Christophe de Ray's Conceptual Cosmological Argument

Introduction

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

Summary of the Argument

The argument may be summarized as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Potential Objection (and its Resolution)

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

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

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

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

Dispositionalism and Contingent Existence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal site: Link

PhilPapers Archive with PDF: Link

A Note on Probabilities in the Fine-Tuning Argument

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

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

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

My Forthcoming Article in Religious Studies

My paper "Two challenges for 'no-norms' theism" has been accepted for publication in Religious Studies. I will post a link on this blog when it becomes available.

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.

A Convenient Way to Explain Metaphysical Modality

Consider the following question: could the laws of nature have been different?

According to physical modality, the answer is trivial: no, of course the laws of nature could not have been different. After all, physical modality just is the range of what is the modal space governed by the laws of nature.

According to logical modality, the answer is similarly trivial: yes, of course the laws of nature could have been different. After all, there is nothing logically incoherent about the idea that, say, the speed of light could have been slightly faster or slower than it in-fact is. 

Metaphysical modality, then, is that form of modality which renders non-trivial the question "could the laws of nature have been different?"