Theism and emotional attitudes to adversity

Here are two three possible emotional attitudes towards great adversity:

1. Judaeo-Christian: hope

2. Stoic: calm

3. Russellian: anger/despair.

Now consider this argument:

1. The appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Judaeo-Christian or Stoic.

2. If naturalism is true, the appropriate attitude towards great adversity is Russellian.

3. So, naturalism is false.

The reason for (1) is the obvious attractiveness of the hopeful-to-calm part of the emotional spectrum as a way of dealing with diversity.

The reason for (2) is that emotions should fit with reality. But as Russell argues, a naturalist reality does not care about us: we came from the nebula and we will go back to the nebula, and the darkness of our life makes Greek tragedy the supreme form of human art. The most we can do shake our fist at the injustice of it all.

Existence

In his famous critique of the ontological argument, Kant said that existence is not a property. Frege and Russell gave a very influential response to Kant (though not framed as such): the existence of an object is not a property of the existent object, but it is a second-order property of an abstract object. Thus, the existence of Biden is the second-order property of being instantiated possessed not by Biden himself but by the abstract object Bidenness.

But now consider this very plausible principle:

1. The existence of an object is explanatorily prior to all the (other) properties of that object.

The parenthetical “other” is included to make (1) acceptable both to Frege-Russell and to “pre-Kantians” who think existence is a property of the existent object.

But combining (1) with the Frege-Russell account leads to an explanatory priority regress:

• Biden’s maleness is posterior to Biden’s existence.

• Biden’s existence is Bidenness’s being instantiated.

• Bidenness’s being instantiated is posterior to Bidenness’s existence.

• Bidenness’s existence is Bidennessness’s being instantiated.

• Bidennessness’s being instantiated is posterior to Bidennessness’s existence.

• Bidennessness’s existence is Bidennessnessness’s being instantiated.

• …

How can we arrest this regress? A natural move is to restrict the Frege-Russell view of existence to contingent entities. Thus, Biden’s existence is the instantiation of Bidenness, but Bidenness is a necessary entity, and its existence is not the instantiation of some further entity. Indeed, perhaps, the pre-Kantian view holds of Bidenness: Bidenness’s existence could just be a property of Bidenness.

Note that if the pre-Kantian view holds of necessary beings, then Kant’s critique of the ontological argument falls apart, since God is a necessary being.

But let’s think through the pre-Kantian view a little bit. Suppose that x is an object and e is its existence, and suppose e is a property of x. But how can x possess e without already existing prior to having e? (I.e., surely, (1) is true with the parenthetical “other” removed.) There seems to be one possible move here: perhaps x = e. That would be a view on which some objects are identical with their own existence—a view very much like St. Thomas’s, who held that God, and God alone, was identical with his own existence.

So, interestingly, thinking the Frege-Russell view through leads fairly naturally to a view like Thomas’s.

I am attracted to this variant of the Thomistic view:

2. Uncaused objects are identical with their existence.

3. The existence of a caused object is its being caused.

The worry that an object cannot possess a property without “already” existing does not appear pressing when the property in question is being caused.

Moreover, we might even more speculatively add:

4. An object’s being caused is its cause’s causing of it.

On this view, a contingent thing’s existence, like on the Frege-Russell view, is a property of something other than the thing: it is a property of the cause (perhaps an extrinsic property of the cause, when the cause is God, so as not to violate divine simplicity).