November 2009 Archives

Here's an easy-to-think-about argument against the infinite past. It bears some resemblance to arguments discussed in other recent threads. Though obviously inspired by the Grim Reaper discussion, it does not feature a series of fractions converging toward zero. I don't think it's a good argument, but I think there is a lesson to be learned.

Here goes... Imagine an on-off Switch and a Switcher such that:

1. Switcher checks at one minute intervals to see whether Switch is ON. If it is, Switcher does nothing; if it is not ON, Switcher turns it ON.

2. Switch is ON iff Switcher has turned it ON immediately after one of its checks.

Now let's look at two scenarios.

Scenario A

We add to 1 and 2 that Switch and Switcher have existed for exactly ten minutes.

Scenario B

We add to 1 and 2 that Switch and Switcher have existed forever, without beginning.

Is it now the case that Switch is ON?

In Scenario A, it is. On its first check (at zero minutes), Switcher turned Switch ON, and (given 1 and 2) it must still be ON.

What about Scenario B? Well, it is ON, and... it is not ON.

It is ON, because for any n, if Switch was not ON n minutes ago, Switcher turned it ON and it stayed ON.

It is not ON, because given 2, Switch is not ON unless Switcher turned it ON immediately after one of its checks. But none of Switcher's checks can have satisfied the condition for turning Switch ON specified in 1. In other words, for any n, Switcher did nothing following the check it did n minutes ago. Why so? Because for any m > n, m minutes ago Switcher turned the Switch ON iff if was not ON m minutes ago. If it was already ON m minutes ago, it was still ON n minutes ago, and if it was not ON m minutes ago, Switcher must have turned it ON m minutes ago, so that it was still on n minutes ago. So either way, 1 tells us that Switcher did nothing n minutes ago.

But of course n was any number of minutes. So there is no time at which Switcher turned the switch ON. From 2, it follows that Switch is not ON.

Presumably everyone will agree that Scenario A is possible, whereas Scenario B is not.

Here, then, is the argument against the infinite past.

• It's obviously possible for Switch and Switcher to satisfy the conditions specified in 1 and 2. So if the series of minutes had no beginning, then Scenario B would be possible. But Scenario B is not possible. Therefore, the series of minutes must have a beginning.

Is this a good argument? I think not. What the impossibility of Scenario B shows is only that the conditions specified for Switch and Switcher in 1 and 2 cannot consistently be combined with the assumption that Switch and Switcher coexist throughout a beginningless past. As I see it, then, we should deny that if the series of minutes had no beginning, then Scenario B would be possible.

It's true, of course, that every finite sub-series of the beginningless series of minutes in Scenario B is possible. But nothing interesting follows from that.

I have a serious point here. We may sometimes be tempted to take a bunch stuff that looks possible, combine it with a beginningless series of temporal intervals, derive a contradiction from the resulting combination, and then conclude that a beginningless series of temporal intervals must be impossible. Without some way of showing that a beginningless series of temporal intervals is possible only if it can be combined with the other stuff, nothing interesting is going to follow. This is something to watch out for in discussions about the possibility of an infinite past.

I recently finished Robert Adams' old article "The Virtue of Faith" (chapter 1 of the book The Virtue of Faith), and I found a really interesting point. Uncertainty and faith are necessary for a certain sort of special good in a relationship. I think it's worth quoting Adams on this:

Toronto, August 18-20, 2010

We live in an age of skepticism about the idea of truth. Contemporary skeptics question the nature and value of truth and the concomitant virtue of truthfulness. Skepticism about truth is not restricted to popular culture. It occurs within the academic world, where deflationists have argued that the idea of truth is not a substantive notion and some poststructuralists have portrayed it as primarily the scene of struggles for power. Such skepticism is surprising, for truth and truthfulness have been central to Western civilization and the academic enterprise. Historically, the idea of truth has helped organize Western intellectual culture since ancient times. It is a central theme in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three monotheistic religions that have shaped Western society. Conceptually, the idea of truth sets a stage for fundamental debates about the point and worth of academic work: debates between realists and anti-realists in philosophy, theology, and the natural sciences, for example, or between relativists and anti-relativists in the humanities and social sciences. Societally, the idea of truth provides a normative background for ethics, law, and public discourse: we expect friends and colleagues to be truthful; we ask witnesses in courts of law to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"; and we get upset when journalists deliberately fabricate their reports.

Given both contemporary skepticism and the centrality of truth, we believe it is time to reconceptualize truth and to reclaim truthfulness for the academic enterprise. The conference organizers have undertaken an interdisciplinary philosophical effort to develop a new model of truth. Now we wish to expand the scope of our work by engaging with discussion partners from other schools and from across the disciplines. The Truth Matters conference will be an occasion for international dialogue and debate. Relevant topics for papers and proposals include:

• artistic and narrative truth


• power, truth, and ideology


• realism, anti-realism, and truth


• elativism, anti-relativism, and truth


• religious truth


• teaching and learning for truth


• truth in ethics


• truthfulness in public life

Submission deadline: March 1, 2010.

Truth Matters continues a series of conferences on issues of faith and scholarship organized by four schools in the Reformed tradition. It is hosted by the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate school for interdisciplinary philosophy in Toronto, and co-sponsored by Calvin College (Grand Rapids, MI), Dordt College (Sioux Center, IA), and the Free University (Amsterdam).

This conference is supported by a generous grant from the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust.

For more information, visit www.icscanada.edu/truthmatters

Updated 11.25.09

I’ve been thinking in general about potentiality arguments. In some cases, they seem undeniably cogent. But there are what seem like analogous cases in which the cogency of such arguments is denied. It’s hard to see why. So, suppose the claim in (1) is true.

(1) The tumor in Smith’s abdomen is currently benign and presents no threat to him, but if it is left untreated it will develop into something that is seriously life-threatening.

Now imagine someone saying that the fact in (1) gives us no reason to treat the tumor in Smith’s abdomen. Imagine someone saying that since the tumor is currently benign we have no reason to remove it. That position is just bizarre. We think that the potential of the tumor to develop into something life-threatening is not just a reason, but an excellent reason for us to remove it now, before it has those life-threatening features. Intuitively, it seems a serious wrong to fail to remove it, providing we can, and other things are equal. So, we naturally and cogently reason this way:

(2) If Smith’s tumor will develop into something life-threatening, then we ought to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something life-threatening.

(3) Therefore, we ought to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something life-threatening.

That argument is pretty compelling, despite the fact that it tells us to remove something that is benign; something that does not yet have any life-threatening properties. Why doesn’t the same reasoning hold in this case?

(1’) The being in Smith’s womb is currently without much value, but if it is left untreated it will develop into something that is extremely valuable.

(2’) If Smith’s being will develop into something extremely valuable, then we ought not to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something extremely valuable.

(3’) Therefore, we ought not to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something extremely valuable.

In the initial argument we conclude that we ought to remove X because X IS NOT, but WILL BECOME threatening, IF LEFT UNTREATED. In the second argument we conclude that we ought not to remove X because X IS NOT, but WILL BECOME extremely valuable, IF LEFT UNTREATED. How can the first potentiality argument be cogent and the second potentiality argument not cogent? If the potential for developing extremely bad properties is an excellent reason to remove X before it develops those properties, then why isn’t the potential to develop extremely good properties an excellent reason not to remove X before it develops those properties? It’s hard to see.

Perhaps the relevant difference is (cf. Matt’s comments) that the initial argument involves potential instrumental disvalue (the threat to someone’s life) and the second argument involves potential intrinsic value. But then consider,

An Argument from Intrinsically Evil Beings

(1*) The being in Jones’ womb is currently without much value, but if it is left untreated it will develop into something that is extremely intrinsically evil.

(2*) If Smith’s being will develop into something extremely intrinsically evil, then we ought to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something extremely evil.

(3*) Therefore, we ought to remove it now, prior to it’s development into something extremely intrinsically evil.

That argument again seems cogent. But then why doesn’t (3’) follow convincingly from (1’) and (2’)?

Suppose I am a person who is either not embodied or who doesn't know that he is embodied. I spend all my time communing directly mentally with other minds, playing games like chess, speculating philosophically, praying to God--I am a theist--etc. I never have any perceptions of anything physical. One day, I learn that the world contains matter--maybe God suddenly equips me with some senses, or maybe I learn this from some authority that I have the right to trust. Among the material things in the world, I learn that on one planet there are complex information processing systems, some of which are made of soft but somewhat resilient stuff, with lots of carbon atoms, though with a calcium endoskeleton, and some of which are made of harder but more brittle stuff, with lots of silicon atoms and metals, largely arranged on flat plates, and with a polymer or metal shell. All these information processing systems have sensors and actuators, and engage in complex processing that mediates between sensor input and actuator output. (Some of these systems may even be indeterministic.)

So far, I have little reason to suppose that these information processing systems are conscious. And as for pain, I would not have that concept at all. But to explain various behaviors among some of these systems, both the carbon and the silicon based ones, I could easily posit the concept of a shpain as something that mediates causally in certain ways between sensors sensitive to damage and various behavioral patterns, and I would understand the general utility of a shpain subsystem.

Reader Stephen Maitzen writes in with the following puzzle:

According to skeptical theism, we should never regard it as likely that we'd spot God's morally sufficient justification for permitting some evil, and hence our failure to spot a justification is never evidence that God doesn't have one. In other words, we should never expect God's justification to be scrutable to us. By the same token, then, we should never regard it as likely that the justification we've spotted is in fact the justification God is using, relying on, or motivated by; it's never unlikely that God's justification is deeper (or at least other) than the justification we happen to have spotted. The phrase "inscrutable evil" can mean two things: (1) an evil such that we can spot no justification we regard as sufficient for God's permitting it; (2) an evil such that we can't reasonably claim to have spotted God's justification for permitting it. Skeptical theists tend to focus on inscrutable evils in sense (1). But my argument is that skeptical theism turns all evils into inscrutable evils in sense (2). One may reply that God's justification might sometimes be scrutable to us, as when God spells out his justification in the Bible. But that reply assumes that God has no morally sufficient justification for lying in a particular biblical passage, something that skeptical theism denies us the right to assert.

[Cross-posted to my blog.]

Supposedly intense pains that non-human animals undergo provide significant evidence against theism. Why? Well, the thought is that, if he existed, God could have done things better. But how?

Many students think that anything that is omnipotent could make 2+2 = 5 or create a round-square, or square-circle or the like. Now these sorts of claims are often dismissed as naive or not well thought out since they amount to the claim that an omnipotent being could do the impossible. I’m now less sanguine about this sort of response, though I’ve given it before. I don’t think that students or others who claim that an omnipotent being could create a round-square are in fact claiming that an omnipotent being could do the impossible. What they are claiming, I think, is that round-squares would not be impossible were there omnipotent beings or the state of affairs that p & ~p would not be impossible were there an omnipotent being. That strikes me as much closer to a reasonable claim. So, we can formulate the naive claim as the de dicto falsehood in (C0),

C0. It is possible that an omnipotent being brings about the impossible.

That cannot happen, since whatever anyone brings about is possible. But there are better ways to express the worry. It might be true, for P = (p & ~p), that

C1. P is impossible & an omnipotent being possibly brings about P.

In support of (C1), (C2) does seem to be an (at least) non-trivially true counterpossible,

C2. Were there an omnipotent being then he might bring about P.

But of course it matters how we interpret this. Does this mean that contradictions would be true, were there omnipotent beings? We don’t want to say that, since we don’t want an explosion of true propositions on the assumption that there is an omnipotent being. Or does it mean that what we regard as contradictions, or what we can only describe as contradictions, would not be so for God, were there a God? I’m not sure that’s coherent. Better, (C2) might be true because, were there an omnipotent being, he could have made P a non-contradiction.

There is something for theists to say, I think, against this objection. God cannot make a contradiction true, but God has the power to determine what the contradictions are. Does that make better sense? Something like C3,

C3. Were there an omnipotent being, he would have the power to bring about P.

But I suspect (C3) involves cutting big corners. If an omnipotent being has the power to bring about P, and that power is necessarily unmanifested, then there is no world in which he brings about P. But I find the idea of a necessarily finked disposition to bring about P very suspicious. It has nothing to do with the idea that a disposition might be finked, since I have no difficulty with contingently finked dispositions.The main concern is why that disposition is unmanifested at all.

The standard view of an everlasting God is that God has existed in time for an infinite amount of time and will continue to exist for an infinite amount of time, and a finite amount of time ago, creation sprang into being. Thus, God existed a year ago, a billion years ago, a trillion years ago, and so on. (I think, though I shall not argue for this here, that if one denies God's atemporality, one should adopt the standard view on pain of believing something theologically much worse, such as that God has a finite age or that creation is infinitely old. So if the standard view of everlastingness is false, then God is not atemporal.)

I shall talk of the universe springing into being a finite amount of time ago rather than its' being created a finite amount of time ago, to disambiguate between the time of the cause (God's act of creating) and the time of the effect (the universe's springing into being).

Problem 1 (Augustine's problem): Why did God wait this infinite amount of time before the universe sprang into being, rather than, say, making the universe spring into being a hundred years earlier? Augustine records the old chestnut that God was busy preparing a hell for those who ask such questions. His own answer that time began with the universe's springing into being is not available to the defender of the standard view. One might take a relational view of time on which the question does not make sense--the world where God create a hundred years earlier is the same world. Only a B-theorist can say that, and not every B-theorist can.

Problem 2 (Deliberation and omniscience): Suppose God at t0 is deliberating what should spring into being and when it should do so. But God being omniscient already knows what will spring into being and when it will do so. How can one deliberate over what one already knows?

There's a tradition in Christendom which says that faith in Jesus Christ as one's savior, and commitment to him as lord, is necessary for salvation. (Different Christian traditions might state this requirement differently; the important point is that almost everybody who hasn't been in contact with Christian missionaries, or isn't part of a chain which goes back to Christian missionaries, will fail to meet this requirement.)

There's another Christian tradition which says that one must have this faith before one's death.

While I see somewhat strong scriptural merit behind the first tradition (despite a growing number of Christian philosophers rejecting it; I think they're called inclusivists), I don't see much scriptural merit behind the second tradition. Furthermore, as my friend Patrick Todd pointed out to me at the Pacific SCP, it seems arbitrary for God to pick death as the moment beyond which there is no return. From the standpoint of eternity, why then? What's so important about that point? It seems that a less arbitrary point would be when a person has shaped his character in such a way that he would never have the faith which I described in the first paragraph of this post (this shaping might happen via what Robert Kane calls "self-forming actions"). A picture of how all this might happen is illustrated beautifully in C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Furthermore, I bet that inclusivists might be more open to exclusivism if they rejected the second tradition.

So, I don't see much scriptural merit behind the second tradition. On the more philosophical side (and hence, more germane to this blog), it seems that death would be an arbitrary point at which to judge people's eternal destiny.

As most readers of this blog know, the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame recently hosted a conference about the moral character of God as portrayed in the texts of the Old Testament & Hebrew Bible. Videos of all of the conference sessions (including Q&A) are now posted online here.

I've always been somewhat skeptical of the Kalam argument. But recently I've had a change of sentiment: I now think the argument is defensible--at least to someone with my background beliefs about time and causation. Previously, there were three obstacles to my confidence in the argument: (1) seeing how to justify the finitude of the past; (2) seeing how to justify the inference from the finitude of the past to the universe's having a genuine beginning to its existence; and (3) seeing why a cause of our universe should be a personal agent. (Others may face different obstacles.) Those obstacles have recently been removed for me. What follows is an autobiography explaining my shift in thinking.

Christ College, the interdisciplinary honors college of Valparaiso University, invites applications for two tenure track positions at the assistant or associate level, beginning August 2010.

Social and Political Thought: Areas of specialization could be political theory, political philosophy, social theory, religion and politics, or international studies.

Literature, Ethics, or Religion: Area of specialty in either literature or ethics is open. Area of specialty in religion could be world Christianity, biblical studies, historical or systematic theology, religion and literature.

The appointee will team-teach interdisciplinary courses as well as seminars in specialty.

Classes (3 courses/semester) consist of a small number (15) of very gifted students (mean SAT c. 1400) committed to learning in a unique community of inquiry. All faculty appointments are exclusive to the free-standing honors college. Ph.D. must be awarded by June 2010.

The successful candidate will demonstrate a commitment to both undergraduate teaching and an active research agenda; an enthusiasm for interdisciplinary studies; and an eagerness to work in a university committed to church-related higher education in the Lutheran tradition. EOE

Valparaiso University is a Phi Beta Kappa university located in northwest Indiana, ten miles from Lake Michigan and fifty miles from Chicago. See www.valpo.edu/christcollege for more information.

Application deadline: December 10, 2009

Send application letter, CV, three letters of reference and graduate transcripts to Mel Piehl, Dean, Christ College, Valparaiso University, 1300 Chapel Drive, Valparaiso, Indiana 46383