Edward Feser's Blog, page 45

A further reply to Glenn Ellmers

At Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers has repliedto my response to his review of my book Aristotle’s Revenge .  He makes two points, neither of them good.
First, Ellmers reiterates his complaint that I am insufficiently attentive to the actual words of Aristotle himself.  He writes: “This where Feser and I part.  He thinks that it is adequate to have some familiarity with ‘the broad Aristotelian tradition’ – a term of seemingly vast elasticity.  I do not.”  Put aside the false assumption that my own “familiarity” is only with the broad Aristotelian tradition rather than with Aristotle himself.  It is certainly true that my book focuses on the former rather than the latter.  So, is this adequate? Well, adequate for what purpose?  If I had been writing a book about Aristotle himself, then I would agree with Ellmers that citing the broad Aristotelian tradition is not sufficient and that I should have emphasized Aristotle’s own texts.  But as I said in my initial response to him, and as any reader of the book knows, that is not what the book is about. 
As Aquinas says in his commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens, ultimately the study of philosophy is not about knowing what people thought, but rather about knowing what is true.  The latter has always been the primary concern of my own work.  Obviously I have a very high regard for thinkers like Aristotle and Aquinas, but I have always been less interested in doing Aristotle and Aquinas exegesis than in expounding and defending what I think they happened to have gotten right.
Hence, what I am concerned with in Aristotle’s Revenge are certain ideas, such as the theory of actuality and potentiality, hylemorphism, and the notion of teleology.  These ideas are historically associated most closely with Aristotle, but lots of later thinkers also had important things to say about them.  But the book is not about those thinkers either.  It is not a book about the history of ideas any more than it is a book about the person Aristotle.  Again, it is a book about the ideas themselves.  In particular, it is a book about whether the ideas are sound, and if so, how they relate to what modern science tells us about the nature of space and time, the nature of matter, the nature of life, and so on. 
Now, in a book that is about the ideas themselvesrather than about specific thinkers or about the history of ideas, it would be tedious and irrelevant to cite a litany of names and works and explain exactly who said what, where and when.  Indeed, it would be counterproductive, because it would only reinforce the widespread false impression that the ideas can only be of interest to students of the history of thought, and have no contemporary relevance.  Noting that they represent “the Aristotelian tradition” thus suffices for the specific purposes of my book.
Really, what’s the big deal?  It isn’t a hard point to grasp.  Once again, Ellmers shows that he is the sort of book reviewer who insists on evaluating a book as if it were about a topic that he is personally interested in and competent to speak about.  And what he is personally interested in and (I guess) competent to speak about is Aristotle exegesis.  Hence he keeps trying to bring the discussion around to that, like the guest you get stuck sitting next to at a dinner party who won’t shut up about some pet topic he is obsessed with.
Ellmers’ other point concerns teleology.  In response to my objection that he has failed to understand the specific notion of teleology that is at issue when discussing basic inorganic causal relations, he says:
Again, who’s view are we talking about?  How is one to respond when there is nothing to grab on to?  As long as Feser himself defines the meaning of this “broadly Aristotelian view,” he will always be correct.  This does not take us very far.
End quote.  Seriously, what is it with Ellmers’ obsession with identifying texts and authors?  I imagine that if you said to him: “Glenn, since all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, it follows that Socrates is mortal.  Isn’t that a sound argument?” he would respond: “Well, I don’t know about that.  Exactly who gave the argument?  We don’t really know if it was Socrates, because he didn’t write anything.  Unless you tell me who said that and where, I don’t have anything to grab on to.”
In reality, of course, the argument is sound, and who gave it when and where is completely irrelevant.  Similarly, the notion of teleology that I was discussing either corresponds to something in reality or it does not, and the arguments for it are either sound or unsound, regardless of who gave them and where and when they gave them.  Ellmers should be focusing on those issues, rather than wasting time looking for scholarly footnotes.
The one thing that Ellmers has to say by way of a substantive response is anti-climatic.  He writes:
The teleology Feser attributes to unformed matter and chemical compounds – a view that finds no support in Aristotle’s writings – “involves nothing more than a cause’s being ‘directed’ or ‘aimed’ toward the generation of a certain kind of effect or range of effects.”  This just means that a cause has an effect.  It is a tautology.  
End quote.  Put aside the irrelevant question of whether Aristotle himself thought of teleology this way.  Put aside also the claim that I attribute this teleology to unformed matter (something I didn’t say).  The “tautology” charge shows just how out of his depth Ellmers is. 
Take any claim of the form “A is the efficient cause of B.”  Some Aristotelians, such as Thomists, hold that the only way to account for why A generates B, specifically (rather than C or D or no effect at all) is to hold that A is inherently directed toward the generation of B.  This entails a kind of necessary connection between A and B.  In this way, efficient causation is, according to the view in question, unintelligible without final causation.  Some recent analytic philosophers have argued for a similar position.  By contrast, philosophers influenced by David Hume deny this.  They hold that there is no directedness in nature, and that the connection between causes and effects is “loose and separate” rather than necessary.
Indeed, other early modern philosophers also rejected the notion of teleology in question, on the grounds that directednesscan (they claimed) only be a feature of minds and not of unconscious inorganic phenomena.  And in fact, even earlier than that, followers of Ockham were questioning the reality of necessary causal connections in nature.  The two sides in this dispute differ over what is entailed by the claim that “a cause has an effect” (to use Ellmers’ phrase).  For one side, this entails teleology and necessary connection, and for the other side it does not.
The point is this.  The dispute over teleology of the kind at issue is substantive.  That’s why there’s a dispute.  The early modern and contemporary philosophers who reject the notion of teleology in question don’t say “Sure, the directedness you’re talking about is real, but that’s just an uninteresting tautological point.”  Rather, they say that it is not real.
Another mark of how substantive the dispute is is the ripple effect it has had on other philosophical issues.  For example, it is the reason why the intentionality of the mental became such a big problem for modern materialism.  If there is no directedness anywhere in the natural world, then how can the mind’s intentionality (its directedness toward an object) be identified with or explained in terms of natural processes?  Again, the reason there is a problem is precisely because materialists don’t say “Sure, there’s directedness in all material processes, but that’s just an uninteresting tautology.”  Rather, they say that there is no directedness in the material world (or that what seemsto be directedness can be analyzed away or reduced to something that involves no directedness).
Here’s another thing.  All of this is discussed in my book.  Which indicates, once again, that Ellmers didn’t read it very carefully, or perhaps simply didn’t understand it.  If he had, he would have realized that the “tautology” charge at best begs the question and at worst simply misses the point.
Ellmers also remarks that “a thoughtful debate about this question would have involved the metaphysical basis of natural right.”  But yet again, this just shows Ellmers’ fixation on trying to tie my book to the issues he personally cares about, even if they are not what the book itself is about.  Is teleology relevant to the question of the metaphysical basis of natural right?  You bet it is.  Is the topic of the metaphysical basis of natural right interesting and important?  You bet it is.
But it is also true that you can say a lot about teleology without getting into that particular application of the concept, and a lot of what you can say about it is interesting and important in its own right.  And it is these other issues that are the subject matter of Aristotle’s Revenge.
Not every book has to be about Glenn Ellmers’ favorite topics.  The fact that Ellmers can’t seem to blow his nose without addressing its relevance to the metaphysical basis of natural right doesn’t entail that the rest of us have to follow suit.

Review of Smith’s The AI Delusion

My review of economist Gary Smith’s excellent recent book The AI Delusion appears today at City Journal.

Ellmers on Aristotle’s Revenge

Last week at Law and Liberty, Glenn Ellmers reviewed my new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science .  It’s one of the weirdest book reviews I’ve ever gotten.  Today my response appears at Law and Liberty.

Gage on Five Proofs

I’ve been getting some strange book reviews lately.  First up is Logan Paul Gage’s review of my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God in the latest issue of Philosophia Christi.  Gage says some very complimentary things about the book, for which I thank him.  He also raises a couple of important points of criticism, for which I also thank him.  But he says some odd and false things too. Let’s take these in order.  Gage writes that Five Proofs is “an incredibly useful book,” that “Feser is to be commended for interacting with a wide swath of historical and contemporary literature,” and that my main arguments are “thorough enough for philosophers while remaining accessible to a general audience – a true accomplishment.”   He judges that:
[T]he major arguments are incredibly well-executed and likely sound.  The first five chapters will be profitable for undergraduates for years to come.  They are suitable for use in the classroom, especially for elucidating difficult primary texts.  They will introduce students not only to the arguments (and their attendant metaphysics) but also let them see how traditional natural theology entails a number of important divine attributes – something sadly missing from much contemporary apologetics.
End quote.  Again, I thank Gage for his very kind words. 
Some useful points of criticism
Let’s turn to Gage’s useful points of criticism.  For one thing, Gage wonders whether my arguments might be too dependent on specifically Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) metaphysical premises.  He doesn’t claim that these premises are false or implausible, but merely worries that they might make my arguments less attractive to some readers, and that they require a deeper defense than I provide in the book.
In response I would say the following.  First, the extent to which my arguments depend on A-T premises varies from argument to argument.  For example, the Aristotelian proof is obviously more dependent on them than the rationalist proof is.  Moreover, sometimes it is not the argument itself that presupposes A-T metaphysical premises, but rather some particular reply to a criticism of the argument that does so.  This might seem a pedantic and irrelevant distinction, but it is not.
Hence, suppose that some reader is initially convinced by an argument from contingency that appeals to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) but makes no reference to any specifically A-T premises.  Suppose the reader is then presented with various objections to the argument, such as the suggestion that it is the world itself rather than God that is the necessary being, or such as a challenge to PSR.  An A-T philosopher might reply to such objections in a way other philosophers would not.  For example, he might say that the world cannot be a necessary being because it is a compound of actuality and potentiality rather than pure actuality.  Or he might defend PSR by reference to the Scholastic idea that truth is convertible with being, so that whatever has being must be intelligible.  Now, if the reader in question rejects A-T philosophy and thus rejects these particular responses to the criticisms in question, it doesn’t follow that he will have to reject the argument from contingency.  For he might still find some other responses to the criticisms to be adequate.
All the same, it has long been my own view that at least some specifically A-T metaphysical premises are, ultimately, crucial to getting things right in natural theology.  For example, I think that the theory of actuality and potentiality is crucial.  But then, I think the theory of actuality and potentiality is, ultimately, crucial to getting things right in philosophy in general, not just in natural theology.  So, I would acknowledge that, at the end of the day, my view is that the natural theologian should defend such specifically A-T premises.  But I don’t see that as a problem.  If something is both true and highly consequential, as I think the theory of actuality and potentiality is, then there’s no point in fretting that it will be a tough sell with many people.  It needs to be defended, so defend it. 
Indeed, as I have complained before, a general problem with too much apologetics is that it is excessively concerned with what will “sell” rather than with what is true.  My view is that, just as a matter of principle, a serious apologist should focus on the latter rather than the former.  And it turns out that if you do that, and do it well, the former will take care of itself.
Gage is also right to say that more could be said in defense of the A-T premises I appeal to than I say in Five Proofs.  That was inevitable given that the book is about natural theology rather than general metaphysics, and given that, in philosophy, no matter what and how muchyou say, there is always going to be someone somewhere who retorts “Well, sure, but what about…”  Of making books there is no end.  But as it happens (and as Gage acknowledges) I have in fact defended the relevant general A-T premises in greater depth elsewhere, such as in my book Scholastic Metaphysics .
A second important point of criticism raised by Gage is that it isn’t clear, in his view, that all of my arguments are really independent of one another.  In particular, he worries that the four proofs that reason from the world to God as cause of the world – the Aristotelian proof, the Neo-Platonic proof, the Thomistic proof, and the rationalist proof – are really just variations on an argument from contingency rather than separate standalone arguments.  For example, he wonders whether the Aristotelian proof is really at the end of the day an argument from change, since the way I spell that argument out, it shifts from the question of why things change to why they exist at any given moment.
In response, I would say the following.  First, though the “many paths up the mountain” analogy is often abused in theological contexts (when deployed in defense of a facile universalism), it is useful in understanding the relationship between causal proofs of God’s existence.  When you get to the top of a mountain, it looks pretty much the same, whatever direction you are approaching it from.  But the north side of the bottomof the mountain might nevertheless look very different from the south side, so that the mountain will seem very different to climbers beginning from the north side and climbers beginning from the south.
In the same way, the notions of what is purely actual, what is absolutely simple, what is subsistent existence itself, and what is absolutely necessary are all at the end of the day (I would argue) different ways of conceptualizing what is and must be the same one reality.  Hence the closer you get to the conclusion of a causal argument for God’s existence, the more the argument is going to seem similar to other causal arguments.  Nevertheless, the starting points – the fact that things in our experience change, the fact that they are composite, the fact that they are caused, the fact that they are contingent – are going to be very different. 
Now, this is important in a way that is also elucidated by the mountain analogy.  Some climbers who may be unable or unwilling to begin their ascent from one side of the mountain (because it is too rocky for them, say) may be able to begin it from some other side.  Similarly, some readers may initially find the notions of contingency or of PSR problematic and thus be put off by the rationalist proof, but find intuitively plausible the notion of change as the actualization of potential, and thus find the Aristotelian proof attractive.  At the end of the day, I think readers should find all of these things plausible when they are rightly understood, but given the place some particular reader is coming from philosophically, he might have a different “break in” point from other readers.  So even if the proofs converge, it is intellectually helpful to see that there are different conceptual avenues by which the idea of a divine first cause might be arrived at.
Having said that, I also think that the extent to which the proofs converge can be overstated.  As my remarks above indicate, I think that one can go a long way in an argument from PSR before one has to get into any distinctively Aristotelian notions like the actualization of potential.  And I think one can go a long way in an Aristotelian proof before one has to say anything that sounds distinctively “rationalist.”  In these two cases, it is arguably only when one has to get into the question of how various objections might be replied to that defenders of the arguments might end up saying some of the same things.
In the case of the Aristotelian proof, it is true that I make a transition from the question of why things change to the question of why they exist at any given moment, and that it is the latter question that I am ultimately more interested in.   This makes my presentation of this sort of argument different from Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s presentation.  (That’s one reason I call it an “Aristotelian proof” rather than “Aristotle’s proof.”)  But there is a reason why I begin with change, which is that the notions of actuality and potentiality are much easier to grasp initially when one applies them to an analysis of change overtime than when one applies them to an analysis of existence at a time.  The latter notion is for many readers too abstract to jump to immediately.  So, starting with change provides a useful “ladder” that may be kicked away once one understands the general concepts and sees that they have a more general application than just to the analysis of change.
Anyway, I agree with Gage that other interpretations of the arguments I defend are possible, and that it would be regrettable if those other interpretations were neglected.  And again, I thank him for these remarks, to which I have responded at some length precisely because the issues he raises are important.
Seeing things that aren’t there
Let’s turn now to (what I judge to be) the odd and unhelpful things Gage has to say.  Gage accuses the book of “some exasperating flaws.”  Like what?  First of all, he claims that the book includes “some of Feser’s favorite hobbyhorses.”  Like what?  Gage writes:
Conspicuously absent from the first five chapters are Feser’s constant refrains: how impressive traditional theistic arguments are for being deductive metaphysical demonstrations rather than probabilistic or scientific arguments (in which he fails to recognize the power of inductive and abductive arguments), tangents about how foolish William Paley and intelligent design are (with uncharitable misreadings of these potential allies), and his blog-style ranting and braggadocio – often against weak targets like the worst of the New Atheists.  But they all return by the book’s end (271-273, 287-289, 249-260), leaving a bitter aftertaste to a largely excellent book.  The whole thing concludes with an unhelpful and supercilious “Quod erat demonstrandum” (307).
End quote.  Now, I fail to see what the big deal is about ending the book with “Quod erat demonstrandum” – especially given that Gage himself says he regards my main arguments as “incredibly well-executed and likely sound” – but let that pass.  The rest of this is just silly and false. 
First of all, it simply isn’t true that the book describes Paley or Intelligent Design as “foolish.”  I mention Paley in exactly two places in the book, at pp. 287-88 and at p. 303.  In the first place, I merely note that the arguments I am defending are in several ways different from Paley’s design argument.  In the second place, I merely cite Paley in a long list of philosophers who have defending theistic arguments.  I also mention Intelligent Design theory in exactly two places in the book, at p. 254 and at pp. 287-88.  In the first place, I merely note that atheists who raise a certain sort of objection against first cause arguments would complain if a parallel objection were raised against evolution by ID theorists.  In the second place, I merely note that the arguments I am defending differ in several ways from the arguments of ID theorists.  I mention inductive or probabilistic arguments for God’s existence at exactly two places, at pp. 287-88 and at p. 306.  In both cases I merely note that the arguments I am defending are not of the inductive or probabilistic kind, but rather are attempts at demonstration.
Nowhere in the book do I say that Paley, or ID theory, or probabilistic arguments are “foolish.”  Indeed, I do not even say in the book that they are wrong.  Again, I merely note that they are different from the sorts of arguments I defend in the book.  That’s it.

It’s not mysterious what is going on here, though.  For I have, in other writings, been very critical of Paley and of Intelligent Design theory.  I have also, in other writings, made it clear that I much prefer demonstrations to probabilistic arguments where natural theology is concerned (though I have also explicitly said that I do not claim that probabilistic arguments for God’s existence are per seobjectionable). 
Now, Gage is a big defender of Paley, ID, and probabilistic arguments for God, and he and I have tangled over these very issues in the past.  Evidently, this past experience has colored Gage’s perceptions of what he has read in Five Proofs.  He is apparently so sensitive about criticisms of Paley, ID, and probabilistic theistic arguments that he cannot bear even my distinguishing A-T arguments from those sorts of arguments.  All he needs is to see that the words “Paley” or “Intelligent Design” or “probabilistic” appear in something I have written, and he is triggered.  He instantly takes my remarks in Five Proofs to be criticisms of these things, even though when read dispassionately it is clear that they are not.  So, while there is definitely some “hobbyhorse” riding going on, it is all on Gage’s part, not mine. 
Something similar can be said about Gage’s claim that Five Proofs contains “blog-style ranting and braggadocio.”  The astute reader will have noted that Gage offers no examples of this purported ranting and braggadocio – and he couldn’t have, because in fact there isn’t any such thing to be found in Five Proofs.  That is deliberate, because I judged that a polemical style was not appropriate given the aims of this particular book.
What is true is that in other writings, I have sometimes (though in fact only relatively rarely) written in a highly polemical style.  For example, of the twelve books I have written, co-written, or edited, there is exactly one – The Last Superstition – that is written in that style.  And occasionally I will write an article, book review, or blog post in that style – typically when responding to some other writer who was himself highly polemical. 
I have in other placesdefended the appropriateness of this approach under certain circumstances.  The point for present purposes is this.  I have found over the years that certain souls seem to be so gentle and sensitive that they just can’t bear this sort of thing even when it is appropriate.  My occasionally polemical style makes such a deep impression on them that they simply can’t help but perceive everything I write as “blog-style ranting and braggadocio.”  This is especially true when my past targets have included some of their own sacred cows. 
It seems that something like this is going on with Gage.  My past polemical writings, perhaps especially those in which I have criticized ID, have colored his perceptions.  Hence though the arguments and objections I present in Five Proofs are measured in tone, he reads into them a “blog-style ranting and braggadocio” that isn’t there.
Some odd and unhelpful criticisms
The really strange remarks Gage makes, though, are about the last two chapters of my book – chapter 6, which treats the divine attributes and God’s relationship to the world, and chapter 7, which is a general treatment of objections to natural theology. 
What annoys him about chapter 6 is that there is some repetition of material from earlier chapters, since after presenting each of my five theistic arguments in the earlier chapters, I say something about how the divine attributes can be derived.  Gage thinks that I should either have said nothing about the divine attributes in chapters 1-5 and saved the entire discussion for chapter 6, or that I should have moved all the material from chapter 6 into the earlier chapters.
It never seems to have occurred to Gage that I had a reason for organizing things the way I did – several reasons, in fact.  Here are some of the relevant considerations.  First, one of the objections routinely raised against arguments for God’s existence is that even if they get you to a first cause, no one has ever shown that they get you to a cause that is unique, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.  There is, it is claimed, always a big jump from the idea of a first cause to the divine attributes.  Now, as I show in Five Proofs and elsewhere, that is simply not at all the case.  Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, and other defenders of proofs for God’s existence in fact routinely provide a wealth of argumentation for the divine attributes.  But, as with the tiresome and clueless “What caused God?” objection, people keep reflexively raising this objection no matter how many times you refute it.
Consider also that many readers will only bother reading a chapter or two from a book like mine before drawing general conclusions about it.  Hence if they read the chapter on the Aristotelian proof but do not see in it any treatment of the divine attributes, they will judge that I have overlooked the obvious objection that to prove the existence of a purely actual actualizer is not to prove that such an actualizer is unique, omnipotent, omniscient, etc.  And they will conclude that it isn’t worth their time to read any further.  This is silly, of course, and not the way an academic philosopher like Gage or me would proceed.  But it is the way a lot of people read and judge books.
Consider too that there are certain divine attributes the derivation of which is more clear and natural when one begins with a particular theistic proof than it is when one begins with some other such proof.  For example, when you deploy the Aristotelian proof to establish the existence of a purely actual actualizer, it is quite natural to move on immediately to argue for the immutability, omnipotence, and perfection of the purely actual actualizer.  The reason is that the theory of actuality and potentiality provides analyses of change, causal power, and perfection that can be quite naturally “plugged in” to the argument to yield a derivation of these particular divine attributes.  The derivation of the attributes isn’t some arbitrary “add on” to the proof of the unactualized actualizer, but follows quite naturally and directly from it.  But the same attributes are less directly or obviously derivable from, say, the notion of the necessary being that is arrived at via the rationalist proof.
So, given considerations like these, I judged that the best way to proceed would be to say something in each of the first five chapters about how the derivation of a purely actual actualizer, an absolutely simple cause, an infinite intellect, a cause which is subsistent existence itself, and an absolutely necessary being, could naturally be extended to a derivation of some of the key divine attributes.  The aim was to show that getting to the divine attributes is an organic partof the style of reasoning that each of the arguments deploys, and not something either neglected or arbitrarily tacked on.
At the same time, I couldn’t say everything that needed to be said about the divine attributes in each of the first five chapters, or even in any one of them, because the chapters would in that case have become ridiculously long.  For example, if I had placed the material on the divine attributes from chapter 6 into chapter 1, which is devoted to the Aristotelian proof, then chapter 1 would have been about 120 pages long.  It would also have ended up dealing with matters that are not unique to the Aristotelian proof, but are relevant to all the proofs.
Hence I judged that the better way to proceed was to give a cursory treatment of the divine attributes in chapters 1-5, and then return to a much more in-depth treatment in chapter 6.  This entailed a bit of repetition, but as every good teacher knows, a bit of repetition is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when giving an exposition of material that is difficult and unfamiliar.  And the arguments for the divine attributes are – as Gage himself acknowledges – very unfamiliar to many people interested in the topic of arguments for God’s existence.
So, though of course a reasonable person might disagree with my judgment, there were reasons for it that Gage does not consider.  The way the book handles the divine attributes was deliberate, and not, contrary to what he suggests, a failure on the part of some editor.  Gage seems to be the sort of reviewer who complains that a book is not carefully tailored to his personal needs and interests, specifically – not keeping in mind that any book has to consider the needs, interests, attention spans, prejudices, etc. of many kinds of readers all at once.  And of course, no book can do so perfectly, so that an author must make a judgment call.  Anyway, as far as I can recall, Gage is the only commenter on the book who has complained about there being a bit of repetition on the topic of the divine attributes.  Evidently, most readers were not troubled by it.
Gage also complains that chapter 6 includes a “digression on analogy,” a “misconstrual of the standard account of knowledge,” a “facile discussion of God’s knowledge and free will,” and a “defense of using male pronouns for God.”  He says that this material only “serves to try the reader’s patience.”
But once again, Gage seems to be confusing hispersonal needs and interests with those of readers in general.  He doesn’t tell us exactly what is wrong with what I say about knowledge or free will, so I don’t have anything to say in response to his remarks about those topics.  As far as my treatment of analogy is concerned, it is by no means a “digression,” but integral to the chapter.  I made it clear in the book why (for Thomists, anyway) the notion of analogy is crucial to a proper understanding of the divine attributes. 
Regarding the use of male pronouns for God, I have no idea why Gage would find it objectionable that I should address that issue.  As I imagine everyone knows who has ever taught a course on religion or philosophy of religion, it is a question that comes up all the time among students, and general readers are no less interested in it.  Furthermore, such language is crucial in certain theological contexts (e.g. when the first two Persons of the Trinity are referred to as the “Father” and the “Son”).  If Gage wants to disagree with the specific claims I made on this topic, that’s fine.  But to object to the very fact that I addressed the issue at all is silly, indeed bizarre.
Finally, Gage is similarly unhappy with my last chapter, wherein I deal with a wide variety of general objections to arguments for God’s existence.  He complains, for example, that I respond to “weak targets like the worst of the New Atheists.”  But why is this a problem?  For one thing, I also respond, in the last chapter and throughout the book, to the more serious critics.  It’s not as if I reply only to the New Atheists.  For another, what was I supposed to do – ignore the objections raised by the New Atheists?  Gage and I realize that their objections are no good, but lots of other readers don’t realize this, and many of those other readers will be unfamiliar with what I have said in reply to the New Atheists in other books of mine, such as The Last Superstition.  Moreover, their objections, however feeble, are very influential.  So, I had no choice but to address their objections, alongside the more serious objections.  Yet again, Gage seems guilty of judging the book in terms of his personal needs and interests, rather than those of the bulk of the book’s readership.
But as I have said, Gage also makes some important and helpful points of criticism, and has some very kind things to say about my book.  And even where I think his remarks are unreasonable, I appreciate his attempt to grapple seriously with what I have written.  So, again, I thank him.

Scotus on divine simplicity and creation

In my exchange with Ryan Mullins on the doctrine of divine simplicity, I noted that one of the problems with his critique of the doctrine is that he pays insufficient attention to the history of the debate about it.  Hence he overlooks what should be obvious possible responses to his criticisms, such as Aquinas’s appeal to the distinction between real relations and logical relations.  He also makes sweeping attributions of certain views to all defenders of divine simplicity, overlooking crucial differences between proponents of the doctrine.  Other critics of divine simplicity also often make these mistakes.  A consideration of the views of John Duns Scotus further illustrates the range of issues with which any serious general critique of divine simplicity must deal. Scotus, like other classical theists, affirms divine simplicity.  But he famously differs with Aquinas and other fellow classical theists over some important matters of background metaphysics.  Let’s consider some views of Scotus that are relevant to the debate over divine simplicity.  Some of these involve disagreement with other proponents of the doctrine, though some of them are merely important contributions of Scotus’s own with which other proponents could agree.
Scotus does not agree with the Thomist position that theological language is analogical.  He takes such language to be univocal.  Hence when we speak of God’s goodness or wisdom, say, we are using “goodness” and “wisdom” in the same sense as when we speak of human goodness or wisdom.  Now, as applied to human beings, “goodness” and “wisdom” are to be defined differently, and so they are also to be defined differently when applied to God.  But that entails, for Scotus, that there is a formal distinction between God’s goodness and God’s wisdom.
A Scotistic formal distinction is not the same as a real distinction, but neither is it the same as a merely conceptual distinction.  It’s supposed to be a kind of middle ground between them.  There is, for Scotus, no real distinction between God’s goodness and wisdom insofar as they are not separable.  The one could not exist without the other.  However, the distinction between them is not merely a distinction in thought.  There is something in extra-mental reality that makes wisdom and goodness different.  The Scotist way of putting this is that there is a difference in formalities between wisdom and goodness – and thus, again, a formal distinction between them.  So, for the Scotist, while there is no real distinction between the divine attributes, it is not correct to say that they are identical full stop.  Not only is the concept of wisdom different from the concept of goodness, but wisdom and goodness themselves are not formally identical.
Where the analysis of action is concerned, Scotus distinguishes between an act of will, the object of the act, and the effectof the act.  In created agents, there can be a plurality of each of these.  I exhibit multiple acts of will over time, each with its distinct object and each with its distinct effects.  For example, the other day I willed to have a steak for dinner, the outcome of the act being a feeling of fullness in the stomach.  Today I willed to type this blog post, the outcome of which was the appearance of certain words on my computer screen.  And so forth.  In God, who is outside time, there can in Scotus’s view be only one act of will, but there can still be a multiplicity of objects and effects of that one act.
The will’s being free, in Scotus’s view, entails several key features.  First, the will is of itself neutral or indifferent toward the outcomes it might produce.  Second, even when the will chooses some action A, it retains at the moment of choice the ability to choose non-A (even if it can’t actually choose both at the same time).  Third, there is no further explanation to be sought for the will’s choice of A other than that the will chose it.  The point of these features is to emphasize the will’s radical indeterminacy with respect to its objects.
Now, Scotus holds that natural reason can demonstrate that contingent things must have a First Cause and that this First Cause is simple or non-composite and exists of necessity.  But he also argues that the creative act of this necessarily existing First Cause cannot itself have been necessary, or its effects would have been necessary too rather than contingent.  Hence creation must have been the result of a free act.  The demonstration of a First Cause, in other words, gets us precisely to something that is both necessary (in its existence) and free (in its activity).
But why does the First Cause will as it does, given that it could have willed otherwise?  Given Scotus’s analysis of the will’s freedom, this is a bad question, like asking of a certain stone why it is a stone.  Given that a thing is in fact a stone, there’s nothing more to be said about why it is.  That’s just its nature, and it couldn’t be any other way and still be a stone.  Similarly, for Scotus, given that a certain choice was free, there’s nothing more to be said about why it occurred.  It occurred because it was free, and it couldn’t have been any other way and still be free.  Again, for Scotus, looking for some explanation of the will’s free choice that is deeper than its being free is a category mistake.  Once you’ve identified it as free, you’ve given it all the explanation you could have or could need.
All the same, it is possible in Scotus’s view for a thing to be necessarily willed and freely willed at the same time.  In particular, he holds that though God does not necessarily will to create the world, God does necessarily will himself.  But even here he wills freely.  In a famous illustration, Scotus asks us to consider a man who has voluntarily flung himself off a precipice, and who, as he falls to his doom, continues to will his fall.  He both falls of necessity insofar as gravity ensures that he will not stop until he hits bottom, and also freely wills his falling.  In a similar way, God both cannot not will himself, but also freely wills himself.
So, how might a Scotist respond to Mullins and other critics of divine simplicity who take the doctrine to be incompatible with divine freedom?  As we’ve seen, Mullins is critical of the Thomistic account of the analogical use of theological terms, and insists that key terms must be understood univocally.  But Scotists don’t accept the doctrine of analogy either, yet they nevertheless insist on divine simplicity.  So they could happily accept Mullins’ criticisms of analogy while taking them to be irrelevant to the larger issue.
Scotists would also no doubt object that certain steps in Mullins’ main argument are expressed in too sloppy a manner.  For example, in steps (8) – (11) of his argument, Mullins speaks of God’s actions being “identical” to one another and to God’s existence.  But the Scotist will ask whether what is meant here is real identity or formal identity.  Mullins’ argument also assumes that necessity and free choice are incompatible, but Scotus’s example of the man flinging himself off the precipice indicates that that assumption needs to be made more precise.
Perhaps the heart of Mullins’ argument could be salvaged by tightening it up to get around these particular objections, but others will be harder to deal with.  For example, step (10) of Mullins’ argument states that “God’s act to give grace is identical to God’s one divine act.”  But the Scotist could object that this conflates the object and/or effect of the divine act with the act itself.  “God’s act to give grace” is identical to God’s one divine act qua act, but not identical to it qua act to give grace, specifically.  Other steps of the argument, such as step (4), also seem to conflate divine acts with their objects and effects.  Naturally, without these steps, Mullins’ critique collapses.
Again, Scotus claims to have demonstrated that a First Cause must be at the same time simple, necessary, and free, and that given the radical indeterminacy of the will, it is metaphysically impossible for the First Cause’s effects – such as creation and the giving of grace – to have been necessary.  Hence any argument that supposes that divine simplicity and divine necessity entail that God’s choices are themselves necessary begs the question against Scotus.  The Scotist could insist that we have independent reason to judge that such a claim must be wrong, so that any interpretation of simplicity, necessity, and will that would entail that God could not have refrained from creating the world, giving grace, etc. must be mistaken.
Into the bargain, Scotus also agrees with Aquinas’s point that the world’s relation to God is a real relation, but God’s relation to the world is merely a logical relation (where this distinction corresponds to what in my initial reply to Mullins I referred to as the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties).
As this last remark indicates, there are aspects of Scotus’s position that Thomists and other classical theists could happily agree with, though there are other aspects that the Thomist would reject.  For example, Thomists would reject Scotus’s view that theological language is univocal, his notion of a formal distinction, and his voluntarist account of the will.  But Mullins and other critics of the doctrine of divine simplicity claim to have refuted the doctrine full stop, not merely the Thomist’s way of spelling out the doctrine.  So in order to make their case, they would not only have to reply to what Thomists have said – which, as I have already noted, they often fail to do – but also to what Scotus and other non-Thomists have said.
Related posts:
A further reply to Mullins on divine simplicity
Aquinas on creation and necessity
Davies on divine simplicity and freedom
William Lane Craig on divine simplicity
Cross on Scotus on causal series

Aquinas on creation and necessity

While we’re on the subject of divine simplicity and creation, let’s consider a closely related issue.  In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas argues that God wills himself, that he does so necessarily, that what he wills he wills in a single act, and that he wills other things besides himself.  Doesn’t it follow that he also wills these other things necessarily?  Doesn’t it follow that they too must exist necessarily, just as God does?  No, neither of these things follows. Let’s take the two questions in order.  First, as Aquinas also argues, God wills things other than himself only for his own sake.  They are willed as manifestations of his own goodness.  But they are not willed because they somehow enhancehis goodness, because that goodness is already perfect.  Hence he doesn’t need to will any other thing as a means to realizing the highest good, which is himself. 
Doesn’t this make his willing of these other things arbitrary or inexplicable?  No, that doesn’t follow either.  He wills them for a reason – again, as a manifestation of his own goodness.  Suppose you’ve already got a large family, including some adopted children, but you decide to adopt yet another child.  You don’t need to do this in order to do your moral duty or to achieve supererogatory virtue.  You’ve already not only done your duty but gone above and beyond it.  But it’s not an arbitrary act either.  It’s a good thing to do, even if it’s not a good thing that must be done.  Creation is like that, neither necessary nor arbitrary.  As Aquinas puts it, God wills other things as “befitting.”
But doesn’t the fact that God wills himself and other things in a single act entail that he wills the latter as necessarily as he does the former?  No.  You might say that it is in a single act that the sun both shines and causes the moon to shine.  But even if the sun shined of absolute necessity, it wouldn’t follow that the moon shined, since of course the moon could have failed to exist even if the sun hadn’t.
But this is to appeal to something outside the sun which limits what sort of effects it will have.  So doesn’t the analogy fail, since, given God’s omnipotence, there is nothing outside him that can limit what sort of effect he will have?
No, the analogy does not fail, and this brings us to Aquinas’s reasons for saying that the fact that God is necessary does not entail that his effects are necessary.  In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas writes:
Sometimes a necessary cause has a non-necessary relation to an effect; owing to a deficiency in the effect, and not in the cause.  Even so, the sun's power has a non-necessary relation to some contingent events on this earth, owing to a defect not in the solar power, but in the effect that proceeds not necessarily from the cause.  In the same way, that God does not necessarily will some of the things that He wills, does not result from defect in the divine will, but from a defect belonging to the nature of the thing willed, namely, that the perfect goodness of God can be without it; and such defect accompanies all created good.
Similarly, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, he writes:
From the side of its object, a certain power is found open to opposites when the perfect operation of the power depends on neither alternative, though both can be.  An example is an art which can use diverse instruments to perform the same work equally well.  This openness does not pertain to the imperfection of a power, but rather to its eminence, in so far as it dominates both alternatives, and thereby is determined to neither, being open to both.  This is how the divine will is disposed in relation to things other than itself.  For its end depends on none of the other things, though it itself is most perfectly united to its end. 
The relevance of these passages to our question is this.  What makes some effect E of God’s action contingent rather than necessary is not anything in God, but it is also not some third thing in addition to God and his effect E.  It’s not a matter of God needing this third thing to be either present or absent in order for E to follow.  Rather, the source of the contingency is just E itself.  As Aquinas puts it in the passage from the Summa Theologiae, it is simply that limitation that “accompanies all created good” as such that makes God’s effects contingent.  E itself, just by virtue of not being God – and thus not being pure actuality or subsistent being itself or absolute simplicity – is of its very nature going to be contingent.  God doesn’t have to do anything extra to it to make it contingent, and neither does some third thing in addition to God and to E have to do anything to make it contingent.
Similarly, as the Summa Contra Gentiles passage says, precisely because of the “eminence” of divine power, none of its effects can be necessary, because it simply doesn’t requireany particular effect in order to realize the end of manifesting divine goodness.  For any particular effect E, some non-E would do just as well, since divine goodness is already perfect just as it is.
Critics of classical theist arguments for God’s existence sometimes claim that if pushed through consistently, those arguments would entail that the world is as necessary as God is.  That is the reverse of the truth.  In fact, an absolutely necessary cause producing an absolutely necessary effect is a metaphysical impossibility.  For if something is an effect, then ipso facto it is not and cannot be absolutelynecessary.
Since we’re talking about unnecessary but fitting acts, it is fitting at this point to plug Gaven Kerr’s new book, Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation , which, as it happens, just arrived today in the mail.  Since I haven’t read it yet I can’t give you a review, but the author of the excellent Aquinas’s Way to God is sure to have produced a worthy volume.

A further reply to Mullins on divine simplicity (Updated)

UPDATE 8/24: Brandon Watson and John DeRosa also respond to Mulllins.

UPDATE 8/21: Look out!  The Scotist Meme Squad has entered the fray.

At Theopolis, Ryan Mullins has now replied to those of us who had commented on his essay criticizing the doctrine of divine simplicity.  (The other commenters were Peter Leithart and Joe Lenow.)  What follows is a response to what he has to say in reply to my comments on the essay, specifically.
Mullins’ main argument
In his original essay, Mullins had in a discursive way explained what he takes the doctrine of divine simplicity to be and how it relates to the notions of divine freedom, grace, and God’s necessary existence.  Along the way he set out a sixteen step argument intended to show that divine simplicity cannot be reconciled with divine freedom.  In his latest essay, Mullins complains that “it is not clear that my dialogue partners have adequately attempted to engage with the argument,” so he repeats the argument again – this time by setting the sixteen steps off by themselves without the surrounding material, for clarity’s sake.  As he did in his original essay, Mullins challenges his critics to identify which premise, specifically, they reject.Now, Mullins writes:
My dialogue partners have not been entirely forthcoming about which premises they reject.
For example, consider Edward Feser’s reply.  Feser comments on my argument from divine simplicity to the necessary existence of the world.  This is curious because none of the premises in my argument even mention the necessary existence of the world.  This leaves me to wonder if Feser read my original essay closely. 
End quote.  But in fact, as anyone can easily verify by going back and reading my original reply to Mullins, I did explicitly identify the premise I reject – namely premise (9), which says “All of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act.” 
I also fail to see why it is “curious” that I “comment[ed] on [Mullins’] argument from divine simplicity to the necessary existence of the world.”  Was I supposed to ignore what Mullins said about that topic in his original essay simply because the phrase “necessary existence of the world” doesn’t appear in any of the sixteen steps of his more formal argument?
I did, in any event, make it clear in my original essay why I presented my objection to Mullins in the way that I did.  In his sixteen-step argument, Mullins emphasizes God’s freedom to refrain from giving grace, specifically, but in fact there is nothing special about that example vis-à-vis the controversy over divine simplicity.  God’s freedom with respect to giving grace is just a special case of his freedom with respect to any of his acts, such as creating the world, causing miracles, sending prophets, etc.  What all these effects of divine action have in common is that they are contingent.  Hence if the doctrine of divine simplicity implies that these effects are necessary, then it seems the doctrine also implies that divine action is not really free after all.
The way to block this outcome is, again, to reject Mullins’ premise (9).  Now, what is wrong with that premise, as I explained in my original reply to Mullins, is that it ignores what Barry Miller calls the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties(where, as I there hinted in a footnote, this echoes Aquinas’s distinctionbetween real relations and logical relations).  Mullins writes:
To be fair to Feser, he does at least attempt to identify which premise in the argument that he rejects. Feser says,
Now, what the doctrine of divine simplicity claims—contrary to what Mullins supposes (in what he labels premise (9) of his argument)—is not that all of God’s properties are identical and thus are necessary as he is, but rather that all of his real properties are.
Feser then goes on to say that he rejects premise (9) because of a distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties.  According to Feser, God is identical to His real properties, but God is not identical to His Cambridge properties.
I find this reply from Feser curious for several reasons. 
End quote.  Mullins sure finds a lot of things “curious.”  Well, here’s something I find curious: that Mullins at first accuses me of having “not been entirely forthcoming” about which of his premises I reject, and then in the next breath conceding that in fact I identified premise (9) as the problem.  Go figure.
Anyway, Curious Ryan’s first complaint is that:
[I]t is curious because my premise (9) does not even mention the word property.  What my premise (9) actually says is, “All of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act.”  My actual premise (9) is something that proponents of divine simplicity explicitly endorse.  By this one act, God is said to will Himself and everything else that He has made.  Moreover, I intentionally avoided any mention of properties in the premises of my argument.  I avoided this because, as I explained in my original essay, proponents of divine simplicity explicitly deny that God has any properties, forms, immanent universals, or tropes.  As the proponent of divine simplicity, Katherin Rogers, makes clear, the simple God does not have any properties.  Instead, God is simply act.
End quote.  There are several things wrong with this.  The first is that it simply isn’t true that all proponents of divine simplicity would say that God does not have properties.  That way of talking makes it sound as if God is some sort of bare particular, and that is certainly not what the doctrine of divine simplicity claims.  What proponents of divine simplicity wouldall say is that God does not have any real properties that are distinct from the divine substance.
In any event, the word “property” is used by different philosophers in different ways, so before one makes sweeping claims about what “proponents of divine simplicity explicitly deny” one had better get clear on exactly how this or that proponent uses the term.  Now, as Mullins surely knows, the word “property” is commonly used in a very loose way by contemporary analytic philosophers, to mean just any old thing you might predicate of something.  To be sure, this is definitely not my own preferred usage, since the term has a much narrower technical sense in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.  But it is, again, a common usage among analytic philosophers.  Since analytic philosophers of religion are Mullins’ own main audience, since Miller (who I was citing) uses the term in this way, and since I had a word limit and didn’t have space in my essay to get into an explanation of the various uses of the term “property,” I decided for expository purposes to acquiesce to the common analytic philosopher’s usage. 
Now, Mullins surely realizes that that is how I intended to use the word “property” in my essay.  But given that broad sense of the term, it is quite obviously false to say that defenders of divine simplicity deny that God has “properties.”  On the contrary, defenders of divine simplicity typically hold that God has lots of “properties” in that broad sense of the term – omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, and so forth.  To be sure, defenders of the doctrine also say that God’s omnipotence is his omniscience, which is his perfect goodness, and so on.  So they would say that God’s “properties,” in this broad sense of the term, are identical.  But to say that is very different from saying that he doesn’t have “properties” in the broad sense.
Now, in this broad sense of the term “properties,” God’s actionswould also be “properties” of God.  Hence the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties is obviously relevant to evaluating Mullins’ premise (9), because we need to know whether the divine actions Mullins focuses on (such as giving grace and creating the world) are real properties or Cambridge properties – again, in the broad sense of “properties” used by analytic philosophers.  And again, Mullins surely has to realize that this is what I meant.  Mullins’ book on the divine nature is in a series devoted to analytic theology, and it cites Miller in its bibliography, so the usage cannot be unfamiliar to him.  So, Mullins’ heavy going about my reference to “properties” seems to me to amount to mere quibbling and kicking up dust.  All very curious, as Mullins would say.
Anyway, here’s the payoff.  When we get clear on the terminological issues, it is manifestly falseto claim, as Mullins does, that his premise (9) “is something that proponents of divine simplicity explicitly endorse.”  For, to use Miller’s language, defenders of divine simplicity claim only that God’s real properties are identical to each other, not that his Cambridgeproperties are.  Hence any divine action that amounts to a Cambridge property is not one that the defender of divine simplicity will identify with the divine nature.  And that is exactly what is going on with properties like “being creator of the world” and “being the source of grace.”  They are Cambridge properties.  So, the problem with Mullins’ premise (9) is that it is too sweeping.  Once one restricts the premise to God’s real properties, the revised premise will be true, but then the rest of Mullins’ argument will no longer go through.  In particular, it will no longer follow that God’s act of giving grace is identical to God and thus as necessary as he is.  And thus it will not follow that that act is not free.
Mullins tells us that a second reason he finds my reply “curious” is that I seem, in his view, to be confusing his position with that of Thomas Morris, against whom I deployed Miller’s distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties in my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God .  (More precisely, Miller himselfdeploys this distinction against Morris – I was just citing Miller’s response to Morris in my book, rather than presenting it as my own.)  Mullins says his argument is very different from Morris’s, since Morris’s focus is on the claim that divine simplicity would make God’s creation of the world necessary.  But I have already explained why this is not a difference that makes a difference.  What is doing the work in Mullins’ argument is the claim that divine simplicity makes God’s actions, in general, necessary – the same thing that is doing the work in Morris’s argument.  The fact that Mullins focuses on the specific example of God acting to impart grace, whereas Morris focuses on the example of God acting to create the world, is irrelevant.  Hence my objection applies to Mullins’ argument no less than to Morris’s.
But Mullins’ third reason for finding my reply “curious,” he tells us, is that he does not think it really applies even to Morris’s position.  The reason, he says, is that “divine actions are intrinsic to God,” and thus cannot be Cambridge properties.  Hence my appeal to the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties is a “category mistake” and amounts to “nothing but hand-waving.”
Well, if Mullins isn’t here waving his own hands, that’s only because he’s too busy missing the point.  To see what is wrong with his response, go back to the examples I used in my original essay to introduce the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties.  When Socrates grows a beard, that involves the acquisition by him of a real property.  But when he becomes shorter than Plato, not because of any change he undergoes, but rather because Plato has grown taller, that involves the acquisition by Socrates of a Cambridge property.  It is, in this case, Plato rather than Socrates who acquires a real property.
Now, it is possible for something to have a Cambridge property by virtue of also having a certain real property.  To modify my example, suppose that Socrates had been Plato’s father, so that it is by virtue of his having been begotten by Socrates and inheriting Socrates’ genes that Plato eventually grew to be taller than Socrates.  Then there is a sense in which you could say that Socrates’ action, the action of begetting Plato, caused Socrates (later on) to become shorter than Plato.  Now, there is obviously a sense in which Socrates’ action of begetting is intrinsic to Socrates.  Something has to happen in him in order for the begetting to occur.  And so, something had to happen in him in order for Plato later on to grow taller, which resulted in Socrates being shorter than Plato.  But does it follow that Socrates’ becoming shorter than Plato is not a Cambridge property after all but a real one?  Of course not. 
Now in the same way, it is certainly true to say that there is something intrinsic to God himself that makes it the case that the world is created.  No defender of divine simplicity denies that.  But it simply doesn’t follow that God’s acting to create the world is not after all a Cambridge property, any more than it follows that Socrates’ growing shorter than Plato is not after all a Cambridge property.
You might characterize the situation in my revised example as Socrates acting in a way that (eventually) resulted in his becoming shorter than Plato.  But though the acting is something intrinsic to Socrates, that the acting resulted in his becoming shorter than Plato is not intrinsic to him.  Similarly, you might characterize creation as God acting in a way that resulted in the world’s existing.  But though the acting is something intrinsic to God, that the acting resulted in the world’s existing is not intrinsic to him.
You may or may not find this plausible.  But here’s the thing.  The unwary reader of Mullins’ response is likely to get the impression that my reply to him was some eccentric concoction of my own, cobbled together to rebut his novel and clever objection.  But my response is neither my own concoction nor eccentric, and Mullins’ objection is neither novel nor particularly clever.  In fact it is pretty old hat.  As I have already said, I am simply making a point made by Barry Miller, but Miller was in turn only putting a contemporary gloss on a line of argument that goes back at least to Aquinas, and that has been repeated by many Thomists since.  And all of them were responding to variations on the sort of objection Mullins gives.
The way Aquinas puts the point is, again, in terms of the distinction between a real relation and a logical relation (sometimes called a relation of reason).  A stock example is the relationship between perceiver and perceived.  If I perceive you, I bear a real relation to you.  But if you are perceived by me, you bear a logical rather than real relation to me.  Miller’s way of putting this is to say that by virtue of perceiving you, I have a real property, whereas by virtue of being perceived by me, you have a merely Cambridge property. 
Now, Aquinas’s view is that by virtue of being created by God, the world bears a real relation to him, whereas by virtue of creating the world, God bears a merely logical rather than real relation to it.  Miller’s way of putting this is to say that the world’s being created by God is a real property of the world, whereas God’s creating the world is a Cambridge property of God.  (When replying to Mullins, I decided to use Miller’s formulation because I supposed it would be less likely to be misunderstood by readers more familiar with analytic than with Thomistic jargon.  Silly me.)  One wonders whether Mullins is even familiar with this traditional Thomistic position.  If he isn’t, that would explain the, er, curious circumstance that Mullins at one point actually tries to employ Aquinas against my objection – an objection I borrow, by way of Miller, from Aquinas.
Anyway, the point is this.  The Aquinas-Miller position is not some obscure or incidental aspect of the debate over divine simplicity.  It is a standard part of it, certainly among Thomists, and has been for centuries.  Mullins does nothing to refute this position.  All he does is make assertions of precisely the kind the Aquinas-Miller position claims already to have answered.  So, while Mullins seems to think he has made some devastating new objection against divine simplicity, in fact he hasn’t advanced the discussion one inch beyond where Aquinas left it in the thirteenth century.  Maybe the Aquinas-Miller position is wrong (though obviously I don’t think it is), but if so, Mullinscertainly has done nothing to show that it is.
Analogy and dire consequences
Mullins has some equally anticlimactic things to say in response to my remarks about analogy.  He writes:
I am not entirely sure what the doctrine of analogy does for divine simplicity with regards to my argument.  Can analogical predication somehow remove a contradiction like “God is free and God is not free.”  No.  Classical theists are quite clear that God cannot be free if His actions are performed of absolute necessity.  No amount of analogical predication can make God’s free actions consistent with those actions being performed of absolute necessity.  Can analogical predication somehow make God’s contingent and necessary actions identical?  Of course not.  No amount of analogical predication can make necessity and contingency mean something completely different so as to remove the contradictions that I have pointed out.  I think what Feser is really working with is equivocation.
End quote.  Well, this is – one more time, everyone, all together – all very curious.  First, there can be no mystery about why I brought up analogy in my earlier essay, because I explicitly said why.  The reason was that in his own earlier essay, Mullins had made some glib and sweeping remarks to the effect that proponents of divine simplicity resort to “cheap” appeals to mystery, and in particular to “mysterious language.”  I was pointing out that this is an unjust characterization, because what they actually appeal to is the notion of the analogical use of terms.  This notion is neither particularly mysterious nor cheap.  It is a familiar part of both ordinary and scientific discourse, is motivated independently of any concerns about divine simplicity, and has been worked out in theoretical detail.
Second, and as should go without saying, Mullins is attacking some pretty crude straw men in this paragraph.  No defender of divine simplicity holds that God is both free and unfree, or that something can be both contingent and necessary in the same respect.  So, naturally, no defender of divine simplicity appeals to analogy in order to defend such absurd claims.
Mullins, once again, has nothing new or of interest to say here, and the other remarks he makes about analogy are just bare assertions that defenders of divine simplicity have heard and answered many times.
Finally, Mullins comments on the classical theist view, which I endorsed in my earlier essay, that to deny divine simplicity entails denying the ultimacy and uniqueness of God, and thus entails atheism.  He characterizes this as a “slippery slope” argument that “assume[s] an elaborate set of metaphysical theories that a Christian does not have to affirm in order to articulate a biblical doctrine of God.”  He then goes on to mention several of the relevant metaphysical claims, and to tell us that he finds each of them “implausible.”  He suggests that classical theism and atheism are not the only options, and he is dismissive of the classical theist’s claim that the further options reduce God to something merely superhuman but still creaturely.
Of course, these are all just more bare assertions, and question-begging ones at that.  For example, the classical theist would not agree that the relevant metaphysical considerations need not be affirmed in order to defend the biblical conception of God.  But what is really curious (whoops, said it again) is that Mullins ignores the main reasons I brought up the dire consequences in question in the first place.  In his initial essay, Mullins had given the impression that the doctrine of divine simplicity is merely the bizarre obsession of theologians too enamored of some obscure philosophical ideas, and irrelevant to anything of specifically Christian or biblical concern.  This is a common rhetorical ploy among critics of the doctrine.  And I was pointing out that in fact, what motivates defenders of the doctrine is a concern to uphold the uniqueness and ultimacy of God – both of which are, needless to say, pretty central to the Christian and biblical conception of God.  I was pointing out that in fact, defenders of divine simplicity would appeal to the ultimacy and uniqueness of God precisely as the basis of positive arguments for divine simplicity.
So, my complaint was that Mullins’ original essay failed to convey what is actually at stake in the debate over divine simplicity, and thus failed to grapple with the main arguments for the doctrine.  And that failure is recapitulated in his latest essay, insofar as all he has to tell us is that he personally finds the arguments in question “implausible” and prefers other views to classical theism.  Well, we already knew that.  What we need is an actual response to the arguments.  Once again, Mullins has failed to advance the debate over divine simplicity even an inch.

A further reply to Mullins on divine simplicity

At Theopolis, Ryan Mullins has now replied to those of us who had commented on his essay criticizing the doctrine of divine simplicity.  (The other commenters were Peter Leithart and Joe Lenow.)  What follows is a response to what he has to say in reply to my comments on the essay, specifically.
Mullins’ main argument
In his original essay, Mullins had in a discursive way explained what he takes the doctrine of divine simplicity to be and how it relates to the notions of divine freedom, grace, and God’s necessary existence.  Along the way he set out a sixteen step argument intended to show that divine simplicity cannot be reconciled with divine freedom.  In his latest essay, Mullins complains that “it is not clear that my dialogue partners have adequately attempted to engage with the argument,” so he repeats the argument again – this time by setting the sixteen steps off by themselves without the surrounding material, for clarity’s sake.  As he did in his original essay, Mullins challenges his critics to identify which premise, specifically, they reject.Now, Mullins writes:
My dialogue partners have not been entirely forthcoming about which premises they reject.
For example, consider Edward Feser’s reply.  Feser comments on my argument from divine simplicity to the necessary existence of the world.  This is curious because none of the premises in my argument even mention the necessary existence of the world.  This leaves me to wonder if Feser read my original essay closely. 
End quote.  But in fact, as anyone can easily verify by going back and reading my original reply to Mullins, I did explicitly identify the premise I reject – namely premise (9), which says “All of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act.” 
I also fail to see why it is “curious” that I “comment[ed] on [Mullins’] argument from divine simplicity to the necessary existence of the world.”  Was I supposed to ignore what Mullins said about that topic in his original essay simply because the phrase “necessary existence of the world” doesn’t appear in any of the sixteen steps of his more formal argument?
I did, in any event, make it clear in my original essay why I presented my objection to Mullins in the way that I did.  In his sixteen-step argument, Mullins emphasizes God’s freedom to refrain from giving grace, specifically, but in fact there is nothing special about that example vis-à-vis the controversy over divine simplicity.  God’s freedom with respect to giving grace is just a special case of his freedom with respect to any of his acts, such as creating the world, causing miracles, sending prophets, etc.  What all these effects of divine action have in common is that they are contingent.  Hence if the doctrine of divine simplicity implies that these effects are necessary, then it seems the doctrine also implies that divine action is not really free after all.
The way to block this outcome is, again, to reject Mullins’ premise (9).  Now, what is wrong with that premise, as I explained in my original reply to Mullins, is that it ignores what Barry Miller calls the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties(where, as I there hinted in a footnote, this echoes Aquinas’s distinctionbetween real relations and logical relations).  Mullins writes:
To be fair to Feser, he does at least attempt to identify which premise in the argument that he rejects. Feser says,
Now, what the doctrine of divine simplicity claims—contrary to what Mullins supposes (in what he labels premise (9) of his argument)—is not that all of God’s properties are identical and thus are necessary as he is, but rather that all of his real properties are.
Feser then goes on to say that he rejects premise (9) because of a distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties.  According to Feser, God is identical to His real properties, but God is not identical to His Cambridge properties.
I find this reply from Feser curious for several reasons. 
End quote.  Mullins sure finds a lot of things “curious.”  Well, here’s something I find curious: that Mullins at first accuses me of having “not been entirely forthcoming” about which of his premises I reject, and then in the next breath conceding that in fact I identified premise (9) as the problem.  Go figure.
Anyway, Curious Ryan’s first complaint is that:
[I]t is curious because my premise (9) does not even mention the word property.  What my premise (9) actually says is, “All of God’s actions are identical to each other such that there is only one divine act.”  My actual premise (9) is something that proponents of divine simplicity explicitly endorse.  By this one act, God is said to will Himself and everything else that He has made.  Moreover, I intentionally avoided any mention of properties in the premises of my argument.  I avoided this because, as I explained in my original essay, proponents of divine simplicity explicitly deny that God has any properties, forms, immanent universals, or tropes.  As the proponent of divine simplicity, Katherin Rogers, makes clear, the simple God does not have any properties.  Instead, God is simply act.
End quote.  There are several things wrong with this.  The first is that it simply isn’t true that all proponents of divine simplicity would say that God does not have properties.  That way of talking makes it sound as if God is some sort of bare particular, and that is certainly not what the doctrine of divine simplicity claims.  What proponents of divine simplicity wouldall say is that God does not have any real properties that are distinct from the divine substance.
In any event, the word “property” is used by different philosophers in different ways, so before one makes sweeping claims about what “proponents of divine simplicity explicitly deny” one had better get clear on exactly how this or that proponent uses the term.  Now, as Mullins surely knows, the word “property” is commonly used in a very loose way by contemporary analytic philosophers, to mean just any old thing you might predicate of something.  To be sure, this is definitely not my own preferred usage, since the term has a much narrower technical sense in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.  But it is, again, a common usage among analytic philosophers.  Since analytic philosophers of religion are Mullins’ own main audience, since Miller (who I was citing) uses the term in this way, and since I had a word limit and didn’t have space in my essay to get into an explanation of the various uses of the term “property,” I decided for expository purposes to acquiesce to the common analytic philosopher’s usage. 
Now, Mullins surely realizes that that is how I intended to use the word “property” in my essay.  But given that broad sense of the term, it is quite obviously false to say that defenders of divine simplicity deny that God has “properties.”  On the contrary, defenders of divine simplicity typically hold that God has lots of “properties” in that broad sense of the term – omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, and so forth.  To be sure, defenders of the doctrine also say that God’s omnipotence is his omniscience, which is his perfect goodness, and so on.  So they would say that God’s “properties,” in this broad sense of the term, are identical.  But to say that is very different from saying that he doesn’t have “properties” in the broad sense.
Now, in this broad sense of the term “properties,” God’s actionswould also be “properties” of God.  Hence the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties is obviously relevant to evaluating Mullins’ premise (9), because we need to know whether the divine actions Mullins focuses on (such as giving grace and creating the world) are real properties or Cambridge properties – again, in the broad sense of “properties” used by analytic philosophers.  And again, Mullins surely has to realize that this is what I meant.  Mullins’ book on the divine nature is in a series devoted to analytic theology, and it cites Miller in its bibliography, so the usage cannot be unfamiliar to him.  So, Mullins’ heavy going about my reference to “properties” seems to me to amount to mere quibbling and kicking up dust.  All very curious, as Mullins would say.
Anyway, here’s the payoff.  When we get clear on the terminological issues, it is manifestly falseto claim, as Mullins does, that his premise (9) “is something that proponents of divine simplicity explicitly endorse.”  For, to use Miller’s language, defenders of divine simplicity claim only that God’s real properties are identical to each other, not that his Cambridgeproperties are.  Hence any divine action that amounts to a Cambridge property is not one that the defender of divine simplicity will identify with the divine nature.  And that is exactly what is going on with properties like “being creator of the world” and “being the source of grace.”  They are Cambridge properties.  So, the problem with Mullins’ premise (9) is that it is too sweeping.  Once one restricts the premise to God’s real properties, the revised premise will be true, but then the rest of Mullins’ argument will no longer go through.  In particular, it will no longer follow that God’s act of giving grace is identical to God and thus as necessary as he is.  And thus it will not follow that that act is not free.
Mullins tells us that a second reason he finds my reply “curious” is that I seem, in his view, to be confusing his position with that of Thomas Morris, against whom I deployed Miller’s distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties in my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God .  (More precisely, Miller himselfdeploys this distinction against Morris – I was just citing Miller’s response to Morris in my book, rather than presenting it as my own.)  Mullins says his argument is very different from Morris’s, since Morris’s focus is on the claim that divine simplicity would make God’s creation of the world necessary.  But I have already explained why this is not a difference that makes a difference.  What is doing the work in Mullins’ argument is the claim that divine simplicity makes God’s actions, in general, necessary – the same thing that is doing the work in Morris’s argument.  The fact that Mullins focuses on the specific example of God acting to impart grace, whereas Morris focuses on the example of God acting to create the world, is irrelevant.  Hence my objection applies to Mullins’ argument no less than to Morris’s.
But Mullins’ third reason for finding my reply “curious,” he tells us, is that he does not think it really applies even to Morris’s position.  The reason, he says, is that “divine actions are intrinsic to God,” and thus cannot be Cambridge properties.  Hence my appeal to the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties is a “category mistake” and amounts to “nothing but hand-waving.”
Well, if Mullins isn’t here waving his own hands, that’s only because he’s too busy missing the point.  To see what is wrong with his response, go back to the examples I used in my original essay to introduce the distinction between real properties and Cambridge properties.  When Socrates grows a beard, that involves the acquisition by him of a real property.  But when he becomes shorter than Plato, not because of any change he undergoes, but rather because Plato has grown taller, that involves the acquisition by Socrates of a Cambridge property.  It is, in this case, Plato rather than Socrates who acquires a real property.
Now, it is possible for something to have a Cambridge property by virtue of also having a certain real property.  To modify my example, suppose that Socrates had been Plato’s father, so that it is by virtue of his having been begotten by Socrates and inheriting Socrates’ genes that Plato eventually grew to be taller than Socrates.  Then there is a sense in which you could say that Socrates’ action, the action of begetting Plato, caused Socrates (later on) to become shorter than Plato.  Now, there is obviously a sense in which Socrates’ action of begetting is intrinsic to Socrates.  Something has to happen in him in order for the begetting to occur.  And so, something had to happen in him in order for Plato later on to grow taller, which resulted in Socrates being shorter than Plato.  But does it follow that Socrates’ becoming shorter than Plato is not a Cambridge property after all but a real one?  Of course not. 
Now in the same way, it is certainly true to say that there is something intrinsic to God himself that makes it the case that the world is created.  No defender of divine simplicity denies that.  But it simply doesn’t follow that God’s acting to create the world is not after all a Cambridge property, any more than it follows that Socrates’ growing shorter than Plato is not after all a Cambridge property.
You might characterize the situation in my revised example as Socrates acting in a way that (eventually) resulted in his becoming shorter than Plato.  But though the acting is something intrinsic to Socrates, that the acting resulted in his becoming shorter than Plato is not intrinsic to him.  Similarly, you might characterize creation as God acting in a way that resulted in the world’s existing.  But though the acting is something intrinsic to God, that the acting resulted in the world’s existing is not intrinsic to him.
You may or may not find this plausible.  But here’s the thing.  The unwary reader of Mullins’ response is likely to get the impression that my reply to him was some eccentric concoction of my own, cobbled together to rebut his novel and clever objection.  But my response is neither my own concoction nor eccentric, and Mullins’ objection is neither novel nor particularly clever.  In fact it is pretty old hat.  As I have already said, I am simply making a point made by Barry Miller, but Miller was in turn only putting a contemporary gloss on a line of argument that goes back at least to Aquinas, and that has been repeated by many Thomists since.  And all of them were responding to variations on the sort of objection Mullins gives.
The way Aquinas puts the point is, again, in terms of the distinction between a real relation and a logical relation (sometimes called a relation of reason).  A stock example is the relationship between perceiver and perceived.  If I perceive you, I bear a real relation to you.  But if you are perceived by me, you bear a logical rather than real relation to me.  Miller’s way of putting this is to say that by virtue of perceiving you, I have a real property, whereas by virtue of being perceived by me, you have a merely Cambridge property. 
Now, Aquinas’s view is that by virtue of being created by God, the world bears a real relation to him, whereas by virtue of creating the world, God bears a merely logical rather than real relation to it.  Miller’s way of putting this is to say that the world’s being created by God is a real property of the world, whereas God’s creating the world is a Cambridge property of God.  (When replying to Mullins, I decided to use Miller’s formulation because I supposed it would be less likely to be misunderstood by readers more familiar with analytic than with Thomistic jargon.  Silly me.)  One wonders whether Mullins is even familiar with this traditional Thomistic position.  If he isn’t, that would explain the, er, curious circumstance that Mullins at one point actually tries to employ Aquinas against my objection – an objection I borrow, by way of Miller, from Aquinas.
Anyway, the point is this.  The Aquinas-Miller position is not some obscure or incidental aspect of the debate over divine simplicity.  It is a standard part of it, certainly among Thomists, and has been for centuries.  Mullins does nothing to refute this position.  All he does is make assertions of precisely the kind the Aquinas-Miller position claims already to have answered.  So, while Mullins seems to think he has made some devastating new objection against divine simplicity, in fact he hasn’t advanced the discussion one inch beyond where Aquinas left it in the thirteenth century.  Maybe the Aquinas-Miller position is wrong (though obviously I don’t think it is), but if so, Mullinscertainly has done nothing to show that it is.
Analogy and dire consequences
Mullins has some equally anticlimactic things to say in response to my remarks about analogy.  He writes:
I am not entirely sure what the doctrine of analogy does for divine simplicity with regards to my argument.  Can analogical predication somehow remove a contradiction like “God is free and God is not free.”  No.  Classical theists are quite clear that God cannot be free if His actions are performed of absolute necessity.  No amount of analogical predication can make God’s free actions consistent with those actions being performed of absolute necessity.  Can analogical predication somehow make God’s contingent and necessary actions identical?  Of course not.  No amount of analogical predication can make necessity and contingency mean something completely different so as to remove the contradictions that I have pointed out.  I think what Feser is really working with is equivocation.
End quote.  Well, this is – one more time, everyone, all together – all very curious.  First, there can be no mystery about why I brought up analogy in my earlier essay, because I explicitly said why.  The reason was that in his own earlier essay, Mullins had made some glib and sweeping remarks to the effect that proponents of divine simplicity resort to “cheap” appeals to mystery, and in particular to “mysterious language.”  I was pointing out that this is an unjust characterization, because what they actually appeal to is the notion of the analogical use of terms.  This notion is neither particularly mysterious nor cheap.  It is a familiar part of both ordinary and scientific discourse, is motivated independently of any concerns about divine simplicity, and has been worked out in theoretical detail.
Second, and as should go without saying, Mullins is attacking some pretty crude straw men in this paragraph.  No defender of divine simplicity holds that God is both free and unfree, or that something can be both contingent and necessary in the same respect.  So, naturally, no defender of divine simplicity appeals to analogy in order to defend such absurd claims.
Mullins, once again, has nothing new or of interest to say here, and the other remarks he makes about analogy are just bare assertions that defenders of divine simplicity have heard and answered many times.
Finally, Mullins comments on the classical theist view, which I endorsed in my earlier essay, that to deny divine simplicity entails denying the ultimacy and uniqueness of God, and thus entails atheism.  He characterizes this as a “slippery slope” argument that “assume[s] an elaborate set of metaphysical theories that a Christian does not have to affirm in order to articulate a biblical doctrine of God.”  He then goes on to mention several of the relevant metaphysical claims, and to tell us that he finds each of them “implausible.”  He suggests that classical theism and atheism are not the only options, and he is dismissive of the classical theist’s claim that the further options reduce God to something merely superhuman but still creaturely.
Of course, these are all just more bare assertions, and question-begging ones at that.  For example, the classical theist would not agree that the relevant metaphysical considerations need not be affirmed in order to defend the biblical conception of God.  But what is really curious (whoops, said it again) is that Mullins ignores the main reasons I brought up the dire consequences in question in the first place.  In his initial essay, Mullins had given the impression that the doctrine of divine simplicity is merely the bizarre obsession of theologians too enamored of some obscure philosophical ideas, and irrelevant to anything of specifically Christian or biblical concern.  This is a common rhetorical ploy among critics of the doctrine.  And I was pointing out that in fact, what motivates defenders of the doctrine is a concern to uphold the uniqueness and ultimacy of God – both of which are, needless to say, pretty central to the Christian and biblical conception of God.  I was pointing out that in fact, defenders of divine simplicity would appeal to the ultimacy and uniqueness of God precisely as the basis of positive arguments for divine simplicity.
So, my complaint was that Mullins’ original essay failed to convey what is actually at stake in the debate over divine simplicity, and thus failed to grapple with the main arguments for the doctrine.  And that failure is recapitulated in his latest essay, insofar as all he has to tell us is that he personally finds the arguments in question “implausible” and prefers other views to classical theism.  Well, we already knew that.  What we need is an actual response to the arguments.  Once again, Mullins has failed to advance the debate over divine simplicity even an inch.

Summer open thread

It’s about time for another open thread, so here it is.  From violent crimes to medieval times to cringe-making rhymes, nothing is off-topic.  Still, as always, please keep it classy and keep it civil.
While I’ve got your attention, let me take this opportunity to make several comments about comments.  First, a few readers have complained recently that their comments are not appearing.  In fact, they are appearing.  What these readers do not realize is that after a thread exceeds 200 comments, you have to click on the “Load more…” prompt at the bottom of the comments section to see the most recent comments.  It’s easy to miss, but it’s there.  Click on it and you’ll no doubt find that comment that you thought had disappeared into the ether (and perhaps had needlessly re-posted several times). Second, with open threads like this one, everything is on topic.  But on regular posts, I urge all my readers not to post off-topic comments and not to respond to people who do post them.  I find threadjacking extremely annoying, and I delete all this stuff as soon as I see it.  (Here’s a tip: If you are inclined to start a comment with the words “This is off-topic, but…,” then don’t bother finishing it or posting it, because I will delete it while uttering some choice cuss words.)  Again, open threads are the places to raise off-topic issues.  You might also try the Classical Theism Forum.
Third, some readers occasionally find themselves exasperated at the propensity of their fellow readers to keep feeding obvious trolls.  I feel their pain.  However, as longtime readers know, I try as far as I can to moderate with a light hand, so as to facilitate free discussion and – frankly – to spare myself work I really don’t need.  I’m way too busy as it is. 
Occasionally there are trolls whose behavior is soobnoxious, disruptive, and even psychotic that I have no choice but to ban them permanently.  (With some of these people, there is more to the story than what you’d know just from what appears in the combox.  Believe me, there are some real nuts out there.)  There are others who are just jerks who don’t get the message until I ban them temporarily, but who will more or less behave themselves afterward. 
Most trolls, though, aren’t quite as bad as that and needn’t be banned.  They are merely tiresomely banal, or can’t think clearly, or are oddballs, or otherwise have nothing of real interest to say.  As long as they refrain from dumping post after post after post into the combox, they are mild pests at worst.  Unless you feed them.  So don’t.  Don’t even post a short insulting response, however merited.  Just bite your lip and ignore them.  You will be doing both me and your fellow readers a big favor.  And if instead you keep feeding them, you will be complicit in wrecking a thread that might otherwise have been worth continuing.  Think before you post, andbefore responding to what others post.
Links to previous open threads can be found here.

Contra Mullins on divine simplicity

The Theopolis Institute website is hosting a conversation on divine simplicity, with an opening essay by Ryan Mullins criticizing the doctrine and responses so far from Peter Leithart, Joe Lenow, and me.  More installments to come over the next couple of weeks.  You can read my own response to Mullins here.