God and Necessary State of Affairs

Kevin-

Can't God (a necessary state of affairs if you like) be logically prior to all non-God necessary states of affairs which in turn depend upon God? The latter are necessary, yes, but their necessity is the logical consequence of original/grounding necessary state which is God. God, being who and what he is necessarily, is such that it's necessarily the case that A is not -A, etc.

Can necessary states be dependent upon other necessary states? I don't see why not, unless it calls into question the necessity of the latter. Does it?

Tom

Tom,

I think I understand what you are saying, but I just don't see how it applies in the present case (and by that I don't mean that it doesn't apply, just that I fail to see how it does apply). I can understand, for example, how the existence of a truthmaker is logically prior to the proposition that it makes true, or how God's eternal act of creating Moses is logically prior to Moses' existence. But I don't see how God's existence and nature is logically prior to "no physical object can be taller than itself [at the same time]" or "a thing is colored if red." In the first two cases, I can see the relationship between what is logically prior and what is logically posterior, so I have an understanding of the 'grounding' at work. But I just don't see the same connection with the latter two cases. In what sense is God's existence logically prior to the fact that no physical object can be taller than itself? How is the fact that no physical object can be taller than itself a logical consequence of God's nature, given that his nature is immaterial?

A few things Kevin,

1. You write "...given that it is neither volitional nor causal" but why is that given? You ruled out actualization (I took you to be ruling out *strong* actualization anyway) but that needn't be necessary or sufficient for the instantiation of a causal relation.

2. re: dependent necessities, Aquinas definitely countenances those. I think he thinks this is true of some angles and the standard scholastic examples of eternal (and necessary) dependent entities include

*the flame of an eternal and necessary candle

*the depression in sand of an eternal and necessary rock on an eternal and necessary sandy beach (maybe on Guanillo's Island!)

Also, people often forget that Aquinas speaks of caused necessities right there in the tertia via

"But every necessary thing either has its necessity caused by another, or not. Now it is impossible to go on to infinity in necessary things which have their necessity caused by another, as has been already proved in regard to efficient causes. Therefore we cannot but postulate the existence of some being having of itself its own necessity, and not receiving it from another, but rather causing in others their necessity."

Ha! Kevin, we must have been composing at about the same time.

For many Thomists, God will be the truthmaker for those facts. They will hold some kind of conceptualism (or even a quasi-nominalism) regarding mathematical truths and the truthmakers will be God's concepts (or analytically distinct aspects of God's one big fat idea).

There's a growing literature on this subject, but I don't know of a very good bibliography. Brian Leftow's book on Aquinas view of mathematics will surely address this.

Trent,

Here is why I think that the dependency at issue is neither causal nor volitional. I take it that efficient causation (which is the kind of causation I meant) takes time, and the entities at issue are non-temporal. And I don't think that it is volitional insofar as Aquinas thinks that the only thing God necessarily wills is Himself. I guess one might think, along with Kretzman, that God necessarily wills other things too, but then we're no longer talking about Aquinas' view. Plus, Kretzman only thinks that God necessarily wills to create something rather than nothing, not that He necessarily wills to create something in particular.

Along the same lines and with regard to the Third Way, it's important to keep in mind that Aquinas didn't understand the necessary existence of such things along the lines of 'exists in every possible world'. My understanding is that here Aquinas is referring to angels who exist at every moment of time, but are still contingent in the contemporary understanding, and thus could fail to exist (i.e., it is possible that God not have created them).

I guess I'm not sold on the thesis that efficient causation takes time. Many Thomists would take the cases I gave as *counter-examples* to that thesis.

You're right about Aquinas' notion of possibility--the overlooking of this often leads moderns to mis-attribute a fallacy to Aquinas here-- but I think the reasoning still works. The examples I gave are, I think, (possible) instances of what he has in mind in the passage from the Third Way.

You have to accept non-trivially-true counterpossibles to accept the counter-exampels, but you ought to do that anyway! :-)>

If there was a burning candle which existed in every possible world, then both the candle and the flame would be broadly logically necessary, yet the flame would still be dependant upon--indeed (efficiently) caused by--the candle.

One could, I suppose, say that their existence in every possible world undercuts the causal dependence, but that strikes me as hugely counter-intuitive and not at all independently motivated and therefore suspect from a justificatory standpoint.

Trent,

Let me clarify. I don't think that the process of X causing Y to Z necessarily takes time. But I think that if Y is caused to Z, then Y must be a temporal entity. These is at least suggested by my Aristotelian leanings on matters metaphysical, and I can't think of an obvious counterexample. But I don't think that much here hangs on this.

About your candle/flame example. If this candle/flame pair is like other candle/flame pairs in that the flame is fueled by the stuff that makes up the candle plus the required activation energy--and differs only in that this pair exists in every possible world--then I would agree with you. We then have a case of derivative necessity that involves causation. But in this example, I can see how the one necessary think causes the other necessary thing. In the case of God's existence and "that a think is colored if red", if we're assuming that the latter state of affairs isn't necessary because God wills it to be necessary, then I don't see the connection in the same way that I do for the candle/flame case.

1. "I think that if Y is caused to Z, then Y must be a temporal entity."

Can you clarify that a bit more for me? It seems like maybe a linking verb or something is missing.

2a. I'm glad you think the candle/flame example works for what it's intended. It's analgousness to the "colored if red" case is, of course, another matter.

2b. There remains, though, the deflationary attempts of neo-Aristotelians/Humeans to understand such "necessary truths" as merely conceptual or linguistic necessities. So the truth-makers will be human or divine concepts.

On this see the stuff Swinburne says in the Necessity chapter in _The Christian God_, in particular pp. 105-116. It resembles in part what he said earlier in _The Coherence of Theism_ (Revised Edition), pp. 243-257.

Neo-Thomists will say that a lot of these problems are due to the Platonism that everyone has accepted via Plantinga.

Trent,

Thanks for being patient with me. I'll try to take a look at what Swinburne says.

By "I think that if Y is caused to Z, then Y must be a temporal entity" I just meant to following:

If a rock is caused to fall on Allison, then the rock must be a temporal entity.
If Allison is caused to die (because of the rock hitter her in the head), then Allison must be a temporal entity.
If Kevin is caused to be sad (because of Allison's death), then Kevin must be a temporal entity.

That's all I meant.

I should also admit that I am a member of the set that is supposedly 'plagued' with Platonism (though I doubt that this is all due to Plantinga! Plato himself should get some of the credit, um, I mean blame).

I think there's a crucial ambiguity in your cases, but I hope that disambiguation will get to the heart of what you're talking about.

So let's look at your tercet of cases and their alternative readings. I'm going to be lazy and just give readings for events and they won't be in parallel form--I hate to do this but my schedule insists.

1.If a rock is caused to fall on Allison, then the rock must be a temporal entity.
1a. ...a rock is falling on Allison (and crushing her)...
1b. ...there was a time t- at which which no rock was falling or had fallen on Allison but a time t+ at which a rock had fallen on Allison...
2. If Allison is caused to die (because of the rock hitter her in the head), then Allison must be a temporal entity.
2a. ...Allison is being caused to die...
2b. ...there was a time t- at which which Allison was not being caused to die or had been caused to die but a time t+ at which Allison had been caused to die...
3. If Kevin is caused to be sad (because of Allison's death), then Kevin must be a temporal entity.
3a. ...Kevin is being caused to be sad by Allison's being caused to die...
3b. ...there was a time t- at which Kevin was not sad, but a time t+ at which Kevin was sad.

The above are to be read in such a way that [my being run through with a rapier] is (ordinarily) a cause of [my being caused to die] even though it might take time to occur (I think temporally extended events are hard to model, but if you like Kim-events thin think of the property being mapped to an interval or else consider the temporal mereological sum of a bunch of events (and I also think it's vague (ontically, not just semantically) when I'm dead)).

On the na. interpretations I think there's no need for temporality. If Allison were being killed in all worlds or at all times then Kevin would be sad with the corresponding type of necessity. Same for the other cases. It's only on the nb. interpretation that temporality seems to be implied.

But notice that those who suggesting that logical facts depend on God need not be saying that there was some time t- (or some world w) at which they don't hold but some time t+ (or world w') such that they do.

The essence of the claim as I see it is that if, per impossibile, there were no God, then there would be no logical facts. If nominalism or conceptualism about logical facts is true, then it seems that the desired form of dependence is present. We don't need a "mechanism" like in the candle/flame case. All we need is the kind of dependence involved in truthmaking. Here's a toy argument that assumes conceptualism and *some* kind of truthmaker theory (though I emphasize that it is quite wide open what the details of that theory might be):

P1 There are no truths of any kind without an appropriate truthmaker.
P2 The truthmakers of all truths there are or might have been consist in God's concepts.
P3 If (P1) and (P2) then if God's concepts were absent, then all truths of any kind would be absent.
L1 If God's concepts were absent, then all truths of any kind would be absent. From P1, P2, P3
P4 If L1, then logical truths depend on God.
T1 Logical truths depend on God. From L1 and P4

PS - Shame on Plato for leading Al astray!

Trent

Maybe I'm just thick-headed (ok, so I know I'm thick-headed--so maybe I'm being thick-headed here), but I just don't see how the na. interpretations are temporal.

Now, I will agree with you that "those who suggesting that logical facts depend on God need not be saying that there was some time t- (or some world w) at which they don't hold but some time t+ (or world w') such that they do." But I'm still trying to understand the kind of dependcy here. To come clean, maybe that's just because I'm not a conceptualist or nominalism about such issues!

On a related note, have you read Ross's "The Crash of Modal Metaphysics." I don't have it at home with me, but he strongly objects to Platonism about abstract objects and thinks that (if I remember correctly) such a Platonism is incompatible with Christian theism. It's worth a read, I think, if you haven't read it. If I remember, I'll try and post a passage or two from the office tomorrow.

Big typo on my part.

The first paragraph of the above post should read: "I just don't see how the na. interpretations are NOT temporal." Sorry about that.

Kevin, I'm confident the misunderstanding is my fault. I was using "eternal" to express strong temporal modality--for all times t...--rather than "timeless" and thus "temporal" more like "temporary" to express a weaker temporal modality of temporal contingency.

For some reason I was thinking you didn't think God's eternity was timeless (it is, after all, the "simple, naive, initial view" as Swinburne says (Christian God, p. 137)).

So I didn't see why you'd object to it being the case that for all times, God causes it to be the case that ...insert necessary truth.. for any reason special to temporality.

You might find the nature of the causation mysterious due to a "lack of mechanism" (I think you said this in response to my candle/flame example) but I think that confuses the causal relation itself with the thing that *plays* that role in this world (compare David Lewis's response to Peter Menzies in his "Void and Object" in _Causation and Counterfactuals_. Causation in itself needn't work through any kind of "mechanism".

We both believe that God causes events by willing them. What's the mechanism there? I have no idea how you'd go about answering such a question.

So when I wrote

"It's only on the nb. interpretation that temporality seems to be implied."

I should have said "problematic temporality".

Perhaps it would be helpful if you formalized your argument against the possibility of the dependence relation between necessary truths and God--if such there be--being causal. Is this it?

Simple Argument
P1 Efficient causation takes time.
P2 That which takes time is temporal.
L1 Thus, EC is temporal. From P1, P2
P3 If EC is temporal, then (if necessary truths are non-temporal they cannot be relata of EC).
P4 Necessary truths are non-temporal.
L2 Necessary truths cannot be the relata of EC. From L1, P3, P4

Here's a reason to think that causation needn't be temporal for those who think that God is not.

Trinity Argument
P1 Prior to creation, the Godhead was timeless.
P2 But prior to creation there was causation in the Godhead.
C1 So Prior to creation there was causation in a timeless entity.

The argument is only meant for those who think that God is timeless so P2 is the premise to focus upon. Why do I think that P2 is true?

I think it's plausible for the following reasons.

*I think it's plausible that the begetting relation (holding between the Father and the Son) and processing relation (holding between the Father and the Spirit) are species of causal relation.
*The Father is caused to love the Son by the Son's properties.

Keep in mind, though, the main case I've urged as plausible for dependence of necessary truths is the conceptualist move. Truths like "If a thing is red, then it's colored" is made true by our/God's concepts. The concept "is red" entails the concept "is colored".

The species of entailment can be a kind of quasi-logical variety as in Chisholm:

C1 entails C2 iff it's psychologically impossible that someone who grasps C1 and C2 to understand that A falls under C1 and not understand that it falls under C2

(that's just an example of a toy model). Conceptual entailments are "self-evident" in the old-fashioned sense.

Conceptualist Argument
1. If there were no minds, there'd be no concepts.
2. If there were no concepts, there'd be no conceptual truths.
3. If there were no God there would be no minds.
4. Thus, if there were no God, there would be no conceptual truths.

This is basically a version of the argument above without reference to truthmakers. I think it's a pretty hard argument to resist, yet it offers a natural way of understanding the dependence of conceptual truths upon God.

I hasten to say that hypothetical syllogisms are not unrestrictedly valid in the subjunctive mood, but I see not reason to suspect problems here (and I think I could redo it anyway by loading a bunch of conditions in the antecedent of a single counterpossible or by quantifying over impossible worlds explicity).

Trent,

I'm on board with your last post until you get to the trinity argument. I recently tried to run an argument against those who think that 1) God is temporal and 2) that simultaneous causation is impossible based on causation in the trinity. I used the same move you made here: that begetting or spirating are causal relations, and that, if they are causal relations, there must be a time prior to the Son's existing where the Father causes the Son (if there weren't the Father's causing of the Son would be simultaneous with the Son).

Then, I pointed out the million places where important fathers or councils or creeds say that each person of the trinity is eternal. Taken in the temporal sense of eternal as everlasting (remember 1) above) that would mean that there couldn't be a time before which the Son didn't exist. SO, a contradiction.

Or, another way to prove it is to start with the anathema in the oringial nicean creed, which states that those who say there was a time before which the Son was not are anathema. Either way gets the contradiction.

But, then I saw that some of the same important folk who say that each person of the trinity is eternal say that the relations of spirating or begetting aren't causal! For istance, Thomas says: STI,Q33,A1,Ad1:

"The Greeks use the words "cause" and "principle" indifferently, when speaking of God; whereas the Latin Doctors do not use the word "cause," but only "principle." The reason is because "principle" is a wider term than "cause"; as "cause" is more common than "element." For the first term of a thing, as also the first part, is called the principle, but not the cause."

The important part is that the Latin Fathers don't use the term cause in talking about the relation between the Father and the Son.

Now, that's not to say that the Father doesn't cause the Son. But it does give me pause in affirming P2. And, unless you can give a good reason to affirm it, I think I'll stick with the voice of tradition in denying it.

All the best,
Tim ______ ps, how does one get the paragraphs to stay separated in this?

Oops, I see that, though the paragraphs weren't separated in the preview, they come out separate in the comment.

Like Tim, I reject the Trinity argument (and Tim, I'm glad to know that Aquinas has the same objection to your earlier paper that I had!).

I'm not trying to say that your view of Conceptualism is false--just that I'm not sure that I understand it. Are God's concepts the same in all possible worlds? If not, then such truths don't seem to be necessary. If they are, why so? Do they just happen to be the same in all possible worlds, or is there a reason behind this? If the former, that seems strange to me. If the latter, maybe you can tell me what the reason is.

Tim,

Thanks for the commentary and I'm glad to be thinking your thoughts after you, but your points are about "causation" not causation. The relevant question is whether being a "principle" in Saint Thomas's sense counts as being a "cause" in the contemporary sense. This is the kind of question Analytic Thomists must face. It's not enough that spiration doesn't fall under the extention of the 13th century term "causa".

I'm pretty sure the Cappadocian fathers and other Occidental Fathers specifically affirm that begetting is causal (though of course the same linguistic issues apply). Can't recall any specific passages though.

Kevin,

Yeah, let's say that God's concepts are the same in all possible worlds (warning, though: I tend toward a conceptualist account of possible worlds, so there may be some complicated syntax in store).

As for *why* they do, I'd say that they are the same in every world for roughly the same reason that molinists think God's knowledge of CFC's are the same or that God's beliefs about what's metaphysically possible are the same, and so forth. We've all got to have some account of such things.

Trent,

But for the Molinist, God's knowledge of the CFCs is not the same in every possible world insofar as what CFCs are true is a contingent matter--it is logically possible that a different set of CFCs is true. And here's my Platonic account for God's beliefs about what's metaphysically possible: the realm of possibilities is itself necessary, and God knows it as such in whatever way He knows truths.

Kevin,

I was thinking of a kind of Leibnizan view where there existed a domain of individual essences which have their CFCs essentially, but let's let that go. Instead I want to try some theological jujitsu and then give an *illuminating* (as can be expected) explanation of why God's concepts are the same in every world.

First the jujitsu. The question was:

(KTQ1) Are God's concepts the same in all possible worlds?

I compared that to the question

(TDQ1) Are God's beliefs about possibilia the same in all possible worlds?

You answed (TDQ1) by saying that:

(KTA1) The realm of possibilities is itself necessary.

I'm not so sure about the ontology of "realms" :-P but I'll take it that you mean something like this.

(KTA1') Possibilia are necessary beings.

So here's my question:

(TDQ2) If you can use (KTA1') to answer (TDQ1), why can't I answer (KTQ1) with (TDA1)?

(TDA1) Divine Concepts are necessary beings.

It seems to be that what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Now for the (hopefully somewhat) illuminating answer to (KTQ1).

(TDA2) God's power is the same in every world.

The idea is that possibilia are God's concepts of what he could do. Now this will have to be understood in an ante rem way since what God can do--from a certain perspective--changes from world to world. But logically prior to creation the possibilities are not limited in that way.

There remain--as ever there does--issues pertaining to God's eternal decrees and the peculiarities of divine cognition, but that's not a problem special to my thesis. I'm attracted by the kinds of things Zagzebski says about God having a single mental state in Section 4 of Chapter 3 of _The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge_. If I endorsed it, I wouldn't know which propositions I was endorsing, but that's the human predicament sometimes. If I went that route I'd say that individual divine concepts were just "aspects" or someting of God's one big idea. I think my basic proposal is intuitive enough without attending to such subtleties, but I just wanted to flag them myself.

Sorry, forgot to close off my italics tag after ante rem. I did not mean to emphasize that last part (at all). :-)~