functions as an alienans adjective.

This argument does not settle the matter, however, since it is not compelling. A Meinongian or quasi-Meinongian could, with no breach of logical propriety, run the argument in reverse, denying (7) and denying (1). One man's modus ponens, etc.

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 play. Being fictional, he does not actually exist. But one might be tempted to suppose that while there is no man Hamlet in actuality, there could have been, that Hamlet is a possible individual. But far from being possible, Hamlet is impossible. Or so I shall argue.

First we need to agree on some definitions.

D1. x is impossible =_df x cannot exist, i.e., x is necessarily nonexistent.

D2. x is incomplete =_df there is a property P such that x is indeterminate with respect to P, i.e., it is not the case that x instantiates P and it is not the case that x does not instantiate P.

The Main Argument

1. Hamlet is an incomplete object. He has all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play that bears his name. It is neither the case that he eats his eggs with hot sauce nor that he doesn't.

2. Necessarily, for any x, if x is an incomplete object, then x does not exist.

Therefore

3. Necessarily, Hamlet does not exist. (from 1, 2)

Therefore

4. Hamlet is an impossible object. (from 3, D1)

The reasoning is correct and premise (1) is surely true. If you are inclined to reject (2), claiming that it does not hold for quantum phenomena, I will simply sidestep that whole can of worms by inserting 'macroscopic' or 'mesoscopic' or some other suitable qualifier between 'an' and 'incomplete.'

Note that Hamlet is impossible even if the properties he is ascribed in the play are members of a logically consistent set. One could say, with a whiff of paradox, that Hamlet is impossible despite the fact that his properties are compossible. His impossibility follows from his incompleteness. What this shows is that not every impossible object harbors internal contradiction. So there there are at least two types of impossibilia, those whose impossibility derives from inconsistency and those whose impossibility derives from incompleteness. To be admitted to the elite corps of the actual, one must satisfy both LNC and LEM. That the impossible needn't be internally contradictory is an insight I owe to Daniel Novotny who kindly sent me a free copy of his excellent book on the scholasticism of the Baroque era entitled, Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel (Fordham 2013). I am indebted in particular to his discussion on p. 108.

Objection: "Hamlet is possible; it is just that his actualization would have to consist in his completion. Surely God could actualize Shakespeare's Hamlet (the prince, not the play) by appropriately supplementing his property set."

Reply: Suppose God were to try to actualize Hamlet, the very same individual encountered in the play. To do so, God would have to supplement Hamlet's property set, bringing it to completeness. For only that which is wholly determinate can exist in (macroscopic) actuality. But there is more than one way to effect this supplementation. For example, if the fictional Hamlet is indeterminate with respect to whether or not he takes his eggs with hot sauce, an actual Hamlet cannot be. He either eats egggs or he doesn't, and he either takes them with hot sauce or he doesn't.

Let AH1 be hot-sauce Hamlet and AH2 non-hot-sauce Hamlet. Both are complete. Let FH be the incomplete fictional individual in the play.

We may now argue as follows.

If God brings about the actuality of both AH1 and AH2, then, since they are numerically distinct, neither of them can be identical to FH. But God must actualize one or the other if FH is to become actual. If God actualizes one but not the other, then it is possible that he actualize the other but not the the one. But then the actualization of either is contingent. Thus if God actualizes FH as AH1, then, since he could just as well have actualized AH2 as FH, the identity of FH with AH1 is contingent. But identity cannot be contingent: if x = y, then necessarily x = y. Therefore, God can actualize neither and fictional Hamlet is impossibly actual, i.e., impossible.

Here is a third consideration. It seems to be part of the very sense of the phrase 'fictional individual' that such individuals be, well, fictional, that is, irreal or unreal. Now the real includes not only the actual and the necessary, but that which is really possible albeit unactual. Thus real possibilities cannot be made up by minds and so cannot be fictional. Therefore Hamlet, as a fictional being, is not a possible being.

According to Novotny, "Suarez and other Baroque scholastic authors seem to assume without question that consistent fictions, such as Hamlet, might become real beings. This implies that Hamlet is a possible being and that therefore he is a real being. [. . .] For several reasons I do not think that a consistent fiction as such is a real possible being." (108)

I agree, and the arguments above are my way of fleshing out Novotny's misgivings.

Addendum (21 November)

The original main argument above is invalid as a commenter points out. Here is

The Main Argument Repaired

0. Necessarily, for every x, if x is a fictum of a finite mind, then x is incomplete.

0*. Necessarily, Hamlet is a fictum of a finite mind, Shakespeare's. (That very fictional individual could not have been the fictum of any other mind.)

Therefore

1. Necessarily, Hamlet is an incomplete object. He has all and only the properties ascribed to him in the play that bears his name. It is neither the case that he eats his eggs with hot sauce nor that he doesn't. (from 0, 0*)

2. Necessarily, for any x, if x is an incomplete object, then x does not exist.

Therefore

3. Necessarily, Hamlet does not exist. (from 1, 2)

Therefore

4. Hamlet is an impossible object. (from 3, D1)