Modal Matters – Page 5 – Maverick Philosopher

The Sense of Contingency and the Sense of Absurdity

The parallel is fascinating and worth exploring.

According to David Hume, "Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent." (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) I've long believed Hume to be right about this. I would put it this way, trading Latin for plain Anglo-Saxon: Our minds are necessarily such that, no matter what we think of as existing, we can just as easily think of as not existing. This includes God. Now God, to be divine, must be a necessary being, indeed a necessary concretum. (God cannot be an abstract entity.) Therefore, even a necessary being such as God is conceivable or thinkable as nonexistent.

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.*

Note the ambiguity of 'conceivable.' It could mean thinkable, or it could mean thinkable without (internal) logical contradiction. Round squares are conceivable in the first sense but not in the second. If round squares were in no sense conceivable, how could we think about them and pronounce them broadly logically impossible? Think about it!

Now try the experiment with an abstract necessary being such as the number 7 or the proposition *7 is prime.* Nominalists have no trouble conceiving the nonexistence of such Platonica, and surely we who are not nominalists can understand their point of view. In short, absolutely everything can be thought of, without logical contradiction, as not existing.

Humius vindicatus est.

I now define the sense of contingency as the sense that everything is thinkable without logical contradiction as nonexistent. I claim that this sense is essential to the type of mind we have. I also claim that the sense of contingency does not entail that everything is modally contingent, i.e., existent in some but not all metaphysically (broadly logically) possible worlds. So from the mere fact that I can think the nonexistence of God without logical contradiction, it does not follow that God is a contingent being. I further claim that we have a hard-to-resist tendency to conflate illicitly the sense of contingency (precisely as I have just defined it) with genuine modal contingency.

So, if someone argues a contingentia mundi to God as causa prima, he can expect the knee-jerk response: what caused God? Behind that reflexive question is the sense of contingency: if the universe is contingent (because conceivably nonexistent) and needs a cause, then so is anything posited as first cause. What then caused the First Cause? If nothing caused it, the knee-jerk responder continues, then it just exists as a matter of brute fact; and if we can accept brute-factuality at the level of the First Cause, then we can accept it at the level of the universe and be done with this nonsense. We can say, with Russell, that the universe just exists and that's all.

My point is that it is the sense of contingency, together with the illicit conflation just mentioned, that fuels the knee-jerk response to the argument to a causa prima.

The sense of absurdity as described by Thomas Nagel is analogous to the sense of contingency, or so I claim. The sense that our lives are Nagel-absurd does not entail that they are objectively absurd. And yet we are necessarily such that we cannot avoid the sense of Nagel-absurdity. About absolutely everything we can ask: what is the purpose of it? What is it good for? What is the point of it? The subjectively serious, under the aspect of eternity, viewed wth detachment from nowhere, comes to appear objectively gratuitous. This holds for every context of meaning, no matter how wide, including the ultimate context. Suppose the ultimate context is eternal fellowship with God. Reflecting on it from our present perspective, viewing it from outside, we can ask what the point of it would be, just as we can ask what caused God.

The classical answer to 'What caused God?' is that God is a necessary being. He has no external cause or explanation, but his existence is not a brute fact either. God is self-existent or self-grounding or self-explanatory. Nagel has trouble with this idea: "But it's very hard to understand how there could be such a thing." (WDIAM, 99) Why does our man have trouble? Because there is nothing that could put a stop to our explanation-seeking 'Why?' questions. In a sense he is right. The structure of our finite discursive intellects makes it impossible to stop definitively, makes it impossible to have self-evident, question-squelching, positive insight into the absolute metaphysical necessity of God's existence in the way have self-evident positive insight into the impossibility of round squares or the necessity of colors being extended. The best we can do is see the failure of entailment from 'Everything is conceivably nonexistent' to 'Everything is modally contingent.'

Just as Nagel cannot suppress the question 'What explains God?,' he cannot suppress the question 'What is the point of God?' or 'What is the point of fulfilling God's purpose for our lives?' Nagel cannot see how there could be something that gives point to everything else by encompassing it, but has no external point itself. He cannot see how God can be self-purposing, i.e., without external purpose but also not purposeless. Nagel thinks that if the point of our lives is supplied by a pointless God, and a pointless God is acceptable, then we ought to find pointless lives acceptable.

Nagel can't see how the ultimate point could be God or eternal life with God. "Something whose point cannot be questioned from outside because there is no outside?" (100) Given the very structure of our embodied awareness, there is always the possibility of the 'outside view' which then collides with the situated subjective 'inside view.' It is this unavoidable duality within finite embodied consciousness, and essential to it, that makes it impossible for Nagel to accept a self-purposing, self-significant, self-intelligible ultimate context.

So for Nagel objective meaninglessness is the last word. For me it is not: our lives are ultimately and objectively meaningful. But Nagel has a point: we cannot, given the present configuration of finite, discursive, embodied awareness, truly understand with positive insight God's metaphysical necessity or how there could be an ultimate context of existential meaning that is self-grounding axiologically, teleologically, and ontologically.

So I suggest that ultimate felicity and ultimate meaningfulness can be had only by a transfiguration and transformation of our 'present' type of finite, discursive consciousness with its built-in duality of the subjective and the objective.

But I can only gesture in the direction of that Transfiguration. I cannot present it to you while we inhabit the discursive plane. All I can do is point to the Transdiscursive, and motivate the pointing by exfoliating the antinomies and aporiai that remain insoluble this side of the Great Divide.

________________________

*One way to oppose this is via the Anderson-Welty argument lately examined. If the exsistence of God is the ultimate presupposition of the laws of logic, then all reasoning, whether valid or invalid, to God or away from God or neither, and all considerations anent logical possibility, necessity, impossibility, contradiction and the like presuppose the existence of God.

A second way of opposition was tread by me in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence.

Actualist and Presentist Ersatzism and Arguments Against Both

For the actualist, the actual alone exists: the unactual, whether merely possible or impossible, does not exist. The actualist is not pushing platitudes: he is not telling us that the actual alone is actual or that the merely possible is not actual. 'Merely possible' just means 'possible but not actual.' The actualist is saying something non-platitudinous, something that may be reasonably controverted, namely, that only the actual exists: the merely possible and the impossible do not exist.

Analogously for the presentist. For the presentist, the (temporally) present alone exists: the nonpresent, whether past or future, does not exist. The presentist is not pushing the platitude that the past is no longer. He is saying something stronger: the past is not at all.

For the actualist, then, the merely possible does not exist. There just is no such item as the merely possible fat man in my doorway. Nevertheless, it is true, actually true, that there might have been a fat man in my doorway. (My neighbor Ted from across the street is a corpulent fellow; surely he might have come over to pay me a visit. 'Might' as lately tokened is not to be read epistemically.) The just-mentioned truth cannot 'hang in the air'; it must be grounded in some reality. To put it another way, the merely possible — whether a merely possible individual or a merely possible state of affairs — has a 'reality' that we need somehow to accommodate. The merely possible is not nothing. That is a datum, a Moorean fact.

Similarly, it is true now that I hiked yesterday, even if presentism is true and the past does not exist. So there has to be some 'reality' to the past, and we need to find a way to accommodate it. Yesterday's gone, as Chad and Jeremy told us back in '64. Gone but not forgotten: veridically remembered (in part) hence not a mere nothing. That too is a datum.

The data I have just reviewed are expressed in the following two parallel aporetic tetrads, the first modal, the second temporal.

Modal Tetrad

1. The merely possible is not actual.
2. The merely possible is not nothing.
3. To exist = to be actual.
4. To exist = not to be nothing.

Temporal Tetrad

1t. The merely past is not present.
2t. The merely past is not nothing.
3t. To exist = to be present.
4. To exist = not to be nothing.

Each tetrad has limbs that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible. Philosophical problems arise when plausibilities come into logical conflict. The tetrads motivate ersatzism since the first can be solved by adopting actualist ersatzism (also known simply as actualism) and the second by adopting presentist ersatzism. (Note that one could be a presentist without being an ersatzer.)

The ersatzer solution is to deny the first limb of each tetrad by introducing substitute items that 'go proxy' for the items which, on actualism and presentism, do not exist. These substitute items must of course exist while satisfying the strictures of actualism and presentism, respectively. The substitute items must actually exist and presently exist, respectively. So how does it work?

The actualist maintains, most plausibly, that everything is actual. But the merely possible must be accommodated: it is not nothing. The merely possible can be accommodated by introducing actually existent abstract states of affairs and abstract properties. Merely possible concrete states of affairs are actual abstract states of affairs that do not obtain. Merely possible concrete individuals are abstract properties that are not instantiated. Suppose there are n cats. There might have been n +1. The possibility of there being in concrete reality n + 1 cats is an abstract state of affairs that does not obtain, but might have obtained. Suppose you believe that before Socrates came into existence there was the de re possibility that Socrates, that very individual, come into existence. Then, if you are an actualist, you could accommodate the reality of this possibility by identifying the de re possibility of Socrates with an actually existent haecceity property, Socrateity. The actual existence in concrete reality of Socrates would then be the being-instantiated of this haecceity property.

Possible worlds can be accommodated by identifying them with maximal abstract states of affairs or maximal abstract propositions. Some identify worlds with maximally consistent abstract sets, but this proposal faces, I believe, Cantorian difficulties. The main idea, however, is that possible worlds for the actualist ersatzer are maximal abstract objects. Now one of the possible worlds is of course the actual world. It follows immediately that the actual world must not be confused with the concrete universe. It may sound strange, but for the actualist ersatzer, the actual world is an abstract object, a maximal proposition.

The actualist, then, rejects (1) and replaces it with

1*. A merely possible concrete item is an actual abstract object that possibly obtains or possibly is instantiated or possibly is true.

The presentist ersatzer does something similar with (1t). He replaces it with

1t*. A merely past concrete item is a temporally present abstract object that did obtain or was instantiated or was true or had a member.

An Argument Against Actualist Ersatzism

Let's examine the view that possible worlds are maximal abstract propositions. If so, the actual world is the true maximal proposition, and actuality is truth. Given that there is a plurality of worlds, whichever world is actual is contingently actual. So our world, call it 'Charley,' being the one and only (absolutely) actual world, is contingently actual, i.e., contingently true. Contingent affirmative truths, however, need truth-makers. So Charley needs a truth-maker. The truth-maker of Charley is the concrete universe as we know it and love it. Since actuality is truth, the concrete universe is not and cannot be actual.

So the concrete universe exists but is not actual! But this contradicts (3) above, according to which existence is actuality. The actualist ersatzer is committed to all of the following, but they cannot all be true:

5. Actuality is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8. Everything that exists is actual: there are no mere possibilia or impossibilia.
9. The concrete universe exists.

This is an inconsistent pentad because any four of the limbs, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the first four limbs entails the negation of (9).

Curiously, in attempting to solve the modal tetrad, the actualist embraces an inconsistent pentad. Not good!

An Argument Against Presentist Ersatzism

A parallel inconsistent pentad is easily constructed. The target here is the view that times are maximal propositions.

5t. Temporal presentness is truth.
6. Truth is a property of propositions, not of concreta or merelogical sums of concreta.
7. The concrete universe is a concretum or a sum of concreta.
8t. Everything that exists is present: there are no merely past or merely future items.
9. The concrete universe exists.

One sort of presentist erstazer is committed to all five propositions, but they obviously cannot all be true.

Presentism and Actualism, Tenseless Existence and Amodal Existence

John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism. An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful. Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:

P. Only the (temporally) present exists.

A. Only the actual exists.

Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology. After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed. It is clear that no presentist thinks his thesis is a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the the various types of anti-presentism. There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms. This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P). If not present-tensed, then what?

A similar problem arises for the actualist. One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual. If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology. But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean?

We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:

DP. Only the present existed or exists now or will exist.

That is equivalent to saying that if x existed or exists or will exists, then x presently exists. And that is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible. This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:

DA. Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.

This too is false since the merely possible is not actual. It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.

We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.' Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that every happened or will happen is happening right now. He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now. The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment.

Similarly wth the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world. He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual necessary. The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary. The actualist is not a necessitarian.

There is no person like me, but I am not the only person. There is no place like here, but here is not the only place. There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.

In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?

To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).

We can't say that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists. So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists. I will say more about tenseless existence in a later post.

What do I mean by amodal existence? Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:

Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds
Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world
Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds
Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds
Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world
Actual being: one that exists in the actual world
Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.

In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:

It was the case that Tom exists
It is now the case that Tom exists
It will be the case that Tom exists.

My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.

But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty? This is what we need to examine. Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudoproblems.

McCann, God, and the Platonic Menagerie

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

I. The Problem

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

II. Three Types of Approach to the Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

I now turn to critique.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps Professor McCann can straighten me out on this point.

Divine Creation, Possibility, and Actuality

This from a reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

All the best to you,

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

RESPONSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could a Universe of Contingent Beings be Necessary?

If everything in the universe is contingent, does it follow that the universe is contingent? No it doesn't, and to think otherwise would be to commit the fallacy of composition. If the parts of a whole have a certain property, it does not follow that the whole has that property. But it is a simple point of logic that a proposition's not following from another is consistent with the proposition's being true.

And so while one cannot straightaway infer the contingency of the universe from the contingency of its parts, it is nevertheless true that the universe is contingent. Or so I shall argue.

The folowing tripartition is mutually exclusive and mutually exhaustive: necessary, impossible, contingent. A necessary (impossible, contingent) being is one that exists in all (none, some but not all) possible worlds. I will assume an understanding of possible worlds talk. See my Modal Matters category for details.

Our question is whether the universe U, all of whose members are contingent, is itself contingent. I say it is, and argue as follows.

1. Necessarily, if U has no members, then U does not exist. (This is because U is just the totality of its members: it is not something in addition to them. If U has three members, a, b, and c, then U is just those three members taken collectively: it is not a fourth thing distinct from each of the members. U depends for its existence on the existence of its members.)

2. There is a possible world w in which there are no concrete contingent beings. (One can support this premise with a subtraction argument. If a world having n members is possible, then surely a world having n-1 members is possible. For example, take the actual world, which is one of the possible worlds, and substract me from it. Surely the result, though sadly impoverished, is a possible world. Subtract London Ed from the result. That too is a possible world. Iterate the subtraction procedure until you arrive at a world with n minus n ( = 0) concrete contingent members. One could also support the premise with a conceivability argument. It is surely conceivable that there be no concrete contingent beings. This does not entail, but is arguably evidence for, the proposition that it is possible that there be no concrete contingent beings.)

Therefore

3. W is a world in which U has no members. (This follows from (2) given that U is the totality of concrete contingent beings.)

Therefore

4. W is a world in which U does not exist. (From (1) and (3))

Therefore

5. U is a contingent being. (This follows from (4) and the definition of 'contingent being.')

Therefore

6. The totality of contingent beings is itself contingent, hence not necessary.

What is the relevance of this to cosmological arguments? If the universe is necessary, then one cannot sensibly ask why it exists. What must exist has the ground of its existence in itself. So, by showing that the universe is not necessary, one removes an obstacle to cosmological argumentation.

Now since my metaphilosophy holds that nothing of real importance can be strictly proven in philosophy, the above argument – which deals with a matter of real importance — does not strictly prove its conclusion. But it renders the conclusion rationally acceptable, which is all that we can hope for, and is enough.

My Existence and My Possible Nonexistence

Leo Mollica made a good objection to my earlier argument, an objection I need to sort out. I exist, but I might not have existed. How might a thin theorist translate this truth?

On the thin theory, my existence is my identity-with-something. It follows that my nonexistence is my diversity-from-everything, and my merely possible nonexistence is my diversity from everything in one or more merely possible worlds. But — and this I take it is Leo's point — I needn't exist in merely possible world w for it to be true in w that I am diverse from everything in w. So w is not a world in which I am self-diverse, but simply a world in which I am diverse from everything in w. Had w been actual, I would not have been self-diverse; I would not have existed at all, i.e., I would not have been identical to any of the things that would have existed had w been actual.

To put it another way, on the thin theory, my actual existence is my self-identity, my identity with me. Opposing this reduction of singular existence to self-identity, I argued that if my existence is my self-identity, then the possibility of my nonexistence is the possibility of my being self-diverse — which is absurd. Mollica's rejoinder in effect was that my possible nonexistence is not my possible self-diversity, but my possible diversity from everything distinct from me.

I could respond by saying that this objection begs the question by assuming the thin theory. But then Mollica could say that I am begging the question against him. Let me try a different tack.

If I am diverse from everything in w, but I don't exist in w, then something must represent me there. For part of what makes w w is that it lacks me. It is essential to w that it not contain me. But how express this fact if there is no representative of me in w? Now the only possible candifdate for a representative of me in possible worlds in which I do notr exist is my haecceity-property: identity-with-BV. If there is such a property, then it can go proxy for me in every possible world in which I do not exist, worlds which in part are defined by my nonexistence.

So it seems that Mollica's objection requires that there be haecceities such as identity-with-BV, and that these be properties that can exist unexemplified. But now two points.

First, there are no such haecceity properties for reasons given elsewhere, for example, here.

Second, if haecceities are brought into the picture, then we are back to the Fregean version of the thin theory according to which 'exists(s)' is a second-level property. But what I have been pounding on is the latest and most sophisticated version of the thin theory, that of van Inwagen. And we have seen that he rejects the view that 'exist(s)' is second-level.

Differences Between Wishing and Hoping

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly
If our lives could be like that.

Bob Dylan's Dream

Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object. One cannot just wish, or just hope, in the way one can just feel miserable or elated. If I wish, I wish for something. The same holds for hoping. How then do the two attitudes differ? They differ in terms of time, modality, and justification.

1. The object of hope lies in the future, of necessity. One cannot hope for what was or what is. In his dream, Dylan wished to be together again with his long lost friends. But he didn't hope to be together with them again. Coherent: 'I wish I had never been born.' Incoherent: 'I hope I had never been born.' Coherent: 'I wish I was with her right now.' Incoherent: 'I hope I was with her right now.'

Although hope is always and of necessity future-directed, wishing is not temporally restricted. 'I wish I were 30 again.' 'I wish I were in Hawaii now.' 'I wish to live to be a hundred.' I cannot hope to be 30 again or hope to be in Hawaii now. But I can both wish and hope to live to be a hundred.

Can I hope to be young again? That's ambiguous. I could hope for a medical breakthrough that would rejuvenate a person in the sense of making him physiologically young and I could hope to undergo such a rejuvenation. But I cannot hope to be calendrically young again.

2. One can hope only for what one considers to be possible. (What one considers to be possible may or may be possible.) But one can wish for both what one considers to be the possible and what one consider to be impossible. I can hope for a stay of execution, but not that I should continue to exist as a live animal after being hanged. ('Hanged' not 'hung'!) I can hope to survive my bodily death, but only if I consider it possible that I survive my bodily death. But I can wish for what I know to be impossible such as being young again, being able to run a 2:30 marathon, visiting Mars next year.

3. There is no sense in demanding of one who wishes to be cured of cancer that he supply his grounds or justification for so wishing. "Are you justified in wishing to be cancer-free?" But if he hopes to beat his cancer, then one can appropriately request the grounds of the hope.

If I both wish and hope for something I consider possible that lies in the future, then the difference between wishing and hoping rests on the fact that one can appropriately request grounds for hoping but not grounds for wishing.

I'll end with my favorite counterfactual conditional: 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.'

Logical Versus Metaphysical Modality

A Pakistani reader inquires:

This is a query which I hope you can answer. Is there such a distinction as 'logical contingency' vs 'metaphysical contingency', and 'logical necessity' vs 'metaphysical necessity'? And if there is, can you explain it? Thank you.

A short answer first. Yes, there are these distinctions. They amount to a distinction between logical modality and metaphysical modality. The first is also called called narrowly logical modality while the second is also called broadly logical modality. Both contrast with nomological modality.

Now a long answer. The following nine paragraphs unpack the notion of broadly logical or metaphysical modality and contrast it with narrowly logical modality.

1. There are objects and states of affairs and propositions that can be known a priori to be impossible because they violate the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Thus a plane figure that is both round and not round at the same time, in the same respect, and in the same sense of 'round,' is impossible, absolutely impossible, simply in virtue of its violation of LNC. I will say that such an object is narrowly logically (NL) impossible. Hereafter, to save keystrokes, I will not mention the 'same time, same respect, same sense' qualification which will be understood to be in force.

2. But what about a plane figure that is both round and square? Is it NL-impossible? No. For by logic alone one cannot know it to be impossible. One needs a supplementary premise, the necessary truth grounded in the meanings of 'round' and 'square' that nothing that is round is square. We say, therefore, that the round square is broadly logically (BL) impossible. It is not excluded from the realm of the possible by logic alone, which is purely formal, but by logic plus a 'material' truth, namely the necessary truth just mentioned.

3. If there are BL-impossible states of affairs such as There being a round square, then there are BL-necessary states of affairs such as There being no round square. Impossibility and necessity are interdefinable: a state of affairs is necessary iff its negation is impossible. It doesn't matter whether the modality is NL, BL, or nomological (physical). It is clear, then, that there are BL-impossible and BL-necessary states of affairs.

4. We can now introduce the term 'BL-noncontingent' to cover the BL-impossible and the BL-necessary.

5. What is not noncontingent is contingent. (Surprise!) The contingent is that which is possible but not necessary. Thus a contingent proposition is one that is possibly true but not necessarily true, and a contingent state of affairs is one that possibly obtains but does not necessarily obtain. We can also say that a contingent proposition is one that is possibly true and such that its negation is possibly true. The BL-contingent is therefore that which is BL-possible and such that its negation is BL-possible.

6. Whatever is NL or BL or nomologically impossible, is impossible period. If an object, state of affairs, or proposition is excluded from the realm of possible being, possible obtaining, or possible truth by logic alone, logic plus necessary semantic truths, or the (BL-contingent) laws of nature, then that object, state of affairs or proposition is impossible, period, or impossible simpliciter.

7. Now comes something interesting and important. The NL or BL or nomologically possible may or may not be possible, period. For example, it is NL-possible that there be a round square, but not possible, period. It is BL-possible that some man run a 2-minute mile but not possible, period. And it is nomologically possible that I run a 4-minute mile, but not possible period. (I.e., the (BL-contingent) laws of anatomy and physiology do not bar me from running a 4-minute mile; it is peculiarities not referred to by these laws that bar me. Alas, alack, there is no law of nature that names BV.)

8. What #7 implies is that NL, BL, and nomological possibility are not species or kinds of possibility. If they were kinds of possibility then every item that came under one of these heads would be possible simpliciter, which we have just seen is not the case. A linguistic way of putting the point is by saying that 'NL,' 'BL,' and 'nomological' are alienans as opposed to specifying adjectives: they shift or 'alienate' ('other') the sense of the noun they modify. From the fact that x is NL or BL or nomologically possible, it does not follow that x is possible. This contrasts with impossibility. From the fact that x is NL or BL or nomologically impossible, it does follow that x is impossible. Accordingly, 'NL,' 'BL,' and 'nomological' do not shift or alienate the sense of 'impossible.'

9. To appreciate the foregoing, you must not confuse senses and kinds. 'Sense' is a semantic term; 'kind' is ontological. From the fact that 'possible' has several senses, it does not follow that there are several species or kinds of possibility. For x to be possible it must satisfy NL, BL, and nomological constraints; but this is not to say that these terms refer to species or kinds of possibility.

Is Every Concrete Being Contingent?

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

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

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

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

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

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

The modality in question is broadly logical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jerry Coyne’s Modal Confusion

In the course of studying Plantinga's new book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, I have encountered some surprisingly hostile web materials directed against Plantinga. Some of this stuff is too scurrilous to refer to, and I won't. Coyne's rants against Plantinga are somewhat milder but still unseemly for someone in the academic world. Alvin Plantinga: Sophisticated Theologian? appears to be Coyne's latest outburst.

That Coyne is muddled in his thinking about free will has already been demonstrated here and here. This post will showcase a sophomoric blunder he makes with respect to the concept of a necessary being. Coyne writes:

No theologian in the world is going to convince me that it’s impossible for God to fail to exist because he’s a “necessary being.” Science has shown that he’s not “necessary” for anything we know about the universe.

Given the silly blunders and nonsensical assertions Coyne makes in his free will piece, I am not surprised that the man fails to grasp a very simple point. To say that X is a necessary being is not to say that X is necessary for something. Could he really not understand this? If X is necessary for Y, it does not follow that X is necessary simpliciter. Sunlight is necessary for photosynthesis, but the existence of sunlight is logically contingent. And if X is a necessary being, it doesn't follow that X is necessary for anything. If Plantinga's God exists, then he exists necessarily and does so even in possible worlds in which nothing distinct from God exists, worlds in which he is not necessary for anything.

What about Coyne's second sentence in the above quotation? Pure scientistic bluster. One thing we know about the universe is that it exists. Has science shown that God is not necessary for an explanation of the universe's existence. Of course not. How could it show any such thing? Or will Coyne make an absurd Kraussian move?