A Funeral for a World that Never Was

Solid insight from David Goldman a.k.a "Spengler":

The bright line in American policy divides the utopians who believe that America’s mission is to bring free markets and liberal democracies to the benighted, backward nations of the world, and realists like Trump.

Senator McCain threw his support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the expectation that it would become a vehicle for Muslim democracy; Donald Trump proposed to insulate America from the problems of the Muslim world.

McCain and Bush are Mainline Protestants, which is to say Wilsonian missionaries. Mitt Romney is the Mormon variety of the same thing.  The Never-Trump neoconservatives, like Bill Kristol, John Podhoretz and the late Charles Krauthammer, played Sancho Panza to Bush’s Don Quixote.

Trump rose to the top in the Republican primaries when he proposed to freeze immigration from some Muslim-majority countries, a stark declaration that America’s safety is what matters, not the fate of nations on the other side of the world.

More than anything else that Trump did, the travel ban horrified the Establishment, but it won the support of 60% of American voters. Trump declared in effect that the United States would rather insulate itself from problems in Muslim-majority nations than fix them. American interests would come first.

Trump inherited a host of problems from the failed Establishment consensus. The greatest of these was the rise of China, which invested in advanced weaponry while the United States spent nearly $6 trillion on its end-of-history illusion. 

[. . .]

Trump’s style has been obstreperous and sometimes rowdy, and he eschews the air of regal noblesse oblige that some of his predecessors brought to the Oval Office. But the hatred he elicits from the Establishment has nothing to do with style, or indeed, with any of his shortcomings: Trump is hated because the American people elected him to bury the Establishment. Last weekend the Establishment obliged by conducting burial services for itself.

That's right, especially the concluding paragraph.  But we ought to distinguish between the Establishment Left's and the Establishment Right's response to Trump, the true political maverick. As I said the other day:

The Left's blind rage against Trump is not primarily because of the man and his personal style, but because of his threat to their agenda. If Trump had Hillary's ideas and policies, and Hillary Trump's, the Left would have overlooked Trump's personal behavior and supported him in the same way that they overlooked the bad behavior of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  They would have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk in the same way they dismissed Bill Clinton's much worse sexually predatory actions as peccadilloes belonging to his personal life.

The Never-Trumpers, on the other hand, hate Trump primarily because of the man he is, and not primarily because of his ideas and policies.  They hate him because he is a crude and obnoxious outsider, an interloper, who crashed their party and threatened to upset their cozy world.

Proof of this is that Trump's solid conservative accomplishments mollify the bow-tie brigade not one bit.  Their hatred and mindless opposition is in no way reduced by the Gorsuch confirmation, the Kavanaugh nomination, the movement of the U. S. embassy to Israel, the surging stock market, the low unemployment numbers, the defense of religious liberty, and so on down the list.

 

Robert Bork’s Originalism

Here you will gain some insight into the context of the Kavanaugh nomination fight. Excerpts:

In Bork’s view, the Constitution derives its moral authority, as law, from the fact that the states ratified it. Accordingly, its text should be interpreted as it was understood at the time of its adoption. Judges have no warrant to expand upon the constitutional text—or to invent new rights—just because they favor the result in a particular case. Judicial power, unless constrained by the Constitution’s original meaning, will become excessive, usurping power properly reserved to the elected branches, or the people. When judges exceed their proper role, by recognizing “liberties” not credibly drawn from the constitutional text or history, they diminish citizens’ most important freedom: the right to govern themselves in a representative democracy.

[. . .]

Fidelity to the law—judicial restraint—is controversial only if one believes that courts should be playing a policymaking role. If the Supreme Court is free to reach decisions based on nothing more than the individual justices’ predilections, the potential beneficiaries of Supreme Court lawmaking will be highly motivated to support or oppose nominees solely based on their political views, rather than their integrity, competence, or commitment to the rule of law. And it is far easier for liberal-interest groups to influence the composition of a nine-member court than it is to control the Congress, the presidency, and the democratically elected governments of the 50 states.

Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality

This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal collapse if it entails that, for every x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  

In God's Powers and Modality: A Response to Mullins on Modal Collapse (no bibliographical information provided, date, or author's name, but presumably by someone named 'Lenow') we read:

Our problem is not with the notion that God has created the world; it is with the fear that we will be forced by divine simplicity to say that God has created the world necessarily. 

[. . .]

I believe that the recent work of Barbara Vetter offers an account of potentiality and modal grounding capable not only of resisting modal collapse, but of doing so along the traditional Thomist lines Mullins rejects as incoherent. Vetter presents us with the theoretical resources needed to affirm divine simplicity without forcing a breakdown in our modal language, and thus allows us to avoid being cornered into asserting that God creates necessarily or that all creaturely events occur necessarily.

We shall see.

What Vetter calls the “standard conception” of a dispositionalist account of modality runs roughly as follows. Objects possess dispositional properties: a vase, for example, possesses the property of fragility; an electron possesses the property of repelling other particles with a negative charge; I have the ability to learn how to play the violin. (3)

I am well-disposed (pun intended) toward this sort of view. 

I am seated now, but I might not have been. I might have been standing now or in some other bodily posture. What makes this true? What is the ontological ground of the (real, non-epistemic) possibility of my not being seated now?  As useful as possible worlds talk is for rendering modal concepts and relations graphic, it is of no use for the answering of this question if we take an abstractist line on possible worlds as sanity requires that we do. On the other hand, David Lewis' concretist approach is, if I may be blunt, just crazy. 

The best answer invokes my presently unexercised ability to adopt a physical posture other than that of the seated posture, to stand up for example.  Ultimately, the ground of real modality is in the powers, abilities, capacities, dispositions, potencies, tendencies, and the like of the things the modal statements are about.

The typical wine glass is fragile: it is disposed to shatter if struck with moderate force. Fragility is a stock example of a dispositional property.  But fragility comes in degrees.  Think of a spectrum of breakability from the most easily breakable items all the way up to items that are breakable only with great difficulty such as rocks and metal bolts and steel beams. We do not apply 'fragile' to things like steel beams, but they too are breakable. 

Yet Vetter is most interested in the property that characterizes all the objects on
this spectrum: the possibility of being broken, the manifestation that she takes to
individuate this property. This modal property that extends from one end of this spectrum
to the other she calls a potentiality—in this case, the potentiality of a thing’s being
breakable.(4)

Now let's see if Vetter's power theory of modality solves our problem.  The problem can be put as follows without possible worlds jargon. There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.  

1) If God is simple, then he is pure act (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be.  Given that God is simple, there can be no real distinction in him between potency and act. This is necessarily true  because God exists of metaphysical necessity and is essentially pure act.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a  different universe, or no universe at all. Had he created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised.  In that case he would not be pure act: he would harbor an unactualized potential.

The dyad is logically inconsistent. What I called a tension looks to be a contradiction. If (1) is true, then it is impossible that God have unexercised powers such as the never-exercised power to create.  But if (2) is true, it is possible that God have unexercised powers. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

If we hold to (1), then we must reject (2). The upshot is modal collapse. For given that God willed our universe with a will that is automatically efficacious, both the willing and the willed are necessary. And so the existence of Socrates is necessary and the same goes for his being  married to Xanthippe and his being the teacher of Plato, etc.

To what work can we put Vetter’s theory in forestalling the threat of modal collapse? Consider God’s will, using Vetter’s language, as an intrinsic maximal first-order potentiality to will God’s own infinite goodness as the ultimate and perfect end of the divine nature. Let me take each descriptor in turn. First, this potentiality is intrinsic, because it does not depend upon any external circumstances for its manifestation and is not possessed jointly. Second, it is maximal, because God cannot fail to manifest this potentiality. As Vetter argued, something is maximally breakable if it is not possible for it not to break—it will break under any circumstances. Similarly, the willing of God’s goodness as end is a potentiality that can be possessed in degrees: rocks do not seem to possess it at all, demons possess it only to the extent that their wills remain a corrupted version of their original unvitiated creation, humans possess it to a greater extent in that the possibility of redemption remains open to them, angels possess it in the highest created degree as a gift from God; yet God “possesses” this potentiality in qualitatively different fashion, possessing it maximally because it is identical with God’s nature—God cannot fail to will God’s goodness. Third, this is a potentiality simpliciter—that is, a first order iterated potentiality, rather than as a potentiality to acquire some other potentiality; the doctrine of divine simplicity removes the possibility of any such composition. Finally, to avoid the threat of modal collapse, this must be a multi-track potentiality, multiply realizable (as are most potentialities); in effect, this means that God is capable of willing God’s goodness in multiple ways, but that no one instance of such willing is any more or any fuller a manifestation of this potentiality than any other such willing. Defenders of divine simplicity typically hold that God’s life is itself full and infinite goodness, lacking nothing.[ . . .] Consequently, had God willed to exist without creation, God would not have willed a lesser goodness than God has willed in creating the world; similarly, had God willed the creation of a different world, God would not have willed a lesser (or greater) goodness than God has willed in creating this one. Each of these acts of willing would have produced different effects, to be sure—but in each case, the potentiality manifested is the same, the potentiality to will God’s infinite goodness as ultimate end.

What is the argument here? It is none too clear.  But one key notion is that of a maximal potentiality. A maximal potentiality is one that cannot fail to be manifested.  An example of a non-maximal potentiality is that of a wine glass to break into discrete pieces when dropped onto a hard surface or struck. That disposition need never be manifested. (Imagine that the glass ceases to exist by being melted down, or maybe God simply annihilates it.) Or think of all the abilities that people have but never develop.

Breakability looks to be a candidate for the office of maximal potentiality. It cannot fail to be manifested. "As Vetter argued, something is maximally breakable if it is not possible for it not to break—it will break under any circumstances." This is a strange formulation. It is true that some things are such that they must eventually break down. But this is not to say that they will break under any circumstances. But let that pass.

Consider now God's power to will his own goodness. We may grant that this is a power that cannot fail to be exercised or manifested. Since it is not possible for God not to exercise this power, it is no threat at all to the divine simplicity. There is no real distinction between God and his willing his own goodness. God's willing his own goodness just is his power to will his own goodness.  This power is plainly compatible with God's being pure act.

But how does this avoid modal collapse?  

Finally, to avoid the threat of modal collapse, this must be a multi-track potentiality, multiply realizable (as are most potentialities); in effect, this means that God is capable of willing God’s goodness in multiple ways, but that no one instance of such willing is any more or any fuller a manifestation of this potentiality than any other such willing.

The second key idea, then, is that of the multiple realizability of liabilities and potentialities and such. I am not now actually sick, but I am liable to get sick, or I have the potential to get sick, in many different ways.  I can get sick from bad food, or polluted water, or a virus can attack me, etc.  My liability to get sick is multiply realizable. The same goes for active powers and abilities.  My power to express myself is realizable in different ways, in writing, in speech, in different languages, using sign language etc. 

God's power to will his own goodness is realizable by creating our universe, some other universe, or no universe at all. So it too is multiply realizable. Fine, but how does this solve the problem? 

Suppose I will to buy whisky. I go to the liquor story and say, "I want whisky!"  The proprietor says, "Very well, sir, would you like bourbon or scotch or rye or Irish?"  If I insist that I just want whisky, I will learn that whisky is not to be had. One cannot buy or drink whisky without buying or drinking either bourbon or scotch or rye or Irish or . . . .

It is the same with God. He cannot will his own goodness 'in general'; he must will it in some specific way, by willing to create this universe or that universe or no universe.

But then we are back to our problem. For whatever he does, whether he creates or not, is necessary and we have modal collapse.  The modal collapse that we all agree is in the simple God spreads to everything else.

As far as I can see, Lenow's response to Mullins fails.

UPDATE (9/4). Joe Lenow writes,

Hi Bill—I am Spartacus. Thanks for engaging the paper. 
 
This is a version of the argument from a conference presentation a couple of years ago; hadn't realized that the conference papers were public view. I've got a much more carefully worked-out version of the argument presently under review; please find it attached. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on it!
 
Best wishes,
 
Resident Assistant Professor of Theology
Creighton University
I will have to study Professor Lenow's latest version. It cannot be reproduced or discussed here, of course, since it is under review.

The Montini-Maritain-Alinksy Connection

Strange bedfellows

In an interview with Playboy Magazine very shortly before his death from a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 63, which interview is part of a declassified FBI file, the man Maritain asked to pray for him declared that he would unhesitatingly choose hell over heaven:

PLAYBOY: Having accepted your own mortality, do ·you believe in any kind of afterlife?

ALINSKY: Sometimes it seems to me that the question people should ask is not “is there life after death?” but “Is there life after birth?” I don't know whether there’s anything after this or not. I haven’t seen the evidence one way or the other and I don't think anybody else has either. But I do know that man’s obsession with the question comes out of his stubborn refusal to face up to his own mortality. Let’s say that if there is an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly choose to go to hell. 

PLAYBOY: Why?

ALINSKY: Hell would be heaven for me. All my life I’ve been with the have-nots. Over here, if you’re a have-not, you’re short of dough. If you’re a have-not in hell, you’re short of virtue. Once I get into hell, I’ll start organizing the have-nots over there. 

PLAYBOY: Why them? 

ALINSKY: They’re my kind of people. 

I enjoyed the delicious incoherence of Alinsky's first response. 

Why There Probably Won’t Be a Serious Inquiry into Priestly Pederasty

Steven Hayward:

Such an inquiry would require journalists to probe into matters that run afoul of liberal orthodoxy today. It is one thing to probe into bad behavior from unpopular and easily demonized cardinals. Blowing open a cover-up is standard Watergate Journalism 101. It’s another thing to open the door to uncomfortable questions about sexual morality in our anything-goes times. And that’s almost as great a moral failing as the bishops and cardinals who cover up the evil in the first place. The point is, while the media will gladly blast the most lurid and awful (but unproven) details of a grand jury report about what took place in Pennsylvania without question, they are unwilling to look deeper into the potential causes and enablers of this evil. That is nearly as contemptible as the cowardly behavior of the Church hierarchy.

Just as the Left cannot tolerate any serious questioning of the morality of abortion, it cannot tolerate any serious questioning of the morality of homosexual practices.  Any raising of those questions would raise questions about their entire worldview. The Left subscribes to the 'wisdom' of that celebrity chef, 'foodie,' and gastro-tourist, Anthony Bourdain, for whom:

Bourdain body not a temple

Man has no higher origin or higher destiny. The body is not the temple of the Holy Spirit or any sort of temple; it is a pleasure factory.  

So what could possibly be wrong with consensual sodomy? But the Church condemns sodomy, consensual or not. Kierkegaard said that Christianity is "heterogeneity to the world." The same is true of the RCC. It is in the world but not of it. It is a rebuke to it and cannot be secularized without being destroyed.

To inquire seriously into the homosexual culture within the Church and to expose it as the root of the rot would involve touching on questions the Left would rather not touch on. 

“The Jury is Still Out”: A Silly Sentence When Used by Philosophers

One sometimes comes across 'the jury is still out' in technical philosophical writing. A philosopher might write that 'the jury is still out' on some question, for example, whether the triviality objection to presentism is sustainable.  It's a silly thing to say.

It is first of all obvious that philosophical inquiry, though in some ways similar to a courtroom proceeding, is unlike the latter in a crucial particular: solutions to problems, if they are arrived at at all, are not arrived at by decision. 

It also falsely suggests that a definitive solution to the problem is in the offing. But we all know that that is false. No substantive philosophical question has ever been answered to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners.

Or can you think of one?

Bergoglio is a Joke

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday called for concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans, lamenting the lack of effective regulation to protect the world’s waters.

And then there is this:

VATICAN CITY—In his first public statement on the horrifying, devastating report on sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Pope Francis stated he would address the controversy in detail once he’s done talking about climate change for a few more weeks.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church claimed he is deeply concerned with the tragic report, but is “just too swamped” with work fighting climate change, criticizing capitalism, and advocating for other issues of social justice to talk about the repulsive report at the moment.

One of the above quotations is from a satire site, the other is not. Can you tell which is which?

Is satire satire when it coincides with the truth?

Related: The Pope is a Buffoon When it Comes to Economics

Pope Buffoon

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Brown-Eyed Girls

Summer subsides once again into the sweetness of September.

Judy Collins, Cravings: How I Conquered Food, Doubleday 2017, pp. 112-113:

. . . and writing Albert Grossmann that no, I did not want to join a trio of women he was bent on calling the Brown-Eyed Girls. He had put Peter, Paul and Mary together, telling me that I was the fallback choice if Mary hadn't worked out. Albert saw how I was struggling and didn't think I could make it on my own, hence the trio idea. It was to be me, Judy Henske and Jo Mapes. He told me he would get me brown contacts, his idea of a joke — Henske had brown eyes and Mapes and I would have to get brown contacts. I had agreed hastily — after all, he had made Peter, Paul and Mary into an international franchise. Now I changed my yes to a no. I would go it on my own, no matter what. I was going to do it my way or die trying.

Way to go, Judy. You pulled it off and beat your addictions as well.

Judy Collins, Both Sides Now.  Wonderful. My favorite version, however, is that of Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters.

Judy Collins, Someday Soon

Judy Collins, Amazing Grace

HenskeJudy Henske, High Flying Bird

Judy Henske, Any Day Now

Judy Henske, Till the Real Thing Comes Along

Jo Mapes, You Were on My Mind. Beautiful, but takes a little getting used to if you are coming at it from the We Five hit version. Ian and Sylvia have a great version. 

Jo Mapes, No One to Talk My Troubles To 

 

Bonus cut: Iris Dement and friends, Will the Circle be Unbroken. Wow.

Of ‘Blind Review’ and Pandora’s Box

This is a repost from 1 April 2014. I was reminded of it by a missive from Spencer Case who rightly complains about a more recent bit of related academentia.  But if I link to it, you won't read what I have to say below. I will talk about the latest outrage perhaps tomorrow.

……………………………….

This is not an April Fool's joke.

Blind review is a standard practice employed by editors of professional journals and organizers of academic conferences.  The editor/organizer removes the name of the author from the manuscript before sending it  to the referee or referees for evaluation.  My present concern is not  whether this is a good practice, although I believe it is.  I am concerned with the phrase that describes it and whether or not this phrase can be reasonably found offensive by anyone.  There are those who think that the phrase is offensive and ought to be banned.  Shelley Tremain writes,

For the last few years, I have tried to get the APA [American Philosophical Association] to remove the phrase “blind review” from its publications and website.  The phrase is demeaning to disabled people because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers.  Because the phrase is standardly used in philosophy and other academic CFPs [Calls for Papers], it should become recognized as a cause for great concern.  In short, use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates.  Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way.

Let's consider these claims seriatim.

1. "The phrase is demeaning to disabled people . . . "  Well, I am a disabled person and the phrase is not demeaning to me.  As a result of a birth defect I hear in only one ear.  And of course there are innumerable people who are disabled in different ways who will not find the phrase demeaning. 

2. " . . . because it associates blindness with lack of knowledge and implies that blind people cannot be knowers."  This is not just false but silly.  No one thinks that blind people cannot be knowers or that knowers cannot be blind. Or at least no sane person thinks that.

Besides, it makes no sense to say that a phrase associates anything with anything.  A foolish person who is precisely not thinking, but associating, might associate blindness with ignorance, but so what?  People associate the damndest things.

To point out the obvious:  if the name has been removed from the manuscript, then the referee literally cannot see it. This is not to say that the referee is blind, or blind with respect to the author's name: he could see it if it were there to see.  'Blind review' means that the reviewer is kept in the dark as to the identity of the author.  That's all! 

3. ". . .  it should become recognized as a cause for great concern."  Great concern?  This is a wild exaggeration even if this issue is of some minor concern.  I say, however, that it is of no concern.  No one is demeaned or slighted or insulted or mocked or ridiculed by the use of the phrase in question.

4. ". . . use of the phrase amounts to the circulation of language that discriminates."  One could argue that the practice of blind review discriminates against those who have made a name for themselves.  But that is the only discrimination in the vicinity.  I said at the top that this post is no joke.  What is risible, however, is that anyone would find 'blind review' to be discriminatory against blind people.

5. "Philosophers should want to avoid inflicting harm in this way."  This presupposes that the use of the phrase 'blind review' inflicts harm.  This is just silly.  It would be like arguing that  the use of 'black hole' inflicts harm on black people because its use associates blacks with holes or with hos (whores).

Pandora's BoxIn the early-to-mid '80s I attended an APA session organized by a group that called itself PANDORA: Philosophers Against the Nuclear Destruction of Rational Animals.  One of the weighty topics that came up at this particular meeting was the very name 'Pandora.'  Some argued that the name is sexist on the ground that it might remind someone of Pandora's Box, which of course has nothing to do with the characteristic female orifice, but in so reminding them might be taken as a slighting of that orifice.  ('Box' is crude slang for the orifice in question.)  I pointed out in the meeting that the name is just an acronym, and has nothing to do either with Pandora's Box or the characteristic female orifice.  My comment made no impression on the politically correct there assembled.  Later the outfit renamed itself Concerned Philosophers for Peace ". . . because of sexist and exclusionary aspects of the acronym."  (See here) 

Pederasty Primarily, not Pedophilia, and Bergoglio’s Role

Damning:

Unfortunately, however, Benedict’s successor was Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina – the man who calls himself Pope Francis. As a Belgian cardinal named Gottfried Daneels – who had been removed as an archbishop because he had covered up pederasty on the part of another Belgian cardinal and had come out in support of contraception, divorce, gay marriage, euthanasia, and abortion – revealed in his memoirs, Bergoglio’s candidacy was promoted by the St. Gallen Group, a part of what Catholics call “the Lavender Mafia.” This disgraced figure stood on the balcony with Bergoglio after he was elected Pope; he was chosen to say the prayer at the new Pope’s inauguration; and there was joy in the ranks of those inclined to break the vow of celibacy.

If you want to get a sense of what such people thought, I suggest that you read “The Vatican’s Secret Life,” an article that appeared in Vanity Fair in December 2013. It is an eye-opener. Its author, Michael Joseph Gross, is not scandalized by what he found. He celebrates it; and, tellingly, he never once mentions, even under the guise of pedophilia, the propensity of prominent priests to indulge in pederasty. 

Read it all, then read Marc Thiessen on his sudden understanding of the Reformation.

From the Mailbag: Modality and Perfection

Daniel C. writes,

A quick remark on your recent possible worlds post. 

You only mention it in  passing but one thing possible worlds talk surely does throw into sharp relief is the issue of the modality of modal statements i.e. if a certain proposition is possibly true is it necessarily possibly true or merely possibly possibly true? To the best of my knowledge most pre-modern metaphysicians simply presumed the truth of the Brouwer axiom (Leibniz and Scotus) or of S5. Far be it from me to challenge these venerable principles but as far as I know very few thought of disputing them before the question could be phrased in terms of accessibility relations between worlds.
Your general point is important and correct: possible worlds talk allows for the rigorous formulation of questions about the modal status of modal statements, which in turn hinges on accessibility relations between worlds.  But I hope you are not suggesting that the Brouwer axiom is the same as the characteristic S5 axiom. I am not a logician, but my understanding is that they are not.
 
Brouwer Axiom: p –> Nec Poss p. That is to say, if a proposition is true, then it is necessarily possibly true.
 
Characteristic S5 axiom: Poss p –> Nec Poss p. That is, if a proposition is possibly true, then it is necessarily possibly true.
Also: On the contrary, I say that God's status as a necessary being follows from His perfection rather than simplicity (although the former may entail the latter as Anselm certainly thought).

I take it that a perfect being is one that possesses all perfections. The Plantingian gloss on 'perfection' seems good enough: a perfection is a great-making property. So a perfect being is one that possesses all great-making properties and the maximal degree of those great-making properties that admit of degrees. 

Now A. Plantinga famously denies the divine simplicity while upholding the divine perfection. I take it we all agree that God is a necessary being.  That than which no greater can be conceived cannot be a mere contingent being. But what makes a necessary being greater than a contingent being? On a possible worlds approach, it will presumably be the fact that a being that exists in all worlds is greater than one that exists in some but not all worlds. It is a matter of quantity of worlds.

But then I will press the question: what makes it the case that God exists in all possible worlds?  What grounds this fact? My answer: the divine simplicity, which implies the identity in God of essence and existence.  Divine perfection is not enough. For God could be perfect in Plantinga's sense while harboring a real internal difference between essence and existence. But this leaves open the question as to why God is necessary.

If you say that God is necessary because he exists in all worlds, then you give a bad answer. It is true that God exists necessarily iff all world-propositions say he exists. But it doesn't follow that God is necessary because all world-propositions say he exists. It is the other way around: he exists according to every world-proposition because he is necessary!

Mundane example. Am I seated because the proposition BV is seated is true? No. The proposition is true because I am seated. The truth-maker is what makes the truth true; it is 'bass ackwards' to say that truths make states of affairs exist.  

Same with God. It is the divine necessity that makes it true that God exists in (i.e., according to) every possible world, and not the other way around. But to be necessary in the unique way that God is necessary, a way he does not share with garden-variety necessary beings such as the number 9 and the set of prime numbers, God must be metaphysically simple.

On Loss of Faith in the Roman Catholic Church

Rod Dreher writes,

At the risk of oversharing, the most painful thing about covering the scandal from 2002 until I left the Catholic Church in 2006 was losing my Catholic faith, which had been at the center of my life since my conversion in 1993.

If I have the story right, Mr. Dreher has moved from the RCC east to Orthodoxy.  If so, then we can safely assume that he is still a theist who believes in the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and much else besides. So his loss of his Catholic faith was his loss of faith in the Roman church as the one, true, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic church founded by Christ.  As he says a little later,

What’s worth pointing out is that the final straw was realizing that my wife and I could not trust the institution anymore.

One question that arises is whether it would be reasonable to cleave to one's faith in the institution as divinely ordained in the teeth of all the revelations of evil deeds and cover-ups.

I should think that this would prove psychologically impossible for many if not most of the laity. But I also think one could reasonably remain within the church if one accepts its traditional teachings. Michael Liccione on his Facebook page writes,

I'm Catholic because I believe that the only principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion is by the teaching of a visible authority, established by Jesus himself and temporally continuous with the Apostles, that is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit when teaching with her full authority. That's the authority which I believe the gates of hell will not prevail against. So even if the Catholic Church had to go underground, and thus become invisible to most people, there would still be her teaching and sacraments to sustain us, even if only through a few.

I would add the following. The Church is in the world where Satan is at work. So it is no surprise that Satan is at work in the Church. But if the Church was founded by Christ, the God-Man, and the current Church can trace itself back to the Founder, then there is 'no way in hell' that the gates of hell can prevail against it.

So if one accepts the RC worldview in all of its major tenets, as I believe Liccione does, then it is reasonable to cleave to one's faith in the institution as divinely ordained in the teeth of all the revelations of evil deeds and cover-ups.  This is because the worldview has the resources to explain away the appearance of its own fraudulence.

Of course, this leaves us with the problem of whether it is reasonable to accept the RC worldview in the first place.  Many will no doubt take the deep levels of corruption as good evidence that the Roman church was never the one, true, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic church that enjoys divine sanction and is ongoingly guided by the Holy Ghost.  

But if one accepts Roman Catholicism in its orthodox form, then it is reasonable to stick with the faith despite the psychological difficulty of doing so at the present time.

Here's my problem. I accept God and the possibility of divine revelation, and I understand the need for a principled way to distinguish divine revelation from human opinion.  But what validates the RCC as this principled way and means? Well, it validates itself.

Is there a problem with that? For more on the general problem of the need for a "visible authority"  see Private Judgment? 

Why Talk of ‘Possible Worlds’?

 This from a commenter:

I have a question about a tangential matter, in case you care to respond to it. You say [in your discussion of divine simplicity and modal collapse] that you don't need talk of possible worlds. I don't think I find such talk puzzling, but I've never understood the vogue for it. Since many absolutely first-rate philosophers seem to insist on using it, I assume there must be some great advantage to doing so, and not seeing what that is I assume that there is something important I don't understand. If you care to explain I'd be interested.

The notion of possible worlds dates back at least to G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) but the current vogue began roughly in the middle of the 20th century when philosophers and logicians applied themselves to the formal semantics of the different systems of (alethic) modal logic. Now this is a highly technical topic but the technicalities can be avoided for present purposes.  I will assume the S5 axiom set. 

Assumption: reality has a modal structure

I will also assume that reality has a modal structure, that modality is somehow ingredient in extramental reality. Thus modality is not a merely epistemic/doxastic matter.  For example, Hillary could have won in 2016. It was really possible for her to have won. Had she worked harder and smarter, kept her trap shut about the 'deplorables,' etc., then she probably would have won.  Things really could have gone otherwise, and this possibility is not parasitic upon our ignorance of all the factors involved in her losing. 

The utility of talking the talk

As I see it, the utility of 'possible worlds' talk is that it allows for an especially  perspicuous representation of modal relationships in extensional terms.  And it seems to me that one can talk the talk without walking the walk. That is, one can  make use of 'possible worlds' (PW) jargon without taking on too many heavy-duty ontological commitments. What do I mean? One thing I mean is that one can employ PW jargon without buying into David Lewis' extreme modal realism. For Lewis, possible worlds are maximal mereological sums of concreta. One can surely talk the talk without walking that walk. How?

Sketch of an abstractist approach to possible worlds

A much saner way of thinking about possible worlds is as follows. If the Lewisian way is concretist, the following way is abstractist: possible worlds are abstract objects, maximal Fregean propositions on one abstractist approach.

14) If worlds are maximal Fregean propositions, then no concretum such as Socrates can exist in any world in the manner of a constitutent. This is because concreta are not among the constituents of Fregean propositions. Therefore, to say that there is a possible world in which Socrates exists but dies in battle, is to say that there is a maximal proposition according to which Socrates dies in battle. 

Restriction to alethic modalities

The concern here is with alethic modality, not deontic or epistemic modality. By alethic modalities I understand the modalities of truth, of existence, and of property-possession.

Truth

It is necessary that 2 is a prime number, impossible that 2 is an an odd number, and contingent that 2 is the number of my cats. In PW jargon: 

Every metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is prime* is true in w.
No metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is odd* is true in w.
Some (but not all) metaphysically possible worlds are such that *2 is the number of my cats* is true in w.

If we quantify over possible worlds, we can understand the modal terms 'necessary,' 'impossible,' and 'contingent' by analogy with the quantifiers of standard, first-order predicate logic: 'every,' 'no,' 'some.'  And we can then set up a modal square of opposition in analogy to the standard square of opposition.

  Modal square of opp

Isn't that neat? The modal relationships fairly jump out at you. Necessarily p entails possibly p. Of course. What is true is true in every world is true in some world, but not conversely.

When I say that the PW representation of modal propositions and inferences is extensional, all I mean is that the representation involves quantifying over possible worlds assumed as given.

Existence and Property-Possession

A necessary being is one that exists in all worlds; an impossible being one that exists in no worlds; a contingent being is one that exists in some but not all worlds. If x has a property essentially, then x has the property in every world in which x exists; if x has a property accidentally, then x has it in some but not all of the worlds in which x exists. If a necessary being has a property essentially, we can say that it has the property necessarily in that there is no world in which it does not have the property. Thus the number 7 is necessarily prime and God is necessarily omniscient.  Socrates, by contrast, is essentially human but not necessarily human.

An important Euthyphro-type question

Now let's dig a little deeper.

God is a necessary being. He exists in every world. But does he exist in every world because he is necessary, or is he necessary because he exists in every world?  I say the former.  His metaphysical necessity grounds and thus explains his existence in every world.  He exists according to every maximal proposition because he is metaphysically necessary.  But what grounds the divine necessity? The divine simplicity: existence and essence are one in God.

Now take Socrates. He is a contingent being: he exists in some but not all possible worlds.  But does he exist in some but not all worlds because he is contingent, or is he contingent because he exists in some but not all worlds? I say the former. Only some world-propositions say he exists because he is contingent.  But what makes him contingent? One answer is that he is contingent because there is in him and in all contingent beings that actually exist a real distinction between essence and existence.

Answering the reader's question

The reader asked about the advantage of PW talk.  My answer is that such talk allows for an especially perspicuous representation of modal propositions and relationships.   

If I am right, the patois of PW is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every point we want to make without engaging in PW talk.  What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples. I have one in mind right now. Stay tuned.