Christopher Martin on Aquinas' Fifth Way

Christopher Martin provides an interpretation of the fifth way which I find rather plausible. He contends that “unconscious teleology is always relative to a system, is always a case of a part being for the sake of the whole” (1997, 200). Furthermore, he argues that if A is for the sake of B, and B is for the sake of C, but C is for nothing whatsoever, then A and B are also (in reality, initial appearances notwithstanding) for nothing whatsoever. As Martin puts it:

If l put my file on the floor, and then a book on top of it, and then my word-processor on top of the book, and then a flower-vase on top of the word-processor, and then put a stick in the flower vase, and then carefully wrap a small scrap of ribbon around the stick, a question arises of what the devil I'm up to; more scientifically, what is the point of all that? [...] If the last step of tying the ribbon, or the system as a whole, fails to have a point, one is surely entitled to say that the apparent point of each previous stage is wholly illusory. (Ibid., 196-197)

The fifth way then goes as follows: every instance of unconscious teleology is system-relative; the world is the all-encompassing system which includes all unconscious teleology. If the unconscious parts of the world are to have teleology, the world itself must have teleology (see Martin’s point above). “If the world has a point, if it is for anything, this cannot be a case of unconscious teleology, since unconscious teleology is always relative to a system, is always a case of a part being for the sake of the whole. There is, by definition, no greater whole of which the world forms a part. [...] Therefore the teleology of the world must be conscious: the point of the world must be conferred on it by some mind. ‘Therefore there is some being with understanding which directs all things to their end, and this, we say, is God.’” (ibid., 200). I think this is pretty convincing.

Sexual Morality and Collectively Harmful Practices

Jason Brennan famously argues that the politically uninformed have a moral obligation not to vote. One of his arguments for this claim goes as follows (2011, 71):

1. One has an obligation not to engage in collectively harmful activities when refraining from such activities does not impose significant personal costs.
2. To cast an unexcused harmful vote is to engage in a collectively harmful activity, while abstaining imposes low personal costs.
3. Therefore, one should not cast an unexcused harmful vote.

Brennan defines a "collectively harmful activity" (CHA) as "a harmful activity caused by a group or collective, where individual inputs into the harmful action are negligible. [...] For instance, producing air pollution is a collectively harmful activity. As a group we do a lot of damage, but as individual polluters we do negligible harm" (ibid., 71).

Now, it is highly plausible that premarital sex qualifies as a CHA: it leads to out-of-wedlock pregnancy (thereby contributing to poverty, crime, and abortion), as well as being correlated with higher rates of divorce and infidelity and lower levels of marital happiness. Given that higher rates of social disorder and a weakening of the married family constitute significant societal harms, it seems that Brennan's argument against uninformed voting will also apply to premarital sex.

It is important to note that given Brennan's definition of a CHA, it is not necessary to show that every act of premarital sex leads to the aforementioned harmful consequences, or even that most such acts do so: the relevant thing is just that the widespread practice of premarital sex in general constitutes a CHA (in virtue of its harmful effects on society and the married family). Given that this is so, it follows from premise (1) of Brennan's argument that there is an obligation to avoid premarital sex when doing so does not impose significant personal costs (i.e. always or nearly-always).

This argument is very similar to one given by Alexander Pruss. In his book One Body, Pruss writes:

The significant number of children born outside of marriage in this country might arguably be a major contributor to poverty, poorer moral education, and other social ills. By engaging in premarital sex, one takes the risk of being a contributor to this serious social problem. It is true that, more likely than not, procreation will not happen in any given act. However, a significant number of children born outside of marriage are conceived despite the use of contraception. Thus, even engaging in contraceptive intercourse, one is risking being a contributor to the problem. And there one is at least presumptively doing wrong. (2013, 187)

Brennan’s principle concerning collectively harmful activities provides a useful way of precisifying this argument. It also provides a way of extending the argument beyond premarital sex to include other potentially wrongful behaviors. The use of pornography is a very plausible candidate: the porn industry is utterly rife with abuse and trafficking, and its proliferation has plausibly contributed to the general loosening of sexual morals in our society (which in turn makes it a contributor to the premarital sex problem). Furthermore, pornography use is correlated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction. Given all of this, it very plausibly constitutes a CHA. Since refraining from pornography use carries no significant personal costs, it follows that there is a moral obligation not to use pornography.

For theists, there is another potential dimension to this argument: even if one does not think that the aforementioned considerations suffice to show the intrinsic wrongness of non-marital sexual activity, they plausibly do suffice to give God very strong reason to prohibit such activity. This fits nicely with the accounts of Christian sexual morality given by e.g. Murphy (2002) and Swinburne (2007).

There are very probably other activities to which one could apply a very similar argument. Hard drug use comes immediately to mind.

Why Would God Make Physical Beings?

One objection to theistic arguments from design is that it seems as though God could have achieved most (if not all) of the goods of creating finite beings without bothering to make a physical world, complete with finely-tuned constants, life-permitting laws, and so on. As Neil Manson puts the objection:

The problem here for proponents of the fine-tuning argument is that, if God does exist, then clearly it is possible for there to be a non-physical intelligence. After all, God is supposed to be just such an intelligence. Why think God would prefer to create other intelligent, conscious beings by creating a life-permitting physical universe? God had other, seemingly much more efficient and sensible, options. For example, God could make Berkeley right. So even if they grant that God has a preference function over possible creations, fine-tuning sceptics are going to need to hear a lot more before they agree that that function favours the creation of a life-permitting physical universe – and favours it enough to make the fine-tuning argument persuasive. (2020, 315-316)

It seems that Thomists have available a potential response to this objection. Aquinas argues that only a material being can change its will over time: an immaterial entity (such as an angel) can only make one choice, fixing its will either for good or for ill. If this view of things is true, then we seem to have a good explanation for why God would want to make embodied beings: only they could experience repeated free moral choice, and all of the goods which come along with it (e.g. moral development, soul-building, deliberation, and so on).

Here are some other reasons why God might want to make physical beings. Firstly, the goods of sensory pleasure (including beautiful sights and sounds, gustatory pleasure, and so on) seem to require the existence of bodies. (Perhaps God could simply give disembodied minds the requisite pleasurable mental states without requiring any actual physical experiences. But there seems to be something off-putting about that; it smacks rather too much of a divine experience machine.) Secondly, one might argue that the unique aesthetic value of material beings would give God good reason to create them. (This is distinct from the just-discussed point about pleasure; beings can have objective aesthetic value even if nobody is around to derive sensory pleasure from the sight of them.) Thirdly, one could appeal to the point (made here) about God wanting to make a great variety of beings: it seems plausible that material beings can image the divine goodness in ways that no purely immaterial being could.

Why Would God Make a Complex Universe?

While perusing Alexander Pruss' blog, I came across a post in which he offers this quote from Aquinas:

Hence we must say that the distinction and multitude of things come from the intention of the first agent, who is God. For He brought things into being in order that His goodness might be communicated to creatures, and be represented by them; and because His goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, He produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine goodness might be supplied by another. For goodness, which in God is simple and uniform, in creatures is manifold and divided and hence the whole universe together participates the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better than any single creature whatever. (ST 1.47.1)

It occurs to me that this line of thinking could be used to support Swinburne's inductive cosmological argument, which goes like so: let "h" be theism, "e" be the existence of our universe, and "k" be our background knowledge (which in this case will consist only of logically-necessary truths). Since the physical universe is extremely complex, it is a priori very improbable that it should exist. However, Swinburne claims that God would have very good reason to produce such a universe, since he would be motivated to create embodied rational creatures, and such creatures would need a universe to live in. So P(e|h&k) is relatively high, while P(e|~h&k) is very low. Hence, P(h|e&k) > P(h|k).

Aquinas' aforementioned reasoning can, it seems to me, be used to substantially strengthen this argument. It does so by explaining why God would want to make a complex universe (such as we observe) rather than a very simple one, suited simply to the purpose of playing host to embodied rational agents. If all goodness involves participation in God (which it does), then (as Aquinas notes) the particular perfections of each individual type of creature can model the divine goodness in unique ways. This plausibly gives God good reason to make a varied and complex universe. This in turn raises P(e|h&k), thus strengthening the argument.

The Kuzari and Resurrection Arguments

Jewish apologists commonly employ what has come to be known as the "Kuzari argument," which purports to show that the Jewish people really did receive a public revelation from God at Mount Sinai. Philosopher Tyron Goldschmidt formulates the crucial principle underlying this argument like so:

The Kuzari Principle: A tradition is true if it is (1) accepted by a nation; and describes (2) a national experience of a previous generation of that nation; and (3) the national experience would be expected to create a continuous national memory until the tradition is in place.

Note that the Sinai story appears to meet all three of these criteria: it was historically accepted by the Jewish nation as a whole, it describes a national experience of a previous generation of Jews, and it is such that, if it happened, one would expect the story to have been passed down (indeed, Goldschmidt notes that Exodus 13:3-10 explicitly commands Jews to "tell your son" about how God freed their people from Egypt). Hence, as philosopher Samuel Lebens argues, "The Kuzari Principle, especially given an antecedent commitment to theism, gives us prima facie evidence that such an event [i.e. the revelation at Sinai] likely occurred" (2020, 198).

On a similar note, Christian apologists commonly appeal to the resurrection argument for the truth of Christianity. The basic argument is simple: it is historically probable that shortly after Jesus' death, (1) his body went missing from his tomb, and (2) multiple people independently claimed to see him alive, including the apostle Paul, a former enemy and persecutor of the Christians. (The first of these data points is highly probable, while the second is as certain as a historical claim can be.) The best explanation of these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead. The most thorough defense of this argument by an analytic philosopher of religion is that of Swinburne (2003). The relevant historical facts are scrutinized by Allison (2021).

Now, here is something noteworthy: both the Sinai revelation and the resurrection of Jesus stand at the very root of their respective revelatory traditions. The entire body of Jewish scripture and religious literature derives its legitimacy from the experience of Sinai, while the entire body of uniquely Christian scripture and religious literature derives its legitimacy from the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, Christians believe that both the Jewish scriptures (the Old Testament) and the uniquely Christian ones (the New Testament) are genuine revelations.

Now, if Christianity is not true, then it is highly surprising that the foundational events of both portions of the Christian scriptures can be defended by plausible historical arguments. Nothing similar can be said for any other religion (save Judaism itself): there is no comparably good historical case for the miracles of the Buddha, or for the divine inspiration of the Quran. I conclude that we have here a very strong argument for the truth of Christianity.

(A possible objection: Why take this argument to support Christianity over Judaism? After all, the Kuzari is principally an argument for the latter. Response: Christianity wins out over Judaism because the former has two good arguments where the latter has one. The Kuzari counts in favor of both religions, since they both accept the revelation at Sinai. The resurrection, however, is exclusively an argument for Christianity.)

Protestantism and the Suitability of the Reformers

Here's a brief and plausibly sound argument:

1. If Protestantism is true, then the reformers (e.g. Luther and Calvin) were specially selected by God to renew his church.
2. The reformers were not specially selected by God to renew his church.
3. Therefore, Protestantism is not true.

(Note: By "Protestantism," I do not simply mean "anything other than Catholicism and Orthodoxy"; I mean adherence to the traditional solae of the Reformation, such as sola fide, sola gratia, and sola scriptura.) 

Premise (1) seems obviously true: if the Protestant Reformation really was what Protestants claim it was, then it must be the case that God specially raised up the reformers in order to effect the restoration of the apostolic faith.

Premise (2) is motivated by the obvious moral and doctrinal faults of the reformers. Luther tolerated polygamy by Christians, doubted the canonicity of various New Testament books, and (most serious by far) openly called for the persecution and murder of Jews. John Calvin was a minor tyrant, who played an important role in the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy. These actions and beliefs simply do not reflect what we would expect to see from men specially raised up by God.

One might object that God frequently uses sinners to achieve his purposes. Moses was a murderer, while St. Paul persecuted Christians and approved of St. Stephen's being stoned. But the difference is that these men engaged in these sinful actions before their calling, and there is evidence of their having subsequently changed their ways. Indeed, St. Paul's letters are filled with self-condemnations and proclamations of remorse concerning his former behavior. By contrast, the reformers' awful statements and actions took place after they had made their break with the Catholic Church, thus beginning the Reformation. So we would have to assume that these men, having already been raised up by God, were continuing to make serious moral and theological errors. That seems implausible.

One could also point out that many Catholic authorities have done horrible things. After all, if we are going to condemn Calvin for the execution of Servetus, should we not also condemn the Catholic Church for the killing of many thousands of heretics? The difference here is that the conduct of Luther and Calvin strikes at the root of the Reformation: these were the men who, if Protestantism is true, were selected by God to be his instruments of restoration. The Catholic authorities who persecuted heretics simply do not play as important a role in Catholic history as the reformers do in Protestant history.

In brief, I find it simply impossible to believe that the reformers were what Protestantism requires them to have been. This seems like a serious objection to Protestantism itself.

Three Pragmatic Arguments for Theism

"You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." - Saint Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1.

Introduction

Pragmatic arguments for theism are often given rather short shrift, treated as mere rationalizations and wishful thinking. I find this rather puzzling; after all, if one is trying to decide what to believe, it seems perfectly rational to incorporate considerations about the effect that one's decision will have on the rest of one's life. With that said, I'd like to consider three underappreciated arguments for theistic belief.

Forgiveness and the Moral Life

The first argument is from the nature of human moral psychology. When we have done wrong, we tend to crave forgiveness; indeed, a human being who did not desire forgiveness following serious wrongdoing would be regarded as psychologically defective. But note that if God does not exist, then many acts of human wrongdoing are literally unforgivable, in the sense that nobody could possibly have standing to forgive them. After discussing the case of those who took part in crimes against humanity, Peter Hacker writes:

It seems evident in these cases that no human being could possibly have the right to forgive them. Though they are not more evil than someone who tortured a single child to death, the magnitude of the evil they have done is monstrous. No one could possibly stand in a special relationship to the vast number of dead that would give them the locus standi to forgive such monsters as Enver and Talaat, Hitler and his henchmen, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so forth. The survivors of such holocausts may be able to forgive their persecutors, but it is not evident that they ought to. But be that as it may, they can forgive only for themselves – they cannot forgive in the name of the thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dead. Indeed, it lies so far beyond the bounds of intelligibility that it is altogether opaque what would count as forgiving the perpetrators, as opposed to asking for mercy for them. (2021, 148-149)

It is not only genocidaires who face such a predicament; even more ordinary offenders may find themselves in a similar state. For example, suppose that Thomas' grandmother is suffering from Alzheimer's, as a result of which she is rather hard to be around. He neglects to visit her, thereby failing in his familial obligations. After her death, Thomas comes to regret his behavior, and wishes to seek forgiveness. But who can offer it to him? His grandmother is dead, and no other human being has standing to offer absolution. So he is stuck in his guilt, unable to be forgiven.

Of course, if God exists, then there is a potential source of forgiveness. Traditional theistic religions assert that God is the primary aggrieved party in every case of human sin. What is more, since he stands in a particular unique relationship to all creatures (i.e. that of being their creator), he plausibly has standing to forgive offenses committed against them. He is also believed to be omnibenevolent and perfectly loving, ready and willing to offer absolution to whoever might want it. 

The upshot of all of this is that without God, the human moral life is ultimately, to some extent, absurd. Only belief in God can allow us to make sense of our own need for forgiveness, and thus, insofar as one thinks that human life is ultimately comprehensible, one has reason to affirm the truth of theism.

One can also present the argument in terms of our obligation to seek forgiveness. Alexander Pruss presents a version of the argument which goes as follows:

1. If one has done a wrong, one ought to ask someone for forgiveness of it.
2. If God does not exist, there are some wrongs (e.g., the murder of someone who has no friends or relatives) that one cannot appropriately ask anyone for forgiveness of.
3. If one ought to do something, then one can appropriately do it.
4. Therefore, if God does not exist, there are some things one ought to do but cannot appropriately do. (By 1 and 2)
5. Therefore, God exists. (By 3 and 4)

Personally, I prefer to formulate the argument in terms of our own deeply-felt need for absolution in the wake of sin. That said, I find Pruss' formulation to be interesting as well.

The Desire for Life

The second argument is from the rationality of the desire for continued life. It is obvious that human beings (when they are sane and healthy) typically desire the continuation of their lives, and that they are entirely right to do so. A human being who did not have this desire would be regarded as psychologically ill, unless they were in very special circumstances (consider the case of St. Ignatius, who sought a martyr's death at the hands of pagan Rome).

The difficulty is that if God does not exist, then it is hard to explain how our desire for life could be rational. For plausibly this desire can be rational only if it is reflective, where "my desire to engage in some activity A is reflective only if there are strong reasons to believe that A is a worthwhile activity" (De Ray 2023, 685). But why should we believe that our continuing to live is worthwhile? After all, "for every instance of good in any given life (happiness, desire satisfaction, success), there is a corresponding instance of evil (sadness, desire-frustration, failure), and it is practically impossible to show (to oneself or to others) that the former outweigh the latter" (ibid., 687).

So it seems that the atheist is stuck with a substantial difficulty: they do desire to live, and it is evident that this desire is rational; however, they are unable to account for how this desire could be rational. The theist, on the other hand, has an easy response: they believe that the universe is providentially ordered by a perfectly loving creator, who would be both willing and able to ensure that the lives of rational creatures are worthwhile. 

Christophe de Ray (2023, 683) summarizes the aforementioned argument like so:

1. The desire for life is rational.
2. The desire for life is irrational, unless it is reflective.
3. If naturalism is true, the desire for life cannot be reflective.
4. Therefore, if naturalism is true, the desire for life is irrational.
5. Therefore, naturalism is false.

The upshot is that our own desire for continued life is only comprehensible if theism (or something very much like it, such as some form of axiarchism) is true.

Pascal's Wager

The third argument is among the most unfairly maligned in all of philosophy. I speak of course of Pascal's Wager, which the man himself presents as follows:

“God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up... Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose... But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is… If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

While for many years the philosophical consensus was that Pascal's Wager is "almost entirely worthless" (Oppy 1991, 159), more recent writers have breathed new life into the argument. In particular, Elizabeth Jackson has done an enormous amount of valuable work on the topic (see e.g. her 2016, 2023a, 2023b, 2023c, forthcoming). A very useful defense of Pascal's Wager is provided by Jackson and Rogers (2019), who provide a plausible way to do decision theory involving infinite utilities, which renders the Wager a perfectly kosher piece of decision-theoretic reasoning.

The upshot is that one ought to endeavor to believe in and practice the religion to which one assigns the highest credence, which will in most cases mean accepting a belief in God.

Conclusion

I believe that the three arguments discussed above are highly cogent, and deserving of a great deal more attention than is commonly paid to them. I hope that the reader will examine the existing literature on these arguments (some of which I have linked to above), and will ponder them deeply.

Happy New Year to all who read this, and God bless you and yours.

Christophe de Ray's Conceptual Cosmological Argument

Introduction

This argument is due entirely to Christophe de Ray, and is presented in his excellent paper "Existence exists, and it is God" (2022). This post is effectively a summary of the argument as I understand it, and is written largely as a way to help me organize my own thoughts on the matter. I highly encourage all who read this to check out de Ray's original paper.

Summary of the Argument

The argument may be summarized as follows:

1. All particular things exist in virtue of their having or sharing in something, which we call Existence.
2. Existence could not enable particular things to exist unless it itself exists.
3. Therefore, Existence exists.
4. If Existence exists, then it is a supremely excellent being.
5. Therefore, Existence is a supremely excellent being.

(1) is motivated by the typical arguments for existence as a first-order property (e.g. the inability of the Frege-Russell view to properly analyze singular existence statements). (2) seems self-evident, while (3) follows logically.

Motivating (4): "If Existence exists, then it is a supremely excellent being"

(4) is the most substantive premise, and obviously stands most in need of defense. The idea here is that we need to give some account of how Existence itself is able to exist. After all, if all particular things receive their being from Existence, then how can Existence itself exist? Surely it cannot bestow being on itself, for this would require that Existence be ontologically prior to itself (which is surely incoherent). Hence, it seems that we must say that Existence itself exists in a different way from how other things exist: while all other things exist in virtue of their standing in a certain "sharing" relation to Existence, Existence itself is a paradigm existent, the existence of which consists in its self-identity. De Ray proposes the following account of existence:

Paradigm Theory (PT): x exists if and only if either x is identical to the paradigm existent, namely Existence, or x bears the ‘sharing’ relation to Existence.

In order to make sense of this account, de Ray proposes an analogy. There are two ways in which something might satisfy the predicate "is a The Starry Night painting": one way is to be a copy or imitation of the original van Gogh painting, while another way is simply to be the original van Gogh painting. The copies satisfy the predicate in virtue of their standing in the "being a copy" relation to the original painting; however, the original van Gogh satisfies the predicate simply of virtue of its self-identity. Similarly, while all other things exist in virtue of their standing in the "sharing" relation to Existence, Existence itself exists in virtue of its self-identity.

So, Existence is a paradigm existent. But what kind of thing would a paradigm existent be? Plausibly, to be a paradigm F is to be a "perfectly good or true instance of F. [...] Obviously, no particular F could be better or more truly F than the paradigm F, since if it [was], then it would be the paradigm. For example, it is impossible for any painting to be a better or truer The Starry Night painting than van Gogh’s original" (de Ray 2022, 6). "

This analysis implies that there can be better or worse ways of existing, with the paradigm existent being a perfect instance of existence. "This accords with our intuition that while both humans and oysters are real, the existence of the former is superior to that of the latter, in virtue of some of the attributes that humans have and that oysters lack, such as self-awareness, creativity, the ability to form relationships, etc. [...] But if the paradigm existent is a perfect instance of existence, and thus exists in a perfect way, then it follows that Existence must possess all the excellence that it is possible for a being to possess. This must surely include consciousness, intelligence, rationality, and indeed maximal power, knowledge and moral goodness, to name only some. Whatever the exact nature of such a being, it is surely appropriate to call it a supremely excellent being" (ibid., 6-7). Hence, (4) is true, while (5) follows logically from (1)-(4).

A Potential Objection (and its Resolution)

Are there any objections to all of this? Here is one: before an object can instantiate a property, it must first exist. But on this account, objects exist in virtue of their standing in a certain relation, i.e. that of imitating the paradigm existent. "It could therefore be objected that our account is incoherent, because imitation can never be prior to the existence of the imitator" (ibid., 12).

De Ray argues that this difficulty is best resolved by considering more carefully what it means for a particular thing to imitate the paradigm existent. Consider again the van Gogh case: what it is for a copy of The Starry Night to stand in the imitation relation to the original painting is simply for it to be modelled on the original, i.e. for it to be created in a certain way by a creative agent. It does not have to exist before it can be a copy of the The Starry Night; rather, it just is a copy of The Starry Night for as long as it exists, in virtue of its having been made in a certain way.

Returning to the case of existence, if we think of the imitation relation as a kind of creation, "the objection at hand vanishes, because it is clear that the existence of a created thing is not ontologically prior to its being created. It would be strange indeed to argue that ordinary existents are created by the paradigm because they exist, and far more plausible to say that they exist in virtue of being created" (ibid., 12).

It is also useful to note that while in the van Gogh case the creation is done by a "third party" (i.e. the painter), who is distinct from the paradigm case (i.e. van Gogh's painting) and the created imitations, in the case of existence there can be no third-party, since everything other than the paradigm existent is an ordinary existent. Any creative agent other than the paradigm existent itself "would thus need to create [itself] to resemble the paradigm existent, which is absurd. Thus, it is the paradigm itself that would need to do the creating, modelling ordinary existents after itself" (ibid., 12). We thus have the result that Existence is a supremely perfect being, which is responsible for creating all other things. "And this," as Aquinas put it, "everyone understands to be God."

Dispositionalism and Contingent Existence

[Note: Most of this post consists of fairly obvious observations about the consequences of modal dispositionalism; I just wanted to have this train of thought in writing somewhere.]

Critics of the cosmological argument will sometimes claim that while no contingent thing exists in all possible worlds, it might still be the case that all possible worlds contain at least one contingent thing. William Rowe provides the following analogy:

We know that although no horse in a given horse race necessarily will be the winner, it is, nevertheless, necessary that some horse in the race will be the winner. (1975, 164)

It turns out that dispositionalists cannot plausibly appeal to this possibility as a way of avoiding a necessary being. Here's why: either causal history is infinite, or it is not. If it is not, then the dispositionalist has very good reason to affirm the existence of a (set of) necessary being(s); see e.g. Vance (2014), Vetter (2015), and Kimpton-Nye (2021). So the dispositionalist who wishes to avoid a necessary being should assume that causal history is infinite. But, as it turns out, this strategy will not work either.

Let S be the plurality of all actually-existing contingent concrete things. (If nothing is necessary, then S will include all actually-existing concrete things.) Suppose that the cosmological arguer asks for an explanation of why the beings in S exist, and the critic gives the aforementioned reply that it is necessary for some contingent things to exist. But note that on a naturalistic dispositionalism, "every possible world contains some natural thing that actually exists... necessarily, every world contains some stretch of our actual natural past" (Leftow 2017, 326). This means that the critic's reply commits them to claiming that it is necessary for at least some of the beings in S to exist.

Is this reply at all plausible? I think not; after all, every being in S is contingent, and so fails to exist in some possible world. But it seems obvious that if x could fail to exist, and if y could fail to exist, then both x and y could jointly fail to exist; otherwise, we would have to suppose that x's nonexistence somehow forces y to exist, which seems implausible. As Vetter puts it, "the possibility, for each contingent object, that it does not exist, together with what we might call a principle of independence—that the non-existence of contingent objects can never force other contingent object into existence—yields the global possibility that none of the actual contingent objects exist" (2015, 275).

A further problem is that while the critic might claim that it is necessary for some of the beings in S to exist, there can be no particular beings in S which exist necessarily. This should be obvious merely from the fact that, as stipulated, S is the plurality of all actual contingent things; however, the point becomes more interesting when put in terms of branching causal histories. Recall that, as Leftow points out, the theory under consideration entails that "every world contains some stretch of our actual natural past" (2017, 326), which, given an infinite past-eternal universe, "would be an infinite stretch" (ibid., 326). However, this would not be the same stretch of our actual past; rather, different possible worlds would share different stretches of the actual past. To make the problem clearer: if causal history is infinite, then for any causal node n, there is an earlier node n-1. But this entails that there is no single node n which is part of the shared history of all possible worlds. Hence, the aforementioned critic of the cosmological argument must claim that it is a necessary truth that all possible worlds share a stretch of causal history with the actual world, but not any particular stretch. This does not seem like a very good explanation of the entire causal series. 

It is also worth noting that the naturalist dispositionalist is committed to claiming that "there could not have been other natural laws... [nor] could there have been a different total amount of mass-energy" (Leftow 2017, 325). Their view will also threaten modal collapse, since "If [this] theory is true and determinism is true, the actual world is the only possible world: there are no chancy causes, so there are no branches off the tree of actual history" (ibid., 326). Thus, on this view "we should take modal Spinozism precisely as seriously as we take determinism" (ibid., 326).

The upshot is that the dispositionalist must either admit that there is a (set of) necessary being(s), or else claim that it is a necessary truth that some actually-existing contingent things exist. Given that this latter claim seems extremely unlikely (if not flat-out nonsensical), entailing as it does many implausible consequences, it appears that the dispositionalist has strong reason to accept the existence of a (set of) necessary being(s).

My paper "Two challenges for 'no-norms' theism" has been published

As the title says. The paper has been published Open Access, so there will be no paywall to deal with. Links to the paper are included below.

Journal site: Link

PhilPapers Archive with PDF: Link

A Note on Probabilities in the Fine-Tuning Argument

I think it's worth pointing out just how dramatic the probabilities being discussed in the fine-tuning argument really are. As John Hawthorne and Yoaav Isaacs point out:

We should emphasize just how small we take the life-permitting parameter values to be according to the physically respectable measures. “Small” here doesn’t mean “1 in 10,000” or “1 in 1,000,000”. It means the kind of fraction that one would resort to exponents to describe, as in “1 in 10 to the 120.” The kind of package that we have in mind tells us that only a fantastically small range is life-permitting.

What kind of evidential weight does this have? Well, suppose that the probability of FT given theism is 1 in 10. Now, suppose that the probability of FT given naturalism is 1 in 1,000 (which, given the probabilities mentioned above, is being very generous). This gives us a likelihood ratio of 100, which, as Hawthorne and Isaacs note, "is sufficient to take someone who antecedently thought that the probability of God’s existence was just under 10 percent to thinking that the probability of God’s existence is just over 90 percent." This is very strong evidence, even if one takes theism to have an extremely low prior probability (in this case, 0.1 as compared to naturalism's 0.9).

Consciousness and Natural Selection

If one is a physicalist, then presumably one thinks that consciousness emerged as a result of naturalistic evolution. From this, it would seem to follow that consciousness was selected for, i.e. that it provided some kind of adaptive advantage, which lead to conscious organisms out-competing non-conscious ones. (If consciousness is a purely physical process, then it would likely depend on rather complex biological systems, and so it is unlikely to be a spandrel that simply piggy-backed on some other adaptive trait.) 

However, this claim seems to be rather suspicious. After all, it is obvious that non-conscious organisms are perfectly capable of doing all the things required for survival, such as finding food and avoiding predators (e.g. about two-thirds of philosophers do not regard flies as conscious, yet they seem to be doing alright for themselves). At the same time, there are a number of behaviors which are highly detrimental from an evolutionary perspective, and which only conscious beings are capable of. Among these would seem to be: committing suicide, developing a mental illness, having an existential crisis, using contraceptives, adopting antinatalism, and committing oneself to celibacy as part of a religious ordination. 

The upshot, then, is this: there seem to no highly adaptive traits that only conscious beings possess, whereas there are numerous non-adaptive traits which only conscious beings possess. It is thus difficult to see why a naturalistic evolutionary process would have selected for consciousness. And of course, this is completely separate from any concerns one might have about emergence (serious though these worries are). I have no idea whether this is a good argument against naturalistic physicalism, but it is interesting to think about.

J.L. Schellenberg on Science and Monotheism

More people ought to read J.L. Schellenberg's excellent book Monotheism and the Rise of Science (2020), published by Cambridge University Press. In it, Schellenberg notes that there is "considerable support" for the claim that monotheism "contributed to science's early rise" (p. 4). He writes that "Monotheism and science... were not enemies at all but rather friends" (p. 47). He further notes that such a relationship might well reemerge, writing:

When the total story of science’s relationship to monotheism, past, present, and future, is told, even such tensions between science and religion as we see today could well appear somewhat anomalous – as moments of struggle bookended by periods in which cultural forces associated with science supported those allied with monotheism. (p. 47)

All-in-all, Schellenberg's book (as with most entries in the Cambridge Elements series) is well worth a read.

Michael Huemer and the Eternality of the Past

Michael Huemer is an interesting guy. I don't have hard data on this, but I'm fairly confident that he's the only philosopher working today who simultaneously advocates veganism, anarcho-capitalism, agnosticism, and substance dualism. As such, it was not terribly surprising to find that he also believes in reincarnation, having defended the idea in a (very interesting) 2019 paper in Nous. The gist of Huemer's argument is as follows:

If you were to live at most once in the history of the universe, we cannot justify assigning any probability greater than zero, initially, to your living at the present time, given an infinite number of past centuries in which you could have been born instead. The best explanation for your otherwise surprising present existence is that you are repeatable, so that your living at an earlier time would not have prevented you from living now – in which case, your present life also will not prevent you from living any number of future lives.

Now, it occurs to me that this argument could be used, not only to argue for reincarnation, but also to argue against the eternality of the past. Indeed, one might think that it is a somewhat stronger argument for the latter, seeing as most people will find reincarnation extraordinarily counter-intuitive, whereas the idea that the universe had a beginning is vastly less so. This is especially true seeing as many philosophers have a view of personal identity on which reincarnation is metaphysically impossible, whereas almost nobody is committed to any theses requiring the eternality of the past. As such, when confronted with an argument which says that either the past is finite, or reincarnation is actual, it is plausible that most philosophers will opt for the former.

Reading Peter Atkins (and Other Ways to Waste an Afternoon)

A few years back, renowned chemist Peter Atkins wrote a couple of rather silly books, in which he tried to give an account of how the universe could arise from absolutely nothing. The essence of his proposal is that "the incipience of the universe was an event in which absolutely nothing (not even spacetime) turned into a more interesting form of nothing, where opposites became distinguished." He explains as follows:

Take electric charge. There are obviously positive and negative electric charge (for instance, of protons and electrons, respectively), but the total charge of the universe is zero. [...] More contentiously, I think it possible to argue that there is no energy in the universe (with mass being another manifestation of energy, through  E = mc2). Yes, there are positive and negative contributions to the total energy, but I suspect that the total is zero, just like the total charge.

The argument, then, is that there was once a state of absolute nothingness, an "absence of being" (Conjuring the Universe, p. 18), which then "split" or "separated" into opposites (i.e. positive and negative charge, energy, and so on).

By my lights, there are at least four serious problems with this proposal.

Firstly, there seem to be some aspects of the physical universe which cannot, even in principle, be explained on Atkins' model. To take one example, the existence of spacetime itself makes little sense if we view creation as a separation of opposites. After all, we don't have "space and anti-space," or "time and anti-time"; there is just spacetime, existing without an opposite. And there are other explanatory failures here; for instance, with regards to the fundamental physical constants, Atkins admits that "No one yet has a clue about why they have their current, and for us serendipitous, values" (CTU, p. 154). Certainly his own muddled proposal does nothing whatsoever the illuminate the matter.

Secondly, Atkins seems to be misunderstanding the fundamental question here, which is primarily ontological in nature. An illustration will help to make this point: in his book On Being, Atkins argues that if the total energy in the universe (TEU) sums to zero (which he thinks it probably does), then this would mean that "What we see around us is actually nothing" (p. 17). But even if Atkins is correct about the TEU (which is by-no-means certain; see here and here), his metaphysical claim is obviously false. To understand why, think of two particles, one of dark matter, and one of common matter. 

These particles are, Atkins says, manifestations of negative and positive energy, respectively; one is the "cancellation" (his word) of the other. But of course, dark matter and common matter both exist; they both have a positive ontological status, that is to say, being. When you have these two particles side-by-side, you do not suddenly have zero particles; you have two particles, one positive, and one negative. A particle of dark matter and a particle of common matter may well "cancel each other out" in some sense, but surely they do not add up to non-being; rather, we know that dark matter and common matter exist alongside one another, even entering into causal relations via gravitation. And of course, such things as particles, positive or negative, would not have been present in "Nothing." As such, Atkins' account is utterly worthless when it comes to addressing (or even simplifying) the foundational question of how being can emerge from non-being.

Thirdly, Atkins seems to equivocate on the nature of "Nothing." For instance, when he speaks of "Nothing" as having been "split," one is immediately urged to ask whether or not "Nothing" is splitable; that is, whether it has the potential to be split. If so, then it has properties, in which case it is not nothing, but rather a very nebulously-defined something. If, instead, we agree that "Nothing" really is devoid of properties, then we must ask how it can be "split" or "separated." We see this confusion throughout Atkins' books; for instance, in On Being he writes that "Nothing has no properties" (p. 12), while in Conjuring the Universe he states that "Our current something has simply inherited the properties of its parent Nothing" (p. 38).

Fourthly, I suspect Atkins' account may simply be incoherent. For take the central idea of his proposal: that Nothing, the "absence of being" (CTU, p. 18), was somehow "separated" into distinct forms of being. When stripped of its pseudo-scientific veneer, it seems rather obvious that this is just a bad conjuring trick. It is not a serious hypothesis about the origins of the universe; it is a category error, of the sort which loses points on a freshman philosophy paper, being dressed up and sold as science, and deriving its credibility solely from the fact that it is the work of an author who once produced worthwhile textbooks on physical chemistry.

It is always depressing when a formerly productive mind turns its attention to the production of vacuous drivel; even still, perhaps the rest of us can derive some amusement from their folly.

Dore on Rowe on the Cosmological Argument

I recently came across an old paper by Clement Dore, entitled "Rowe on the Cosmological Argument" (1983). In it, Dore objects attempts to uphold Hume's objection to the PSR, by critiquing Rowe's defense of the principle. He writes:

[In] order to support the cosmological argument, PSR must be interpreted this way: "For any infinite set, S, each of whose members can be explained by another member, the question 'Why are there any members of S?.' can (only) be truly answered by referring to a cause which is not itself a member of S." But how much credibility has PSR, thus interpreted? Consider the question, "Why are there any things which are at least as large as a quark?" Rowe's claim that PSR (as presently interpreted) may be plausible appears to commit him to the thesis that the following may be plausible: "If there is a finite number of members of the set of things which are at least as large as a quark (call it S'), then S' is like my philosophy of religion class, in that we do not need to infer an irreducibly distinct cause of its having members. However, if S' has an infinite number of members, then it is subject to a causal explanation which does not reduce to the individual explanations of the individual members, namely, the following one: The individual members of S' exist because there is something smaller than a quark which is their ultimate cause." 

But of course, Dore argues, it is absurd to suppose that there must be something smaller than a quark which is the ultimate cause of the set S'. And since PSR (allegedly) commits one to such a claim, it seems that PSR must be rejected.

I found this line of argument noteworthy, if only because of how absurdly weak it seems. Firstly, because the cosmological argument doesn't require one to assume any infinite set of objects; the argument from contingency (for example) works identically well whether the totality of all contingent things is finite or infinite.

But there's another issue with Dore's line of reasoning. For assuming that S' has infinitely many members, it seems that we may still avoid his claim of absurdity with relative ease. Example: suppose that the universe had a beginning in time, with an initial state and physical laws that were/are metaphysically necessary (this is the view taken by, among others, Graham Oppy). In that case, S' would be explained by the initial state of the universe, in tandem with the laws of nature that necessarily follow from it. This claim hardly seems absurd, and it is hard to believe that it should lead one to abandon PSR.

Alternatively, suppose that the universe has existed for eternity, and that its existence is metaphysically necessary. In that case, we have a number of options. For instance, S' might be metaphysically necessary (e.g. if the universe is necessary and past eternal, and S' includes everything in the universe, it follows that S' is metaphysically necessary). Alternatively, S' might be explained by the laws of nature in tandem with the most fundamental physical entities, and these things might be metaphysically necessary. Or else, if nothing in the physical universe is necessary, then S' would need to be explained by something outside of the universe, in which case the cosmological argument is sound. None of these options seem so absurd as the merit the rejection of PSR.

[Note: Dore might consider the last result (i.e. the cosmological argument being sound) to be absurd; however, this would hardly constitute a genuine reply to that argument. For then Dore would be arguing as follows: "The PSR as required by the cosmological argument is absurd, because if it were true, it would entail the success of the cosmological argument." This might be sufficient grounds for rejecting PSR, but it will certainly not convince anyone who regards the cosmological argument as sound.]

Richard Carrier Doesn't Understand [Insert Concept Here]

Richard Carrier (an atheist blogger suffering from the world's most ironic god complex) thinks he has an argument to the effect that "[if] there was once absolutely nothing... it necessarily follows that there is an infinite multiverse." How does he get there, you might wonder? Well, like this:

[If] nothing exists, then by definition no rules exist limiting what will happen to it; if no rules exist limiting what it will happen to it, it is equally likely it will become one of infinitely many arrays of things (including remaining nothing, which is just one of infinitely many other things no rule exists to prevent happening); if we select at random from the infinitely many arrays of things it can become (including the array that is an empty set, i.e. continuing to be nothing), the probability is infinitesimally near 100% the array chosen at random will be a vast multiverse whose probability of including a universe like ours is infinitesimally near 100%. Because there are infinitely more ways to get one of those at random, than to get, for example, the one single outcome of remaining nothing. There is no way to avoid this. Unless you insert some law, power, rule, or force that would stop it, or change the outcome to something not decided at random. But once you do that, you are no longer talking about nothing. You have added something. Which you have no reason to add. Other than your human desire that it be there. Which is not a compelling argument for it being there.

Now, perhaps it's just me, but I must admit that this passage made me scratch my head. This is because Carrier consistently identifies himself as a "neo-Aristotelian." But as Robert Koons (UT Austin), William Simpson (Cambridge), and Nicholas Teh (Notre Dame) point out, it is a defining feature of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics that "[it] embraces what is commonly called a causal powers ontology, in which both active and passive powers are regarded as fundamental features of particular things in the world that bring about change by some kind of natural necessity" (Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, Routledge, p. 1). But this idea wrecks havoc with Carrier's argument. Allow me to explain.

Metaphysicians agree that "powers and dispositions are properties of things" (The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics, Wiley-Blackwell, p. 106). Furthermore, Aristotelian accounts of modality hold that "a proposition is possible if there is some actually existing thing that has the power to bring about the truth of that proposition" (ibid, p. 348). In other words, a neo-Aristotelian metaphysic is one characterized (in part) by the claim that all possibilities and potentialities are grounded in the properties of actually existing things. More specifically, they are grounded in the powers of concrete objects, here defined as "objects [which] can change other concrete objects, and are able to undergo change themselves" (ibid, p. 321).

But here arises the difficulty. For Carrier wishes to claim that an infinite multiverse can emerge from a "nothing-state," defined as a state of affairs in which "nothing whatever exists except anything whose non-existence is logically impossible." But presumably, this means that the "nothing-state" includes no concrete objects (if it did, one would think it could not qualify as a "nothing-state"). So Carrier is forced into something of a dilemma, with only two possible outcomes:

1. The "nothing-state" does possess causal powers, in which case it has properties, in which case it is not nothing, but rather a concrete object. A very vague and nebulously-defined concrete object, true, but a concrete object nonetheless.
2. The "nothing-state" does not possess causal powers, in which case any self-respecting neo-Aristotelian will simply reject the claim that it could give rise to an infinite multiverse, on the grounds that such a thing is metaphysically impossible (i.e. no concrete objects = no causal powers = no potentialities = no infinite multiverse).

And of course, neither disjunct is favorable to Carrier's argument.

[Incidentally, lest Carrier (or his fans) should feel tempted to deploy his favorite strategy (i.e. accusing all who oppose him of "science illiteracy"), it should be noted that William Simpson "was formerly a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and holds a doctorate in physics from the University of St. Andrews," while Nicholas Teh "held postdoctoral research fellowships at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge and the Quantum Group at the Oxford University Comlab." Thus giving both of them infinitely more credibility on scientific matters than Richard Carrier, who has no formal training in physics (or any other scientific field), can rightfully dare to claim. And of course, many other eminent philosophers of science (such as Nancy Cartwright) take a similar neo-Aristotelian view.]

This leaves only one question: how in the hell did Carrier get this so badly wrong? Isn't he a neo-Aristotelian? In fact, upon closer inspection, it seems that Carrier rejects almost everything that characterizes neo-Aristotelian philosophy. For instance, in his "reply" to Edward Feser, he writes that "'essences' don’t exist. And we’ve long known they don’t exist." But this blatantly contradicts mainstream neo-Aristotelianism, which holds that "substances in nature belong to recurring natural kinds, each with its own intelligible nature or essence" (Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science, Routledge, p. 2).

So what exactly is going on here? Well, wouldn't you know it, it turns out that Richard Carrier has managed to convince himself that he (and basically only he) understands Aristotle better than the entire philosophical community put together! Case in point:

Most Neo-Aristotelianism today (like much of what Ross Inman is talking about) is crank theistic claptrap. Like Medieval Aristotelianism, it gets practically everything wrong about what Aristotle even thought or taught.

Oh, well that settles it then! Never mind the fact that Ross Inman has a PhD in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, whereas Carrier has zero formal training in philosophy. Never mind the fact that Inman has published a book with Routledge, not to mention articles and book chapters in the American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, and Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, whereas Carrier has no philosophical CV to speak of (and distorts his publishing credentials to boot). The great and powerful Richard Carrier has spoken, and really, what more proof do you need?

This is all rather silly, of course. Carrier has repeatedly shown himself to be incompetent, first in his own field of ancient history (exhibit A, exhibit B, exbibit C, etc.), then in the use of his favorite hobby-horse, Bayes' theorem (exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C, etc.); as such, it's worth asking why anyone would even begin to take him seriously on matters of philosophy, especially when there are so many respectable atheist philosophers of religion out there (such as Graham Oppy, J.L. Schellenberg, Paul Draper, and so on). But I'm afraid that mystery is rather above my paygrade.

The Contents of a Foundational Mind (Or: A Weird Objection I Found on the Internet)

I recently came across somebody who argued that the foundation of reality could not be a mind, because if it were, then this mind would have no referent beyond its own existence (no "intrinsic content," as they put it). This would (supposedly) prevent the foundational mind from proceeding beyond its initial state. 

I must say, this strikes me as obviously wrong. After all, if God exists, and is omniscient, then He presumably has perfect modal knowledge; that is to say, even before the moment of creation, God knew all possible worlds that He could actualize. How might God know/have known this? Well, one potential answer is that modality is grounded in divine power. This would allow God to have perfect modal knowledge simply by knowing Himself, and specifically, His own power to actualize various states of affairs.

Indeed, classical theism has traditionally held that God's knowledge is rooted in His knowledge of Himself. For instance, here's what Aquinas has to say on the matter:

Inasmuch as He knows His own essence perfectly, He knows it according to every mode in which it can be known. Now it can be known not only as it is in itself, but as it can be participated in by creatures according to some degree of likeness. But every creature has its own proper species, according to which it participates in some degree in likeness to the divine essence. So far, therefore, as God knows His essence as capable of such imitation by any creature, He knows it as the particular type and idea of that creature; and in like manner as regards other creatures. So it is clear that God understands many particular types of things and these are many ideas. (ST I.15.2)

And of course, one does not need to be a Thomist to accept my initial point (i.e. that God could have perfect modal knowledge simply by knowing His own power).

Richard Carrier's Argument from Specified Complexity

Noted pseudo-philosopher Richard Carrier has an argument which, he thinks, demonstrates that "we should think the supernatural is impossible." Specifically, he wants to claim that "God's mind appears to be logically impossible." His line of reasoning goes (more-or-less) as follows:

1. (Assume for contradiction) God's mind is simple and immaterial.
2. God's mind must be able to store and process information.
3. Information storage and processing require specified complexity.
4. Such complexity requires some material on which information can be stored and circuitry stamped.
5. God's mind is complex and material (from 2-4).
6. Contradiction (from 1 and 5). 

Unfortunately, Carrier seems to have gotten himself tripped up on the nature of God's knowledge. For he writes:

A god has to know things (store information), and think things (process information). But there is a difference between correct and incorrect information, present and absent information; between conflation and distinction. A god has to be able to distinguish one person’s face, from another; and correctly connect each face, with other information about the corresponding person, like that Joe’s face goes with Joe’s job in sales and wife of eleven years, and Mark’s face goes with Mark’s service in the military and husband of eleven years. That information could be connected up differently—wires crossed, and Joe’s face gets incorrectly linked to Mark’s husband, producing the false information that Joe has a husband, and so on. And notice how many different ways connections can be crossed up: the more information, the more different connections are possible. And most of them (in fact, all but one of them; out of effectively infinitely many) will be false.

However, as the physicist Aron Wall pointed out in response to a near-identical objection (ironically put forward by a couple of conservative Mormons), "This is only an issue if you assume that God's knowledge is, like ours, representational, that is, that it proceeds by means of making something like an image or duplicate of the object known, in some other physical system (in our case, the brain)." But of course, classical theism does not make such an assumption; rather, it has always held that God knows all things via direct awareness, simply by knowing Himself as creator and sustainer of all things (hint: this is part of what CTs mean when we say that God's knowledge, creative act, etc. are really all one thing). Thomas Aquinas provides a useful summary of this concept, when he writes:

Now, it is not repugnant to the simplicity of the divine mind that it understand many things; though it would be repugnant to its simplicity were His understanding to be formed by a plurality of images. [...] Inasmuch as He knows His own essence perfectly, He knows it according to every mode in which it can be known. Now it can be known not only as it is in itself, but as it can be participated in by creatures according to some degree of likeness.  But every creature has its own proper species, according to which it participates in some degree in likeness to the divine essence. So far, therefore, as God knows His essence as capable of such imitation by any creature, He knows it as the particular type and idea of that creature; and in like manner as regards other creatures. So it is clear that God understands many particular types of things and these are many ideas. (ST I.15.2)

The idea that God's knowledge does not consist in stored-up beliefs or mental images may also be found outside of the Thomistic tradition. For example, William Alston (1986), a critic of divine simplicity, was nevertheless a major proponent of the idea that God has no beliefs whatsoever, but rather knows all things via direct awareness. To quote:

A creature in our condition needs inner representations in order to be able to think about absent states of affairs, since the facts are rarely if ever directly present to our consciousness. But since God enjoys the highest form of knowledge He is never in that position, and so He has no need for inner representations that He can ‘carry around with him’ for use when the facts are absent. The facts are never absent from His awareness; thus it would be fatuous to attribute to Him any such mental map. When we have arrived at our destination we can fold the map away.

In a recent paper defending Alston's view, Saeedimehr (2021) discusses two non-propositional accounts of God's knowledge, each of which would seemingly allow us to avoid Carrier's argument. To quote:

Since God is absolutely simple, He (His essence) is identical with his knowledge. Therefore, God’s knowledge is totally simple and hence it is beyond any kind of complexity, including the complexity due to having a propositional structure.

Since Alston finds the principle of Divine simplicity quite problematic, he seeks another basis for the non-propositional position. He argues that as human beings, our propositional knowledge stems from two of our limitations: first we ‘cannot grasp any concrete whole in its full concreteness’, and second ‘we need to isolate separate propositions in order to relate them logically’ and then ‘extend our knowledge inferentially’. But since God is obviously beyond these limitations, His knowledge is not required to be propositional.

It would seem, then, that a non-propositional account of God's knowledge allows us to reject premise (2) of Carrier's argument; namely, that God's mind stores and processes information. God does not store information at all (or to quote Alston, "carry [it] around with Him"); rather, at any one moment He has an infallible intuitive grasp of all facts. Similarly, God does not need to "process information" (or to quote Alston, "isolate separate propositions in order to relate them logically"). We need to do that, because our cognition is fallible and limited; God, on the other hand, is far beyond such things.

One hopes that Carrier himself never gets wind of this post, lest I be subjected to his, uh... scholarly rigor.

Do Theistic Arguments Support the Simulation Hypothesis?

Richard Brown believes that "the traditional arguments for God’s existence provide better support for the simulation hypothesis than they do for the traditional God of Theism." He basis this view on the following argument:

1. The traditional a posteriori arguments (cosmological, teleological, etc.) point, if one accepts their conclusions, to a creator, but not to what kind of creator.
2. The traditional theistic God (all-powerful, all-knowing, and morally perfect) is one candidate for being the Creator.
3. The Simulators are another candidate.
4. The traditional arguments do not distinguish between (2) and (3).
5. The problem of evil (evidential) suggests that (2) is not the creator.
6. Therefore, the traditional arguments for God’s existence provide better support for the simulation hypothesis than they do for the traditional God of Theism.

I think the theist can challenge almost every premise here. Let's go through them in order

While premise (1) might apply to some arguments for God's existence (such as the fine-tuning argument), it seems obvious that it does not apply to many others, including some of the most popular in the current literature. For example, Rasmussen's contingency argument tells us that the creator must be a metaphysically necessary being, while his various stage-two arguments (if they succeed) tell us that it must be eternal, unlimited, unsurpassably powerful, and possessing a supreme nature. Similarly, the Pruss-Koons argument from basic natural facts seeks to establish the existence of a "supernatural being," that is to say, "a simple being that is unbounded and wholly infinite in intrinsic measure."

Premise (2) is uncontroversial (especially amongst theists), and so it seems like we can skip over that one.

Premise (3) seems to fail for the same reasons as premise (1); namely, the most popular theistic arguments today (such as the contingency argument) would seem to rule out a simulator. After all, a simulator would presumably be a natural being, rather than a supernatural one. We also have no reason to assume that they would be necessary, rather than contingent. In addition, stage-two contingency arguments (such as those made by Rasmussen) are specifically designed to solve the so-called "gap problem," by showing that the necessary being in question must have some or all of the traditional divine attributes.

Premise (4) fails for the same reasons as premises (1) and (3).

Premise (5) only works if one agrees that the problem of evil really does provide evidence against theism. However, even if one does agree with this, it seems like this premise still fails to support the simulation hypothesis. This is because, if my criticisms of premises (1) and (3) succeed, the traditional theistic arguments rule out the idea of a natural contingent being as the cause of our universe. 

The conclusion (6) stands and falls with the rest of the argument, so if (as I've argued) the rest of the argument fails, then so does (6).

I think Brown has also neglected an important point, namely that theistic arguments must be approached in tandem, rather than one-by-one. For example, assume that the argument from contingency is correct, and the existence of a necessary being has been established. Then when we consider the fine-tuning argument, we must take into account the fact that a necessary being exists. It would be deeply strange for there to be a necessary being which explains contingent reality, and also a fine-tuner who fixed the laws of nature. Therefore, any evidence that we have for design should be interpreted as evidence for design by the necessary being. But surely the traditional simulation hypothesis does not regard the simulating beings (whoever or whatever they are) as necessary. So Brown's argument would seem to fall flat yet again.

There is a potential way that one could escape this last argument: namely, one could hold that our world really is a simulation, but that reality as a whole was created by God. This view is not unheard of in the literature; David Kyle Johnson (2012) has argued that some theists might be committed to this view, while theists Barry Dainton (2020) and Dustin Crummett (2021) have both approached it as a potential theodicy. That being said, I don't personally endorse this view (nor am I one of those whom Johnson argues are committed to it), and I'm not sure how important it is for my above argument (since it is ultimately still a theistic view).