Saturday 6 January 2018

Five Proofs Critique: The Rationalist Proof

To begin I wish to make a few remarks on what constitutes a satisfactory theistic argument. When assessing the value of a theistic argument it is vital not only to look at whether the argument itself succeeds or not, but also at the strength of the background metaphysics on which it depends. In many ways arguments for God’s existence are only as strong as their ontological backdrop. Consequently, an argument which requires a very specific metaphysical account, say a certain theory of dispositions or mental activity, will have less force than one which depends on a broader view, for instance: a cosmological argument that requires real powers and dispositions has high value, some powers theory being a strong contender for the only satisfactory account of causation—if on the other hand it requires a very specific powers account the argument loses force, since it is far more debatable which powers account is the correct one.

Similarly, if an argument commits one to an otherwise counterintuitive ontological thesis, then that is generally considered a point against it. For instance, were Anselm’s first ontological argument to commit one to Meinong’s theory of objects then many philosophers would take that as sufficient reason for rejecting that argument. Of course, one can argue the net gains and losses of primitives and counterintuitive theses must be weighed against the success of one’s broader metaphysics—a metaphysical account which explains the existence of contingent being at the cost of endorsing the theory of objects is probably preferable to one which provides no such explanation—but generally if similar conclusions can be reached without taking on the problem thesis then such alternate accounts are preferable.

Some of my claims will be antipathetic to Feser’s preferred approach to Natural Theology. He has stated on a number of occasions, most recently in Scholastic Metaphysics, that proving the existence of God is easy providing one has the correct metaphysics beforehand. Whilst this is true, the ‘providing’ claim in question does restrict the value of his work. It remains a fact that many of the debates in the theory of powers, properties and accounts of universals depend not on knockdown arguments and refutations but on what primitives one is prepared to accept and how comfortable one is with a fulsome ontology (of course Feser might claim that the fact his preferred account leads to the existence of God and thus the resolution of a whole host of ethical and ontological problems is a reason why we should accept it—I have yet to read him argue in this way, though I’m somewhat sympathetic to it). In the project of Natural Theology then it would be preferable to steer a middle course between those, such as William Lane Craig, who only engage in ontology as far as it touches on theology, and the hyper-specific metaphysical requirements of those such as Feser.

In the following discussions my method will be to endeavour to ascertain how much one can prove from the premises of the argument itself and only then to discuss additional appeals to background ontology. This approach serves another purpose: when discussing theistic arguments it is often open to the atheist to claim that the argument in question appears to succeed but since it entails a conclusion i.e. God’s existence, that we have strong independent reason to think impossible, we ought to reject the argument even if we cannot detect where our reasoning went wrong. If, on the other hand, we do not appeal to external metaphysical concerns to determine that what the argument reaches is the God of classical theism, then the atheist has no a priori reason to reject it—in this latter case then both the theist and atheist can accept the minimal conclusion that the argument has established something and thus advanced the task of explanatory metaphysics.

In the following discussion I do not intend to discuss Feser’s arguments in chronological order. Instead I am going to approach them in a way that will prove more fruitful in raising pertinent philosophical issues which I’ll return to in discussion of later arguments.

The most important argument, and probably the only ‘knockdown’ argument for something approaching theism in the book, is what Feser calls the Leibnizian Argument. This argument, quite possibly the quintessential cosmological argument, appeals to that most venerable of metaphysical principles, the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth PSR), and proposes that from this and the relatively uncontroversial premise that there exist contingent beings we can prove that there exists a necessary being. Of all arguments showcased in the book it is the one with the least metaphysical baggage.

It is fashionable to divide the PSR into a weak and strong variant: the former makes the modest claim that all existential fact have an explanation whilst the latter claims that all contingent facts have an explanation. Both of these suffice for a functional cosmological argument (as does the even weaker claim that for every existential fact it is possible that it has an explanation1).  Feser gives three ‘Thomistic’ formulations of the principle, the first of these amounts to the weak version and the third, to the claim ‘there is a sufficient reason or adequate necessary objective explanation for the being of whatever is and for all attributes of any being’, to the strong version (assuming one is to take attributes in the wide sense including relational properties).

The second formulation, the claim ‘Everything is intelligible’, is more interesting as it suggests that the PSR might follow from the scholastic account of the transcendentals (truth being considered convertible, if not synonymous, with being). I do not know if it would be possible to give a deductive proof of the principle based on this—the transcendentals have received little to no attention in contemporary philosophy of religion and it is likely that the PSR is so basic that any proof for or even against it would end up tacitly appealing to it—but it represents an important area for further exploration.

As it stands Feser follows the well-trodden Leibnizian course and relies on abductive and retorsive argument to support the PSR. It is in the latter of those approaches that he makes what is undoubtably his most original contribution to the discussion. Against those who reject the PSR Feser argues that the nature of psychological justification itself implies the PSR—our acceptance of a claim as true, or at least rational, is itself a form of explanation (to put it another way: it is proposition Y’s appearing to be true because of factor X which explains why we accept Y). In other words if the PSR did not hold there would always be the risk that our seemingly true beliefs are held for no reason as opposed to some justificatory factor. In endorsing such an argument one need not deny the possibility of error—all the argument requires is that the beliefs in question have some justificatory factor even if it is a false one—or endorse Spinozistic epistemic determinism (more on this later). Such an argument must be spelt out in greater detail, say with distinctions between rational and psychological justification, before it can make headway, but as it stands it is an elegant fusion of the PSR and the argument from reason.

Of the weak and the strong formulation, the primary criticism people can muster against the former is that it is ad hoc. Feser takes the philosophically more interesting route and defends the latter. Two major problems present themselves on such an account2.

The first is just an expanded version of the Standard Objection to Free Will, which in its normal formulation appeals to causation. The dilemma goes like so: a so-called free action is either explained by a pre-existing factor in which case it can hardly be called free, or lacks an explanation, thus happening for no reason, in which case it can hardly be called an 'action', the deliberate choice of an agent. The proponent of the PSR is, the critic will say, committed to the first freedom-denying option of the disjunction.

The second, really the major criticism against the strong PSR, is that it leads to ‘Modal Collapse’, a scenario in which all contingent truths become necessary ones3. The most common formulation refers to the ‘Big Contingent Conjunctive Fact’. If every contingent fact has an explanation—if there is an explanation for why each contingent state-of-affairs holds—then there must also be an explanation for why the contingent fact which is the conjunction of all smaller contingent facts holds. This explanation cannot itself be a contingent fact, for no contingent fact can explain itself, and therefore must be a necessary one. Yet if it is a necessary fact that certain other facts hold then those facts too are necessary.

Although most analytical philosophers prefer the above formulation of the objection, the general problem in fact dates back to the question of whether God must choose the best of all possible worlds. This problem can be put as follows: God, as a supremely rational agent, must always choose the best; therefore God must have a sufficient reason for choosing to actualise this possible world as opposed to all the other seemingly possible options4. But if God (the being in which all possibilities are grounded as both Feser and Leibniz would agree) must actualise this possible world and thus cannot actualise any others, it follows that it is in fact the only possible world, and, once again, all seemingly contingent facts, facts about things which could have seemingly been otherwise, become necessary. If the theist tries to escape this conclusion by pointing out that there is no single ‘best possible world’, (that there are worlds containing distinct but comeasurable goods) then the critic will fling the PSR back in their face. If there is no sufficient reason to prefer one possible world over another then God cannot rationally act. The deity will be trapped, like some divine Buridan's Ass, eternally contemplating an infinitude of equally tempting alternatives yet never acting5.

Feser’s response to this problem is infuriatingly insubstantial. As in Scholastic Metaphysics he gestures to the fact that scholastics do not treat propositions as platonic entities existing apart from the mind’s entertaining them6. Whilst true this is irrelevant to the criticism, since it is concerned not with propositions in and of themselves but with the states-of-affairs (the ways reality is, e.g. X entity having Y property) which they represent; this is why the term ‘facts’ is used as a way of remaining neutral as to whether truths add another entity to one’s ontology above the beings involved. He also makes the case that not all explanations need be such that potential explanans entail their explanandum. Whilst I’m sympathetic to such a view—I suspect logical entailment in the strict sense belongs only to narrow logic and that our unwillingness to let go of lingering prejudices linking necessity with analyticity—the supposed counterexamples that Feser gives of statistical and scientific explanation are unconvincing: in each case they appear merely to be incomplete explanations which, if sufficiently fleshed out, would give the same appearance of entailment. Take his example of the sun’s gravitational influence explaining the elliptical orbits of the planets: accepting an account of the laws of nature on which such laws are metaphysically necessary, then if one has a complete description of a physical domain—that is all the substances that make it up and all the causal powers at work—then from that description the outcome necessarily follows. It does no good to say that it would be different if there were other factors at work because a description of the other-factored system would necessitate the different result just as much. What is needed is a paradigmatic example of a complete explanation which looks sufficiently different to those presenting the appearance of entailment.

Surprisingly, and perhaps tellingly, Feser does not discuss the most significant response to all of the above problems, one that has been lurking in the wings since Leibniz’s correspondence with Samuel Clarke. Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss have proposed that an elegant and brutal way to defuse all such problems is to hold that contingent facts stating an agent’s free choices are in fact self-explanatory (how one formulates this is still up for debate—of the options discussed by Pruss readers would probably prefer ‘X freely chose Y because impressed by reason Z’ as it leaves room for the Scholastic insight that every agent acts for a perceived good)7. This account fits well with our intuitions about free agents being neither random nor externally determined but self-determined—whilst one may grant that causa sui (in the sense of cyclical causation) is impossible one can still accept self-explanation. True there is something unsatisfactory about non-necessitating explanation, but the atheist libertarian will have to bite the same bullet; the mystery lies not with the theism but with the free will. One might press an analogy with abstract objects: the difference between agents and non-agents is as radical as the difference between abstracta and concreta—abstracta have their own account of explanation separate from most concreta so why should it surprise us if agents do as well? A free choice seems a good candidate for that ‘paradigmatic example of a complete explanation sufficiently different to those presenting the appearance of entailment’.

Armed with such an account one can avoid modal collapse and liberate God from His divine indecision. This would not imply the extreme voluntarist position Feser has elsewhere called ‘liberty of indifference’, for one need not deny that an agent that does not make ‘evil’ choices is better, or even more ‘free’, than one that does (although, as Quentin Smith has pointed out, if one accepts the restriction of the principle of alternate possibilities to only good choices, the standard Free Will response to the Logical Problem of Evil appears to fail8). The observations do not concern a choice between a bad and a good option but between choices, of which there are likely an infinite number, where one alternative is no better or worse than another. Charges of doxastic voluntarism can be rebutted on the same grounds.

A bigger concern might be that in taking contingent facts regarding free choices as self-explanatory one risks vitiating the PSR’s role in the Cosmological Argument. I suspect that the worry here is that every explanatory chain might terminate in the free choice of a contingent agent: although the vast majority of existential facts do not appear to involve free acts on the part of contingent beings, might not the sceptic postulate a deceitful angel responsible for each fact? Multiple formulations of the argument do not suffer from this problem however: for instance those that ask ‘why does the set of contingent beings have the members that it does?’ (Rowe), ‘why do these contingent beings exist as opposed to others?’ (Pruss) or ‘why are there contingent beings at all?’ (Feser) (of course one can ask the same questions about the subset of contingent beings, contingent agents). Feser’s specifically Scholastic variant, ‘why do contingent beings remain in existence?’ is also unaffected. Finally, all that one needs to conclude from the existence of contingent beings to a necessary being is that a world without contingent free agents is possible, a premise that seems uncontroversial and can be supported with subtraction arguments.

It may be wondered why so much time has been spent on an argument Feser does not even mention; this will become apparent later on when I return to some of the points raised in discussion of the other proofs. For now let us take it that Feser’s PSR argument has worked and it has been granted that a necessary being exists.

Next, what attributes might the necessary being of the PSR Cosmological Argument have? In a sense this is one of the most existentially important questions in philosophy, for it is far easier—infinitely easier in fact if one wishes to remain rational—for the atheist to accept PSR reasoning from contingent beings to a necessary being but deny said being is anything like the God of classical theism. If one accepts the free will lemma, of course one gets agency. Feser appeals to a number of considerations from his Thomist metaphysics to derive the classical Divine Attributes; in keeping with our project, though, let us examine what one can derive solely from the argument itself.

The argument itself leads swiftly to the conclusion that the necessary being in question is omnipotent, for if all contingent states-of-affairs depend upon said entity then it follows that it has the power to actualise said states-of-affairs whether directly or through an intermediary. William Rowe objected to this course of argument claiming that all one is entitled to conclude is that the being is ‘very powerful’9, but not omnipotent—we know it can bring about all contingent states-of-affairs that actually are the case but what reason do we have to think it can bring about all others? An easy response comes to mind: being of its nature necessary, the being revealed in the PSR must exist in all possible worlds; if that is the case then—the notion of a contingent fact being the case for no reason at all having already been ruled out—the being could ultimately explain the existence of any contingent fact in every world in which it exists. Since it exists in all possible worlds, though, it exists alongside all possible contingent facts (thus all possible beings) and thus would have the power to actualise them.

An objection: might not it be the case that instead of the totality of contingent entities having its explanation in one necessary entity, the various subsets of that totality are explained by different necessary beings? Let us take two necessary beings, Scarlet and Azure. Scarlet has the power to actualise all contingent states-of-affairs related to material beings and Azure those relating to immaterial beings. What justification is there for belief in one omnipotent being as opposed to Scarlett and Azure or any number of specialised necessary beings? From the argument itself one can only appeal to the Principle of Parsimony—true, we have no a priori way of knowing that there is only the one necessary being, but if we can get away with only affirming one our theory will be in better shape.

This reveals an interesting limitation of the PSR argument taken on its own; namely that it proves there exists a necessary being but does not on its own furnish any further account of that being’s necessity10. This is not to the argument’s detriment (Clarke admits this limitation early on); after all, many philosophers, both atheist and theist, accept the existence of Platonic abstracta, for the necessity of which no account is given. By their very nature necessary facts are not brute facts, yet when weighing theoretical virtues it is considered good form to try to make necessity claims as transparent as possible. Let us look at the ‘necessity-making’ principles the PSR arguer might appeal to:

1. A form of Ontological Argument. This is the authentically Leibnizian option and the reason Kant claimed the Cosmological Argument depends upon the Ontological Argument to establish God’s existence. A perfect being is a necessary being and if a necessary being is possible then it is actual. We know from our PSR reasoning that a necessary being is actual, therefore we know that the ontological argument goes through, therefore our necessary being is a perfect being. The problem with this is that it gives no way of knowing whether the necessary beings in question are one and the same. At the back of the Leibnizian’s mind is the assumption that the only way one could account for the necessity of a concrete being is through its perfection, a claim modern philosophers might find too strong. A better way would be to claim that from Ontological Argument concerns we know that at least one necessary being is an omnipotent being, but that the existence of an omnipotent being is incompatible with almost omnipotent beings like Scarlet and Azure. If we have a priori reason to think omnipotence is metaphysically possible (the PSR argument certainly gives us reason to believe that) then we have additional reason to prefer that over merely epistemically possible limited necessary beings.

2. Divine Simplicity. Feser appeals to this option though he runs it into the next two options. A simple being, much like a perfect being, is such that if it is even possible then it actually exists. The challenge is then to derive some of the divine attributes from simplicity (Feser makes an interesting case for such in his Neo-Platonic proof) and argue in a similar way to the above.

3. Act and Potency. This the classic scholastic account, which will be looked at in greater detail during discussion of the Aristotelian Proof.

4. The identicality of Essence and Existence. This is the infamous Thomist account which holds that a necessary being (in the relevant sense) is a being in which essence and existence are one. Of all the accounts of necessity given this is probably the clearest. It requires commitment to an inflationary account of existence—one which treats existence as a really distinct property of things. Although Thomas derives this view from the Act/Potency distinction it is an open question whether one could hold it without that piece of Aristotelian metaphysics.

A few closing observations: none of these ways of accounting for necessity exclude the others; indeed, most of them follow from the others, e.g. in the case of 3 entailing 2 and 1. This gives the theist an impressive cumulative argument. One might worry that asking for an account of the being reached through the PSR cosmological argument is moving the goal posts; after all, it is only contingent being which requires an explanation and, unless the theist can give a very clear explanation of what elucidating necessity-maker principles actually means, all they have is a weak appeal to theoretical virtue. At any rate, in order for the theist to prove that the necessary being established in the course of PSR reasoning is God they must either show that the argument plus one’s background ontology means the being in question has all of the Divine Attributes, or that it is the only coherent (concrete) necessary being (in which case other attribute proofs pertaining to a necessary being in fact refer to this necessary being). Until such time theists must learn to live with the epistemic possibility of limited necessary beings.

Next up: the Aristotelian Argument

NOTES:

1. This refers to the Cosmological Argument devised by Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss. The original paper can be read online here or with additional context in Gale’s God and Metaphysics. For an in-depth account of the Pruss-Gale Argument and some of the criticisms it has faced the reader should consult pages 51 to 97 of Emanuel Rutten’s A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments: Towards a Renewed Case for Theism.

2. Other criticisms of the PSR usually take the form of denying the principle itself or claiming that we cannot, for Russelian reasons, coherently speak of a totality of contingent facts. Since none of them appear that plausible I do not discuss them here. There exists a further ingenious criticism mentioned by Rowe and further developed by Bede Rundle to the effect that instead of requiring a necessary being the existence of contingent being could equally be explained by a hypothetical principle: ‘necessarily there exists some contingent being’. Although a clear advance on criticisms which simply seek to deny the PSR I do not think this a serious contender to the necessary being option. For one thing the nature of this principle is left extremely unclear. For another it fails to satisfy variants of the PSR that cover all contingent facts or even all contingent existential facts: if it is necessarily the case that there exists a contingent being why is it the case that contingent being Y exists as opposed to contingent being X? This account provides no explanation as to why this possible world is the actual world.

3. This criticism is commonly associated with Peter Van Inwagen’s presentation of it in his 1983 volume An Essay on Free Will, although William Rowe had in fact raised a similar objection in his survey of the Cosmological Argument 8 years before. The most detailed presentation of modal collapse objections in contemporary literature can be found on pages 214 to 233 of J.H. Sobel’s dense and idiosyncratically written Logic and Theism. A dishonourable mention goes pages 119 to 123 of Graham Oppy’s Arguing About Gods.

4. The astute reader will have noticed that the much vaunted ‘Problem of Evil’ in fact boils down to the question of what worlds a morally good rational being can have a sufficient reason to actualise.

5. William Rowe sets out the various problems relating to Divine choice in his excellent study Can God be Free? though of course the question was first raised explicitly in relation to the PSR in Leibniz's correspondence with Samuel Clarke.

6. Here we come to a tricky question about priorities. Feser can hardly accept that truth is dependent on a contingent mind, that without thinking beings a certain fact e.g. ‘Snow is white’ is neither true nor false, since his denial of this forms a premise in his Augustinian Argument. Both he and the ‘Platonic’ atheist are committed to propositions being independent of contingent knowers. See pages 73 to 75 of Rutten for a good case as to why the PSR arguer can remain agnostic about the ontological status of propositions or even assay them in a nominalist manner should he or she wish to.

7. See page 240 of Gale’s On the Nature and Existence of God and pages 128 to 168 of Pruss’ The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment.

8. See pages 148 to 157 of Smith’s Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytical Philosophy of Language for his ‘Divine Perfect Freedom’ objection to the Free Will Defense.

9. See pages 243 to 245 of Rowe’s The Cosmological Argument.

10. For reasons best known to themselves a number of people find this distinction confusing. For an explanation of how the Cosmological Argument establishes the existence of a logically necessary being without providing or needing to provide an account of that being’s necessity one is recommended to see Chapter 5 of Rowe’s study.

Bibliography:

Feser, Edward (2014). Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction. Ignatius Press.
Feser, Edward (2017). Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Ignatius Press.
Gale, Richard (2004). God and Metaphysics. Prometheus Book
Gale, Richard (1999). On the Nature and Existence of God. Cambridge University Press
Oppy, Graham (2006). Arguing about Gods. Cambridge University Press.
Pruss, Alexander (2006). The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment. Cambridge University Press.
Rowe, William (1975). The Cosmological Argument. Princeton University Press.
Rowe, William (2004). Can God Be Free?. Oxford University Press.
Rutten, Emanuel (2012). A Critical Assessment of Contemporary Cosmological Arguments:
Towards a Renewed Case for Theism. Academisch Proefschrift. Full text available here.
Smith, Quentin (2004). Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytical Philosophy of Language. Yale University Press.
Sobel, Jordan Howard (2004). Logic and Theism. Cambridge University Press.
van Inwagen, Peter (1983). An Essay on Free Will. Oxford University Press.

28 comments:

  1. Daniel,

    Do you think the PER (not the weak version) strictly entails contrastive explanations?

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    1. No, but with qualifications.

      In many cases it appears clear that one can ask of state X ‘Why X rather than Y’. What is needed is some kind of canon or method for distinguishing where it makes sense to ask for a further contrastive explanation and where it doesn’t. Libertarian free choices* seem the best candidate for this. Somewhere Gale mentions dividing explanations into scientific and agential – it would be an interesting question whether one could make room for further options e.g. those involving aesthetics or perceptual phenomenology. I am to an extent leaning on the dilemma presented by the standard objection to support this claim i.e. if free choices are dependent on brute facts then they are indeterminate and thus beyond the agent’s control.

      I do appeal to contrastive explanation against Bede Rundle’s non-necessary being alternative to the PSR and I still hold that question (if ‘necessarily some contingent being exists’ why contingent being A rather than contingent being B) is a reasonable one.

      *Strictly speaking it requires not just Libertarian free will but a certain kind of Libertarian free will, that is Agent Causation, the claim that agent’s qua substances are the ultimate causes of their free choices. This definition is less than helpful however as agent causation qua causation by substances is often contrasted with event causation, whereas on Scholastic and Aristotelian accounts all causation is between substances. I know that Timothy O’Connor, who is mentioned in the blog entry you linked to earlier, has written a book about this kind of agency which I want to read at some point.

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  2. I wonder if the principle of proportionate causality could help with Rundle's objection? That intellect and will must in some sense exist in the neccessary explanation.

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    1. I don't think so (explanations are states-of-affairs not substances so proportionate causality does not apply to them directly). The Rundle defender would say 'yes, necessarily there must exist a contingent being and given proportionate causality that being must contain all the properties of its effects in some way, but at the very most that only proves that whatever contingent being it was in this world contained the properties of possessing intelligence and will'.

      The best I can make of Rundle’s alternative principle (‘necessarily, there exists some contingent being’) is by combining it with John Leslie’s Optimalism (‘the world exists because it is better that it does so’). Thus we get: A maximally good world has to exist because it is better that it does so, however there are commeasurable maximal worlds, therefore it is a brute fact which one gets actualised. Rundle’s principle could then be strengthened to ‘necessarily very good contingent beings exist because it is better that they do so’. That way Optimalism avoids modal collapse and the Rundle principle appears less ad hoc. One is still left with a massive lack of contrastive explanation however.

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  3. On the subject of PSR versions and entailment/contrastive explanations, I wonder about your thoughts on Feser's version where it makes a fact or state of affairs intelligible? The bar seems to be set quite low in regards to what counts as an explanation and thereby dodging brute facts. On one hand this doesnt seem to have the ad hoc air about it that the weak version (of WLC or stephen Davis, say) has. On the other it seems just as comfortable with explanans that dont entail the explanation and content that we can say atleast *something* regarding contrastive explanations. Here I'm thinking of Pruss's ideas in his Divine Creative Freedom paper where Agent A was impressed by reason R to choose choice C. Even though A was also impressed by reason R2 to choose choice C2. We can still make the choice intelligible, if not entailed. But then I get the feeling you may reply something along the lines of 'why not just take such accounts of free will as self explanatory and stick to the strong version?'. You would have a point imo. Wouldn't self explanatory accounts of free will still need to reject explanatiry entailment with an omniscient God?

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  4. Hello! Some questions/remarks, if I may;

    First, it seems to me that there's a problem with the PSR that Dr. Feser endorses; he don't use, if I'm correct, the full version wich concerns facts, and only uses the one concerning beings. But here's my problem; it seems to me that this is not sufficient to get to a necessary being, because it seems that the Hume objection works here. A set of beings is not really a being, so it may well be the case that with the principle "Every contingent being has an external cause", the set is sufficiently explained. That's not problem with the the principle with facts of course.
    Am I wrong?

    Now, relating to the free will theme: don't you fear that, if you accept that there can be self-explaining facts, then the atheist could say that the BCCF is itself self-explaining? For escaping that, we would need a coherent account of libertarian free will which is not equivalent to that idea.
    It looks like a necessary fact of the form "God freely choses to do so" is a better way to follow for the explanation of the BCCF. (God being necessary, and also an agent, the proposition holds in every possible world, even if He hadn't created anything at all.)

    The biggest problem seems that there's no reason to say that a libertarian choice is self-explaining but not the proposition "Necessarily, there's a contingent being (or not.)"
    What do you think?

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    1. Thanks for your comments.

      Re 1. Good point! I will check about this but I am assume that's a verbal category mistake on his part - technically explanations are something we ask about facts - people tend to be lazy when formulating the weaker version and ask about the existence of contingent beings when they should really ask about the facts reporting the existence of these contingent beings.

      Re 2, The BCCF would only be self-explanatory if each chain of explanations terminated in an explanation involving a free choice. This does gesture towards important questions involving freedom and divine foreknowledge though (if one rejects Molinism for instance one might have to say that the fact X is the actual world is explained by God's free choice + all the free choices contingent beings make).

      Re 3, On the contrary I think regardless of the truth of theism the libertarian has a strong reason to hold that free actions are self-explanatory in that it allows them to escape the two horns of the Standard Objection.

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    2. A problem I have with the idea that a contingent proposal can be self-explaining, other than that it isn't completely understandable for myself, is that it would imply a circular response to the contingency argument, because the free act of God would be part of the BCCF, or you would need to built another set of fact who don't contain free acts.
      Well, if you do this, it would solve the problem of the destruction of the free choices of the creatures.

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  5. One way in which we could show both that the necessary being proved by the Leibnizian argument is intelligent, rational and is unique and necessarily singular and one, would be by using an argument based on powers and possibility.


    All logical possibilities are based in a logically necessary being, of which there can by necessity only be one, in the same way there is only one law of non-contradiction. This being would then also have intellect because a good case could be made that possible worlds exist intentionally and thus must eternally subsist in a mind, and the necessary being would then be able to contemplate all of the possible worlds when actualising them as well.

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  6. That's a good point. Pruss and Jacobs argue this way and I think it's a good route to take if a powers account is a live contender for a working modal theory. Two potential worries spring to mind:

    1. Such an account requires the truth of Axion S5, that if something is possible then it is necessarily possible. (That logical possibilities are themselves necessary) If one has no problem with things becoming possible and then impossible one will worry less about grounding possibilities in beings which are themselves contingent. On the plus side this might not be fatal for Pruss 'it possible the set of contingent beings could have been different' formulation of the argument.

    2. May be I'm not following but why necessarily must there only be one such being ?To back to my example: if all powers relating to material beings are grounded in Scarlet and all powers relating to immaterial beings are grounded in Azure why should not we say that these two are not both necessary beings? Caveat: maybe in this case one might say that technically the necessary being which grounds all powers and thus possibilities is the sum Scarlet+Azure.

    P.S. Am now turning off combox moderation as a test.

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  7. 1) It would require acceptance of Axiom S5, but I don't think that would be a problem because the axiom is quite intuitive and commonsensical. What's important to note here is that logical possibilities are grounded also by the law of non-contradiction, which means that if any possibility were to become an impossibility, we would have to posit a change in the law of non-contradiction, which is absurd.



    2)The reason why there can only be 1 such being is because all logical possibilities are grounded and limited by the law of identity and non-contradiction. The possibilities literally flow from them so to speak. To say there is more than 1 being is tantamount to saying that there is more than one law of identity or non-contradiction, which is impossible.


    In fact, this is the most important thing about the argument in my opinion. Because one of the reasons why I like this argument is because of it's complete independence from PSR. But when I originally realised an argument for God could be made from logic, I wasn't thinking about how it proves there must be a necessary being that is directly causally efficacious.


    Rather, what the argument is supposed to show is that logic is a sort of modal inhibitor. It allows for the possibility for certain things while making other things impossible. What is most interesting is the question of how brute facts are supposed to fit into this.


    Given that they are logical possibilities, they must be grounded in a higher logically necessary reality. But doesn't this imply causal possibility? That God could causally actualise brute facts? This would be incoherent because brute facts by definition aren't actualised by anything.

    Yet at the same time, brute facts are logical possibilities who depend on the laws of logic for their very possibility.



    In other words, if the modal inhibitor version of the argument is correct, it would prove a higher necessary reality that grounds all possibilities, even uncaused brute ones. But it wouldn't exactly show that the reality is causally efficacious, which might be problematic.

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  8. and it is likely that the PSR is so basic that any proof for or even against it would end up tacitly appealing to it


    Actually, there are some rather obscure and not often mentioned arguments from Thomist philosophers that attempt to show how the PSR follows from the PNC and Principle of Identity.


    One such argument is given by Scott Sullivan and is also derived form Garrigou-Lagrange, and goes like this:


    If a thing exists, it is distinguished from nothing, because otherwise it would be nothing.

    If a thing is distinguished from nothing, it is distinguished either by itself or from another.

    If a thing were to be distinguished from nothing by itself, it would be necessary because it would need nothing outside of itself in order to exist.

    Since a contingent thing exists and is not necessary, it must be distinguished from nothing by another.

    The thing which distinguishes existing objects from non-existence is existence. And existence distinguishes itself from nothing by it's nature. Therefore, etc.


    In other words, the ontological cause of all existing things, even so-called brute facts, would be existence because otherwise the thing in question wouldn't exist, and would instead be nothing more than a bunch of non-existing potential properties.


    What's interesting is that this argument is meant to point to God as Existence itself, and it looks like this argument may also be partially inspired by an inflationary view of existence, though whether or not the argument is independent from such a view, or if it even proves the truth of such a view during it's argumentation, is not certain.

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  9. I know of those arguments, though think they are at the very most of limited value. For one thing one shouldn't play into the sceptic's game of being forced to justify the PSR with further positive arguments. The PSR may well be so basic that any argument for it will end up appealing to it.

    Likewise the argument you reference appears cyclical. The third and fourth claims taken to together amount to a variation on the PSR taken in the pre-formulaic sense of 'everything has the reason for its existence either from itself or from another' (only instead this is phrased in the Thomistic way 'everything has its existence property either of its nature or from another' with the former corresponding to being necessary and the latter to being contingent) and thus cannot be used to prove the principle.

    In other words, the ontological cause of all existing things, even so-called brute facts, would be existence because otherwise the thing in question wouldn't exist, and would instead be nothing more than a bunch of non-existing potential properties.

    Could you explain what you mean here about brute facts being things? Technically speaking ‘brute fact’ is not a categorical term, it does not refer to any type of entity be it substance, property, accident relation et cetera et cetera. A brute fact is lack of a state-of-affairs which explains another-state-of-affairs. So brute facts don’t seem to exist or even hold.

    I wonder though if it doesn’t point to some argument about it not being impossible for state to have an explanation e.g. since brute facts do not correspond to states there can be no state which necessarily rules out another's having an explanation.

    What's interesting is that this argument is meant to point to God as Existence itself, and it looks like this argument may also be partially inspired by an inflationary view of existence, though whether or not the argument is independent from such a view, or if it even proves the truth of such a view during it's argumentation, is not certain.

    I tend to avoid the Thomistic take on existence, at least if that’s understood to imply the property view. For one thing defending it requires a lot of additional assumptions which appear ad hoc and which few philosophers would accept independently of Thomist ontology. More seriously the property view argued for by Barry Miller is actually incompatible with Axiom S5 (this is my main argument against it). There may be over inflationary accounts of existence e.g. Vallicella’s, that don’t have that consequence though.

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    1. The third and fourth claims taken to together amount to a variation on the PSR taken in the pre-formulaic sense of 'everything has the reason for its existence either from itself or from another'


      Actually, the argument does not explicitly appeal to reasons, but simply uses distinguishing as it's base.


      This is different from reasons for existence precisely because to deny it would end up either denying the existence of the brute fact, or denying the Principle of Identity. While it is at least logically coherent to say that the universe has no reason for it's existence, it is NOT logically coherent to say that the universe as a brute fact is not even distinguished from nothing.


      For if that were the case, the universe would be nothing, and would not exist. The only other option is to deny the dualism of "From itself or another", but that is tantamount to denying the dualism of "Either contingent or necessary" and would be denying the Law of Excluded Middle.



      Could you explain what you mean here about brute facts being things?


      Well, if a ball existed for no reason, it would be a thing whose existence is brute, and thus a brute fact.

      Unless, of course, the very idea of a brute fact has nothing to do with existence, which of itself is already an objection against them.



      I tend to avoid the Thomistic take on existence, at least if that’s understood to imply the property view.



      Which is why I said that I'm not sure if the argument above is dependent on an inflationary view of existence. It could be the case the argument is so basic as to be independent of such a view, or even to be so basic as to actually prove the truth of the inflationary view of existence as a consequence of it's conclusion.



      More seriously the property view argued for by Barry Miller is actually incompatible with Axiom S5 (this is my main argument against it).


      I think that this could be a reason to reject the property view in question, because to deny Axiom S5, specifically when it comes to the law of non-contradiction viewed as a modal inhibitor, would lead one to conclude that the laws of logic could change.


      It would be tantamount to saying that a square ciricle could magically become a possibility rather than an impossibility, which is absurd.


      Once more, this is as applied to the second logical possibility argument I laid out in the second comment above the one you were responding to, specifically about the laws of logic being a positive reality that acts as a modal inhibitor and allows for the possibility of some things while disallowing for the possibility of other things.

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  10. If a thing is distinguished from nothing, it is distinguished either by itself or from another.

    Believers in brute facts will say that you're missing an option—the thing is brutely distinguished from nothing—and that, absent further argument, to leave it out is to implicitly beg the question.

    but that is tantamount to denying the dualism of "Either contingent or necessary" and would be denying the Law of Excluded Middle

    It doesn't follow that if something is brutely distinguished from nothing, it's neither contingent nor non-contingent. It could be a necessary being that is brutely distinguished from nothing (i.e. necessary for no reason at all, rather than in virtue of its nature).

    Which is why I said that I'm not sure if the argument above is dependent on an inflationary view of existence.

    It includes a standard argument against the identitarian view of existence as its fourth premise, but ignores replacement (eliminativist) views and takes for granted that they're wrong. The latter's proponents could say that entities are distinguished from nothing in virtue of various aspects of their essence. Nothing, unless it's made into something, has no essence.

    The thing which distinguishes existing objects from non-existence is existence.

    There is something off about this premise. If all you want to do is to distinguish things from nothing, then any part of their essences will do just fine. It's not as if there are non-existent items that have essences, so that corresponding existent items need some further “existence” to distinguish them.

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    1. the thing is brutely distinguished from nothing


      So what distinguishes it from nothing?


      necessary for no reason at all,


      This is a contradiction. A necessary thing is by definition something that could not be any other way, something that is self-explanatory and cannot be brute because it has an explanation.


      If all you want to do is to distinguish things from nothing, then any part of their essences will do just fine.


      What distinguishes their essence from nothing?

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    2. So what distinguishes it from nothing?

      It's brutely distinguished from nothing. It's simply a flat, foot-stomping, pound-the-table fact that it's distinguished from nothing.

      This is a contradiction. A necessary thing is by definition something that could not be any other way, something that is self-explanatory and cannot be brute because it has an explanation.

      No, it's not. A necessary being is one that exists in every possible world, or could not fail to exist. Unless you presuppose the PSR, it doesn't follow that it has to have an explanation for why it couldn't fail to exist in virtue of its nature.

      What distinguishes their essence from nothing?

      It's partly constituted by a substance, instantiates qualities, and so on. Nothing, not being a thing, lacks all these.

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    3. It's brutely distinguished from nothing. It's simply a flat, foot-stomping, pound-the-table fact that it's distinguished from nothing.


      So nothing distinguishes it from nothing?


      Unless you presuppose the PSR, it doesn't follow that it has to have an explanation for why it couldn't fail to exist in virtue of its nature.


      So it's true that it couldn't fail to exist?

      Which means there could be no reason why 2 + 2 = 4? Or why the principle of non-contradiction holds?



      It's partly constituted by a substance, instantiates qualities, and so on


      What distinguishes those from nothing?

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    4. So nothing distinguishes it from nothing?

      It helps to distinguish between there is no entity that distinguishes entity a from nothing and a isn't distinguished from nothing. The proponents of brute facts accept that there is no entity that distinguishes entity a from nothing; they, however, deny that a isn't distinguished from nothing. Your argument (that if nothing distinguishes a from nothing, a is nothing) relies on running these two claims together.

      It's simply a brute fact that a is distinguished from nothing. a just is distinguished from nothing.

      Which means there could be no reason why 2 + 2 = 4? Or why the principle of non-contradiction holds?

      Let's keep it simple and (for the sake of argument) say yes; they might be bedrock, no-further-explanation, pound-the-table necessary truths.

      Even Pruss is on record saying that he's not sure whether all mathematical truths have explanations.

      What distinguishes those from nothing?

      The qualities are distinguished by their qualitative nature. It, however, doesn't follow from this that they're therefore necessary beings. Only that they're some way different from nothing (which, of course they are).

      A similar reply can be given for substances, if there are substances.

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    5. The qualities are distinguished by their qualitative nature


      And what distinguishes their qualitative nature from nothing?


      It helps to distinguish between there is no entity that distinguishes entity a from nothing and a isn't distinguished from nothing. The proponents of brute facts accept that there is no entity that distinguishes entity a from nothing; they, however, deny that a isn't distinguished from nothing. Your argument (that if nothing distinguishes a from nothing, a is nothing) relies on running these two claims together.

      It's simply a brute fact that a is distinguished from nothing. a just is distinguished from nothing.



      In other words, nothing distinguishes A from nothing. Which is basically a tautology for A not being distinguished from nothing.


      To say that there is nothing that distinguishes A from nothing is the same as to say that A is non-A. So a brute fact response here won't work because one is trying to destroy identity itself.


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    6. I'm going to draw a few more distinctions to pin down exactly what I mean by the words I'm using, in hope that it helps smooth the dialectic.

      The first is between a's essence and a. a's essence is identical with a. a is identical with a's essence. No matter how you slice it, they're the same thing. (a's essence encompasses all of what a is.) I use essence and nature as synonyms.

      The second is between a's essence and its substantial form (natural kind). a's essence is what a is; a's substantial form is the natural kind-universal (Aristotle) or bearer-individuated natural kind-instance (Aquinas) that is a constituent of a. “a's essence” (a) includes its particularity, and we more or less come to know it through the senses; a's substantial form doesn't include a's particularity, and has to be abstracted from that which we acquire through the senses. If you muddle this distinction, you're going to run into questions like “How do we know x individual's essence?”

      The third is between a's essence and a's existence. a's essence is just a. a's existence (says Thomism) is something additional to a (e.g. Barry Miller's existence property-instance). The result is that there is a (real) distinction between a and existing a.

      And what distinguishes their qualitative nature from nothing?

      When I wrote that the qualities are distinguished by their qualitative nature, I had in mind that qualities' qualitative nature exhausts their essence and, it being of itself plainly different from nothing (which as nothing has no qualitative nature), needs no further individuation from nothing. In other words, I'm pointing to qualities' essence, which on eliminativist views of Being is all there is, to individuate them from nothing.

      You presumably thought I was saying the qualities were distinguished from nothing by some further nature, their qualitative nature. That isn't what I meant. The confusion is my mistake, and I'm sorry for not having been clearer.

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    7. In other words, nothing distinguishes A from nothing. Which is basically a tautology for A not being distinguished from nothing.

      To say that there is nothing that distinguishes A from nothing is the same as to say that A is non-A. So a brute fact response here won't work because one is trying to destroy identity itself.


      To say that there is no entity that distinguishes a from nothing isn't the same as saying that a is non-a. You're muddling the same distinction. :-)

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  11. qualities' qualitative nature exhausts their essence and, it being of itself plainly different from nothing (which as nothing has no qualitative nature), needs no further individuation from nothing.


    So they distinguish themselves from nothing?


    To say that there is no entity that distinguishes a from nothing isn't the same as saying that a is non-a. You're muddling the same distinction.


    Forget about the term entities here. What this reduces to is that absolutely nothing distinguishes A from non-A, which means that A is identical to non-A, which is clearly false.

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    1. Here is a cleaner version of your argument and a summary of my replies so far:

      (1) If a thing exists, it's distinguished from nothing, because otherwise it would be nothing.
      (2) If a thing is distinguished from nothing, it's distinguished either by itself or by another.
      (3) If a thing were to be distinguished from nothing by itself, it's a necessary being and its existence is explained by its own nature.
      (4) If a thing is distinguished from nothing by another it's distinguished from it by existence and its existence is explained by existence, and existence's existence is explained by its own nature.
      (5) Therefore, if a thing exists, it has an explanation of its existence.

      I've raised eliminativism about existence as a counterposition. (Probably if we eliminate existence, nothing has an explanation of its existence.) I've also rejected (2) as presenting a false, question-begging dichotomy and (3) and (4) as ignoring ways of distinguishing things from nothing that have nothing to do with existence.

      Here is another version of your argument:

      (1) If a thing exists, it's distinguished from nothing, because otherwise it would be nothing.
      (2') If a thing is distinguished from nothing, it's either distinguished by itself or isn't.
      (3) If a thing were to be distinguished from nothing by itself, it's a necessary being and its existence is explained by its own nature.
      (4') If a thing isn't distinguished from nothing by itself it's distinguished from it by existence and its existence is explained by existence, and existence's existence is explained by its own nature.
      (5) Therefore, if a thing exists, it has an explanation of its existence.

      Now (2') follows, but (4)'s replacement (4') begs the question. For absent the PSR or some further argument, it could be the case that a thing isn't distinguished from nothing by itself because it's brutely distinguished from nothing.

      The rest is the same as before.

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    2. Still no spark of comprehension from you my good man. Thanks for the conversation anyway.

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  12. Hi Daniel,

    A bit tangential but what do you think of the accidental property objection? Vallicella and Pruss discussed it, and i've seen John West mention it a few times. I think it's the strongest argument against God's existence that an Atheist can utilize. I wonder if Theists can work around it without accepting an externalist view of knowledge.

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    1. Well an easy way to respond to it is to simply reject Divine Simplicity. I would prefer not to but in the end I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. I have yet to see the externalist belief explanation fleshed out in any satisfactory way, a task Thomist philosophers should follow up on as they reply upon something like it.

      Slightly more detail: the discussion is too often phrased in terms of the Thomist account of simplicity. I think this is a mistake and that it would be worth investigating other accounts in greater depth. At some point I hope to do a post on Scotus and Leftow's alternate accounts of simplicity.

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    2. I agree with Dan that rejecting divine simplicity is a way to avoid the accidental property objection, but disagree that it's an easy way to avoid it. There are good arguments that entail the Thomist account of divine simplicity, like Aquinas's so-called existential proof.

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