Complexity Implies Causation
The first argument is discussed at length in a fine article ‘Divine Simplicity, Aseity, and Sovereignty’ by Matthew Baddorf; it is the claim that complexity implies causation, that if an entity is complex then it requires an efficient cause of its existence. Neither Baddorf nor Paul Vincent Spade, who the former quotes in favour of that thesis, are aware of any reason for this dictum beyond a purported inductive generalisation from observed contingent beings to the effect: all contingent beings are complex therefore all complex beings are contingent1. The case for such a generalisation is weak and the purported supporting evidence easily explained in other ways e.g. by the aseity claim that all contingent beings depend on God for their existence. If such is granted then of course all non-God entities will require a cause, regardless of whether we assay God as ontologically simple or complex. As an inductive argument complexity implies causation has as much dialectical force as J. H. Sobel’s necessity implies abstractness animadversion against traditional theism (all abstract objects are necessary, God is necessary, ergo God is an abstract object)2.
Baddorf is correct in claiming that as a stand-alone thesis complexity implies causation lacks support, but from an historical and exegetical perspective his dismissal is somewhat unfair since it overlooks the specific metaphysical framework those who held it were working in. As an accepted principle complexity implies causation entered into the scholastic canon through the works of Plotinus, who does give reasons for accepting it based on distinction between a thing’s nature and its existence3. To treat essence and existence as distinct metaphysical constituents is of course the basis of the Thomistic proof for God from the real distinction, an argument which is distinctly Neo-Platonic in heritage. Such purported theistic proofs are interesting and important but in this case appeals to them it are bound to be unconvincing from a dialectical perspective, as few philosophers accept anything like the Thomist real distinction for reasons other than a prior commitment to divine simplicity.
What about the related claim that all unified composites require a unifier? Here this requirement might not be one of efficient causation but some other form of dependence e.g. all complexity requires an explanation4. This claim could be applied to both mereological and metaphysical parts and distinguished from the standard PSR claim that either contingent facts or the existence of contingent beings requires an explanation. In other words, one arguing on the basis of unified composites requiring an explanation would apply this demand to instances of composition regardless of whether the beings in question are contingent or necessary.
The problem is that when phrased in terms of explanation the argument fails to yield the conclusion the friend of divine simplicity desires. The reason for this is that internal explanations, explanations in terms of the nature of properties, obviate the need for an external unifier in some cases. Consider an object which is both triangular and warm. We might ask what explains this case of warmth being co-instantiated alongside triangularity. The explanation then will not only include reference to what caused the object to exist in the first place but also to what caused it to have both these properties (the same state-of-affairs might serve as an explanation for both). So far so good—there is nothing in the nature of warmth and triangularity which explains their being co-exemplified, so we can seek for an external explanation of this fact. However things would be different if we were to ask why being trilateral or being coloured were co-instantiated alongside being triangular. Explanations for these states-of-affairs would lie in the nature of the properties themselves e.g. it is a necessary fact about the property trilaterality that it is co-exemplified alongside triangularity. This fact of modal space can be thrown into sharper relief if we speak in terms of contrastive explanation—it makes sense to ask why said triangular object is red rather than blue because these things could have been otherwise but not why it is trilateral rather than bilateral, for such is necessarily the case.
Recall this argument seeks explanation for compositeness rather than contingency. In the case of our triangle the fact that these properties occur together as part of a composite requires no external explanation, although the existence of the being in which they occur does, as it is contingent (to put that another way: it is a necessary truth that all triangular objects will be trilateral but a contingent truth that any triangular objects exist). If we were talking about necessary beings this admixture of contingency disappears. Say for instance we know that there exists a necessary being that is a moral agent. Said being will also possess intelligence since agency and intelligence are necessarily co-instantiated. In such a case there would be no requirement to give an external explanation for why this is so since it is a necessary fact grounded in the nature of those properties. To deny that the nature of certain properties accounts for their co-instantiation is to embrace the Humean thesis that there are no necessary connections between distinct properties.
A Non-Simple Being just would not be God
The second argument, beloved of theologians, is very different in approach as it eschews appeal to metaphysics in favour of axiology and appropriate religious consciousness. It takes a number of different forms but the basic intuition behind it is that a non-simple being could not be an adequate object of worship as it is not radically transcendent5. Unfortunately debate on this issue is immensely complicated by the fact that the vast majority of its proponents seem intent to simultaneously treat it as an argument for analogical theory of language. With due deference to our friends the Scotists and other champions of divine simplicity and ontological univocity we will try to treat these separately.
Unlike in its continental philosophy counterpart, worshipfulness (along with its negative correlate idolatry) does not play a prominent part in analytical philosophy of religion. Part of this is because worshipfulness strikes many philosophers as too subjective, at least to enjoy any kind of priority in matters of natural theology. The closest one gets (and even here one is drawing heavily from other disciplines) is the qua-phenomenological analysis of religious experience.
One might try to derive worshipfulness from the basic principle of perfect being theology i.e. that God’s worshipfulness results from His being that which possess all perfections to the maximum degree. We might think, as Anselm did, that oneness or unity is a great-making property—all else being equal a being is greater the less divergence and complexity there is amongst its constituents6. I am sympathetic to this claim (in fact I think it is broadly true) but it is strongly related to a certain theoretical background and not immediately supported by our intuitions about value. Plantinga and disciples are right that unity is not a transparent great-making property and thus need not feature in our pre-philosophical conception of a perfect and thus worship-worthy being.
Alternatively we might return to the given and seek our criterion of worshipfulness in religious experience, this term by taken broadly to include both the doxastic attitudes of the reverence and adoration and mystical experience itself.
For the former one might turn to the thought of Max Scheler, who in a number of works gives phenomenological analysis of different forms of valuing, including those appropriate to a religious attitude which discloses the nature of the holy. According to this philosopher the value of holiness signifies a being which is an infinitely good person and which is absolute in the sense of having all other beings dependent on it for their existence whilst it depends on nothing beyond itself7. True to his phenomenological background Scheler stresses that this analysis is separate from theoretical questions about divinity; it does not relate to speculative theology or religious doctrine only that which follows from the appropriate value attitudes and the intentional objects to which they are correlated.
For the latter from the beginnings of comparative religion it has been accepted that mystical experiences differ greatly in nature, indeed the fairest one might say is that the majority of them involve an insight into some ultimate reality or truth8. Presumably this ultimate truth is a necessary one—Brahman does not happen to be the ultimate reality beyond all world illusion or the universe does not happen to be one mode of an infinite divine substance. Again it might be an ultimate fact that necessarily the contingent reality is grounded in a divinely simple being but simplicity does not appear to be given transparently in mystical experience unless we are assuming simplicity is synonymous with ultimateness. Once again it is ‘ultimate’ status that confers worship-worthiness not simplicity itself.
None of these approaches then yield a direct connection between divine simplicity and worship-worthiness. This is not to say they are without value: they do provide an intuition about divine aseity that should lead us to prefer theistic ontologies which make platonic universals dependent on God rather than vice versa. That these motivating factors are pre-theoretical—independent of the concerns of a particular philosophical system—makes them good candidates for guiding our philosophical practice prior to the sort of question of ontological frameworks discussed in my recent post.
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The arguments here are by no means the most important let alone the only arguments for divine simplicity. Conspicuous in its absence is the argument that parts are prior to wholes and thus divine complexity implies that the properties or property-instances pertaining to the Divine Attributes have a better claim to ultimate being status from God. Indeed it is probably this concern about grounding, which, when misconstrued in a quasi-causal sense, leads to the arguments from unity mentioned in the first section. Since a discussion of this would involve weighing competing accounts of properties and predication, bringing us close to the promising truthmaker account of simplicity, I will reserve it for a future entry.
Footnotes
1. From a scholarly perspective this admission is a little surprising. Causation implies complexity is likely derived from the related thesis that complexity entails separability and thus contingency, which is clearly stated in scholastic works e.g. quite explicit statements of it can be found in the writings of Anselm and Thomas. Caution must also be taken as the separability of ‘really distinct’ parts is a truth by definition on many scholastic theories of distinctions.
2. Sobel offers this as an objection against forms of the modal ontological argument but it applies account which holds God to be a necessary being. See pages 114 to 140 of Logic and Theism.
3. For excellent discussions of Plotinus’ account of simplicity in terms of essence-existence identification see Kevin Corrigan’s ‘Essence and Existence in the Enneads’ in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus and Chapter I of Lloyd Gerson’s Plotinus.
4. I am here reading the argument as an explanatory demand for composition in general rather than the unity of specific metaphysical parts like essence and existence. This is similar to Edward Feser’s Neo-Platonic Proof in Five Proofs.
5. See Vallicella’s blog entry ‘God as Uniquely Unique’ for a brief example of this.
6. See the Monologion and the Reply to Gaunilo.
7. Such discussions and much else are to be found in Scheler’s On the Eternal in Man. For a quick overview with suggestions for applying the fruits of Scheler’s analysis to perfect being theology see Quentin Smith’s entry for Scheler in The History of Western Philosophy of Religion volume V, Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Religion.
8. For a brilliant overview of divine ultimacy and its different meanings see J. L. Schellenberg’s ‘God for All Time: From Theism to Ultimism’.
Bibliography:
Anselm, Hopkins and Richardson (trans) (2000) Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatise of Anselm of Canterbury, the Arthur J. Banning Press
Baddorf, Matthew (2017) ‘Divine Simplicity, Aseity and Sovereignty’ Sophia 56 (3)
Corrigan, Kevin ‘Essence and Existence in the Enneads’ (2006) in Gerson (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge University Press
Feser, Edward (2017). Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Ignatius Press.
Gerson, Lloyd (1998) Plotinus: The Arguments of the Philosophers, Routledge
Scheler, Max (1972) On the Eternal in Man, Archon Books
Smith, Quentin (2013) ‘Max Scheler’ in Oppy & Trakakis (eds) The History of Western Philosophy of Religion volume V, Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Religion.
Schellenberg’ J. L. ‘God for All Time: From Theism to Ultimism. ’ Unpublished draft. Available for download here.
Sobel, Jordan Howard (2004). Logic and Theism. Cambridge University Press.
Vallicella, William (2016) ‘God as Uniquely Unique’, blog entry – available here.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteYou need to extend your fifth paragraph's argument from de specie to de individuo unity. I might post about it later.