Recently in Concept of God Category

Jaegwon Kim's well known Pairing Problem is supposed to show that it is impossible both that immaterial souls cannot have causal efficacy in the physical world as well as to other immaterial souls. The problem, in brief (super-brief) is that for event A to cause event B, there must be some further factor X in virtue of which A causes B. There is no such further factor X in the case of the mental events (willings, actings, intendings) of souls and physical events. So, souls cannot be causally related to the physical world. This argument is supposed to apply to ALL souls.

I just finished (most of) Plantinga's really nice article "Materialism and Christian Belief" in Persons: Human and Divine, and he proposes that broadly logical necessity is that relation. He writes,

According to classical theism, it's a necessary truth that whatever God wills, takes place. It's a necessary truth that if God says, "Let there be light," then there is light. Necessarily, if God says, "Let Adam come into existence," Adam comes into existence. So what is it that makes it the case that God's intentions cause what they cause? To ask that question is like asking, "What is it that makes an equiangular triangle equilateral?" The answer is (broadly) logical necessity; it's necessary that whatever God wills comes to be just as it's necessary that every equiangular triangle be equilateral. Accordingly there isn't a problem about that factor X in the divine case... (p. 133)

So Kim's Pairing Problem that it is impossible that souls be causally related to the world fails. Plantinga goes on to show that once you have theism, there is no problem for human souls having causal interaction in the world as well.

This seems compelling to me. Anybody see any problems with it?

According to most Anselmians—and most theists—God has a special set of essential properties. Those essential properties include omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness and necessary existence. But how do we know this? There are just two possibilities: either we know that God has those essential properties apriori or we know aposteriori. Again, almost no theist maintains that we know the essential properties of God aposteriori. The reason this is rejected is because it entails that we might have discovered that God was less than essentially perfectly good, etc. But almost no theist thinks that’s a possible discovery. So, most Anselmians—I’d again say most theists—maintain that (A) is true.

A. A being x = God only if (i) for most essential properties P of x, it is primarily necessary (i.e., apriori) that x has P, and (ii) the essential properties of x include omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and necessary existence

There is a concise and valid apriori demonstration based on (A) and some well-known logical relations holding between primary necessity (aprioricity) and secondary necessity (metaphysical necessity). Let M be restricted to essential properties understood as properties objects have in every world in which they exist. Here’s a concise ontological argument.

On one reading of the doctrine of divine simplicity, God is identical with divinity. If divinity is a property, this entails that at least one property is a person. A lot of people think this is absurd. I am holding an argument contest--with modest prizes ($50 amazon gift certificate for the best argument; $30 amazon gift certificate for a random entrant subject to some conditions)--for arguments against the thesis that at least one property is a person. See here for rules and how to enter. Comments should be placed there.

I've been re-reading Book I of Spinoza's Ethics in preparation for teaching History of Modern Philosophy. He defines 'God' as follows: (Book I, Def. 6) "By God I mean an absolutely infinite being, that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence." The two attributes he discusses are, of course, thought and extension. I started wondering why he would simply define 'God' in such a way that God is extended. I came up with what seems to me to be an interesting argument. If the argument is correct, it's an argument for either pantheism or panentheism (the latter is the view that nature is a part of God). It's inspired by some brief comments Spinoza makes in the scholium to Proposition 10 of book 1 and, as far as I've been able to tell in a brief scan of the literature, it hasn't shown up in the literature at all. I'm interested to see what you all think about it.

Here's the argument:
1. God is a perfect (i.e. the greatest possible) being.
2. A perfect being will have all property-kinds that are intrinsically good.
3. Being extended (or being physical/material) is an intrinsically good property-kind.
--------
C. God is extended (or physical/material).

I'm going a bit out on a limb and talking about stuff I haven't read too much about. But if blogs are for learning and fun discussion, I guess I don't need to be an expert! Also, this post is directed more toward people who are theists, substance dualists, and deniers of open theism.

The following two claims seem plausible enough to me:

1. God is not morally obligated to create the best possible world.
2. There are no supererogatory acts.

Supererogatory acts are those acts that go above and beyond what duty or obligation requires. But if God isn't obligated to create the best possible world, and is merely obligated to produce a good enough world, then isn't it better if God creates a world that's better than the minimally good enough world? It seems like a supererogatory act for God to create at all, since it will never be the best act of creation. So there does seem to be a problem if you accept both these claims. But, though I would not submit to martydrom for either claim, there do seem to me to be good arguments for both, and yet they seem inconsistent.

1. I think it's plausible that adding one more intrinsically good thing to a world will make the world better, and its always possible to add one more intrinsically good thing. This means there is no best possible world, and thus it is impossible even for an omnipotent being to create the best possible world. Unless God is obligated to do the impossible, it seems that claim 1 is true.

2. Consequence-based ethical theories have usually required maximizing the best consequences, but a lot of people have rejected such an approach, because it implies that it's wrong to go see a movie because that money could better be spent helping starving people get some food (for one example). So we now have satisficing theories approaches that say that all we're obligated to do is seek good enough consequences. A similar approach occurs in non-consequentialist ethics, where perfect duties are duties everyone has but imperfect duties are acts that someone or other ought to do but no one particular person is required to do them.

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:

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?

I’ve argued that the problem of no best world in fact generates a moral dilemma for God. But some interesting and important moral dilemmas for perfect beings assume that there is a morally best possible world. We can show that there are cases in which God actualizes the best possible world and nonetheless violates a moral obligation! Suppose that the earlier Moses receives his divine message the better. But suppose that the set of possible times at which Moses can receive his message begins after 7am and ends exactly at 12 noon. Moses can receive his message at any one of the infinitely many possible times after 7am and up to (and including) 12pm. An essentially perfectly good agent is required to pass the divine message on to Moses at some time after 7am, but for every time t after 7am, there is some other time t’ (t > t’ > 7am). So there is no earliest time after 7am at which an essentially perfectly good being can pass the divine message on to Moses. Now consider the principle in (1.0).

1.0 It is morally necessary that A if and only if some time t at which A is true is better than any time t’ at which ~A is true.

        OA  ≡  (Et)(Vt')((A is true at t) & ((~A is true at t') & (t' < t)))

Let At symbolize the proposition that the divine message is passed on to Moses at time t. Prior to 7 am, an essentially perfectly good agent is morally required not to pass the divine message on to Moses at any time after 7am.

1.1 O~A12pm & O~Aj & … & O~Ak

For any time t after 7am at which he passes the divine message to Moses there is a better time t’ (t’ < t) to pass the message on to Moses.

1.2 O(A12pm v Aj v … v Ak)

But it is better that Moses receives the message at some time during the interval [7am, 12pm) than at any time outside the interval.

Maybe that should be ‘Yablo on Hartshorne on God’. Stephen Yablo (see, for instance, ‘Textbook Kripkeanism and the Open Texture of Concepts’) points up the inevitable reply to Anselmian ontological arguments that the theist is equivocating on ‘possibility’. The Anselmian God is epistemically possible, sure, but that Anselmian God is not metaphysically possible. Yablo’s point is that this textbook Kripkean distinction is not available to the textbook Kripkean. For Kripkeans, conceivability and possibility pull apart in cases where the presentation of some statement S is possible, but the proposition expressed by S is not possible. The problem is that this does not (or does not obviously) happen in the Anselmian argument. The standard example goes as follows.

1. Water is not H2O. (metaphysically impossible)

2. The watery stuff is not H2O. (metaphysically possible)

If the reference of ‘water’ is fixed by ‘the watery stuff’ (or the liquid potable stuff, or what have you), then it is no more than contingent apriori that water is the watery stuff. When we are tempted to assert that (1) is possible, what tempts us is the genuine possibility of (2). Indeed, it is because (2) is metaphysically possible that (1) is epistemically possible. Hence the illusion that (1) is possible. Notice that you cannot substitute ‘water’ for ‘the watery stuff’ in (2) to get (3).

(3) Water is not H2O (metaphysically possible)

The doctrine that God is identical with his nature has traditionally been defended by Christians, and would be useful for responding to the following argument (defended by Quentin Smith, Wes Morriston, etc.):

(*) The best answers to the problem of evil all involve significant libertarian freedom; but significant libertarian freedom is not something God has (because he cannot do wrong); a freedom that God does not have is not the most valuable kind of freedom; therefore, significant libertarian freedom is not the most valuable kind of freedom.

The challenge this argument presents is to come up with a reason to think either (a) that significant libertarian freedom is valuable in us, but would not be valuable in the case of God because of some relevant difference between us and God, or (b) that God has a kind of freedom which is more valuable than significant libertarian freedom, but it is a freedom that we cannot have. Both kinds of responses (actually, they may not be very different) require the identification of a disanalogy between us and God. One proposed disanalogy is that God is identical with his nature, while we are not. Therefore, actions that are necessitated by God's nature are rooted precisely in God. But we are not identical with our natures, and hence any actions that were necessitated by our nature would be rooted in something outside of us, contrary to source incompatibilism.

One of the next moves in the dialectic (Wes Morriston does this) is to question the coherence of the doctrine of divine simplicity that the identity of God with God's nature is based on, giving standard objections such as asking how God's attributes could be identical (e.g., how could God's omnipotence be identical with God's mercy?) However, although I have tried to answer such objections, I think this is not how the present dialectic should go. For the doctrine that God is identical with God's nature is not the doctrine of divine simplicity--it is only one of the entailments of the doctrine of divine simplicity. Thus, it is prima facie possible to defend the identity of God with God's nature without defending the doctrine of divine simplicity. Perhaps in the end one can derive divine simplicity from the identity of God with God's nature. But those are going to metaphysically controversial arguments.

So, how might one defend the identity of God and his nature? Well, let's ask what the alleged difficulty in that identity is. I see three metaphysical difficulties, actually: (1) Could anything be identical to its nature? (2) Even if so, could anything concrete be identical to its nature? (3) Even if so, could anything causally efficacious be identical to its nature?

This is the third weekly post on Moser's book The Elusive God.

There are many things Moser says, and I will not provide a comprehensive summary. Many of the things he says can be personally challenging if one takes them to heart.

In 3.1, I took Moser to be presenting an interesting argument that belief in naturalism is not rational. (It's not obvious that he's doing this, but see below.) In 3.2, I took him to be emphasizing that it is God who decides how we should come to believe in God. In 3.3, I took him to be talking about how we should have filial knowledge of God, which is not something one gains by way of spectator evidence or natural theology. It is knowledge of God as loving Father and as a moral authority in our lives. In 3.4, I took him to be explaining what is involved in "cognitive idolatry", and how God should be the supreme cognitive authority in our lives.