{"id":6432,"date":"2016-05-17T05:36:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T05:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/05\/17\/two-senses-of-contingency\/"},"modified":"2016-05-17T05:36:57","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T05:36:57","slug":"two-senses-of-contingency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/05\/17\/two-senses-of-contingency\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Senses of ‘Contingency’ and a Bad Cosmological Argument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fr. Aidan Kimel asked me to comment on a couple of divine simplicity entries of his.  When I began reading the first<\/a>, however, I soon got bogged down in a preliminary matter concerning wonder at the existence of the world, its contingency, and whether its contingency leads us straightaway to a causa prima<\/em>.  So I will offer some comments on these topics and perhaps get around to divine simplicity later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fr. Kimel writes, <\/span><\/p>\n

Why is it obvious to [David Bentley] Hart, when it is not obvious to so many modern theologians and philosophers, that a proper understanding of divinity entails divine simplicity? Earlier in his book Hart invites us to consider with wonder the very fact of existence. \u201cHow odd it is, and how unfathomable,\u201d he muses, \u201cthat anything at all exists; how disconcerting that the world and one\u2019s consciousness of it are simply there, joined in a single ineffable event. \u2026 Every encounter with the world has always been an encounter with an enigma that no merely physical explanation can resolve\u201d (pp. 88-89). The universe poses the question \u201cwhy?\u201d and in so posing this question, it reveals to us its absolute contingency. The universe need not have been.<\/strong> [Emphasis added.]\u201cNothing within the cosmos contains the ground of its existence\u201d (p. 92):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

All things that do not possess the cause of their existence in themselves must be brought into existence by something outside themselves. Or, more tersely, the contingent is always contingent on something else<\/em>. This is not a difficult or rationally problematic proposition. The complications lie in its application. Before all else, however, one must define what real contingency is. It is, first, simply the condition of being conditional: that is, the condition of depending upon anything external or prior or circumambient in order to exist and to persist in being. It is also mutability, the capacity to change over time, to move constantly from potential to actual states, and to abandon one actual state in favor of another. It is also the condition of being extended in both space and time, and thus of being incapable of perfect \u201cself-possession\u201d in some absolute here and now. It is the capacity and the tendency both to come into and pass out of being. It is the condition of being composite, made up of and dependent upon logically prior parts, and therefore capable of division and dissolution. It is also, in consequence, the state of possessing limits and boundaries, external and internal, and so of achieving identity through excluding\u2014and thus inevitably, depending upon\u2014other realities; it is, in short, finitude. (pp. 99-100)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And now some comments of mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

    Fr. Aidan Kimel asked me to comment on a couple of divine simplicity entries of his.  When I began reading the first, however, I soon got bogged down in a preliminary matter concerning wonder at the existence of the world, its contingency, and whether its contingency leads us straightaway to a causa prima.  So I … Continue reading “Two Senses of ‘Contingency’ and a Bad Cosmological Argument”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[551,142,143,235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmological-arguments","category-existence","category-god","category-modal-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}