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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

Privation and Divine Hiddenness

J.L. Schellenberg insists that the problem of divine hiddenness should be viewed, not as a subspecies of the problem of evil, but as a unique problem in its own right. He supports this view by saying that the hiddenness argument is discussing something which only theists would view as "evil," whereas atheists would not. To quote:

Although a theist may indeed keenly feel the value of (what she takes to be) an existing relationship with God and may be inclined to view anything contributing to its absence, even for a time, as a bad thing, and although in debate an atheist may be tempted to take advantage of this, such moves only mislead in the present context. The atheist would properly be quite content were we all to recognize simply that, given certain definitional facts about ‘love’, the situation of hiddenness is in conflict with the idea that a God of fullest love exists, as opposed to feeling that hiddenness represents something bad that a benevolent or morally perfect God would resist.

However, it seems that once we adopt a privation account of evil (or something similar, such as Pruss' misalignment view), this argument simply collapses. After all, it seems to be a key premise of the hiddenness argument that, if God exists, then a relationship with Him would be a good thing (otherwise the lack of it could not impugn His perfect goodness). But then, hiddenness is simply the lack of a good thing (i.e. a privation), which, by our definition, would make it an evil. Therefore, the problem of divine hiddenness simply is a form of the problem of evil.

One might try and counter this by saying that an atheist doesn't regard their lack of relationship with God as an evil; they don't believe that God exists, and as such, a relationship with Him cannot be a due good that they are lacking. However, the hiddenness argument seems to be saying that if God exists, then a relationship with Him would be a due good, which some people are nonresistantly lacking. It seems, then, that we may regard it as an attempted reductio of theism, which tries to show that there is a specific gratuitous evil which would have to obtain if God exists, yet which would also (allegedly) render God impossible.

TL;DR: On a privation view of evil, divine hiddenness may be regarded as a specific form of the problem of evil. What makes it unique is the fact that the evil it posits (i.e. the lack of a due relationship with God) is one which can only obtain if theism is true, since if God does not exist, one cannot be said to lack a due relationship with Him. The problem of divine hiddenness therefore provides an interesting twist on the POE. It also seems that a solution to the POE more generally would also serve to solve the problem of divine hiddenness.

Contra Leon on Wave Function Realism

Felipe Leon thinks that wave-function realism should lead us to conclude that "ordinary perceptual experience is massively unreliable." He gives the following argument for this conclusion:

[It's] not at all clear how the ordinary three dimensions of our experience can be accounted for [given WFR]. In fact, some (e.g., Alyssa Ney) have argued that they probably can't, in which case there is non-trivial epistemic pressure to think the three dimensions of ordinary experience are, in an important sense, mirage-like.

Leon then argues that this leads to "troubling epistemic consequences for theism," because "if God exists, then God designed us in such a way as to ensure that our perceptual faculties reliably track the truth about the world." But if three-dimensional reality is illusory, then our perceptual faculties don't reliability track the truth, and as such, it is unlikely that God exists.

I think Leon is simply mistaken on this issue. To see why, take a look at this interview with philosopher of science Jill North (whom Leon also cites):

But ordinary 3-D space is not just an illusion, says North. “I think that 3-D space exists, and our talk about it is true. It’s just that this space is nonfundamental. Similarly, ordinary particles exist but are nonfundamental. They are more like tables and chairs: made up out of fundamental stuff, not themselves in the fundamental inventory.” 3-D space is a separate thing that is in some sense “made up out of” the higher-dimensional space, just as particles are ultimately “made up out of” the wave function.

Similarly, in a recent paper on wave-function realism and the place of 3D-space in a high-dimension world, Theodore Sider writes:

[High-dimensionalism] might suggest that rocks, trees, subatomic particles, and other three-dimensionalia are illusions, or intellectual mistakes, akin to phlogiston and phrenology, and should be purged from our cognitive lives. But high-dimensionalists cannot, and do not, take this hard line. In addition to being literally unbelievable, the view would be self-undermining. The empirical evidence for any scientific theory is three-dimensional, consisting of observations of pointer positions, computer readouts, and the like. If quantum mechanics implies that statements about pointer positions and the rest are all false, it does not imply any of our evidence, and thus it is incapable of empirical confirmation.

Accordingly, what high-dimensionalists say is not that three-dimensional matters are unreal, but merely that they are nonfundamental. High-dimensional fundamental reality “gives rise to” a nonfundamental three dimensional world. Thus high-dimensional quantum theories do, after all, imply facts about the three-dimensional evidence, and are therefore capable of confirmation.

Interestingly, Sider himself argues for a view on which high-dimensionalism is closer to what Leon supposes it to be (though he still accepts that our talk about 3D space is, in some sense, true). However, the point is that most defenders of higher-dimensionalism would reject the claim that 3D space is unreal.

As such, it seems that Leon is wrong to say that three-dimensional reality is "mirage-like." It may be nonfundamental, but it is not fictitious or unreal. This takes away most of the force from Leon's atheistic argument; after all, why should we expect God to give us accurate perception of fundamental reality? Isn't it enough that we perceive the level of reality on which we operate? One might as well say that our perceptions are misleading because we cannot see the individual atoms that make up the world around us!