Thursday, December 1, 2022

Davies on classical theism and divine freedom

I’ve long regarded Brian Davies’ An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion as the best introduction to that field on the market.  A fourth edition appeared not too long ago, and I’ve been meaning to post something about it.  Like earlier editions, it is very clearly written and accessible, without in any way compromising philosophical depth.  Its greatest strength, though, is the attention it gives the classical theist tradition in general and Thomism in particular, while still covering all the ground the typical analytic philosophy of religion text would (and, indeed, bringing the classical tradition into conversation with this contemporary work).  The fourth edition adds some new material along these lines.

Davies is well-known for contrasting classical theism (represented by Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, et al.) with what he calls the “theistic personalism” that is at least implicit in thinkers like Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, open theists, and others.  The difference between the views is that theistic personalists reject divine simplicity and, as a consequence, often reject other classical attributes such as immutability, impassibility, and eternity.  (Davies acknowledges that not all those he labels “theistic personalists” agree on every important issue and that they don’t necessarily self-identify as theistic personalists.  But he’s identifying a trend of thinking that really does exist in contemporary philosophy of religion, even if those contributing to it do not always realize they are doing so.)

Among the important additions to the new edition are a few pages addressing the question of whether, given the significant differences between classical theists’ and theistic personalists’ conceptions of God, they are even really referring to the same thing when they use the word “God.”  Davies suggests that it may be that “if differences in beliefs about God on the part of classical theists and theistic personalists are serious and irreconcilable, then classical theists and theistic personalists do not believe in the same God” (p. 19).  But he also urges caution and acknowledges that everything hinges on what counts as “serious and irreconcilable.”  He does not attempt to resolve the matter, but recommends looking at Peter Geach’s treatment of the question (which I discussed in a post some years back).

Several new pages are also added to the previous edition’s discussion of divine freedom in the chapter on divine simplicity.  (Davies’ views on this issue were the subject of another post from years ago.)  Critics of divine simplicity often argue that it is incompatible with God’s having freely created the universe.  For if God could have done other than what he has in fact done, doesn’t that entail that God is changeable, contrary to divine simplicity?  And if he is in fact unchangeable or immutable, doesn’t that entail that he could not have done otherwise, and thus created of necessity rather than freely?  In response, Davies points out, first, that creating freely simply does not in fact entail changing.  Certainly it simply begs the question to assume otherwise.  For the classical theist, God creates eternally or atemporally, and what is eternal or atemporal does not undergo change.  Still, he could have done otherwise than create, so that this eternal act of creation is free.

Second, Davies notes that in order to show that an eternal and immutable God’s act of creation would be unfree, one would have to show that there is something either internal to God’s nature or external to him that compels him to create.  But given that the divine nature is as classical theists, on independent grounds, argue it to be (pure actuality, perfect, omnipotent, etc.) there can be no need in God for anything distinct from him, so that nothing in his nature can compel him to create.  And since, the classical theist also argues (and again on independent grounds) there is nothing apart from God that God did not create, there can be nothing distinct from him that compels him to create.  Hence we cannot make sense of God’s being in any way compelled to create, and thus must attribute freedom to him.

Third, Davies notes that those who suppose that freedom in God would entail changeability often presuppose an anthropomorphic conception of divine choice.  In particular, they imagine it involving a temporal process of weighing alternative courses of action before finally deciding upon one of them.  But that is not what God is like, given that he is eternal or outside time, and that he is omniscient and doesn’t have to “figure things out” through some kind of reasoning process.

Fourth, Davies notes that critics of the doctrine of divine simplicity argue that the doctrine implies that God is identical to his act of creation, and that accordingly, if God exists necessarily, then his act of creation is necessary.  But if it is necessary, they conclude, then it cannot be free.  In reply, Davies distinguishes between an act considered as something an agent does, and what results from an act, which is external to the agent.  He then argues that even if God’s act, being identical to him, is necessary, it doesn’t follow that the result of that act (namely, the created world) is necessary.

Finally, Davies emphasizes that “to speak of God as simple is not to attribute a property to God but to deny certain things when it comes to God” (p. 179).  Here, as he has in other work, Davies emphasizes the idea that the ascription of attributes to God should be understood as an exercise in negative or apophatic theology.  The main arguments for classical theism, he points out, emphasize both that the world is contingent or conditioned in various respects, and that an ultimate explanation of the world must be unconditioned and non-contingent in those respects.  (Though, just in case he wouldn’t himself use it, I should note that the language of “conditioned” and “unconditioned” in this context is mine, not Davies’.)   In particular, God must not be changeable, must not have properties that are distinct from each other or from him, and so on.  This is what it means to characterize him as simple.  But by the same token, he must not be compelled to create by anything either internal to his nature or outside of him.  Hence divine simplicity, divine freedom, and the relationship between them are properly understood as characterizations of what God is not.

161 comments:

  1. According to Anselm, if G-d is the greatest conceivable being, then He would also be a person, because beings with personality are greater than beings without. That seems to imply theistic personalism.

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    1. Wait till you find out what he wrote about the Trinity.

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    2. God certainly isn't less than a person. We could use the term "person" to describe God as we do created beings, but only in an analogous sense God is not sub personal, He is supra personal if anything.

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    3. That seems to imply theistic personalism.

      No: the term "theistic personalism" is not used to denote merely a belief that (a) there is a God, and (b) that God is personal. The term denotes more than that, (as Feser indicated) e.g. a denial of divine simplicity.

      In addition, many major theistic philosophers (e.g. St. Thomas) deny that the Anselmian ontological argument is valid.

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    4. @Tony ...then why call it "theistic personalism"? Why not "theistic convolutionalism" instead?

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    5. @Tony

      Spot on, but...

      "In addition, many major theistic philosophers (e.g. St. Thomas) deny that the Anselmian ontological argument is valid."

      Cant the anselmian grant that but reply that it is still the case that God needs to be a person if He is to be Goodness Itself, perfect etc? Not that thomists deny that, of course.

      @Infinite_Growth

      I also dont like the "theistic personalism" name, it is confusing and ugly.

      "Neo-theism" is way superior.

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    6. God is personal because He has Intellect and Will. God does not have intellect and will nor is God personal in the univocal manner of a human creatue.

      Focus laddies!

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    7. "then why call it "theistic personalism"?"

      We shouldn't. I agree it's a terrible and confusing label. Nowadays people seem to be preferring to use the term "neo-theism", which is much better. It's neutral, doesn't invite the misunderstanding that it's about personal vs impersonal, and still drives the point that denial of divine simplicity is (mostly) a new phenomenon - and in academia, motivated by recent objections in analytic philosophy against divine simplicity.

      So yeah, everyone should just use neo-theism.

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    8. Except that it isn't mostly a new phenomenon at all.
      The vast majority of people have been 'neo'-theists as long as anyone can remember.
      In fact, the term is condescending. It suggests that people have somehow invented a brand new kind of theism just because they couldn't grasp the 'superior' views of 'classical' theism.

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    10. Most people also see God as having a body, but i think that the only theologians that understood He as material would be the mormons and... Hobbes? So if a bunch of thinkers started to defend the view nowdays we would call it a new thing.

      Divine simplicity is truly a feature of most pagans, jewish, christians and muslim thinkers for quite a time, it is traditional, man.

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    11. "The vast majority of people have been 'neo'-theists as long as anyone can remember."

      Not the vast majority of theologians and philosophers, though. Which is what is most interesting for philosophical discussions of theism, I think. So I think "neo-theism" is a good label.

      I do not find it condescending at all. Sure, there are some smug classical theists who fail to properly consider the arguments and motivations of neo-theists, but in academia the discussion is pretty civil. I don't know of a better term to use. "Theistic personalism" is horrible and misinforming; it gives the idea that classical theists think God isn't personal, which is not true. It also doesn't help that it uses the same name as the philosophical movement that Karol Wojtyla was a part of - thomistic personalism, etc.

      I think neo-theism is neutral, historically accurate (when it comes to the experts), and works. What better name would you suggest? Parts theism?

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    12. RunDec

      Whatever they themselves suggest. Neo-theism is normally used for process theology and open theism. But most of the people you would call neo-theists are not into that at all.
      By 'the vast majority' I mean the vast majority of believers. Even nowadays, the vast majority of Catholics have no notion of Divine Simplicity. They see God indeed as a sort of superhuman who can do everything he wishes.
      I know that philosophers and theologians have a more sophisticated view of God, but most of them do not seem to be able to free themselves from their anthropomorphism.
      No matter how simple they claim their God, He still remains an anthropomorphism.

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    13. Talmid

      Yes, it has tradition, but so has theistic personalism.

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    14. If G-d is being itself, then is existentialism a subfield of theology?

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    15. "Neo-theism is normally used for process theology and open theism. But most of the people you would call neo-theists are not into that at all."

      Just saying, I am an open theist. And a classical theist too.

      (Yes, the two are not in opposition, folks. You can be a classical theist and an open theist, deal with it, guys)

      "By 'the vast majority' I mean the vast majority of believers."

      Fine, but I think in philosophy of religion people are mostly interested in what experts (philosophers and theologians) have thought of God. Just like how in philosophy of mathematics and overall metaphysics people are more interested to know what historical Platonist philosophers vs nominalists vs aristotelians etc. have said about numbers, instead of ordinary people's beliefs about abstract objects.

      We basically just need a label to separate those who affirm simplicity and those who reject it. If neo-theism is objected, then perhaps we should just say "composite theism"

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    16. @Walter

      "Yes, it has tradition, but so has theistic personalism."

      And which is older and more proeminent? Picking up christian theology, for instance, Divine simplicity was taken for granted by St. Irenaeus when dealing with the diference that the gnostics made about God and His intellect* and also, from what i remember, by St. Athanasius treatment of the Holy Trinity.

      Sure, there are oponents of divine simplicity from centuries like in certain schools of islamic theology, but divine simplicity is still the more traditional view of western philosophers and theologians. It is like realism about universals, it aways got oponents, but it is way more associated with classical and medieval thinkers than nominalism.

      @RunDec

      How do open theism and divine simplicity get together? Do you have something to recomment there? Not asking for debate, you got me curious.

      *or wisdom, i think, it is probably on book II of Against the Heresies

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    17. Talmid

      I do not know which is older. If Irenaeus took Divine simplicity for granted and on the basis of that rejcted gnosticism, then gnosticism seems older than Irenaeus's belief.

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    18. @Talmid

      The same way classical theism and contingent knowledge go together. My open theism is based on the openness of the future (I agree with Pruss and many others that foreknowledge of free acts requires eternalism, but I am a presentist, so I reject foreknowledge of free acts). In other words: there is no difference at all in our views of God - I also believe that he must know every true fact. The difference between us is that I do not believe there are any true facts of what we will choose. Only what we choose or have chosen. So there is nothing for God to know there.

      How can God "learn" what we choose without undergoing intrinsic change? The same way God can learn any contingent facts without undergoing intrinsic change. Classical theists believe God's knowledge of contingents is externalist and involves only Cambridge changes for him. You already have to believe that God's knowledge differs between worlds without that entailing any change in his intrinsic properties. Even with foreknowledge you have to believe that God only knows what you will do IFF God contingently creates you (unless you are a Molinist - which thomists reject - or you believe God creates of necessity). So you're on the same boat as me when it comes to having to account for God's contingent knowledge without real change. The only difference, again, is that I think there is nothing to know re: "future choices".

      So no, open theism does not entail God being temporal. I wholeheartedly agree that God is outside of time. But unlike what some (very confused) thomists think, that does not mean that God can "see the future" as if there were anything to see there (unless, again, you are an eternalist/B theorist).

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    19. Well, Ed Feser seems to classify open theism under "theistic personalism".

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    20. @Walter

      Or both views could have existed together. Anyway, classical theism won that day and got to massively influence western philosophy and theology for centuries, so it is the classical one, my man.

      And perhaps some gnostics did believe in divine simplicity, you know. St. Irenaeus problem was with they making intellect a emanation, but Plotinus did the same thing latter precisely thanks to divine simplicity, so it could have motivated some of they as well.

      @RunDec

      I see. That is a interesting view that do take a perspective accepted by a lot of classical theists for granted and does seems to account for Quentin Smith problem with Boethius account of divine foreknowledge.

      It take a thing or too that i'am going to reject on the analytical take on thomistic divine simplicity, but it is a good view. Wonder how people commited to the premises you use would respond.

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    21. Talmid

      Yes, both views could have existed together, but in that case, why call one of those views "neo"?
      Yes, some gnostics may have believed in DS, but my point is that if not all of them believed in DS, the rejection of DS is not "newer" than DS. It has existed for hundreds or even thousands of years.

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    22. Because a tradition is not only old, it also supposes a sort of sucession line stretching for some "generations".

      We do have that with divine simplicity, it was a thing for quite a while. Do we have a similar story with neo-classical theism? Probably not, not on western theology/philosophy.

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  2. SWEET! Yee had me at Brian Davies.......

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  3. Hey, can someone explain to me the relation between how Classical Theism God - Our Father - is Omniscient and our free will? Because there is a lot of discussion on that, people who argue about that - at least the ones I saw - are not Classical Theists so it's difficult to find answers about that in their worldview.

    I ask that because (some) interpretations of it may turn the world and its residents in an occasionalist manner i.e if God knows what I do and knows that I couldn't do otherwise. I think that sounds odd because somewhat implies a difficulty for freedom - and we can't forget the fact that we are contingent and not necessary beings. But at the same time, if God knows necessarily contingent truths how can they be otherwise? How can we have the freedom to change our minds and somewhat our 'destiny' (pardon for the expression) between doing good or bad if God already knows *ahead* of us? (p.s not that I personally believe that that's the case, it is just how I see people arguing and I found these points legitimate questions, at least).

    So, can someone explain to me the relationship between our free will and Our Father's Omnipotence?

    May God bless us all!

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    1. Tadeo,
      I myself struggled with that question for quite some time. For a while I held that God couldn't know the future because the future is not, and the act of knowing necessarily requires that which is, but fortunately some friends talked me out of that one. To my understanding, the answer (insofar as we can get to it) involves distinguishing between absolute necessity (i.e. it follows from the nature of the thing) and conditional necessity (which is brought about by a specific set of circumstances) and having a proper understanding of God's eternal knowledge (not foreknowledge) as a presentialist view, wherein God sees all things which are (for us) past, present, and future all as the present and immediately available. This knowledge of what presently is does not necessarily preclude the rational agent from choosing to do otherwise in that moment other than what he or she was already doing, i.e. it is conditionally necessary and not absolutely necessary.

      It's quite complicated (at least for me), hence why I'm trying to sum up and not dive deeper, but this article from Catholic Answers is where I got this information from, and I highly recommend reading it: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/god-knows-what-im-going-to-do

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    2. Hello Tadio,

      You might find it helpful to read a bit of Aquinas's views on these topics, if you haven't already:

      1. Whether the knowledge of God is the cause of things?: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#article8

      2. Whether the knowledge of God is of future contingent things: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1014.htm#article13

      3. Whether man has free will: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1083.htm#article1

      Peaceful days,

      Jordan

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  4. "He then argues that even if God’s act, being identical to him, is necessary, it doesn’t follow that the result of that act (namely, the created world) is necessary.'

    I remember seeing some philosophers using this reply and i still do not find it inteligible. If God act of creation is necessary them the only way the created world would not be as well would be if God could fail to bring the world into being, which is dumb.

    Rather, one should argue that it is necessary that God has a choice to either create something or not, but that, thanks to the already noticed lack of any internal or external influence that could force He to create, His particular choice is not. God is, one could say, internally draw to wish His own goodness, but not anything else.

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    1. @Talmid, you find it unintelligible because Ed is using "necessity" in the absolute sense. Classical theists use "necessity" here in the suppositional sense. If God decrees something, that something will necessarily happen. That does not mean that the event itself is absolutely necessary, for that would entail God's dependence on it.

      Since created things always depend on God for their existence, their necessity will always be conditional, whereas God does not depend on anything to exist. Hence, His necessity is absolute.

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    2. I see. I remember St. Thomas using this distinction.

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  5. Fr Brian Davies O..P. teaches at Fordham University and carries on the great Dominican tradition of philosophy. His Introduction to the Philosophy of. Religion is indeed a classic.

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  6. Much has been written about the freedom of the will, and that leaves me wondering if it makes sense to think about a "freedom of the intellect," something which I don't really see talked about in that way.

    Is there any sense in which the human intellect can be called free in a way analogous to the will? For the will's freedom to act follows upon the intellect judging something to be good. And while I understand that the will can at times force the intellect to (re)think something, what leads the intellect to judge something good in the first place? Is the intellect free to judge something true or false, or is there a necessity in the intellect or outside it that forces it to issue a certain judgment? Can the intellect freely refuse to assent to some proposition before the will even gets involved?

    Can anyone help me figure this out?

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    1. The faculty responsable for choice is the will, so the idea that the intellect can choose before the will gets involved is... uninteligible? I really can't see how can we have a choice if the choice-part is not active.

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    2. Anonymous,

      Yes; Aquinas, who regards the intellect as a free power, calls this 'free decision', and it's part of his account of free will -- human freedom in the full sense includes free decision in the intellect and free choice in the will, and what we call 'free will' is often the interplay between the intellect and the will as free powers. On Aquinas's view, the intellect can freely infer (suspend judgment, etc.) in matters that do not involve necessary truths, and so it can likewise select without necessitation non-necessary goods to consider, and thereby sometimes influence the options available to the will's free choice, not by determining the will, but by shifting the non-necessary goods among which the will chooses.

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  7. "In response, Davies points out, first, that creating freely simply does not in fact entail changing. Certainly it simply begs the question to assume otherwise. For the classical theist, God creates eternally or atemporally, and what is eternal or atemporal does not undergo change. Still, he could have done otherwise than create, so that this eternal act of creation is free.
    How doesn't Davies beg the question here?
    What Davies is saying here is that creating freely doesn't entail changing because god doesn't change and yet creates freely. Davies is already assuming that god can create freely, which is what he is supposed to show is possible if God is unchanging.

    "Second, Davies notes that in order to show that an eternal and immutable God’s act of creation would be unfree, one would have to show that there is something either internal to God’s nature or external to him that compels him to create."

    The thing that is internal to Him that "compels" Him to create is His nature. It is the same thing that"compels" God not to lie.

    Davies' third objection actually shows the exact opposite of what he is trying to claim.
    If God doesn't use a process of "figuring out", that means that His will of creation is eternally present. If God does not have properties that are distinct from each other or from him, then this will of creation is identical to God. And that, again, would be what "compells" him to create.

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  8. (continued)

    "In reply, Davies distinguishes between an act considered as something an agent does, and what results from an act, which is external to the agent. "

    If what results from the act is external to the agent, then the agent has no control over the results.
    Does Davies, or any other classical theist think that if God wills X the result may be Y? If not, then this fourth reply doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

    Finally, if divine simplicity, divine freedom, and the relationship between them are to be properly understood as characterizations of what God is not, then "being free and yet simple and necessary and whatever" is also to be understood as a characterization of what God is not.

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    1. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      Walter, you do not really understand what simplicity is (let alone divine simplicity) and therefore argue in the complexity ghetto of futility. You are stuck there by your own choice and need not remain so confined.

      Leave that ghetto!

      Tom Cohoe

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    2. Tom

      I simply use what Davies and Feser have to say about simplicity. Simpliciti means that God is identical to all His properties.
      'Willing X instead of Y' is a property, hence it is identical to God.
      That's really all there is to say about this.
      Unless you are stuck in the ghetto of Catholic apologetics, of course, which you can leave by your own choice, as I did many years ago.

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    3. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Simpliciti means that God is identical to all His properties."

      The word "properties" implies plurality in God and that is opposed to simplicity. Its plural use is by humans who speak of different human views of one simplicity that does not have these artificial parts.

      You really should make a serious attempt to understand what I am talking about when I model simplicity as an unbiased infinite normal bitwise random sequence.

      God does not "[will] X instead of Y". This is just a human mode of speech as we wonder and talk about things like "why did X happen instead of Y?" and "why did John die instead of me?".

      Our modes of speech and thought are not identical to God. Do you really think Feser and Davies claim so in their purported usage of "identical"?

      Speaking of the "ghetto of futility", I am not joking but I mean rejecting the hope offered by God to us in finite temporal creation - as in "for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay [...]" (Romans 8: 20,21).

      Tom Cohoe

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    4. Tom

      When I spoke of the ghetto of Catholicism, I wasn't joking either. Philosophy is to be done without any 'ghetto' at all.

      A bitwise random sequence is also a plurality in God. I use 'properties' in an analogous way, of course. And that I am not being sarcastic here, I really mean this.
      A simple God has no plurality of anything, not bits, not properties. Moreover, a simple God has no different properties across possible words either, or if you reject possible world semantics, a simple God could not have been different in any sort of way.
      That's it.
      It's not a matter of our modes of speech being identical to God, it's about God being in control of what he creates
      According to most classical theists (and most certainly according to Feser and Davies); God 'chooses'(again, in an analogous way) whether to create X (this world) or Y (another world or no world at all).
      If God is simple, He cannot choose at all.

      I have nothing more to say on this subject.

      Nothing more to say, really.

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    6. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Philosophy is to be done without any 'ghetto' at all."

      It can't be because the "ghetto" is our environment from conception to death. After you die, you cannot do "philosophy'' to us at all, no matter how pure and not filthied up by thoughts of people you deem unworthy of you in your self isolating activity.

      "A bitwise random sequence is also a plurality in God."

      No it isn't. It is only a model or image exterior to God as I have explained more than once. You have not dealt with it at all, only denied it in your attempt at "splendid isolation"

      "A simple God has no plurality of anything, not bits, not properties. Moreover, a simple God has no different properties across possible words either, or if you reject possible world semantics, a simple God could not have been different in any sort of way.
      That's it."

      You seem to think you have the ability to choose, and I agree that you do. But you also seem to think that God must obey your denialist logic and that God cannot choose in a way that is superior to your choosing and is above your understanding. You practise self-isolation to yourself and a chosen band of "superior" philosophers in order to avoid challenge, but oddly, you do it in a forum set up to encourage debate. Why not write a book where you can ignore whom you choose to ignore?

      "If God is simple, He cannot choose at all."

      Your declaration, ignoring explanations you have chosen to not understand, fails to establish this.

      "I have nothing more to say on this subject."

      You'll have to have more to say on this unless you want to have the futile appearance of someone who thinks he can unanswerably dictate truth.

      :-)

      Tom Cohoe

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    7. Tom

      Obviously God only had to obey your logic.
      I don't avoid challenge,, but real challenge requires real arguments, and I don't see any from you.

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    8. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Obviously God only had to obey your logic."

      That is nothing like what I said.

      "I don't avoid challenge,, but real challenge requires real arguments, and I don't see any from you."

      You do avoid challenge and you avoid mine because you can't answer it.

      You would first have to understand the consequences of the bitwise XOR operation between a bitwise random sequence and an intelligible sequence. I will start with finite sequences and we can think of them as displayed on a computer screen under some standard protocol that displays sequences of bits as words on a computer screen, or at least it does if the sequence of bits are not such that what is displayed is nonsense. Now I can get a random sequence with 50/50 bits by a physical process. It could actually display as something intelligible but it is not likely.

      Let us call this random sequence A. Let us call B an actually intelligible sequence. It consists of meaningful words converted into a sequence of bits so that they will display as the meaningful words when displayed under the standard protocol being used.

      It can easily be shown that when a third sequence, C, is created by doing the operation A XOR B -> C, that C is as random as A and is as unlikely as A to display as anything meaningful.

      Now, the beginning of a system:

      It can also easily be shown that A, B, and C, together, have the property such that any two of them produce the third sequence when the bitwise XOR operation is performed on the other two. Thus:

      A XOR B -> C,
      B XOR C -> A, and
      C XOR A -> B.

      As stated above as easily demonstrated, if A is random, then so is C. But we began with a random A and then chose B to be intelligible, so if we XOR the two random sequences ("disordered" is a better word here than "random", but for now I stick with "random"), we get the intelligible sequence that we purposely chose. Now here is the crux of the beginning of the system:

      The random sequence A that we began with cannot, by itself, give us the chosen sequence B. A is random after all. It could have been any similarly random sequence, so if any random sequence could be decoded into the chosen sequence, how could it be decoded into a different chosen sequence had a different one been chosen? If there was some process dependent upon the chosen sequence by which any random sequence could be decoded into the particular chosen sequence, then the chosen sequence would already have to be known before the correct process that works could be used. So the random sequence A cannot have, intrinsic to itself, the information thatispecifies the chosen sequence. Furthermore, since the second random sequence was produced using the XOR operation with the chosen sequence and the chosen sequence could have been _any_ intelligible sequence, we have that a second random sequence C exists for any initial random A and chosen B. For random A there exists a random C that gives B, the intelligible sequence, no matter what intelligible sequence Biwas chosen.

      By just guessing at what C happens to be, A XOR C is most likely nonsense, but if it results in an intelligible B, it is very unlikely to be the pre-chosen B. It is in fact as likely as correctly guessing the pre-chosen B from all possible intelligible sequences (this is slightly simplified for clarity).

      This is the beginning of a system based on simplicity that will show that God does not have to be ruled by the logic that you, Walter, futilely use to try to impose your own ideas as limits on God.

      You are seeing a challenge from me.

      Tom Cohoe

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    9. Ton

      But this is the logic I (futilely) use.
      So I really don't see the point you are trying to make.

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    10. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "But this is the logic I (futilely) use.
      So I really don't see the point you are trying to make."

      I like your response again Walter.

      We use the same logic, the logic that God gave us. It is sufficient to understand some truths about God because God intended us to use our logic to understand these truths, but our logic is not sufficient to understand everything about God as that is unlimited and infinite (as the integers are infinite in number yet are limited by not being all ratios or fractions).

      We can make progress towards infinity in the same way that 8 is closer to a completed infinity than 6 (I am not speaking of my infinite sequence here, just making a numerical metaphor). While 8 is close to infinity in the direction towards infinity than 6 is, 8 is still infinitely far from the completed infinity. I can correct your ideas because I am beyond them. I have at least made it out of the ghetto of futility.

      :-)

      You don't really see the point I am trying to make because I have not yet made it. I don't know how to show you without beginning with these bare mechanics first, because I do not know what you know of these things.

      But be patient and hopeful. We will get there. I will need you to question me about things that do not seem to make sense (i.e., things that you do not understand). Otherwise I cannot know that I have lost you and the narrative will be broken.

      Tom Cohoe

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    11. Tom

      I have no questions for you so far. So, please, make your point.

      Delete
  9. This is basically echoing Talmid's, though I'd already copied the below text before I saw his post. But:

    "He then argues that even if God’s act, being identical to him, is necessary, it doesn’t follow that the result of that act (namely, the created world) is necessary."

    This seems coherent only if we assume that the creation of the world does not necessarily follow the act of creating the world. How do we make sense of this? Certainly this must be a highly uninituitive sense of "creation," to say the least.

    And it seems to suggest that God did not ever actually decide to create *this* world -- that just kind of happened for unclear reasons.

    I want to accept / tentatively do accept divine simplicity, but I continue to be very concerned and bothered by this line of response to this (very strong) criticism.

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    1. From what i can see of the debate that is going on modal collapse objections: analitical philosophers views on modality are a mess. Possible worlds and all that, these things do not help much. Even Dr. Feser criticized it before.

      St. Thomas take on it is quite interesting: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1019.htm#article3

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    2. Talmid

      It is not because Classical theism has no serious answers to the problems posed by analytical philosophers that their views are a mess.
      Possible worlds, e.g. are simply to be understood as analogies. They simply describe what would be possible under other circumstances. And that immediately reveals a problem for Divine Freedom since God sans creation is the only possible 'circumstance'.
      And Aquinas begs the question.

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    3. @Walter

      "Possible worlds, e.g. are simply to be understood as analogies. They simply describe what would be possible under other circumstances."

      Correct. And these possibilites are based on things essences or natures. Like St. Thomas would say, you know if something like "there is no possible world were a human is omnipresent" is true by knowing the human nature and its limitations and all that.

      Some analyticals instead seems to want to know a thing nature by knowing what characteristics it would have in all possible worlds and all that, as if these modal truths could float free. That is quite a mess. Possible worlds talk seems at best unnecessary.

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    4. Perhaps 'some' analytical philosophers may do this, but I don't know of too many who would say that modal truths 'float Freek. I most certainly don't.

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    5. There are some that do defend that there is no truthmakers for some truths or to any*, but the point is that if the modal truths are what ground the truths about essences them it is hard to understand were do the modal truths come from.

      *they see the whole idea as not necessary. Even WLC of all people!

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    6. Talmid

      What makes it true that god is possible (or necessary for that matter)?

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    7. This modal truth is grounded on His essence. By being Being Itself, God can't fail to exist and so it follows that "God is possible" is true.

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    8. Why can't Being fail to exist? Because there is a modal truth that says so?

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    9. To a thing to be capable of fail to exist its essence has to be dependent on a second thing to be actual. This by the thing being composed of parts, that do need a actualizer to be together.

      By contrast, Being Itself has no parts, so there is no need of a outside actualizer to join the parts. So He is there aways.

      The modal truth describes that but it does not cause it to be the case.

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    10. Talmida

      That's question-begging. A simple being could be a brute fact, unless there is a modal truth that says it can't.

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    11. To a being existence to be a brute fact this being would need to be one that is composed of parts. On these beings either the existence is explained by another being or not explained by anything(a brute fact, if we suppose these are possible). Since Being Itself is not composed of parts, them the idea that it could have parts that are together by no reason at all, which we need to have a brute fact, is simple unintelligible, really. We are talking of a being whose essence just is existence, how could we have a brute fact?

      I would say that the modal truths merely describe this. They do say that Being Itself has to exist, but they are not the reason.

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    12. Talmid

      But, you are still begging the question.
      A brute fact, if possible, could be anything. It could be composed, but it could also be simple, unless there is some modal truth that says it can't



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    13. I really can't see your point here. If a being is simple on the sense that the classical cosmological arguments get them its existence is explained by its nature. If its existence has a explanation them there is no place for a brute fact, for a brute fact here would be a existence that has and has not a explanation.

      Contigent things existence can be brute facts precisely because they can't explain themselves, so there is ground for they having no explanation at all. For instance, a being with potentials that are made actual could have the actualization happening by no reason, but there is not the same oportunity with Pure Act, for it has no potentials.

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    14. Talmid

      So, that Pure Act cannot have potentials is a modal truth.
      What you are saying is that "God is necessary" is tue and therefore "God is possible" is also true.
      Sure, but how do you get to "X is necessary" without using modal truths?

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    15. "X is necessary" is a modal truth.

      But this truth is the case thanks to X essence being what it is, not the contrary. Both ontologic and epistemic the essence goes first

      Delete
  10. @ Ed Feser,

    Hi Ed,

    Davies' book sounds very interesting. I think my wife will get it for me for Christmas. I have a couple of books recommended to me by Michael Copas to read while I wait.

    :-)

    Tom Cohoe

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  11. Nice Post Prof Feser. I'd like to see your take on the question why god chose to create this world rather then some other world. Have you addressed it anywhere?

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    1. God freely chose to create this world "according to His own Good pleasure". To wonder if there might be some other world equal to this, appears to be idle speculation. To ask about 'some other world', how would anyone but God be able to answer that question?

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  12. Walter,
    You may want to read this article by Fr Davies on divine simplicity:
    https://afkimel.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/brian-davies-on-divine-simplicity.pdf

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  13. "one would have to show that there is something either internal to God’s nature or external to him that compels him to create.  But given that the divine nature is as classical theists, on independent grounds, argue it to be (pure actuality, perfect, omnipotent, etc.) there can be no need in God for anything distinct from him, so that nothing in his nature can compel him to create.  And since, the classical theist also argues (and again on independent grounds) there is nothing apart from God that God did not create, there can be nothing distinct from him that compels him to create"

    I don't see how that works.

    1- if it's being argued that the act is free simply because it isn't being compelled by anything external to God, nevertheless it could still be compelled by God's nature - that is, what is internal to God, not external. If this is free, it is not *libertarian* free however, and entails that creation is necessary: necessitated by God's nature;

    2- if it is argued that there is nothing internal to God that could compel him, because he is pure actuality, it's not clear that the argument works. For all we know, an internal necessity need not be construed as some kind of "lack", in the sense that "humans need food to survive". God didn't need creation to not be lonely or any other nonsense. But it could be a "need" in the sense of a necessary manifestation of the divine nature/goodness. Just like how it's true that "God needs to not create a world of horrendous pointless torture" (it is necessary from his nature), it could be that God's nature compels him to create - as, for example, Leibniz believed (leibnizian optimism); the neoplatonists believed (emanation); or Pseudo-Dionysius (perhaps) believed - that it is the nature of the Good to be self-diffusive.

    Much more argument would be required to show that God's perfection/pure actuality cannot allow for a necessary creation.

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    1. Good point. Davies needs to adress the defenders of a necessary creation on the classical theist tradition if he wants to defeat the modal collapse problem.

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    2. @RunDec

      Re: 2
      Please note that your example concern God on the supposition that He creates, and the 'compulsion' is negative: if God creates, then His creation is bound to be per se intelligible.

      I think that for true, positive compulsion one would indeed need to posit some lack because creating, logically, seems to be an actual condition of God's perfection, something it depends on, on this scenario, something not predicable of actus purus, which doesn't depend on anything for actuality.

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    3. "I think that for true, positive compulsion one would indeed need to posit some lack because creating, logically, seems to be an actual condition of God's perfection, something it depends on"

      Perhaps. But this is very vague to me. A being that is so perfectly good that heis just naturally (necessarily) making good things does not strike me as absurd, and the good things it makes would still be dependent upon him - and not he dependent upon them. The good things just follows as a necessary consequence from the perfectly good being, because that's what a perfectly good being is: it makes good things.

      Again, it seems intelligible to me, and compatible with what Leibniz thought; Pseudo-Dionysius; the Neoplatonists; and so on. Personally I do not know that it should be rejected. What you said, again, strikes me as vague. The point remains that it's a controversial issue that requires a lot of argument, instead of just mentioning that God is pure actuality. Some classical theists have thought (and some continue to think) creation is necessary.

      Also, if someone does not accept libertarian freedom in any way, they just can't avoid the fact that creation would be necessary (or perhaps random). Not my case, since I accept LFW; but it is conceivable that someone could both be a classical theist and reject LFW and as such be a necessitarian classical theist.

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    4. @RunDec

      Given that, as I understand it, to qualify as a classical theist, a thinker has to, principally, adhere to divine simplicity, I readily concede that this is compatible with a necessitarian view, and that of many thinkers classified as such. This compatibility, however, obviously does not entail its truth. Fr. Davies seems to concern himself with rebutting the claim that divine simplicity entails it, and to achieve this he doesn’t need to positively prove the account he happens to think is the true classical theist account, namely, presumably that of St. Thomas. After all, it’s not like classical theism is a concrete comprehensive philosophical doctrine or “system” as opposed to a (contingently useful) classification abstracting from the all-important theoretical peculiarities.

      Now, in light of your reference to pure act, I assumed that it is this account that you had in mind, and I submit that, I find, the way the pure act argument works is straightforward, really: agents act for an end, and where there is no necessary relation between the means and an end, there is no necessity. Because, on the one hand, God is pure act, something per se perfect, and is the only possible end for His acts, and creatures fail to contribute anything to His perfection, on the other, God cannot be said to will the creatures necessarily. See e.g. Ia q. 19 a. 3.
      And, naturally, Thomists do make arguments for their views e.g. on the teleological nature of causation that allow them to make this argument.

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  14. As a Catholic who accepts classical theism and divine simplicity, this topic of freedom vs. necessity of creation is one that I struggle with.

    God's decision to create or not to create does not end with that binary choice; rather the choice to create involves the further choice of WHAT to create, out of an infinite number of possibilities.

    Good, being omniscient, would know what all these possible creations are, and also know which ones are better, which less good, and which one is best of all.

    Being infinitely good, would it not go against His nature to choose a lesser good, as against a better one? Similarly, would it not go against His nature to to choose not to create, if He knows that the choice to create is better?

    Does this all come down more to definitions than substance? Perhaps the meaning of "freedom" in the context of the Divinity is something that our human minds can't quite grasp? Do freedom, necessity, and goodness in some sense "merge" together into the simple infinity of God?

    Any help understanding these things better will be much appreciated.

    ACL

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    1. Not the easiest paper to read, but I am sympathetic to Pruss's suggestion that there is a wide range of worlds God could create with incommensurable value (which is to say, they cannot be ranked as being "more good" or "less good."): http://www.alexanderpruss.com/papers/DivineCreativeFreedom.pdf

      This doesn't solve every difficulty, but it provides an account for some issues you raise.

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    2. "Being infinitely good, would it not go against His nature to choose a lesser good, as against a better one? Similarly, would it not go against His nature to to choose not to create, if He knows that the choice to create is better?"

      I am also puzzled by this. But since I am not bound by dogma, I am open to accepting that God creates out of a necessity of his perfect nature. But it'd be nice if it can be avoided.

      So there's a lot to be said about this, and what I'll mention doesn't come close to covering the whole topic, but I think it's an interesting thought, and maybe an escape route. Consider: one could deny that perfect goodness MUST entail always doing the best, if the best is supererogatory. The very notion of a supererogatory action is that it's a good action you can perform without being anything like an obligation. We can imagine you can, for instance, donate 100 dollars to a charity right now, and it would be good and virtuous of you, but it wouldn't be an obligation. You can fail to do it without thereby incurring in sin or evil.

      I think creation might be a supererogatory good like that. If it's supererogatory, then God would be very willing to create (or create the best) without nevertheless *having* to create. So you could say God is somehow likely to perform supererogatory actions, but not determined (thus preserving contingency).

      I don't think this works for the problem of evil or anything like that (I very much believe God must, for example, prevent or stop a torture if there is no greater good to be gained from permitting it), but I think it's a nice enough candidate to solve the necessitarian issue

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    3. Following up on RunDec's point: If there is some definite "best" world A out there that God could create, it would be seemingly difficult to explain why he might choose world B (less good than A) to create rather than A.

      But if God's goodness is infinitely beyond that of any, every, and all created being, there is no way to presume there is a "best possible world A" to create: there could be an infinity of good worlds, with always some other world A' better than any specified world A. In that case, God could not be expected to create the "best possible" world because there isn't such a thing.

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    4. Tony

      That presuppsoes that God is finite. But god is infinite, so from the point of view of infinity, there must be such a thing.
      Otherwise, i could also claim that God cannot be infinitely good because there will always be some God better than this one.

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  15. RunDec
    So you believe God must supernaturally intervene to stop every torture if there is no greater good to be gained from permitting it? Why stop with torture? Why shouldn't God stop rape, murder, or child molestation if there is no greater good to be gained from permitting ?

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    1. I don't stop with torture. That was just an example.
      I do think God has to stop every single one of these evils, unless there is a greater good to be gained from his permission of them.

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  16. The second edition of Fr Davies' Intro to the Phil of Religion" is available free online
    https://monoskop.org/images/b/bf/Davies_Brian_An_Introduction_to_the_Philosophy_of_Religion_2nd_edition_1993.pdf

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  17. Hi Ed,

    I respectfully put it to you that the Thomistic doctrine of Divine simplicity you're defending here has passed its use-by date, for the following reasons:

    1. It isn't taught by the Church, which merely affirms that God has “one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple” (Lateran IV, 1215). There's nothing here about whether God has contingent thoughts, plans or intentions in his capacity as Creator of the cosmos, in addition to possessing a nature which is necessary.

    2. It's totally unscriptural. The Bible depicts God as explicitly declaring, "My thoughts [plural] are not your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8), in a verse affirming Divine transcendence (which is the last place where one would expect anthropomorphic language, so I can only assume it's literal). The Psalmist adds: "How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:17). Thomists, on the other hand, believe that God does not have multiple thoughts; instead, He has only one thought, viz., His thought of Himself, and He knows creatures by knowing Himself.

    3. It's grounded in a philosophically dubious ontology: creatures are said to be compounds of essence and existence, while God alone is an Act of Pure and Infinite Existence, which is incapable of possessing any modifications or attributes (such as thoughts and intentions). However, the arguments for a real distinction between essence and existence in creatures prove no such thing: all they prove is that matter and form are distinct (which is why I can know what a Thylacine [or Tasmanian tiger] is, without knowing whether it currently exists or not: I don't know for sure if its form is still instantiated anywhere on Earth). What's more, the notion of Pure Existence is utterly vague: it is indefinite rather than infinite. Better to say, rather, that God is the Ultimate Yardstick of existence. He defines what it means for us to exist, for "in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

    4. Thomists also contend that God, the Author of nature, could have made a different world, or no world at all, without having any different mental acts, such as intentions. That's like an author saying, “I could have written a totally different story, or even no story at all, without there being any difference in my intentions.”

    5. Why is there a world? The Thomist’s answer is: “Because God.” But if there were a different world, or no world at all, the Thomist's reply would be the same: "Because God." I respectfully submit that any explanation which is elastic enough to account for BOTH the world’s occurrence AND its non-occurrence is not doing the work of an explanation at all. It's vacuous.

    6. Finally, if there's one thing Scripture is quite clear about, it is that God is a Father. And as the doctrine of the Trinity shows, even without creating anything, He'd still be one. That's a basic fact about God, and it shows He's personal all the way down.

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    1. Hey Vicent.

      On 2:

      "in a verse affirming Divine transcendence (which is the last place where one would expect anthropomorphic language, so I can only assume it's literal"

      There is a analogy on the next verse, so i think that one can read the verse you posted as not literal if there is a good reason to(which the defender of a high degree of divine simplicity does affirm). Isaiah does hardly used literal language, so i would not try to basis a remote theological opinion on a single verse like that.

      On 3:

      "What's more, the notion of Pure Existence is utterly vague: it is indefinite rather than infinite."

      But by negating that it is infinite is one them not commited to Pure Existence being limited in a certain way and so also to it existing in a determinate way, therefore not being Pure Existence?

      Either it is a infinite or it is finite. But if PE was finite them it would be a certain form of existence and so not PE, which is contradictory, so PE has to be infinite.

      On 6:

      Ed and Davis do defend that God is personal by having someting analogous to intellect and will. They just choose the wrong name for their opponents.

      The rest of your are thinks i also have a problem with and 1, which i cant judge.

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    2. 1- I don't care about what is taught by the Church, so I'll ignore that;

      2- I also don't care about what Scripture teaches;

      3- Aren't you getting Essence and Existence confused with Form and Matter? Knowing whether a Tasmanian tiger exists or not is a matter of knowing whether it has Existence or not, not what its Matter is. Sure, the existence of an animal might require its material exemplification, but this is not the case with immaterial beings (such as souls, angels, God, or any other candidates). What you are pointing to is precisely the difference between Essence and Existence - that you can know what-a-thing-is without knowing that-a-thing-is. It's not the same as what form a thing has versus its material cause (which also could or could not exist). I don't know what you mean by "Pure Existence" being vague or not infinite but Aquinas has some pretty good arguments for why Pure Existence is infinite, divine, etc.

      More importantly, why are you ignoring the entire rationale for Divine Simplicity? It seems to be a recurring thing among critics. You point apparent problems but then ignore the arguments given for simplicity.

      I speak as a person who has no ulterior motives; I simply am convinced that the First Cause of all things must be absolutely simple. If it had parts, then it would be dependent upon those parts for its existence, and thus would not be perfectly independent. Yet cosmological arguments require a foundation that is entirely independent of anything, which just is necessary existence, unconditioned. A composite is always conditioned by its parts, its existence is always "iffy" and dependent on the parts. So if "God" had parts, the parts would be the First Principles, not the composite. And if you follow that along, you'll reach some really bad problems.
      And if God had an accident distinct of himself (his essence), where would this accident come from? It can't come from the essence lest you accept the precedence of a perfectly simple Essence which is the source of all things, which is what you're trying to avoid. But there is nowhere for the accident to come from, then, and being an accident, it cannot exist "by its own (non-substantial, hence conditioned and dependent) nature". You know classical authors reflected a lot on these matters and didn't just adopt Divine Simplicity because of church teaching, right?

      4- And yet the same happens with libertarian freedom for us as well. Before you make your choice, there is a point in which there is no difference in your properties between world 1 (where you go on to choose X) and world 2 (where you go on to not choose X). So do you reject libertarian free will for humans too? Since I accept LFW, I already cannot accept that objection.

      If I had to accept it, though, I would rather embrace necessitarian emanationism or optimism etc. than reject Simplicity, speaking for myself.

      5- This objection wouldn't just cut against Divine Simplicity; it would also cut against creation being the result of a free choice, given what I said in 4. And you seem to be presupposing that an explanans must determine the explanandum, which is very doubtful (especially if it would cost us standard free will explanations);

      6- Again, don't care about what Scripture says in philosophical matters (philosophy and rational argument always comes first to me) but Divine Simplicity isn't incompatible with God being personal. God *is* personal, and literally so, since he is the ultimate source of personhood. He's just eminently personal by virtue of a greater perfection (a single one) which includes the actualities of all others in a unified way.

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    3. - The Thomist’s answer is: “Because God.” But if there were a different world, or no world at all, the Thomist's reply would be the same: "Because God." -

      If there were no world at all, there wouldn't be any Thomists.

      "That's a basic fact about God, and it shows He's personal all the way down."

      Feser doesn't deny that God is personal.

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    4. RunDec

      Vincent says,'Thomists also contend that God, the Author of nature, could have made a different world, or no world at all, without having any different mental acts, such as intentions. That's like an author saying, “I could have written a totally different story, or even no story at all, without there being any difference in my intentions."'
      You reply that the same happens with libertarian freedom for us as well. But thta is not true. Libertarian free will means freedom of the will. That means that, on LFW, I could have willed or intended something completely different. It does not mean that I could intend X and got Y instead.
      Now, it is not claimed that we (humans) are identical to our will (or intention), so, there are very serious problems with huan LFW, but that isn't one of them.
      However, it is a problem for God, whose intention is identical to Him.

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    5. Walter,

      Libertarian freedom entails that you can, at the same time, have non-determining reasons for doing X and non-determining reasons for not-doing-X. What is the intention, beyond the choosing of one over the other? It is when you intend (and hence have chosen) to do one instead of the other, and thus are ready intending the action. If the intention is not the choice, then it would be the motivation. And in both cases there is no difference between our case of LFW and God's:

      Before I finally make my choice, I have motivations for X and ~X. In w1 I go on to choose X; in w2 I go on to choose ~X. And yet there is no difference in my intrinsic properties between w1 and w2.

      This is what is weird in LFW, but as explained, it is the same for God as well as for us. So this is no objection against divine simplicity per se.

      But perhaps you think that the "intention" is neither the choosing nor the motivation, but an accompanying mental state that is always present when, and only when, a choice is made. In that case, the intention would NOT be a necessary condition for a choice being made. Because if it were, we would never be able to choose anything, since we would have to choose our intention before being able to make a choice, and that is circular or regressive. I can, under motivations for both X and ~X, and with no intention whatsoever (since I haven't made the choice yet), choose to do X or ~X and thus effectively, freely bring about X or ~X without this "intention" entity/property. So God's having or not having an intention in this case would be irrelevant for his power to choose, but it ALSO is the same for us.

      But if the the problem is that God must be different when he chooses X as opposed to ~X, then again this would not work under libertarian freedom for us as either. Because (again) when you choose between X (in w1) or ~X (in w2), the cause of your choice has exactly the same intrinsic properties between worlds. The cause of your choosing X in w1 is you at t in state S; and the cause of your choosing ~X in w2 is you at t in state S. There is a branching, and yet there is no difference in intrinsic properties of you at t between worlds. So, once again: it is the same for us and God, and libertarian freedom does not require subjects to change in intrinsic properties between worlds in order to make choices.

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    6. RunDec

      "Before I finally make my choice, I have motivations for X and ~X. In w1 I go on to choose X; in w2 I go on to choose ~X. And yet there is no difference in my intrinsic properties between w1 and w2."

      Of course there is a difference in my intrinsic properties between w1 and w2. Otherwise there is no reason why I choose X over ~X.
      The cause of my choosing X in w1 is me with my intention to choose X, which is an intrinsic property.
      You are describing a random process instead of a choice.
      So, LFW requires an intrinsic difference between world. And humân beings can have this difference, but God can't;

      A mundane example would be my chouce of coffee. I did not use to like coffee, so in those days I would never have chosen coffee, but I grew to like coffee and now i always choose coffee when i have the choice. My intrinsic property of disliking coffee changed.
      There may be non-determining reasons for me killing my wife and also non-dtermining reasons for me not to do that, but, unless I undergo some intrinsic change, I will never intend to kill my wife.
      When exactly this intention happens is irrelevant. the only thing that matters is that this intention is intrisic to me. And if this intention is never intrinsic to me, my "chosen" action will never happen.

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    7. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "However, it is a problem for God, whose intention is identical to Him."

      No Walter, it is just a problem for you. It is beyond humans to understand God. Multitudes of human words have no bearing on what God is or what He can do. In particular, He does not obey your thought.

      And whatever Professor Feser or Professor Davies hold Divine simplicity to be, it surely isn't something that leads to your conclusions. Your conclusions can only be reached by assuming that certain ideas opposed to yours are false without demonstration, ideas that you cannot bother to even understand.

      This makes your words empty and without serious force - a joke at best.

      Tom Cohoe

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    8. Hi everyone,

      Thanks you all for your responses.

      Talmid, you write: "Either it [Pure Existence] is infinite or it is finite. But if PE was finite them it would be a certain form of existence and so not PE, which is contradictory, so PE has to be infinite."

      What your argument really proves is that the notion of "pure existence" is utterly amorphous: it is not tied to any particular form. But by the same token, since it has no form, we cannot say that it is positively infinite, either; all we can say is that it has no positive characteristics at all.

      RunDec, you object to my assertion that the alleged distinction between a thing's essence and its existence can be explained in terms of the form-matter distinction, by arguing as follows: "the existence of an animal might require its material exemplification, but this is not the case with immaterial beings (such as souls, angels, God, or any other candidates)."

      Re separated souls: at least we can say that they once had bodies and that they will one day have them back, so we can regard them as being "branded," so to speak, by the matter they informed. Re angels: I'm sure you're well aware that there were many medieval philosophers who held that angels are not pure forms, but possess a kind of spiritual matter, allowing two or more angels to be of the same species. As for God, His essence and existence are commonly held to be identical, anyway.

      You also ask, "if God had an accident distinct from himself (his essence), where would this accident come from? It can't come from the essence lest you accept the precedence of a perfectly simple Essence which is the source of all things, which is what you're trying to avoid."

      I'm quite happy to say that God's essence is simple. What I insist is that God's Mind or Essence has multiple thoughts and intentions which are contingent accidents - e.g. God's concept of this universe, and His intention to make it.

      You deny that having an intention is a necessary condition for making a choice because "if it were, we would never be able to choose anything, since we would have to choose our intention before being able to make a choice, and that is circular or regressive." However, your argument misconstrues my position, which is that an agent's choice to do something must be (at least logically, even if not temporally) preceded by a plan or intention to do it. Otherwise, it would be impossible to attribute an action A to spiritual agent X rather than spiritual agent Y, as neither of them would have done anything to identify it as the cause of A. But although I produce things (or states of affairs) as an agent, I do not "produce" my intentions; I just have them. They are voluntary, but not in the same sense that my actions are. My intentions have no prior cause; I just have them, and that's all. So too with God.

      I don't have any problem with an agent either choosing to bring about X or choosing not to bring about X, and having an identical causal history in both cases. What bothers me is the notion of an agent acting without a plan. That just makes no sense. Cheers.

      William,

      While Ed doesn't deny that God is personal, He construes God's personhood in terms of His possessing an intellect (and will), which in turn is construed in terms of God being Pure Act and containing (eminently) every form which He generates, within Himself, since He is Pure Being. Thus God's personhood is grounded in impersonal notions like "being" and "act": for Thomists, these are what God is, primarily. I maintain that God has thoughts of His own, which are in some sort of Divine language, and these thoughts are what makes God personal.

      I hope Ed spoils himself this Christmas and buys himself a copy of Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou's "God: An Anatomy." It will change the way he thinks about the God of the Bible. Cheers.

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    9. Walter

      "Of course there is a difference in my intrinsic properties between w1 and w2. Otherwise there is no reason why I choose X over ~X.
      The cause of my choosing X in w1 is me with my intention to choose X, which is an intrinsic property.
      You are describing a random process instead of a choice."

      No, Walter, there is no intrinsic difference if LFW is true, and this is precisely how there can be a libertarian free choice. Otherwise the presence of you + the intention would determine the resulting action and we would no longer have libertarian freedom. If the cause were you and the intention, then in order to preserve libertarian freedom you would have to cause your intention. But then to cause your intention you would end up in an infinite regress, unless you accept that you at t in state S can cause Intention (what it does in w1) or not cause it (what it does in w2). In other words: there is no difference in intrinsic properties in the agent in worlds 1 and 2, and yet the agent can cause X or ~X. See? That's my point.

      There is literally no difference between humans and God when it comes to this weird aspect of libertarian freedom. For determinism to be avoided, it must be the case that someone at t in state S can cause both X or ~X. For our libertarian choice of X, there is a time t which is the earliest time with the property that after t it is no longer causally possible for us to choose ~X instead. How else do you think libertarian freedom could work, without determinism? If the choice follows a difference in intrinsic properties, then the choice would be determined by such a difference and thus would no longer be libertarian, lest we cause the difference in properties (the intention, say), but then the same problem would reappear.

      You say that this is "random". That is a common accusation by those who *reject* libertarian freedom. I do not accept that it is random; I believe libertarian choice is a sui generis category that is neither random nor deterministic, but that is beside the point. My response was that the "problem" Vincent was pointing out doesn't just affect Divine Simplicity, but also libertarian freedom for humans. It is THE SAME THING for us. The issue there doesn't lie with classical theism, but LFW; LFW by itself requires that an agent can be able to (non-randomly) bring about different effects without there being any change in the intrinsic properties of the agent when it is choosing.

      So if you have a problem with God choosing to cause different things without requiring any difference in intrinsic properties as a condition for that, you should also have a problem with libertarian freedom for humans. Which you probably do (you probably do not accept LFW). Vincent however does presumably accept LFW, so he has to choose between rejecting LFW altogether or dropping that objection.

      The only difference between us and God in this case is you could argue that our intrinsic properties change *after* we have CHOSEN (not when we are choosING). But so what? It is not even clear to me that we must change intrinsically after we have chosen; why insist that this must happen universally, even with God? It would still be the case that for a libertarian free choice to be made, the cause need not incur in change, since the cause can indeed, under the same exact intrinsic properties, bring about different effects. So the objection against God's choosing is worthless.

      One could go on to complain about God's contingent knowledge of what he in fact chose (again, a matter of what could change AFTER a choice), but that is a different objection - the one that pertains to God's contingent knowledge. (For that problem, the classical theist will usually appeal to an externalist model of knowledge)

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    10. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "LFW requires an intrinsic difference between world. And humân beings can have this difference, but God can't"

      Maybe God is not obedient to your ideas, no matter what they are. It is easy enough to show in a model of simplicity that logic is not restricted to being what you call logic. It could be something that would appear to be random to you but is not random to God. It is just something you cannot understand. It is a way to see that your words cannot apply to what God can or cannot do.

      God rules you, not you God. God gave you free will, but not the understanding to know how it works. What the model can do, you cannot show that God cannot.

      Tom Cohoe

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    11. Vincent,

      You mention souls having to be branded by their bodies - nevertheless, once the soul loses the body, it CONTINUES TO EXIST. Which would be sufficient to refute the idea that existence is the same as material exemplifications. That seems obvious to me. If you wanna say things exist because they have matter, you cannot say that a disembodied soul can exist or continue to exist; at most you can say that such a soul has existed before, but no longer exists, if it no longer has matter.
      Saying angels also have prime matter is okay but that'd just be another cost for a position that seems implausible and frankly doesn't seem to accomplish much.

      "As for God, His essence and existence are commonly held to be identical, anyway."

      But God is not material. So it just seems bizarre to suggest that existence comes from prime matter.

      And overall, I cannot quite make sense of what you are suggesting except if we are just calling "Existence" "Matter". In that case, the form will be the Essence and Matter will be "Existence" and you have only a semantic difference.

      The whole point of the Essence x Existence distinction, in a nutshell, is that there is a real actuality that is the "oomph" of things existing. When you consider a unicorn, you can understand what it is without knowing whether it actually exists or not. This is so because its existence is not the same as its essence. Sure, the unicorn's existence qua unicorn involves material exemplification, but there might be things which exist without matter (as the examples I gave), and in any case we are just trying to maintain a principle of actuality/reality here. You seem to just be turning that principle into matter. One could make more objections from the nature of prime matter and how it can be changed etc., but it's not even clear to me what you're trying to accomplish with that, and how you would avoid the arguments for a real distinction (if you really are trying to abandon it).

      "What I insist is that God's Mind or Essence has multiple thoughts and intentions which are contingent accidents - e.g. God's concept of this universe, and His intention to make it."

      But where do these accidents come from? They could only be caused by the divine essence, but then God would just be the simple essence anyway. And it seems impossible for the accidents to come about, since they would have to actualize God somehow (in the way accidents actualize the subjects), but God as pure actuality (the simple essence as you admitted) would not be able to be actualized by accidents. To put it differently: I worry that God could only cause himself parts if he already had parts in the first place (a potential to receive the actuality of the accidents/be modified by the accidents), so it would be viciously circular.
      Another worry I have is that the First Cause would already prepossess in itself the actualities of the accidents it would cause, but then, what's the point? And it would be the case of a something actualizing itself, which is impossible.

      "an agent's choice to do something must be (at least logically, even if not temporally) preceded by a plan or intention to do it. "

      If intentions do not determine the choice, then it seems you are treating intentions as if they were non-determining motives or predispositions. But then the classical theist can agree that God DOES have these intentions. I certainly believe that, at least. To me, God created this universe because he was impressed by reasons R, and his being impressed by reasons R is not a contingent fact, but a necessary one. God is impressed by R in every world.

      So what's the issue? Classical theists need not deny that God has intentions to act. If you accept the fact that God can create different things in different worlds without there having to be any differences in intrinsic properties in God between these worlds as he chooses what to create (something you should accept if you accept LFW) then what is the problem? (1/2)

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    12. God can have all the necessary reasons to create in every possible world. And he knows these reasons by knowing himself.

      If your problem is that you think these reasons have to be literal, existing separate things in the divine mind (and they cannot be identified with each other) then the problem isn't with divine creative freedom per se, but rather with the status of the multiplicity of divine ideas ("and 2 must be different from 5!"). That is a different problem. Speaking for myself it's not clear to me that divine ideas must literally exist as separate entities; the nature of knowledge and how (it seems to me) it's basically a "transparent" power whereby something is grasped by the knower and understood through itself seems to me compatible with God knowing different abstract facts by means of a single known concrete substance which is analyzed (a substance that happens to be the ground of all possibilia anyway, God), though I cannot hope to imagine it. I think what Dolezal has written on the divine ideas would also be very helpful here.

      Thus God's personhood is grounded in impersonal notions like "being" and "act": for Thomists, these are what God is, primarily"

      This misses the point. The point at that stage is precisely that "being" and "act" are NOT impersonal. Intelligence is an irreducible aspect of existence which some beings (like us) enjoy when they're not limited enough. God's personhood is not grounded in anything impersonal (that would be absurd); existence in its fullness is taken to be irreducibly personal. It's impersonal beings that just happen to be limited enough that they are unable to possess that dimension of being, so to speak. As the ultimate source of personhood and the unlimited actuality of the principle that is the basis of personhood, God is personal through and through.

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    13. @Tom Cohoe speaking of free will, it disturbs me greatly that traditional Catholic theology has not considered animal abuse to be a deadly sin like Lust or Gluttony. That goes very contrary to religions like Judaism or Buddhism.

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    14. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Any actual argument, Tom?"

      You have been seeing it, but I chose at the end of my last comment to call it a "challenge" instead of an "argument".

      Your response here is quite agreeable. You have neither disagreed nor questioned my comment. I take that to mean that you have understood and are eager to get on with it.

      Patience my good man, patience. I have Eucharistic adoration for the next 2 days and will be too time pressed to make a lot of progress, but I will try to make some at least.

      Tom Cohoe

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    15. RunDec

      No, it not intrinsic properties change *after* we have chosen, they happen when we are choosing. A choice to do X differs from a choice to do ~X.
      If you can either go the the right or to the left, then if you choose (or 'decide') to go to the left, your mind has the 'content' "go to the left".
      What actually causes this content is another matter, it only matters for our discussion that there is such content. I do not know how you decide which road to take, but I make a real decision. i do not suudenly find myself on the road to the left.
      And that real decision is an intrinsic state of my mind, and , if LFW is tue it can be different.
      But it cannot be different in God.
      In your reply to Vincent you contradict yourself. you say, "God created this universe because he was impressed by reasons R, and his being impressed by reasons R is not a contingent fact, but a necessary one. God is impressed by R in every world."

      If God created because of those reasons, that is another way of saying he was determined to create by those reasons. If you deny this, you simply cannot have any "because" .

      So, that's it. The modal collapse argument against DS is still very much alive.

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    16. Tom

      I am always open for discussion provided real arguments are presented. I never just disgarre with a comment unless I have reasons and then I state those reasons.
      So, if you want to present a real argument, or a challenge, then I will welcome that. Please take whatever time you need.

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    17. @Infinite_Growth, lust and gluttony are categories of sins. Animal abuse is much more specific (and probably actually just falls under wrath).

      Why exactly is that troubling to you?

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    18. @Vicent

      "What your argument really proves is that the notion of "pure existence" is utterly amorphous: it is not tied to any particular form. But by the same token, since it has no form, we cannot say that it is positively infinite, either; all we can say is that it has no positive characteristics at all."

      True, it has none of the atributes that we know for these would need limitations, so all pictures we could make of Pure Existence would be wrong. But, if we suppose that the thomistic arguments work, we do have knowledge that PE needs to have something like atributes, we just can at best describe they as similar to our owns in some way.

      That is negative theology 101, i think. Even your more eastern view, which i'am very interested in actually, insist that God essence is completely impossible to know at all. So there is nothing that i would find wrong with your caracterization, at least if we talk of PE before using the arguments for it.

      @Infinite_Growth

      It does find it wrong to be cruel to other animals, i remember it being on the Cathecism.

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    19. @Anonymous @Talmid According to Judaism and the first ecumenical council the Catholic Church ever held, eating meat from animals that have been abused is a mortal sin, of the same gravity as fornication or idolatry.

      "You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell." - St. James the Just (Acts 15:29)

      Practically speaking, because almost all forms of mass farming in the United States are far more abusive than the relatively tame practice of merely strangling animals of Ancient Rome, this means that anyone who knowingly buys meat from a mass farm or mass food supplier like Sysco (via a restaurant), knowing what the first church council wrote, with full consent of the will, has committed a mortal sin. In order to avoid falling into mortal sin, you must eat vegan whenever you eat out (or reduce animal product intake as much as possible) or buy animal products only from Kosher or Halal delis (because Jews and Muslims still hold fast to these rules). Or if you yourself or anyone in your immediate family is a farmer, you have to use traditional ways of killing an animal.

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    20. Walter,

      "No, it not intrinsic properties change *after* we have chosen, they happen when we are choosing. A choice to do X differs from a choice to do ~X.
      If you can either go the the right or to the left, then if you choose (or 'decide') to go to the left, your mind has the 'content' "go to the left"."

      The choice to do X is different from the choice to do ~X because the effects are different, but if Libertarian Freedom is to work, the two effects could indeterministically come about from the same cause without any difference of intrinsic properties in it. If there was a difference which was associated only with X (and another with ~X) then that would entail that the agent would have already chosen either X or ~X, since he would have the corresponding property for one or the other. And if he has already chosen, he is no longer choosing.

      Again: you at t in state S can cause either X or ~X. Do you not see how this is required for LFW?
      If in order to cause X you had to be in S1 and to cause ~X you had to be in S2, then if you were in S1 you would not be able to cause ~X, and hence would not be able to choose between X and ~X. The same state of the agent must be able to cause either X or ~X; the same state of the agent must be able to produce a branching (one world in which you at t in S caused X, and another world in which you at t in S caused ~X).

      "What actually causes this content is another matter, it only matters for our discussion that there is..."

      It absolutely matters for our discussion! If we can only choose X if we have an "intention" Y which is incompatible with our choosing ~X, then in order to be libertarian-free when choosing X I need to have caused Y with libertarian freedom. And so I needed to have been able to cause Y or ~Y without

      ""In your reply to Vincent you contradict yourself. you say, "God created this universe because he was impressed by reasons R, and his being impressed by reasons R is not a contingent fact, but a necessary one. God is impressed by R in every world."

      If God created because of those reasons, that is another way of saying he was determined to create by those reasons. If you deny this, you simply cannot have any "because" ."

      Walter, you simply reject Libertarian Freedom. The whole basis of LFW is that there can be a "because" which isn't determining (or random, either). I freely chose strawberry ice cream because I like strawberry ice cream, but this explanation does not determine my choice (otherwise it wouldn't have been a libertarian free choice). The explanans need not determine the explanandum. I could have chosen chocolate ice cream instead, and yet it would still be true that I like strawberry ice cream. Likewise, God created our universe because he was impressed by how our universe would be good (whatever reasons R), and R could be necessary and he could be impressed by R in every world, without R determining his choice to create. R are motivating reasons for a choice.

      By saying that "if an agent did something because of reasons, that is another way of saying that he was determined by those reasons" you are begging the question against LFW. You are literally saying that there cannot be an explanation for libertarian choices unless said explanation determines the choice.

      Again, if you reject libertarian freedom for humans like that, then it's no wonder you'll also reject libertarian freedom for God. But (and this was my point) if someone is open to libertarian freedom for humans, it is the same thing for God. An explanans which does not determine the explanandum; an agent in S at t being able to cause either X or ~X (~X would not require a change of intrinsic properties in the agent to have been chosen instead of X...), etc.

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    21. @ Infinite_Growth,

      "speaking of free will, it disturbs me greatly that traditional Catholic theology has not considered animal abuse to be a deadly sin like Lust or Gluttony. That goes very contrary to religions like Judaism or Buddhism."

      First, note of pre-Christian Judaism that it certainly permitted the use of animals
      for human needs, including for rites of sacrifice. Christianity does not include the use of animals for sacrifice so from your point of view that is an improvement.

      Second, note that Jesus said:

      "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matthew 5:17-20 KJV)

      But much of what is specifically listed as law in pre-Christian Judaism is subsumed in Christianity as Love rather than being specifically listed, so while abuse of animals is not listed, it is an act of hatred against what God loves, which includes all of Creation. Now we have been given all of material Creation for our proper and needful use, but an act of hatred against anything is a turning from God and is a mortal or deadly sin as Christians always understood.

      So at no time did Christianity embrace the evil treatment of animals. It would have always been recognized as hate. But as in many other things, a formal doctrine against the mistreatment of animals was later worked out from these foundational principles of Christianity. It certainly is explicit now. See, for example, the Catechism as promulgated by Pope John Paul II.

      Buddhism is not a development of Christianity or Judaism. Therefore, its rites and rules, while based on partial truth, are not held wholly correct. We cannot properly be directed by Bhuddhist doctrine.

      Tom Cohoe

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    22. Walter claims (against RunDec):

      "If God created because of those reasons, that is another way of saying he was determined to create by those reasons. If you deny this, you simply cannot have any "because" ."

      Now I'm interested to see what RunDec has to say in his own defense, but it strikes me that Walter does have a point, here at least. (In general I think RunDec's arguments have been quite right.) I would suggest that RunDec might better have stated his position as something like the following:

      "In freely creating this universe God saw that it was good (if you want a 'because,' because it was his (free) act of creation -- which he (necessarily!) saw/knew in all of its aspects: in itself, in its (necessary!) relation to him, and in his (free!) relation to it as its creator); and his seeing that it was good is not a contingent fact, but a necessary one. God sees that every possibly creatable world would be good."

      According to Walter:

      "And that real decision is an intrinsic state of my mind, and, if LFW is true it can be different.
      But it cannot be different in God."

      Seems confused. A decision once made can't be unmade, regardless of the truth of LFW or the identity of the decision-maker. As for the notion "an intrinsic state of mind," what is the term "intrinsic" supposed to signify here? (Nothing question-begging, I hope!)

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    23. Vincent writes: "an agent's choice to do something must be (at least logically, even if not temporally) preceded by a plan or intention to do it. ... My intentions have no prior cause; I just have them, and that's all. So too with God."

      Gratuitously asserted...?

      And God said, "Let there be..." But, per Vincent, first, 'logically' speaking, he formed (quite unintentionally, apparently!) a prior intention/plan that he would say "Let there be..." -- and to be clear, he didn't need to form a prior prior intention (a second-order prior intention) in order form the aforementioned prior intention, because 'logically' (Vincent says) one must form intentions before acting; and so clearly forming an intention/making a plan is not itself an action; otherwise one would always have to form an(other) intention before forming any intention, so that it would be impossible to ever get started forming an intention/making a plan.

      So the question remains, if forming an intention/making a plan is not an action (as it can't be on Vincent's account), then what is it?

      Vincent again: "I maintain that God has thoughts of His own, which are in some sort of Divine language, and these thoughts are what makes God personal."

      It's not at all clear what the point here is, but why not instead the converse: God's thoughts are what make us personal? Vincent seems to think that God's knowing us by knowing himself puts us somehow 'outside' of God's knowledge (not to mention love, care, etc.?) -- as if it must really be himself he knows, not us, not 'personally.' (A queer view, it must be said.) But it seems clear that the truth is the opposite: God's knowing us by knowing himself implies that we are necessarily, really, personally inside God's knowledge (love, care, etc.). (That is, just as Aquinas, Feser, the Bible, etc. all have it.)

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    24. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Please take whatever time you need"

      OK, here is a bit more:

      I avoid using phrases or concepts like "all possible worlds" as confusing or ambiguous and easily giving rise to dispute that can never be resolved, for how can our human minds encompass all possibility, especially if we admit that God must know more about what is possible than we can. I don't mean to claim that talk about all possible worlds does not have its place or cannot be useful. I just like to avoid it when possible, and so I favor "all imaginable worlds".

      By "imaginable" I mean strictly what is limited to normal human imagination, not the "imagination" of God, angels, people experiencing the beatific vision, etc. Just people like you and me. It greatly simplifies discussion and simplicity is what we are looking for.

      I make a further simplification by saying that our ideas about all imaginable worlds must be communicable to other ordinary people. If it can't be communicated there is not much use in having the idea. It won't get anywhere.

      This entails a further restriction, and that is that the communication must be verbal - in words that other people can understand. This could be widened somewhat. For example, ideas could be communicated by images, non verbal sounds, moving imagery, with or without sound, etc. But I hope you do not object to my just restricting it to words alone, again for simplicity. I believe that whatever can be said about communication by words alone can be extended to these other forms of communication.

      So, I will talk about all _imaginable_ worlds, imaginable to ordinary people, ideas of which must be verbally communicable to other humans.

      Tom Cohoe

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    25. David: J'ai rate' vos commentaires!

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    26. @Infinite_Growth

      I can get your view, but dont go too fast. For starters, the Church has the important criteria, cant remember the name, of degrees of cooperation with evil, which goes on the degree of participation that one can have with bad persons and situations. It came across alot in the discussions on the use of the Pfizer vacine before, so it should not be so dificult to finding the literature, even Dr. Feser did it.

      At minimum, you would need a argument based on it to argue for your view that we are dealing with a sin here. The lack of official defense of your view by the Church even when there are a few on the clergy that are more sympathetic to the other animals also does not help your case. So, from my very little competent perspective, i remain skeptical.

      But if it gets thing brighter: i'am very sympathetic to the idea that our industrial production, meat specially, needs to change and also one of my Advent penitences is not eating any kind of meat* and i'am doing very great!

      *screw these casuals that eat fish! XD

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    27. RunDec

      The whole point of LFW is that the will is not determined. LFW does not mean you can have no will that determines your choice.
      It doesn't matter where that will came from, it there is a will, then my argument goes through.
      If you will vanilla ice (for whatever reason), then, unless something happens to prevent this choice you have vanilla ice and not chocolate ice.
      I don't think we can make any progress on this, RucDec, so, thank you for the discussion.

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    28. David

      'A decision once made can't be unmade'. I agree with that, but it's important that, in order for there to be a real choice, there has to be a decision by the agent and it is intrinsic because otherwise it would not be by the agent.
      'I'll go left' is a 'thought' that is in thé mond of the agent.
      Hence it is intrinsic to thé agent.

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    29. Walter,

      "The whole point of LFW is that the will is not determined. LFW does not mean you can have no will that determines your choice.
      It doesn't matter where that will came from, it there is a will, then my argument goes through.
      If you will vanilla ice (for whatever reason), then, unless something happens to prevent this choice you have vanilla ice and not chocolate ice."

      How on earth can I choose what to eat, then? The picture you described is literally my will - completely outside of my control - determining my choice to either get vanilla or chocolate depending on some property arising in it - and you suggest that the causal origin of that property is irrelevant for whether we are libertarian free or not! That it doesn't matter where it came from. So in your model I can - with no control over it, no choice over it - just get a "will" to have vanilla ice and this will make me get vanilla ice instead of chocolate (unless something happens to prevent it, again something over which I presumably have no control over since all my actions would just follow upon another will arising, and it wouldn't matter where that will came from, according to you).
      In what world is that libertarian freedom? That is just people being determined by a will over which they have no control. I don't think any LFW proponent would agree with that model; certainly I think most LFW theorists would agree with me. And then you just refuse to elaborate on the potential regress of the origins of the "will" and how, in your model, it cannot arise by the choice of the agent (since you must refuse that A at t in S can cause either X or ~X).
      I am surprised that you think this would count as LFW.

      I take it as essential that in LFW *we* are the ones making our choices, in an indeterministic but non-stochastic way; that we cause our actions and do so in such a way that, when we're deliberating, we can really cause one or the other at that moment, and thus under the same set of intrinsic properties.

      I say we can reach an agreement and a common conclusion here: you and I have radically different ideas of LFW. So if someone accepts your model, then indeed they will have a problem with God's choice in DS. If someone subscribes to your model of LFW, then that objection to DS is a serious one, and perhaps there is no way around it.

      But if someone accepts my model of LFW (or, even more modestly, accepts my model as metaphysically possible) instead, then the problem disappears. Because in my model, the agent can cause either X or ~X without requiring a difference in intrinsic properties for choosing one or the other. It's not unique to God, it's the same for humans, too.

      So if someone accepts your model of libertarian freedom (call it LFW1) then the objection is very much alive. Well done. But if someone prefers my model (call it LFW2) instead, the objection isn't really impressive. I think that's fair.

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    30. RunDec

      I wasn't going to reply to you anymore on this subject, but you seem to completely misunderstand my position.
      It may matter for LFW where that Will came from, but it doesn't matter for my argument. What matters is that there is a Will to do X. And a will to do X is not thé same as a Will to do not X.
      That's it.

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    31. "It may matter for LFW where that Will came from, but it doesn't matter for my argument."

      How does it not matter for your argument, if whether or not the model counts as LFW depends on it? Of course if there is such a thing as this "Will" which determinately lead to vanilla rather than chocolate, we must be the ones to cause such a Will. Otherwise, again, we are in no control whatsoever of our actions - a Will just emerges (uncaused by us, hence beyond our choice or control) which then causes our actions. Of course it matters for your argument, since if your model is unacceptable for libertarian freedom proponents then it won't work as a defense against my claim (that LFW for humans already involves the issue of an agent being able to cause 2 distinct effects without a change in intrinsic properties).

      "What matters is that there is a Will to do X. And a will to do X is not thé same as a Will to do not X."

      And the problem - to repeat myself again - is that if we are to maintain libertarian freedom, we have to have caused this Will. Otherwise the Will-for-X just emerges beyond our control and determines that we do X, and this is no libertarian freedom.

      But if we cause the Will-to-X we cannot require a further, second order Will-to-will-to-X, otherwise we end up in a regress. That's been my point for a while now. So it turns out that this "Will" isn't really required for our choices. It's a confused notion that would lead to an infinite, vicious regress.

      The existence of a Will-to-X becomes superfluous, since even on the assumption that it exists we must be able to choose and cause it (or the Will-to-not-X) without requiring a further second order Will. So it turns out this "Will" is not really required for free actions. In the end, LFW requires that an agent be able to choose and cause X or ~X without a difference in intrinsic properties. If there is a Will-to-X, it does not determine X, and is not incompatible with the possession of a Will-to-not-X.

      Delete
    32. And also: I have quite explicitly said in previous posts that if there is a problem here, it has to do with the God's intention/reasons for X being the same as God's intention/reasons for ~X. That is a different issue which is only tangentially related with divine creative freedom - the actual problem there is with the multiplicity of divine ideas. I can grant (as I have granted before) that there can be an objection from the fact that prima facie in DS God's ideas would all be the same, but there should be a multiplicity, etc. This is something that strikes us as being quite different from how us humans think (and by extension, intend things).

      This is not the problem of "how could God freely cause different things in different worlds without any intrinsic differences in God between worlds???". I have been very clear and precise in my comments that it is *this* that I think is a bad objection which would also affect LFW for humans, not just God. And I have explained why.

      So, using the terms in our latest posts: if we are to assume these "Wills" as you want, they would have to not determine the action. Someone would have both the "Will-to-X" and the "Will-to-not-X" and then be able to indeterministically cause either X or ~X in that case. So there would be no intrinsic difference in the subject required for him to cause X or cause ~X in that situation. The same as God.

      What you CAN object is that, differently from us, under DS in God the "Will-to-X" would be the same as the "Will-to-not-X" and you could think that this is absurd. But then as I said this is a different objection - it's basically the issue of the multiplicity of divine ideas, only tangentially related to free choice (if one thinks ideas are required for choices). The issues of "5 is different than 2!" etc. I have talked about this in my last reply to Vincent. On this topic I'd just recommend Dolezal's model and how I think different facts can have the same truthmaker (similarly to how triangularity and trilaterality can have the same grounding). But that's not what I was discussing with you.

      Delete
    33. A rather lively discussion concerning LFW which has long been lacking with respect to divine freedom (and to a more indirect extent, modal collapse).

      @RunDec @Walter

      As far as I can tell, there has been a hidden assumption about event causation here: namely "choose x" is some event then leading to "x occurs". That is completely wrong, in that it would destroy the unity of an action and would lead to a vicious regress regarding volition. Rather "choose x" and "x occurs" is a simultaneous causal relationship of an action of a volitional agent.

      A better description of LFW here (in its most bare bones form as self-generated action; deliberation is a type of it) is not so much in weighing scales, but something like picking a point on a circle: namely, insofar as the formula of a circle only provides an undifferentiated sea of possibles but no actual ones, I have to actualize some particular point, and prior to that actualization, the point is just a mere possible, not something with an individual actual reality; it cannot even be considered of itself a true individual reality apart from my actualization.

      You could say that relies on a dubious notion of an infinity of options, but the basic idea does not change even for finite options. Suppose I have C = {X, Y}. C taken of itself is just an undifferentiated sea of possibles, to get X I would need C[0] while for Y I would need C[1]. That caused "indexing" is just what a self-determined action is. Since that "indexing" is not prior to the action but simultaneous with it, it is self-determined and free; nor is it some random "coin flip" because the 0ing and 1ing are not some earlier floating states (which would also generate a vicious regress as above) but coincident with the volition itself. In fact, it is more accurate to describe "0ing" and "1ing" as descriptions of self-determinations, not as "things".

      The major issue I see being made here is regarding a volitional act as something like picking from already existent states competing for dominance.

      Delete
    34. Anonymous

      Is action A of a volitional agent the same as action B from a volitional agent?
      IOW does a volitional agent only have one action or does he have several?

      Delete
    35. RunDec

      You don't understand my objection, but that's okay. I have shown you what the problem is, but if you can't see it, there is nothing more I can say.

      Delete
    36. Walter,

      Fair enough; we're opposites. I think you don't understand the issue and that if you can't see it after everything I wrote here, there is nothing more I can say. I am satisfied with what I've written. It was a nice discussion.

      Anonymous,

      I don't think simultaneity is particularly important here. The thing is that in order to maintain the indeterminism of a free choice it must be the case that the agent at t can be able to cause either X or ~X without either effect *requiring* a change in intrinsic properties. They might ENTAIL a change (A now has the property of having chosen X, say), in our case, but still this would be a consequence of the choice. If there was a requirement for a difference in properties then you could never have true indeterminism in the choice, because if it had P (and P were incompatible with the choosing of ~X, say) the cause would not be able to cause the effect that would be incompatible with the property. Whether simultaneously or diachronically.

      Delete
    37. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      An intelligible verbal communication can exist on a computer as a sequence of 1's and 0's that is made intelligible through an operational protocol that casts it to the monitor as readable words. No computer can print an infinite sequence to the screen, but a finite subsequence can be read through a computer this way. There is an absolute difference between an infinite sequence and a finite sequence here. Now no matter what the intelligible communication, it must exist throughout the infinite bitwise random sequence as a subsequence, normally distributed (from Wikipedia "Normal Number" on an infinite sequence of "coin tosses" : "If a number is normal, no finite combination of digits of a given length occurs more frequently than any other combination of the same length").

      Yet in searching for the specific intelligible verbal subsequence described earlier it is impossible to know, if it is not found, that the infinite sequence is biased - is not normal, for the search could encompass a length of the infinite sequence that just does not contain the verbal subsequence. For example the sequence 01 should appear in 25% of the 2 bit subsequences, but if the sequence consisting of a million 1's in a row is where you happen to look for 01, you will not find 01 normally distributed in the million 1's. Such lengths missing the verbal subsequence must also appear in the infinite sequence, and they must also be normally distributed if the infinite sequence is normal, which it must be if it is bitwise 50/50 random.

      This model of simplicity contains all human imaginable worlds that can be verbally communicated and yet no matter how much of it is human examined (i.e., the examination must be finite), a verbally communicable description of the finite world might never be found. You might just always be looking in the wrong place.

      This is similarly true of human verbal speech about anything.

      God knows this idea. It is a Divine Idea. As a model or image of God it does not limit God but it shows how God cannot be limited.

      I should stop now for your response, your objections, questions, or additions.

      Thanks for your patience.

      Tom Cohoe

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    38. @Walter
      An agent has a range of actions that can be actualized for some given scenario (which provides the common intelligibility for the range of these actions). Since the range considered in itself is indeterminate (and the scenario is indifferent towards any one such action) the agent particularizes out of that range to get an actual action. The particularization itself is sui generis and only exists with some volition itself.

      To answer your question more directly, action A and action B are analogous to each other with respect to the scenario in question. If the scenario is for instance that one needs to survive, then the actions "drink water" and "eat food" can both be said to ensure survival, but in different ways. Since neither of these has commanding power until they are realized, the agent is really open to both.

      As such, if you were somehow able to run simulations of this, you would see the agent sometimes "drink water", other times "eat food".

      @RunDec
      I think it does, though I will get to what I think is a more core issue that I think you are getting at.

      Volitional causation is not univocal. Because it is not univocal, you can have different actions with no intrinsic difference across the agent (until after the action is done). Moreover, "X" and "Y" do not have any actual individual reality until actually caused.

      You only get a mystery if you already assume X or Y are already actual in the relevant way and are univocally transmitted to the effect.

      Delete
    39. Tom

      So far, I still have no questions. So, please continu.

      Delete
    40. Anonymous

      But does he decide to drink water?
      And the "sometimes X" and "sometimesY" looks suspiciously close to randomness.
      But, while all this may matter for LFW, it doesn't matter for my objection to Divine Simplicity, for it is still the case that my drinking water is a voluntary act by me. Hence, no matter how it came about, the "me" who drinks water is not completely the same "me" who eats some food.
      And that may be possible in human beings, but it is not possible in God if he is simple and immutable.

      Delete
    41. @RunDec I wonder if stochasticism can still be connected to LFW insofar as it's often easy to predict what a person will do when faced with a set of choices due to pre-existing inclinations that strongly incline him one way or the other.

      An inclination towards one particular thing can be very strong to the point where a person could basically choose that object almost every time basically, as long as the person still has the ability to choose differently, even though it's harder.

      Heck, I lean towards thinking that even if an individual always chose the same object every single time, with a very strong inclination, that still wouldn't be a problem for LFW, because the concept of being able to choose differently is distinct from how many times one does so.

      One could thereby rewind the tape of time / reality indefinitely many times and get the same choice made by a person, without this in any way undermining LFW.

      On a different note, here's an objection to LFW I once saw that I'd like to know your thoughts on:

      The idea of self-explaining sui generis choices are actually gibberish even with LFW. If my free choice is sufficient to explain itself to the exclusion of other possibilities, it isn't indeterministic. If it isn't, then there's no reason in my will or otherwise why I chose as I did and I'm not free. So we have compatibilism.


      What do you think?

      Delete
    42. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      "Please continu"

      Well then, the simplicity of a random number is greater than the simplicity of science, logic, or mathematics. The XOR process is meant to show that even a finite random sequence can mean any predetermined thing, but we cannot unravel its intended meaning, except by luck, and even then, there is no way to know that the lucky guess was correct, because it could mean anything that would fit against its length, as I wrote earlier.

      The logic that you and I use, as expressed by Aristotle, is complex. The rules of inference are ordered and detailed in a complex way that cannot be reduced to the simplicity of a random number, which yet contains them if it is long enough, as I described. I earlier described how 2+2 could easily be made equal to 3 as shown by video games running a sequence that displays such things on a screen (ask me if this was somewhere else that I discussed it). With the infinite random sequence, an image (only) of God, these things are written an infinite number of times. Any finite part of it that is long enough, running on a computer, could always show our logic expressed as we know it. It could also always show the rules incorrectly expressed. That is because the predetermined meaning that could be anything intended, in the image, is not open to us and the XOR process shows that no specific random sequence matters. It's all in there somewhere and the computer can show anything you can imagine (now I will include moving images). It could show that the world runs exactly as our sight and sound senses tell us it runs except that if you walk 500 steps without stopping you step on the tines of a rake that suddenly appears and it pops up and gives you a good whack on the head and then disappears. Yet for some reason, people mentally (only) start to count their steps, they do not know why they are doing it, and they forget where they are in their count long before they reach 500. Then after 500 - whack!

      Logic in this computable world would have to be different from the logic we love and know in order to account for these abnormal (in our world) mental phenomena. God knows this idea, but is not limited by it. If you don't like it, you can always ignore this computable meaning and only pay attention to the one you like. It's in there too but so are great numbers of other computable meanings.

      Something that suggests this is the arrangement of the grains of sand on a beach washed by winds, waves, and disturbed by animals, including humans with their various activities, motorised or not, disturbed by their nuclear activity, etc. Now look at the arrangement of the grains as they change for a few days and then try to articulate something in the spirit of science as we know it that will allow you to accurately predict the arrangement of the grains into the future. I speak not here of the lack of sufficient information. I speak of the impossibility of knowing what agents with free will will do that will convert their mental phenomena into tangible acts.

      I think this is enough for now. I need some guidance from you, and I am posting this with very little editing because I have to get some sleep.

      Tom Cohoe

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    43. Tom

      "The rules of inference are ordered and detailed in a complex way that cannot be reduced to the simplicity of a random number, which yet contains them if it is long enough, as I described."

      I am not sure I understand this. If a random number contains it if it's long enough then it obviously can be reduced to a random number. Maybe you mean that human beings cannot reduce it to a random number, which may be true or not, but i do not see the relevance.
      Nor do I see the relevance of "the impossibility of knowing what agents with free will will do that will convert their mental phenomena into tangible acts."
      That may indeed be impossible, at least in some cases, but how does it matter for our current discussion which is about absolute simplicity, not about predictability?

      Delete
    44. @Walter

      You are only different after the decision, not before. The decision is itself a self-determination to a possibility. The self-determination does not exist until actually willed. Hence why it is free. We can conceive different outcomes because the determination is not there until it is there; there is a real sense in which the agent creates the determination. This is the reason I emphasized simultaneous agent causation as well as equivocal causation. Event causation gets you a vicious regress or no real decision at all.

      As far as "randomness" goes, that would only hold if you assume the outcomes already have some nascent individually determinate reality that are coin flipped between, which is not the case here; moreover the possibilities considered altogether can also be viewed as a region that an agent's individual determinations are bounded by.

      Further, a distribution of an agent's decisions does not tell you by what means they come about. Heads on a coin flip is not determined by P(H)=0.5. It's determined by the physics of an actual flip; P(H) tends to 0.5 given the symmetry of a coin.

      With respect to an agent, given their beliefs and their character you can have a rough idea of how they will act; but that would just constitute the boundaries of decisions, not the actual act of self-determination itself.

      The relevance to divine simplicity is quite clear since this issue is integral to analogously understanding God's will and freedom in relation to modal collapse.

      @JoeD

      The objection begs the question. The choice does not exist in the agent somehow that is then univocally transmitted into the outcome, which is what the objection requires.

      The choice is in fact created in a certain sense and reflects a way the agent can self determine. Prior to the choice there is nothing and no self-determination. There is no contrastive otherwise possible here. Hence the actual free willing is sufficient to explain the choice because it is coincident with the choice. Self-determination is something like marking off a number in a continuous region, not picking a stone out of a discrete pile of stones. The determination and the decision are one in the same thing, not two events, and so the sui generis willings are relevantly explanatory.

      Delete
    45. Correction:
      @Walter

      I do not think my latest follow up really got to what you are asking for. I will post a more focused reply later.

      Delete
    46. @Anon How would this respond to the objection that if the choice itself is self-explaining or self-determined to the exclusion of other possibilities, it thereby automatically means you couldn't have made a different choice, because the choice that was made excludes other options?

      I guess this begs the question by assuming that sufficiency of explanation entails determination, so that sufficient explanation which COULD've been otherwise is assumed to be false.

      Delete
    47. Anonymous

      No, I am different "simultaneously" with the decision. And that's all that matters, because I can be different but God can't. QED.

      Delete
    48. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      I am not able to say much now because we have an apparently frozen septic field and brown water in our basement. We may even have to move into a hotel for a while.

      "If a random number contains it if it's long enough then it obviously can be reduced to a random number."

      If you regard it as nothing but a random sequence, sure, it's nothing but a random sequence. But regarded as a model or image of a mind, it's more than that. Regarded as a simple image of God, it is hidden from us, it contains everything expressible, finite or infinite, within the limits of the model (e.g., it is not a sequence of real numbers, etc.), and it is indeterminate so that a human mind may or may not find something in it as the XOR process shows. You should regard computation to a computer's output devices similarly as a model of a human mind as impacted by the sequence.

      By "indeterminate" I mean something _like_ that it is not a specific random sequence but something _like_ that it is all of them superimposed. The XOR process and the discussion about how _predetermined_ meaning could be anything even though the sequence is random illustrates that. You see, it is not the specificity of a particular sequence that matters. It is that it is random. The randomness is not a bug. It is a feature of the model.

      A random sequence can be generated by a physical process according to quantum physics, at least a finite random sequence can, but as the output of an observed nuclear decay interval sequence or something like that, it is indeed just a random sequence with no further meaning. That process just shows that there is such a thing as what we can call a random sequence.

      Mathematicians find the idea hard or impossible even to define from pure mathematical ideas. A definition is a rule and a rule defeats randomness. As a _model_ of a real mind, however, the model mind's process as a non-specified random sequence imbues it with meaning. I can't say that the model is a specific observed nuclear decay interval sequence, but the XOR process shows how such a non-specific number could work. Nuclear decay intervals cannot generate infinite random sequences either. I just have to assume the existence of infinite random sequences.

      "Nor do I see the relevance of 'the impossibility of knowing what agents with free will will do that will convert their mental phenomena into tangible acts.'"

      Forget that paragraph. It is not really part of the model. I was trying to show a similarity with Professor Feser's article on Davies' book. I didn't even know whether it would be helpful or just more confusing to add it.

      "how does it matter for our current discussion which is about absolute simplicity"

      I guess it doesn't.

      Thanks for your response. You are helping me to express this. Without feedback, that would be almost impossible.

      Tom Cohoe

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    49. Tom

      I hope everything will work out fine in your home.

      Delete
    50. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      Thanks Walter. It's not quite as bad as we first thought. We'll have everything fixed up soon, except for a pump to the septic field that a professional will have to fix, but by careful use of our water, it shouldn't happen again.

      Tom Cohoe

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    51. @ Walter Van den Acker,

      I should make clear that where I said "I guess it doesn't" I was referring only to the paragraph that began with "Something that suggests this", not what was above it.

      Tom Cohoe

      Delete
  18. Are there good treatments of the relation between divine simplicity and the essence-energies distinction? I do see some eastern orthodox thinkers comment on it but usually to argue against the thomist version of divine simplicity, so someone who do explain how both go together would be very interesting.

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  19. God's act of creation is God's very essence. That's why creation is a mistery we can not fully grasp. But I think we can show that this doctrine is coherent - or, at least, we can show that the arguments against this doctrine fail.

    God has but one act of will - the act by which God wills himself. And God wills everything in the act of willing himself. This Divine Act is the same in every possible world. However, just as a point can be considered as the maximal or the minimum point of different parabolas, or the zero of many different lines, God's Will can be considered as the source of different worlds. His act of Will is really the same, but virtually distinct across possible worlds.

    In fact, Saint Thomas says in the Summa contra Gentiles that sometimes a causa has a non-necessary relation with its effects. During the Middle Ages, of course, he was not aware of any probabilistic events - intrinsically probabilistic, I mean, like Quantum Mechanics. But his answer has this deep insight: a cause may produce its effects, not out of necessity, but randomly or because of a free choice.

    The argument against Divine Simplicity shifts, at this point, towards intentional directedness. But here I think the argument presupposes an anthropomorphic conception of Divine Choice. We do not know anything about God's psychological life. We can not affirm nor deny the possibility of choosing different things in the same Divine Act.

    A final observation: English is not my first language. I hope my text is clear and understandable, despite some mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. >> We can not affirm nor deny the possibility of choosing different things in the same Divine Act.<<

      Doesn’t that mean that, for all we know, God may not have been able to choose differently? If so, isn’t that a problem?

      Pat

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  20. Respectfully, the discussion here has been significantly advanced by Schmid and others beyond what’s covered in this post. I know Dr Feser has declined interviews with Schmid a few times, but it seems like a good idea to to engage in a live discussion

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    Replies
    1. @Anonymous, I'm not impressed by Schmid's arguments. He's the kind of guy that will tell you how a watch is made when you ask him what time it is. So, I'm not asking you for a rundown of what you think is impressive, but I'd like to know just one thing he argues that you think legitimately undermines divine simplicity. And please don't offer his critiques of the Trinity because I am not a trinitarian.

      Delete
    2. @Bill

      What was your philosophical argument/issue against the Trinity again?

      Delete
    3. @RunDec

      It is my contention that the Doctrine of the Trinity runs afoul of the law of noncontradiction in all its variants. I argue that the real distinction of the persons cannot avoid composition in the divine essence, and all efforts to rectify the contradiction are either unsuccessful or extend to tritheism.

      Since that is not the topic of this thread, I won’t take the matter further. I explicate my reasons in much more detail in other threads. Suffice it to say at this point that I’m fully convinced of the correctness of divine simplicity and the full deity of Jesus (I’m a modalist). That’s why I’m not interested in Anonymous’ raising the Trinity as an example of Schmid’s criticisms of simplicity. However, I guess he isn’t interested in providing anything because he hasn’t replied here.

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    4. If Bill is the guy i'am thinking about, it has to do with divine simplicity.

      Delete
    5. "Since that is not the topic of this thread, I won’t take the matter further."

      A pity, I wish you could explain it further so I could analyze it.

      I don't care about dogmas much (I am fully convinced of both classical theism and open theism for instance: I think foreknowledge of free acts is impossible) so I'm open to these arguments. I just find the Trinity particularly difficult to think about.

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    6. @RunDec

      Ed has strict rules about posting off-topic, else I wouldn't mind discussing it here. Perhaps on the next open thread or when Ed talks about it again.

      Delete
  21. Schmid? Based on a quick word search for 'Schmid' it appears he hasn't contributed to the discussion here at all, never mind "significantly advancing" it. A search for 'Anonymous' on the other hand returns 24 hits, so it seems that Anonymous has significantly contributed to the discussion (so to speak), but of course whether Anonymous (with the assistance of his essential property, Anonymity) has "significantly advanced" the discussion here would seem to remain an open question. (And I notice, to complicate (or simplify?) matters further, that Anonymous is frequently a.k.a. 'Tom Cohoe' (12 hits).)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Joe Schmid, and I didn’t that he has posted here; I meant he has advanced discussion on the ideas discussed here. And I’m not that Tom guy.

      Delete
    2. Wouldn't it be a good idea if each "anonymous" wrote a "signature" so that we could distinguish between the various "anonymouses".
      Tom Cohoe does this, so why can't the others?
      It doesn't have to be your real name, an alias would do.

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    3. Schmid indeed has a way out of the modal collapse objection, but it comes at a dear cost for (classical) Christianity.

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    4. @Walter, as we've previously discussed, one can easily avoid modal collapse without any cost to classical Christianity.

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    5. @Bill have you read Schmid’s recent stuff on divine simplicity? He’s worth taking seriously imo

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    6. @Anonymous

      Can you point me to one of them? The stuff I've read from him so far doesn't impress me.

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    7. @Bill here are two Schmid papers:

      1. https://philarchive.org/rec/SCHCTA-28

      2.
      https://philarchive.org/rec/SCHTFD-5

      — Pat

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    8. @Anonymous, Schmid’s first paper is actually an explication of Mullins’ critique of simplicity via God’s inability to create without a reason. Mullins appears to think authoritatively on the workings of the divine mind. But, he knows or should know that the very term rational is an extremely limited label to describe something analogous to God. Schmid explains:

      God’s act of will is based on that self-same intrinsic goodness that is identical to God. This seems to be a far cry from a reason for creating, let alone a reason for creating this particular universe (as opposed to some other possible universe).

      This just strikes me as odd. Schmid and Mullins seem to argue that God’s reasoning in some way parallels ours, but we have not the slightest clue how the mind of God works. If the arguments for divine impassibility are successful, then God is impassible regardless our inability to figure out how simplicity can be maintained when we consider creation. If the DDI is false, then arguments should be provided to show the inferential mistakes therein.

      Moreover, Mullins’ “proposals” are nothing but finite attempts at figuring out how creation is compatible with “reason.” And since Mullins cannot come up with a good reason for creation, DDI (the doctrine of divine impassibility) must be false. But this of course does not follow. It’s akin to arguments for the logical Problem of Evil. The fact that we cannot figure out a good reason for evil does not mean that one doesn’t exist. So long as it is logically possible that there is a morally justifiable reason for allowing evil, then evil cannot be used as evidence against God. And this also works the other way with transcendental arguments for God. The fact that God is the best explanation for rationality does not mean, in itself, that God exists. Spontaneous generation was at one the time the “best” explanation for the appearance of worms in rotting meat, but we discovered that it was neither best nor true. Thus, our apparent inability to come up with a reason for creation that is consistent with DDI does not mean that one doesn’t exist. Mullins should stick with attacking the arguments for DDI instead of engaging in vain attempts at understanding the divine mind.

      I realize that this smacks of unprincipled mysterianism, but it’s just the opposite. An unsuccessful argument cannot be held together by an appeal to mystery. That would be unprincipled. But if an argument is sound, we cannot reasonably discard it based on our inability to figure out some of its consequences. For example, I believe the arguments for creatio ex nihilo are convincing, but I don’t have a sweet clue how God did it. There are times when I find it an interesting mental exercise, but at the end of the road I’m always baffled. That doesn’t shake my confidence in the legitimacy of the argument; it just shows the limitation of my knowledge. Finite minds cannot comprehend an infinite mind, so it’s pointless to try. Likewise, I’m perfectly happy with the mystery of creation because the arguments for simplicity are solid.

      I haven’t read the other paper, but I hope to as time permits.

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    9. @Anonymous,

      In addition to the above objections, Schmid’s extension of Mullins’ argument doesn’t work either. Schmid proposes the intuitive idea that reason itself makes one who utilizes it dependent, and if God has a reason for doing something, that makes God dependent in some fashion. But this of course reduces God’s internal reason to something less than or other than God, and that is something a classical theist, as I understand it, will not accept. God is reason and God is knowledge. He is the reason for creation, so if there is a “dependence,” then God is “dependent” upon Himself. This is hardly a defeater for either the DDI or the DDS.

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    10. @Anonymous, your second paper is Schmid's take on the fruitful death of modal collapse arguments. I read it a while ago and find it unpersuasive as well. A commentator by the name of Brandon, who often posts here, has a nice response to it HERE. Please also see the links in said reply for further analysis.

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    11. @Bill, thank you for your time and replies. It means a lot that you actually read the articles. Maybe we should put *you* against Schmid in a live video. He’s written and said more than the above (counter counter counter replies etc), and although I think he sometimes argues for the sake of arguing, he also has a huge influence on people— for better or worse.

      Either way, thank you again!

      — Pat

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    12. @Anonymous (Pat)

      If Schmid wants genuine interaction, he's got to quit this penchant of his for writing War and Peace every time his fingers hit the keyboard. I know that he wants to cover his bases, but he needs to remember to stay focused. Going on tangent after tangent is wholly unnecessary.

      Yes, he's gained quite a following, and I've wondered at that. Contrary to what he may think, Thomism is formidable, and many atheists won't take the time to learn it (hence, they lack the tools to properly debate the matter). To his credit, Schmid has taken the time to learn some fundamentals, but he still makes critical errors which, in my view, derails his critiques.

      Perhaps that's why Feser's not bothering with him. If Schmid had better arguments, I'm certain Ed might take the time to spar with him. As it stands so far, there are bigger fish to fry.

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  22. Dr. McPike
    Excellent dissertation
    https://ruor.uottawa.ca/bitstream/10393/32867/5/McPike_David_Roderick_2015_thesis.pdf

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  23. Walter, yes, that’s what I intended but failed to say. Schmid has made some interesting rejoinders against the internal coherence of divine simplicity.

    I think the arguments FOR simplicity are good. So it’s an interesting situation.

    — Pat

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  24. Saint Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest defenders of divine personalism, as opposed to the anthropomorphic approach. As he pointed out, a non-personal God would not be God at all.

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