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.

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."

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

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.

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.

A New Paper on Physical Necessity

Alexander Roberts has published an interesting new paper in Mind, which argues for the claim that "those who believe in physical necessity should not harbour any scepticism towards merely metaphysical possibilities." How he reaches this result is quite complex, and I'll leave it to the full paper to provide an explanation; however, "the result requires those who believe in physical necessity to recognize merely metaphysical possibilities which are forbidden by our physical laws." The key line of argument in the paper revolves around the notion of lawless worlds (i.e. worlds in which no laws of nature, whether ours or any others, obtain). Roberts argues that such worlds are accessible from all other possible worlds by a finite chain of physical possibility.

The Feser-Ross Argument for the Immateriality of the Mind

In a lecture given for the Society of Catholic Scientists, Ed Feser lays out his argument for the immateriality of thought in simple, syllogistic form. Since he does not provide the actual syllogism in his (very good) paper on the topic, I thought I would jot it down here for future reference:

1. Nothing material can have an exact or unambiguous conceptual content.
2. Formal thought processes can have an exact or unambiguous conceptual content.
3. Therefore, formal thought processes are not material.

I think this is one of the more interesting arguments for dualism out there today; I wish it received more of the attention so often devoted to (for example) the Zombie argument.

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!

On Luke Tracey's Logical Problem of Evil

A few years back, atheist blogger Luke Tracey formulated an ingenious new version of the logical problem of evil. The argument goes as follows: there are two types of properties, good-making properties (GMP) and evil-making properties (EMP). All EMPs are such that they are not entailed by any GMP, which is proven by the fact that God (who instantiates all GMPs) may exist alone, without His contingent creation. In this "alone world," all GMPs would exist (as instantiated by God), and no EMPs would exist. Thus, it is possible for all possible good-making properties to exist without any evil-making properties. Therefore, the existence of EMPs is innately superfluous, and since God would not allow superfluous evil, it follows that God does not exist.

It seems to me that the best response for the theist is to deny the existence of evil-making properties. The classical theist tradition (as epitomized by Augustine, Aquinas, etc.) has usually held that evil as-such does not exist; rather, evil is a privation, the absence of due goodness. Ben Page and Max Baker-Hytch (2020) explain this as follows:

Badness is a privation... because something is only ever ‘bad’ in virtue of its failure to exhibit (or to exhibit to a sufficient degree) a property that a member of a given kind ought to have.

On this view, so-called "evil-making properties" do not exist, and Tracey's argument loses all force. In addition, Tracey's argument relies on the idea that God would not allow any gratuitous evil to exist, a view which has been increasingly challenged by theistic philosophers (e.g. Rubio 2018, Murphy 2019). One could also adopt the view that God is free from moral obligations, as He is not a part of the moral community (see the aforementioned papers from Rubio and Murphy, as well as Davies 2006 and Feser 2021). 

Finally, I would draw attention to Kenneth Pearce's (2019) response to the logical problem of evil, in which he argues that "a certain way of thinking about the nature of mind—which is widely held by naturalists but might also reasonably be endorsed by theists—has the consequence that the existence of (non-divine) minds is impossible in the absence of evil." This would arguably serve to undercut Tracey's argument, which hinges on the notion that God could instantiate all good-making properties without this entailing any evil-making properties. If Pearce is correct, then Tracey's line of reasoning would lead us to conclude that the creation of any non-divine minds at all is impermissible for God, which is a highly implausible conclusion.

Causal Explanations Need Not Increase the Probability of Events

I recently came across this argument, which purports to refute the argument from contingency:

1. Suppose that some necessary proposition q causally explains a contingent proposition p.
2. A proposition q only causally explains a proposition p if q is true.
3. So, q is a necessary truth. (From 1 and 2)
4. The probability of a necessary truth is 1.
5. So, P(q) is equal to 1. (From 3 and 4)
6. Then, P(p|q) is equal to P(p). (From 2 and 5)
7. But, if q causally explains p, then P(p|q) > P(p).
8.  So, q does not causally explain p.
9. Then, q both does and does not causally explain p, which is absurd. (From 1 and 8)
10. Therefore, no necessary proposition causally explains a contingent proposition.

The essential premise here is (7), which the author summarizes thusly: "though causal explanations may neither entail nor make probable what they explain, it is at least true of causal explanations that their being true increases the probability of that which they explain." 

However, on closer examination, we see that this is flatly false. For it is well-known in philosophy of science that an explanation can reduce the probability of an event that it explains (thanks to Alexander Pruss for the following example). Suppose that Todd is a skilled assassin, who has been hired to kill Carl. When Todd fires his gun, there is a 99% chance that his target will die. As he is lining up his shot, Bob, a less effective assassin, also shows up. When Bob fires his gun, there is a 60% chance that his target will die. Bob, who compensates for his lack of precision with speed, gets his shot off first, and Todd flees the scene, never firing his gun. As it happens, Bob's shot kills Carl (though if he had missed, due to Todd's flight, Carl would have lived).

Here we have a case of a clear causal explanation, which nevertheless reduces the probability of the event that it explains. Bob's gunshot provides a causal explanation of Carl's death, despite the fact that it reduced Carl's chance of dying from 99% down to 60%. In other words, P(Carl's death | Bob's shot) is 60%, while P(Carl's death) without Bob's shot is 99%. So, by premise (7), we should say that Bob did not cause Carl's death, which is absurd.

At the end of the aforementioned "refutation," the author attempts to rebut these sorts of examples. He claims that, while the less effective assassin may reduce the target's chance of death relative to the more effective assassin, they nevertheless increase the probability simpliciter. I would argue that his objections fail; by premise (7), the probability of p occurring without q must be lower than it is with q in order for q to count as a causal explanation. Therefore, if the probability of p would be higher in the absence of q, premise (7) would tell us that q cannot be a causal explanation of p. This would require us to embrace the absurd conclusion that Bob did not cause Carl's death. The author of this supposed "refutation" should either revise premise (7), or acknowledge that his argument is a failure.

Just for the sake of argument, there are other examples we can give to illustrate this general issue. Suppose that there were an infinite series of snipers lined up to kill Carl, all firing one after another, and all with a non-zero chance of hitting their target. Here Carl's chance of death is 100%, and no individual sniper can affect this probability in any way (since even if he were to pack up his rifle and go home, there would be an infinite number of substitutes). But of course, one of the snipers must inevitably be the one to fire the fatal shot. From this, we can generate a problem for our interlocutor.

Suppose snipers one through thirty miss their target, and sniper thirty-one makes the kill. If he had missed, there would have been an infinite number of snipers after him, one of whom would have hit the mark; that is, the probability of Carl's death is 100%, whether sniper thirty-one is there or not. Therefore, P(Carl's death | Sniper Thirty-One) = P(Carl's death). But then, by premise (7) we should deny that sniper thirty-one caused Carl's death, which is absurd.

The conclusion, therefore, is that causal explanations need not increase the probability of the events that they explain. Thus, the supposed refutation of the argument from contingency fails.