Divine willing

A correspondent asked me how a simple God can choose. I've thought much about this, never quite happy with what I have to say. I am still not happy (nor is it surprising if "how God functions" is beyond us!) but the following helps me a little.

Suppose I am choosing between making a brownie or a smoothie, and end up making a smoothie. Then there are four stages with each stage causing the next:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and any other options).

2. An internal intention for a smoothie.

3. Physical movements.

4. Output: smoothie!

At Stage 1, I am still open between brownie and smoothie. Starting with Stage 2, I am internally set on the smoothie, and at that point I become morally responsible for setting myself on the smoothie.

Now one great thing about God’s power is that God doesn’t need means: he can produce effects directly.

In particular, God will omit stage 3: he doesn’t need moving limbs (nor anything else beyond himself) to produce the smoothie in the way that I need them.

Now suppose we apply perfect being theology to God. It’s a perfection of power not to need means. But stage 3 is not the only means in the above story: stage 2 is also a means. If God really doesn’t need means, then stage 2 will also be omitted in God, and we will have the two (non-temporal) stage production:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and infinitely many other options).

2. Output: smoothie!

In particular, nowhere in this account is there an internal intention. It’s not needed: God acts directly on the external world.

We might ask: How does God know that he intends to create a smoothie? I think it’s by direct observation of the output, stage B in the divine case. (And God’s knowledge of contingencies is extrinsically grounded in the contingencies.)

If that sounds wrong, let’s ask how we know what we intend. Sometimes we know what we intend by introspection: by observing the internal intention of stage 2. But not always. Sometimes stage 2 is not conscious—we deliberate, we presumably form an internal intention but we are not directly aware of it, and then we act. When we deliberate whether to do something minor like whether to lift the left or the right hand, sometimes the first thing we are aware of is not an internal intention or specific act of will, but the movement of the hand itself. Thus, even in us, knowledge of our intentions is sometimes read off from stage 3.

Moreover, in some cases, for us, stage 3 is not distinct from stage 4. For we have bodies that we move, and sometimes—as in the hand-lift case—the output is the same as the physical movements. In some such cases, then direct knowledge of the merges stages 3 and 4 is how we know our own intention. There may even be rare cases where stage 3 and stage 4 are distinct, but in our consciousness, the knowledge of stage 4 comes first. Suppose I am deliberating whether to press the space-bar or the enter key in response to the computer saying “Press any key”. I choose to press the space-bar. It may well be that in the order of consciousness, I first feel the impact of my finger on the keyboard, then I discern the subtler kinesthetic sensation of my finger having moved through the air, and then only then do I realize what key I intended to press. I don’t know if this is how it happens—it’s too fast to be confident of phenomenology—but it seems like an intelligible possibility.

In any case, there is nothing absurd about knowing an intention by direct observation of the output.

While writing the above, it occurred to me that perhaps we shouldn’t be all that confident that we always have a stage 2. In the cases where our knowledge of what we intend comes from knowledge of stage 3 or 4, and we do not have direct conscious access to an internal act of intention, the internal act of intention is a mere theoretical posit. Perhaps that theoretical posit is correct, but perhaps it is not. If it is not, then one can intend a specific output without having an internal specified act of intention.

Possible futures

Given a time t and a world w, possible or not, say that w is t-possible if and only if there is a possible world w_t that matches w in all atemporal respects as well as with respect to all that happens up to and including time t. For instance, a world just like ours but where in 2027 a square circle appears is 2026-possible but not 2028-possible.

Here is an interesting and initially plausible metaphysical thesis:

1. The world w is possible iff it is t-possible for every finite time t.

But (1) seems false. For imagine this:

2. On the first day of creation God creates you and promises you that on some future
   day a butterfly will be created ex nihilo. God never makes any other promises. God never makes butterflies. And nothing else relevant happens.

I assume God’s promises are unbreakable. The world described by (2) seems to be t-possible for every finite time t. For the fact that no butterfly has come into existence by time t does not falsify God’s promise that one day a butterfly will be created. But of course the world described by (2) is impossible.

(It’s interesting that I can’t think of a non-theistic counterexample to (1).)

So what? Well, here is one applicaiton. Amy Seymour in a nice paper responding to an argument of mine writes about the following proposition about situation where there are infinitely many coin tosses in heaven, one per day:

3. After every heads result, there is another heads result.

She says: “The open futurist can affirm that this propositional content has a nearly certain general probability because almost every possible future is one in which this occurs.” But in doing so, Seymour is helping herself to the idea of a “possible future”, and that is a problematic idea for an open futurist. Intuitively:

4. A possible future is one such that it is possible that it is true that it obtains.

But the open futurist cannot say that, since in the case of contingent futures, there can be no truth about its obtaining. The next attempt at accounting for a possible future may be to say:

5. A future is possible provided it will be true that it is possible that it obtains.

But that doesn’t work, either, since any future with infinitely many coin tosses (spaced out one per day) is such that at any time in the future, it is still not true that it is possible that it obtains, since its obtaining still depends on the then-still-future coin tosses. The last option I can think of is:

6. A future is possible provided that for every future time t it is t-possible.

But that fails for exactly the same reason that the t-possibility of worlds story fails.

Here is one way out: Deny classical theism, say that God is in time, and insist that God has to act at t in order to create something ex nihilo at t. But God, being perfect, can’t make a promise unless he has a way of ensuring the promise to come true. But how can God make sure that he will one day create the butterfly? After all, on any future day, God is free not to create it then. Now, if God promised to create a butterfly by some specific date, then God could be sure that he would follow through, since if he hadn’t done so prior to the specified date, he would be morally obligated to do so on that day, and being perfect he would do so. So since God can’t ensure the promise will come true, he can’t make the promise. (Couldn’t God resolve to create the butterfly on some specific day? On non-classical theism, maybe yes, but the act of resolving violates the clause “nothing else relevant happens” in (2).)

This way out doesn’t work for classical theism, where God is timeless and simple. For given timelessness, God can timelessly issue the promise and “simultaneously” timelessly make a butterfly appear on (say) day 18, without God being intrinsically any different for it. So I think the classical theist has reason to deny (1), and hence has no account of “possible futures” that is compatible with open futurism, and thus probably has to deny open futurism. Which is unsurprising—most classical theists do deny open futurism.

More on God causing infinite regresses

In my previous two posts I focused on the difficulty of God creating an infinite causal regress of indeterministic causes as part of an argument from theism to causal finitism. In this post, I want to drop the indeterministic assumption.

Suppose God creates a backwards infinite causal regress of (say) chickens, where each chicken is caused by parent chickens, the parent chickens by grandparent chickens, and so on. Now, I take it that the classical theist tradition is right that no creaturely causation can function without divine cooperation. Thus, every case where a chicken is caused by parent chickens is a case of divine cooperation.

Could God’s creative role here be limited to divine cooperation? This is absurd. For then God would be creating chickens by cooperating with chickens!

So what else is there? One doubtless correct thing to say is this: God also sustains each chicken between its first moment of life and its time of death. But this sustenance doesn’t seem to solve the problem, because the sustenance is not productive of the chickens—it is what keeps each chicken in existence after it has come on the scene. So while there is sustenance, it isn’t enough. God cannot create chickens by cooperating with chickens and by sustaining them.

Thus God needs to have some special creative role in the production of at least some of the chickens, fulfilling a task over and beyond cooperation and sustenance. Furthermore, this special task must be done by God in the case of an infinite number of the chickens, since otherwise there would be a time before which that task was not fulfilled—and yet God created infinitely the chickens before that time, too, since we’re assuming an infinite regress of chickens.

What happens in these cases? One might say is that in these special cases, God doesn’t cooperate with the parent chickens. But since no creaturely causation happens without divine cooperation, in these cases the parent chickens don’t produce their offspring, which contradicts our assumption of the chickens forming a causal regress. So that won’t do.

So in these cases, we seem to have two things happening: divine cooperation with chicken reproduction and divine creation of the chicken. Since divine cooperation with chicken reproduction is sufficient to produce the offspring, and divine creation of the chicken is also sufficient, it follows that in these cases we have causal overdetermination.

Now, we have some problems. First, does this overdetermination happen in all cases of chicken reproduction or only in some? It doesn’t need to happen in all of them, since it is overdetermination after all. But if it happens only in some, then it is puzzling to ask how God chooses which cases he overdetermines and which he does not.

Second, when there is overdetermination, the overdetermination is not needed for the effect. So it seems that if God’s additional role is that of overdetermining the outcome, that role is an unnecessary role, and the chickens could be produced by mere divine cooperation, which we saw is absurd. This isn’t perhaps the strongest of arguments. One might say that while in each particular case the overdetermining divine creative action is not needed, it is needed that it occur in some (indeed, infinitely many) cases.

Third, just as it is obviously absurd if God creates chickens merely by cooperating with chickens, it seems problematic, and perhaps absurd, that God creates chickens merely by cooperating with chickens and overdetermining that cooperation.

Famously, Aquinas thinks that God could have created an infinite regress of fathers and sons, and hence presumably of chickens as well. At this point, I can think of only one plausible way of getting Aquinas out of the above arguments, and it’s not a very attractive way. Instead of saying that God cooperates with the production of offspring, we can say that occasionalism holds in every case of substantial causation, that all causation of one substance’s existence by another is a case of direct divine non-cooperative causation, with the creaturely causation perhaps only limited to the transmission of accidents. Like all occasionalism, an occasionalism about substance causation is unappealing philosophically and theologically.

Qualitative haecceities

A haecceity H of x is a property of an entity such that necessarily x exists if and only if x instantiates H.

Haecceities are normally thought of as non-qualitative properties. But one could also have qualitative haecceities. Of course, if an entity has a qualitative haecceity then it cannot be duplicated, so one can only suppose that everything has a qualitative haecceity provided one is willing to agree with Leibniz’s Identity of Indiscernibles.

I am personally drawn to the idea that everything does have a qualitative haecceity, and specifically that the qualitative haecceity of x encapsulates x’s qualitative causal history: a complete qualitative description of x’s explanatorily initial state and of all of its causal antecedents. One might call such properties “qualitative origins”. The view that every entity has a qualitative origin is a haecceity is a particularly strong version of the essentiality of origins: everything in an entity’s causal history is essential to it, and the causal history is sufficient for the entity’s existence.

I suppose the main reason not to accept this view is that it implies that two distinct objects couldn’t have the same qualitative origin, but it seems possible that God could create two objects ex nihilo with the same qualitative initial state Q. I am not so sure, though. How would God do that? “Let there be two things satisfying Q?” But this is too indeterminate (I disagree with van Inwagen’s idea that God can issue indeterminate decrees). If there can be two, there can be three, so God would have to specify which two things satisfying Q to create. But that would require a way of securing numerical reference to specific individuals prior to their creation, and that in turn would require haecceities, in this case non-qualitative haecceities. So the objection to the view requires non-qualitative haecceities.

But what started us on this objection was the thought that God could say “Let there be two things satisfying Q.” But if God could say that, why couldn’t he say “Let there be two things satisfying H”, where H is a non-qualitative haecceity? I suppose one will say that this is nonsense, because it is nonsense to suppose two things share a non-qualitative haecceity. But isn’t there a double-standard here? If it is nonsense to suppose two things share a non-qualitative haecceity, why can’t it be nonsense to suppose two things share a qualitative haecceity? It seems that “what does the explaining” of why two things can’t share a non-qualitative haecceity is the obscurity of non-qualitative haecceities, and that’s not really an explanation.

So perhaps we can just say: Having a distinct qualitative origin is what it is to be a thing, and it is impossible for two things to share one. This does indeed restrict the space of possible worlds. No exactly similar iron spheres or anything like that. That’s admittedly a little counterintuitive. But on the other hand, we have a lovely explanation of intra- and inter-world identity of objects, as well as a reduction of de re modality to de dicto, all without the mystery of non-qualitative haecceities. Plus we have Leibniz’s zero/one picture of the world on which all of reality is described by zeroes and ones: we put a zero beside an uninstantiated qualitative haecceity and a one besides an initiated one, and then that tells us everything that exists. This is all very appealing to me.

Ontology as a contingent science

Consider major dividing lines in ontology, such as between trope theory and Platonism. Assume theism. Then all possibilities for everything other than God are grounded in God.

If God is ontologically like us, and in particular not simple, then it is reasonable to think that the correct ontological theory is necessarily determined by God’s nature. For instance, if God has tropes, then necessarily trope theory holds for creatures. If God participates in distinct Platonic forms like Divinity and Wisdom, then necessarily Platonism holds for creatures.

But the orthodox view (at least in Christianity and Judaism) is that God is absolutely simple, and predication works for God very differently from how it works for us. In light of this, why should we think that God had to create a tropist world rather than a Platonic one, or a Platonic one rather than a tropist one? Neither seems more or less suited to being created by God. It seems natural, in light of the radical difference between God and creatures, to think that God could create either kind of world.

If so, then many ontological questions seem to become contingent. And that’s surprising and counterintuitive.

Well, maybe. But I think there is still a way—perhaps not fully satisfactory—of bringing some of these questions back to the realm of necessity. Our language is tied to our reality. Suppose that we live in a tropist world. It seems that the correct account of predication is then a tropist one: A creature is wise if and only if it has a wisdom trope. A Platonic world has no wisdom tropes, and hence no wise creatures. Indeed, nothing can be predicated of any creature in it. What might be going on in the Platonic world is that there are things there that are structurally analogous wise things, or to predication. We can now understand our words “wise” and “predicated” narrowly, in the way they apply to creatures in our world, or we can understand them broadly as including anything structurally analogous to these meanings. If we understand them narrowly, then it is correct to say that “Nothing in the Platonist world is wise” and “Nothing is correctly predicated of anything in the Platonist world.” But in the wide, analogical sense, there are wise things and there is predication in the Platonist world. Note, too, that even in our world it is correct to say “God is wise” and “Something is correctly predicated of God” only in the wide senses of the terms.

On this account, necessity returns to ontology—when we understand things narrowly. But the pretensions of ontology should be chastened by realizing that God could have made a radically different world.

And maybe there is an advantage to this contingentism. Our reasoning in ontology is always somewhat driven by principles of parsimony. But while one can understand why parsimony is appropriately pursued in study of the contingent—for God can be expected to create the contingent parsimoniously, both for aesthetic reasons and to fit reality to our understanding—I have always been mystified why it is appropriately pursued in the study of the necessary. But if ontology is largely a matter of divine creative choice, then parsimony is to be sought in ontological theories just as in physical ones, and with the same theological justification.

The above sounds plausible. But I have a hard time believing in ontology as a contingent science.

Divine temporalism once again

I’m thinking about my recent argument against divine temporalism, the idea that God has no timeless existence but is instead in time, and time extends infinitely pastwards.

Here’s perhaps a simple way to make my argument go (I am grateful to Dean Zimmerman for suggestions that helped in this reformulation). If infinite time is a central feature of reality, as the temporalist says, then one of the most fundamental things for God to decide about the structure of creation is which of these three is to be true:

1. Nothing gets created.

2. There is creation going infinitely far back in time.

3. There is creation but it doesn’t go infinitely far back in time.

But without backwards causation, a temporal God cannot decide between (2) and (3). For at any given time, it’s already settled whether (2) or (3) is the case.

Now, it seems that the temporalist’s best answer is to deny the possibility of (2). We don’t expect God to choose whether to create square circles, and so if we deny the possibility of (2), God only needs to choose between (1) and (3).

But there are two issues with that. First, creation going infinitely far back in time is the temporalist’s best answer to the Augustinian question of why God waited as long as he did before creating—on this answer (admittedly contrary to Christian doctrine), God didn’t wait.

Second, and perhaps more seriously, there is the question of justifying the claim that (2) is impossible. There are four reasons in the literature for thinking that in fact creation has a finite past:

1. Big Bang cosmology

2. Arguments against actual infinity

3. Arguments against traversing an actually infinite time

4. Causal finitism.

None of these allow the temporalist to justify the impossibility of creation going infinitely far back in time. Big Bang cosmology is contingent, and does not establish impossibility. And if the arguments (ii) and (iii)
are good reasons for rejecting an infinite past of creation, they are also good reasons for rejecting divine temporalism, since divine temporalism would require God to have lived through an actually infinite time. And (iv) also seems to rule out divine temporalism. For suppose that in fact creation follows an infinite number of days without creation. During that infinite number of days without creation, on any day we could ask why nothing exists. And the answer is that God didn’t decide to create anything. So the emptiness of the empty day causally depends on God’s infinitely many decisions in days past not to start creating yet, contrary to causal finitism.

Arguing for divine simplicity

I want to defend this argument:

1. If God is not simple, then some of God’s parts are creatures.

2. If some of the parts of x are creatures, then x is partly a creature.

3. God is not even partly a creature.

4. So, God is simple.

I think (2) is very plausible. Premise (3) follows from the transcedence of God.

That leaves premise (1) to argue for. Here is one argument:

5. If God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

6. Anything that is not God is a creature.

7. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is a creature.

Premise (5) is true by definition of “simple”. Premise (6) follows from the doctrine of creation: God creates everything other than God.

But perhaps one doesn’t believe the full doctrine of creation, but only thinks that contingent things are created. I think we can still argue as follows:

8. If God is not simple, then God has contingent parts that are not God.

9. Anything contingent that is not God is a creature.

10. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

Why think (8) is true? Well, let’s think about the motivations for denying divine simplicity. The best reasons to deny divine simplicity are considerations about God’s contingent intentions or God’s contingent knowledge, and the idea that these have to constitute proper parts of God. But that yields contingent parts of God.

Now, what if one rejects even the weaker doctrine of creation in (9)? Then I can argue as follows:

11. If God is not simple, then God’s contingent thoughts are proper parts of God.

12. God is contingently the cause of each of his contingent thoughts.

13. Anything that God is contingently the cause of is a creature of God.

14. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

Again, the idea behind (11) is that it flows from the best motivations for denying divine simplicity.

Essentially evil organizations

Start with this argument:

1. Everything that exists is God or is created and sustained by God.

2. God does not create and sustain anything essentially evil.

3. The KKK is essentially evil.

4. The KKK is not God.

5. So, the KKK does not exist.

Now we have a choice-point. We could say:

6. If the KKK does not exist, no organization exists.

7. So, no organization exists.

After all, it may seem reasonable to think that the ontology of social groups should not depend on whether the groups are good, neutral or bad.

But I think it’s not unreasonable to deny (6), and to say that the being of a social group is defined by its teleology, and there is no teleology without a good telos. A similar move would allow for a way out of the previous argument.

Two theories of divine conservation

Here are two theories of divine conservation, tendentiously labeled:

• Occasionalist conservation: That a creature that previously existed continues to exist is solely explained by God’s power.

• Concurrentist conservation: That a creature that previously existed continues to exist is explained by God’s power concurring with creaturely causal powers (typically, the creature’s power to continue to exist).

It is usual in classical theism to say that divine conservation is very similar to divine creation. This comparison might seen to favor occasionalist conservation. However, that is not so clear once we realize that classical theism holds that all finite things are created by God, and hence creation itself comes in two varieties:

• Creation ex nihilo: God creates something by the sole exercise of his power.

• Concurrentist creation: God creates things by concurring with a creaturely cause.

Most of the objects familiar to us are the product of concurrentist creation. Thus, an acorn is produced by God in concurrence with an oak tree, and a car inconcurrence with a factory. (The human soul is an exception according to Catholic tradition.)

Because of this, even if we opt for concurrentist conservation, we can still save the comparison between conservation and creation, as long as we remember that often creation is concurrentist creation.

Which of the two theories of conservation should we prefer?

On general principles, I think we have some reason to prefer concurrentist conservation, simply because it preserves the explanatory connections within the natural world better.

However, if we insist on presentism, then we may be stuck with occasionalist conservation, because presentism makes cross-time causal relations problematic.

[Edited Nov. 4 2020 to replace "cooperation" with the more usual term "concurrence".]

Humeans should be (Kenneth-)Pearceans

I have long thought that Humeanism leads to strong inductive scepticism about the future—the thesis that typical inductive generalizations about the future aren’t even more likely than not—roughly because there are a lot more induction-unfriendly worlds with our world’s history than induction-friendly ones.

But this argument assumes that there isn’t some extra-systemic explanation of why we have an induction-friendly physical reality. If there is, then the mere counting of worlds does nothing. Now, standard theism provides such an extra-systemic explanation. But standard theism is incompatible with Humeanism, because God-to-world causation is incompatible with the Humean understanding of causation.

However, it’s occurred to me today that there is a non-standard theism that could furnish the Humean with an escape: Kenneth Pearce has advocated a theism on which God explains the contingent world in a non-causal way.

I don’t know of another option for the Humean in the literature. I know of three candidates for extra-systemic explanations of physical reality:

1. there isn’t one

2. there is one, and it’s theistic

3. there is one, and it’s necessitarian (e.g., Optimalism).

The Humean can’t take the necessitarian way out, because Humeanism is strongly opposed to such necessities. The first option leads to inductive scepticism. That leaves 2. But Humeans cannot accept causal theism. So that leaves them non-causal theism.

Creation and artifacts

Analytic metaphysics is widely thought a dry discipline. I want to show how it could be used to connect with some deeply devotional theological claims.

Here is a valid argument:

1. If artifacts exist, we created them.

2. Only God creates.

3. So, artifacts don’t exist.

This argument suggests that there can be a deeply devotional connection to the arguments of those metaphysicians, like Merricks and van Inwagen, who deny the existence of artifacts.

Here is another devotional line of thought towards this. Some radical theologians say that God doesn’t exist. They do this to emphasize the radical difference between God and creatures. But they do so wrong. The right way to emphasize this difference is to say that we don’t exist. (Recall how God is said to have told St. Catherine of Siena: “I am he who is and you are she who is not.”) Only God exists.

So, the things that God creates don’t exist—at least not in the same sense in which God exists. By analogy, it should be no surprise if the things we make don’t exist—at least not in the same sense that we exist.

Objection 1: We can create organisms in the lab, and organisms surely exist.

Response: Maybe we should say that their life comes from God.

Objection 2: The distinction between God’s creating and our making is sufficiently accounted for by noting that God creates ex nihilo and we make things out of preexistent stuff.

Response: God doesn’t always create ex nihilo. He made Adam out of the dust of the earth. And anyway the more differences we see between God and us, the more God’s transcendence is glorified.

Eleven varieties of contrastive explanation

In connection with free will, quantum mechanics or divine creation it is useful to talk about contrastive explanation. But there is no single generally accepted concept of contrastive explanation, and what one says about these topics varies depending on the chosen concept.

To that end, here is a collection of definitions of contrastive explanation. They all have this form:

• r contrastively explains why p rather than q if and only if r explains why (p and not q) and [insert any additional conditions].

They vary depending on the additional conditions to be inserted. Here are some options for these:

1. No additional conditions.

2. r makes p more likely than q.

3. r cannot explain q.

4. r wouldn’t explain q if q were true instead of p.

5. r wouldn’t explain q as well as it now explains p if q were true instead of p.

6. q wouldn’t be explained by r or by any proposition with r’s actual grounds if q were true instead of p.

7. q wouldn’t be explained by r or by any proposition with r’s actual grounds as well as r now explains p if q were true instead of p.

8. the conjunction of everything explanatorily prior to p makes p more likely than q.

9. r entails (p and not q).

10. r entails the truth of p.

11. r entails the falsity of q.

It is not possible to normally have contrastive explanations of indeterministic free choices or quantum events in senses 9–11, and probably sense 8, but it is possible (with an appropriately metaphysical theory of free choice or quantum events) in senses 1-7. As for the case of contingent divine creative decision, things depend on divine simplicity. Without divine simplicity, contrastive explanations are possible in senses 1–7. Interestingly, if divine simplicity is true, then it is not possible to have contrastive explanations of contingent divine creative decisions in senses 6 or 7.

In what I said above, I assumed that the explanandum cannot be a part of the explanans. If following Peter Railton one drops this condition, then contrastive explanation of all three phenomena (with or without divine simplicity) becomes possible in all the senses.

Lesson: When one talks about contrastive explanation, one needs to define one’s terms.

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Christopher Tomaszewski for in-depth discussion that led me to recognize the important difference between 4–5 and 6–7. And the Railton point is basically due to a remark by Yunus Prasetya.

The probability of the universe popping into existence

Consider the hypothesis that contingent reality popped into existence uncaused.

Now, either popping into existence uncaused is astronomically unlikely or not astronomically unlikely.

If it is astronomically unlikely, then we have a very strong Bayesian argument for theism. For then P(contingent reality | no God) is astronomically small while P(contingent reality | God) is at least moderately high.

If uncaused popping into existence is not astronomically unlikely, then there are two main options. The first option is that there is no meaningful probability of such an event. In that case, there is no meaningful probability of Maxwell’s Demon popping into existence for no cause at all in one’s lab. But if Maxwell’s Demon were to pop into existence in one’s lab, then one wouldn’t expect to get the predicted observations. Thus, if there is no meaningful probability of things popping into existence for no cause at all, then there is no meaningful probability of our scientific predictions, and science falls apart. That’s not acceptable.

The other option is that there is a probability, and it’s not astronomically small. But then at every moment of time, it is not astronomically unlikely that an object would causelessly pop into existence. Since there are astronomically many moments of time during a second (perhaps infinitely many, but at least equal to the number of Planck times in a second, i.e., of the order of 10⁴³), it seems we should expect to see lots of objects pop into existence causelessly. And we don’t observe that.

There is lots of technical detail to fix in this argument.

Explanation, grounding and divine simplicity

Here is a plausible principle:

1. If p is partly grounded in q, then p does not explain q.

But the best account of divine simplicity commits one to:

2. That God willed horses to exist is partly grounded in there existing horses.

(For, that God willed horses is a contingent fact. By divine simplicity any contingent fact about God must be partly grounded in realities outside of God. And the only plausible candidate for the reality outside of God here is the fact that there exist horses.)

Therefore:

3. That God willed horses to exist does not explain why there are horses.

This seems very counterintuitive, sufficiently counterintuitive to provide an argument against divine simplicity, or against (1).

But I think one should just accept (3). For even apart from considerations of divine simplicity, it is plausible that God’s will is so strongly efficacious that his willing something just is his making it be so:

4. God’s willing horses to exist just is God’s causing horses to exist.

But in general, even apart from the divine case, x causing y is partly grounded in both x and y, and hence is partly grounded in y. Thus:

5. God’s causing horses to exist is partly grounded in horses existing.

It seems to follow (there are tough issues involving the hyperintensionality of grounding) that:

6. God’s willing horses to exist is partly grounded in horses existing.

In fact, once we understand that God’s (consequently) willing and God’s causing are the same thing, then the paradox in (3) is just very much like:

7. My causing a boomerang to exist does not explain why the boomerang exists.

But we have good reason to accept (7). For when I made a boomerang some years back, that I caused a boomerang to exist was partly grounding in a boomerang existing. (A boomerang might not have eventuated from what I was doing. Instead, I might have been left with a broken piece of wood.) But then by (1), I have to accept (7).

What is unfortunate for me is that for a long time, in print and in speech, I’ve been happy to accept claims like:

8. My causing a boomerang to exist explains why the boomerang exists.

9. God’s willing horses to exist explains why horses exist.

I still find it difficult to deny (8) and (9).

Maybe I should deny (1) instead. But I don’t want to. I am strongly committed to there not being any circles of explanation, even ones involving different kinds of explanation (say, causal and grounding).

Maybe I can save the intuitions behind (8) by saying:

10. My actuating my causal power of boomerang production explains why the boomerang exists.

(Note that my actuating that causal power does not entail a boomerang exists. A causal power can be actuated unsuccessfully.)

And maybe I can save the intuitions behind (9) with:

11. God’s desiring that horses exist explains why horses exist.

(God’s desiring something doesn’t entail that thing’s existing, since God desires every good, and some goods are incompatible with one another.)

Causal powers, imperfection, free will and divine simplicity

Here is a plausible connection between normativity and causal powers:

1. If x has a power to ϕ in C, and x is in C but does not ϕ, then x qua having that power imperfect.

2. x is imperfect simpliciter if x is imperfect qua having ϕ for some ϕ that x has in virtue of its nature.

(I think one can make biconditionals out of these.)

But here is a problem. By omnipotence, God has the power to make reality be such that there are horses and they are all green, and he has the power to make reality be such that there are horses and they are all red. And he has these powers in the same circumstance C, namely that of creation. He exercises only one of these two powers. So it seems that God is imperfect qua having at least one of these powers. But he has these powers in virtue of his omnipotence and hence in virtue of his nature. Hence it seems that God is imperfect simpliciter.

Here is my best solution. Revise 1 to:

3. If x has a power P such that P is a power to ϕ in C, and x is in C but does not successfully exercise P, then x qua having P is imperfect.

This sounds like it is equivalent to 1. After all, this seems like a necessary truth:

4. If P is a power to ϕ in C and x successfully exercises P in C, then x must ϕ.

But actually 4 need not be true. For the same entity, P, could be both a power to ϕ in C and a power to ψ in C. And if so then when the possessor of P ψs in C, that would be a successful exercise of P.

This fits really well with divine simplicity on which all of God’s causal powers are ontologically the same, and indeed are identical to God. Given that, God’s powers are always fulfilled as long as God exercises one of them. (And perhaps even ensuring that God is alone would count as an exercise of God’s creative power.)

Here is another interesting thought. When I exercise free will, I have the power to ϕ and the power to ψ where ϕing and ψing are incompatible. It seems at first sight that one of these powers is unexercised, and hence thus far I am imperfect by 1. But perhaps sometimes the power to ϕ and the power to ψ are ontologically the same entity, either my nature or a single accident of me, in virtue of which entity I can ϕ and I can ψ. If so, then either ϕing or ψing could suffice for perfection qua having that power.

And now here is a very speculative thought. When we choose between right and wrong on earth, maybe the power to choose the right and the power to choose the wrong are distinct entities. Thus, we are imperfect even if we choose the right, for the power to do the wrong is unexercised. However, this sort of imperfection is not found in heaven, because there we lack the power to choose the wrong, due to the perfection of our character. But the same question will still come up in heaven when we choose between two incompatible goods, say reciting a piece of prose or reciting a piece of verse. However, perhaps, our mind will have such a deep internal unity in heaven that our abilities to choose between the various incompatible goods will be grounded in a single entity, and so no matter what we choose, we will thus far be perfect. (Not that I think it is disastrous to admit certain kinds of imperfections in heaven, so perhaps we don’t need recourse to this.)

An argument for theism from certain values

Some things, such as human life, love, the arts and humor, are very valuable. An interesting question to ask is why they are so valuable?

A potential answer is that they have their value because we value (desire, prefer, etc.) them. While some things may be valuable because we value them, neither life, love, the arts nor humor seem to be such. People who fail to value these things is insensitive: they are failing to recognize the great value that is there. (In general, I suspect that nothing of high value has the value it does because we value it: our ability to make things valuable by valuing them is limited to things of low and moderate value.)

A different answer is that these things are necessarily valuable. However, while this may be true, it shifts the explanatory burden to asking why they are necessarily valuable. For simplicity, I’ll thus ignore the necessity answer.

It may be that there are things that are fundamentally valuable, whose value is self-explanatory. Perhaps life and love are like that: maybe there is no more a mystery as to why life or love is valuable than as to why 1=1. Maybe.

But the arts at least do not seem to be like this. It is puzzling why arranging a sequence of typically false sentences into a narrative can make for something with great value. It is puzzling why representing aspects of the world—either of the concrete or the abstract world—in paint on canvas can so often be valuable. The value of the arts is not self-explanatory.

Theism can provide an explanation of this puzzling value: Artistic activity reflects God’s creative activity, and God is the ultimate good. Given theism it is not surprising that the arts are of great value. There is something divine about them.

Humor is, I think, even more puzzling. Humor deflates our pretensions. Why is this so valuable? Here, I think, the theist has a nice answer: We are infinitely less than God, so deflating our pretensions puts us human beings in the right place in reality.

There is much more to be said about arts and humor. The above is meant to be very sketchy. My interest here is not to defend the specific arguments from the value of the arts and humor, but to illustrate arguments from value that appear to be a newish kind of theistic argument.

These arguments are like design arguments in that their focus is on explaining good features of the world. But while design arguments, such as the argument from beauty or the fine-tuning argument, seek an explanation of why various very good features occur, these kinds of value arguments seek an explanation of why certain features are in fact as good as they are.

The moral argument for theism is closely akin. While in the above arguments, one seeks to explain why some things have the degree of value they do, the moral argument can be put as asking for an explanation of why some things (more precisely, some actions) have the kind of value they do, namely deontic value.

Closing remarks

1. Just as in the moral case, there is a natural law story that shifts the argument’s focus without destroying the argument for theism. In the moral case, the natural law story explains why some actions are obligatory by saying that they violate the prescriptions for action in our nature. But one can still ask why there are beings with a nature with these prescriptions and not others. Why is it that, as far as we can tell, there are rational beings whose nature prescribes love for neighbor and none whose nature prescribes hatred for neighbor? Similarly, we can say that humor is highly valuable for us because our nature specifies humor as one of the things that significantly fulfills us. (Variant: Humor is highly valuable for us because it is our nature to highly value it.) But we can still ask why there are rational beings whose nature is fulfilled by the arts and humor, and, as far as we can tell, none whose nature is harmed by the arts or humor. And in both the deontic and non-deontic cases, there is a theistic answer. For instance, God creates rational beings with a nature that calls on them to laugh because any beings that he would create will be infinitely less than God and hence their sensor humor will help put them in the right place, thereby counteracting the self-aggrandizement that reflection on one’s own rationality would otherwise lead to.

2. Just as in the moral case there is a compelling argument from knowledge—theism provides a particularly attractive explanation of how we know moral truths—so too in the value cases there is a similar compelling argument.

Lying as an offense against God

There is a tradition of seeing lying as specifically a sin against God. St Augustine thought that this followed from the identification of God with Truth itself.

Here, I want to offer another option.

Reality = God + creation. A lie misrepresents reality, and hence misrepresents God or creation or both (with the “or both” covering complex cases like a disjunction of a claim about God and a claim about creation). But creation is God’s self-revelation. So, a lie misrepresents either God directly or misrepresents God’s self-revelation or does some combination of these. In general, thus, a lie covers up God’s revelation of himself to us.

I am not offering the above as an argument that lying is always wrong, but as an explanation of one thing that makes lying wrong.

(But it’s interesting that the standard hard case for opponents of lying is one where the above account works particularly well. If you’re hiding innocents from persecutors, then the fact you are deceiving the persecutors about—viz., that a brave person is hiding innocents—is a fact that is actually quite revelative of God.)

Why might God refrain from creating?

Traditional Jewish and Christian theism holds that God didn’t have to create anything at all. But it is puzzling what motive a perfectly good being would have not to create anything. Here’s a cute (I think) answer:

• If (and only if) God doesn’t create anything, then everything is God. And that’s a very valuable state of affairs.

Do God's beliefs cause their objects?

Consider this Thomistic-style doctrine:

1. God’s believing that a contingent entity x exists is the cause of x’s existing.

Let B be God’s believing that I exist. Then, either

2. B exists in all possible worlds

or

3. B exists in all and only the worlds where I exist.

(Formally, there are other options, but they have no plausibility. For instance, it would be crazy to think B exists in some but not all the worlds where I exist, or in some but not all the worlds where I don’t exist.)

Let’s consider (3) first. This, after all, seems the more obvious option. God’s beliefs are necessarily correct, so in worlds where I don’t exist, God doesn’t believe that I exist, and hence B doesn’t exist. Then, B is a contingent being that causes my existing. Now apply the Thomistic principle to this contingent being B. It exists, so God believing that B exists is the cause of B’s existing. Let B₂ be God’s believing that B exists. Since B₂ causes B, B₂ must be distinct from B, as causation cannot be circular. Furthermore, if (3) is the right option in respect of B and me, then an analogue for B₂ and B should hold: B₂ will exist in all and only the worlds where B exists. The argument repeats to generate an infinite regress of divine believings: B_n is God’s believing that B_n − 1 exists and B_n causes B_n − 1. This regress appears vicious.

So, initial appearances aside, (3) is not the way to go.

Let’s consider (2) next. Then B exists in some possible world w₁ where I don’t exist. Now, at w₁, God doesn’t believe that I exist, since necessarily God’s beliefs are correct. This seems to be in contradiction to the claim that B exists at w₁. But it is only in contradiction if it is true at w₁ that B is God’s believing that I exist. But perhaps it’s not! Perhaps (a) the believing B exists at the actual world and at w₁ but with different content, or (b) B exists at w₁ but isn’t a believing at w₁.

Let’s think some more about (2). Let w₂ be a world where only God exists (I am assuming divine simplicity; without divine simplicity, it might be that in any world where God exists, something else exists—viz., a proper part of God). Then by (2), B exists at w₂. But only God exists at w₂. So, God is identical to B at w₂. But identity is necessary. Thus, God is actually identical to B. Moreover, what goes for B surely goes for all of God’s believings. Thus, all of God’s believings are identical with God.

It is no longer very mysterious that God’s believing that I exist is the cause of my existence. For God’s believing that I exist is identical with God, and of course God is the cause of my existence.

The difficulty, however, is with the radical content variation. The numerically same mental act B is actually a believing that I exist, while at w₂ it is a believing that I don’t exist. Furthermore, if truthmaking involves entailment, we can no longer say that B truthmakes that God believes that I exist. For B can exist without God’s believing that I exist.

All this pushes back against (1). But now recall that I only called (1) a “Thomistic-style” doctrine, not a doctrine of St. Thomas. The main apparent source for the doctrine is Summa Theologica I.14.8. But notice some differences between what Aquinas says and (1).

The first is insignificant with respect to my arguments: Thomas talks of knowledge rather than belief. But (1) with knowing in place of believing is just as problematic. Obviously, it can’t be a necessary truth that God knows that I exist, since it’s not a necessary truth that I exist.

The second difference is this. In the Summa, Aquinas doesn’t seem to actually say that God’s knowledge that x exists is the cause of x’s existence. He just says that God’s knowledge is the cause of x’s existence. Perhaps, then, it is God’s knowledge in general, especially including knowledge such necessary truths as that x would have such-and-such nature, that is the cause of x’s existence. If so, then God’s knowledge would be a non-determining cause of things—for it could cause x but does not have it (and, indeed, in those worlds where x does not exist, it does not cause x). This fits well with what Aquinas says in Article 13, Reply 1: “So likewise things known by God are contingent on account of their proximate causes, while the knowledge of God, which is the first cause, is necessary.”

Maybe. I don’t know.

From causal finitism to divine simplicity

If God is not simple, he has infinitely many really distinct features. Moreover infinitely many of these features will be involved in creation, e.g., because there are infinitely many reasons that favor the creation of this world, and for each reason God will plausibly have a distinct feature of being impressed by that reason. But causal finitism (the doctrine that infinitely many things can't come together causally) rules this out. So divine simplicity is true.

Assuming causal finitism, the thing that one might challenge is the claim that infinitely many of God's features are causally efficacious.

There is an even easier argument for divine simplicity based if actual infinites are impossible. For, surely, either (a) God is simple or (b) God has infinitely many really distinct features. If actual infinites are impossible, that rules out (b).