(1) If S does not know that S is not a brain in a vat, S does not know there is
an external world.
(2) S does not know that S is not a brain in a vat.
(3) S does not know there is an external world.

And Moore says in response that

(2*) S knows there is an external world.

is more reasonable to believe than (2), and so concludes

(3*) S knows that S is not a brain in a vat.

More precisely, the Moorean fact in question is:

(4) It is more reasonable to believe (2*) than (2).

Now, suppose a persistent skeptic denies (4) and says:

(5) It is not more reasonable to believe (2*) than (2).

I say the skeptic who denies (4) is a persistent skeptic because (4) is a very modest proposal; definitely more modest than (2*). And typically, more modest proposals are more reasonable to believe than less modest ones. But what happens when the skeptic asserts (5)? Can Moore make another appeal to common sense to once again outmaneuver the skeptic, or does the skeptic’s denial of (4) drag Moore back into the skeptic’s playground?

If the dialectic so far is valid (i.e., no questions are being begged, fallacies being committed, etc), what would prevent Moore from positing second-order Moorean facts? For example, in response to the persistent skeptic, why can’t Moore say

(6) It is more reasonable to believe (4) than (5).

After all, if (4) is more modest than (2*), wouldn’t (6) be more modest than (5), thus even harder to deny than (4)? I guess another way of putting the question is this: does the modesty increase with higher-order Moorean facts?

Objection: What makes (4) more modest than (2*) is the fact that (2*) is about what one knows, whereas (4) is about what is reasonable to believe. But both (4) and (5) are about what is reasonable to believe, so (4) is not more modest than (5).

This is a good reply, but there may be a decent rejoinder. Consider first the definition of a Moorean fact. On the construal above, a Moorean fact is about what is reasonable to believe. But now two things bear saying. First, exactly how is what is known being distinguished from what is reasonable to believe here, such that there are things that are reasonable to believe that are not known while things that are known are reasonable to believe? Second, the canonical definition of a Moorean fact is about what one knows (Cf. David Lewis in “Elusive Knowledge”: “A Moorean Fact [is] one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of any philosophical argument to the contrary.”). Granted, Lewis’ definition is a bit odd in that it requires degrees of knowledge; but what if we understand a Moorean fact as such? Well, it seems clear that the objection under consideration would be sufficiently dealt with. But the question then is whether the dialectic above changes in light of this reworded definition.

Consider second the nature of the persistent skeptic’s response. Actually, the skeptic can deny (4) in two ways. He could say either of the following:

(5) It is not more reasonable to believe (2*) than (2)
(5*) It is more reasonable to believe (2) than (2*)

If the skeptic denies (4) by asserting (5), he apparently is not making a claim about what is reasonable to believe at all; he is denying a claim about what is reasonable to believe, presumably on some grounds more reasonable to believe than (4). What are those grounds? Does the skeptic thus reach a stalemate with Moore over what is more reasonable to believe  by asserting the grounds for (5)?

If the skeptic denies (4) by asserting (5*), then again he must have some grounds independent of skeptical scenarios to support it. His grounds for asserting (5*) must be independent of skeptical scenarios because skeptical scenarios are his grounds for asserting (2). If he appealed to the same grounds, he’d be engaged in circular reasoning. But if he has additional grounds for (5), what are they? And again, are they more reasonable to believe than (4)? Do we reach a stalemate again?

(1) God is pure act (P)
(2) If God is pure act, then if God could do x, God does x (P)
(3) If God could do x, God does x (1, 2, MP)
(4) If God does not do x, God could not do x (3, trans)

If (1)-(4) are true (well, really just (2)), then all sorts of absurdities follow. For example, consider the following three arguments, each of which begin with a putatively true proposition:

A1:

(5) God could have created infinitely many universes other than this one
(6) If God could have created infinitely many universes other than this one, God has created infinitely many universes other than this one (3, EI)
(7) If God has created infinitely many universes other than this one, then Lewisian realism is true (P)
(8) Lewisian realism is true (5, 7, MP)

A2:

(5*) God has not refrained from creating this universe
(6*) If God has not refrained from creating this universe, God could not have refrained from creating this universe (4, EI)
(7*) If God could not have refrained from creating this universe, God is not free (P)
(8*) God is not free (5*, 7*, MP)

A3:

(5**) For any x such that x exists and x is not God [hereafter (∀x)(∃x · ~G)], God has not refrained from creating x
(6**) (∀x)(∃x · ~G), if God has not refrained from creating x, then God could not have refrained from creating x (4, EI)
(7**) (∀x)(∃x · ~G), God could not have refrained from creating x (5**, 6**, MP)
(8**) (∀x)(∃x · ~G), if God could not have refrained from creating x, then x exists necessarily (P)
(9) (∀x)(∃x · ~G), x exists necessarily (7**, 8**, MP)
(10) (∀x)(∃x · ~G), if x exists necessarily, then necessitarianism is true
(11) Necessitarianism is true

These are just a few examples. And, of course, more could be said in defense and clarification of each of the arguments’ key premises, (7), (7*), and (8**), respectively. But they’re roughly intuitive for now. One could generate any number of other absurdities, including contradictions, from (1)-(4). This leads me to think that (2) is dubious. But why? What do Thomists say that makes (2) a dubious implication?This posts was inspired by R. T. Mullins’ excellent paper, “Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity.”

A gratuitous evil is an evil for which there is no outweighing good—an evil that serves no ultimate purpose, and so is unnecessary. But for any gratuitous evil you pick (or even gratuitous evil as a category), it seems at least possible that the act of discussing or thinking about it renders it non-gratuitous. For the very discussion about whether some evil is gratuitous may serve as an outweighing good of some kind (perhaps deepening one’s philosophical or existential grip of reality, or one’s understanding of God and his ways).

If so, the only way evil could be gratuitous would be if no one thought about it at all. But if no one thought about it at all, it could never serve as a defeater for the rationality of belief in God. One cannot think about gratuitous evil as a defeater for belief in God without thereby generating a defeater for the belief that there are gratuitous evils. Thus, it would not be possible to rationally believe there are gratuitous evils, even if there were such.

Calvin College 4^th Annual
Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

May 4-5^th, 2012

Keynote Speakers:

  TED SIDER         &         JILL NORTH

This year we are very pleased to have Cornell philosophers Jill North and Ted Sider as our keynote speakers. On Friday the 4^th, Dr. North will kick off the conference with “The Structure of a Quantum World.” Dr. Sider will conclude the conference with “Against Parthood.”

ABOUT

Calvin’s undergraduate philosophy conference is a two-day event held each year to promote excellence in philosophy. In addition to keynote lectures from leading contemporary philosophers, the conference provides students an opportunity to present and receive rigorous feedback on their own work in the form of formal comments from a peer and Q&A.

INFORMATION

• Participants: The conference is free of charge and open to the public.
• Papers: Accepting papers on all topics in philosophy.
• Lodging: Calvin students offering to host visiting students.
• Contact: For further questions about the conference, please contact Chad McIntosh: cam39@students.calvin.edu

 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

• Submission deadline is March 15^th. Acceptance notification is April 1^st. All papers are subject to blind review.
• Include detachable title paper with name, title, and institution affiliation. The paper itself should include only the paper title. Submit papers as attachments in pdf/word.doc format to Chad McIntosh: cam39@students.calvin.edu
• Papers should be prepared to be read within 30-45 minutes.

For the presentist, talk of objects that did or will exist parallels the misleading modal talk of possible objects that do not exist. Just as there are no possible but nonexistent objects for the actualist, there are no non-present entities or objects for the presentist. There are only objects that exist at present. Tense, like actuality, therefore, is a real and monumentally significant feature of ontology. So according to the actualist, if God were to take an inventory of the total contents of reality using as his criteria everything that a totally unrestricted existential quantifier “∃x” ranges over, the only things that would turn up on his list would be things that exist. No possible but nonexistent entities or objects would turn up. Similarly for the presentist; if if God were to make an inventory of all that exists, the only things that would show up would be things that presently exist, or exist now. No non-present entities or objects would be catalogued. So an interesting question is How, at least from a presentist perspective, the items catalogued in God’s actualist inventory  differ from his presentist inventory.

Presentists believe that some propositions are essentially tensed. This fact also caused Plantinga to revise his initial account of possible worlds from maximal temporally-invariant (i.e., tenseless) states of affairs to “a temporally variant state of affairs that is maximal with respect to temporally invariant states of affairs.”[1] This is because Plantinga believes states of affairs, an hence possible worlds, are isomorphic to propositions. If possible worlds are isomorphic to propositions, and certain propositions are essentially tensed, then at least a subset of the propositions that make up a possible world must also be essentially tensed. In a striking passage, Plantinga gives a glimpse of this revised conception of a possible world as quite congenial to a presentist ontology:

There are many propositions, I believe, whose truth value varies over time. Thus the proposition Paul is typing is true at the present time, but fortunately not at every time. As I see it, a sentence like ‘Paul is typing’ uttered at a time t does not express the temporally invariant proposition Paul types at t but a temporally variant proposition true at just the times Paul types. Since states of affairs are isomorphic to propositions, there are also temporally variant states of affairs—Paul’s typing, for example. But this makes trouble for the above account of possible worlds. A possible world, I said is maximal; since Paul is in fact typing, α, the actual world, includes Paul’s typing. But then α itself will be temporally variant and will be actual only as long as Paul types. In fact, of course, its actuality will be briefer. Just now a bird is flying towards my window: name that bird ‘Sylvester.’ Let t be the present time; for each time t* as close as you like to t, Sylvester is a different distance from me. α, therefore, will be actual for no more than an instant.[2]

Here, it’s almost as if what is actual (contingently, at least), for Plantinga, just is what is what is present at t. But, as soon as t ceases to be present at some later time, say, t’ becomes present, so α ceases to be actual and α’  becomes actual. The actual world is actual as long as the present is present. Consider the following diagram, where each time t corresponds to some temporally variant (i.e., present) state of affairs that is maximal with respect to the temporally invariant states of affairs α* (e.g., the state of affairs consisting in 1+1 being 2, etc.):
While it is tempting to think of “the actual world” as the set composed of each temporally variant state of affairs {α_t1, α_t2, α_t3, α_t4,…} plus α*, this not correct. The actual world, on this picture, is represented in toto by any one pair α*+α_t1, α*+α_t2,α*+α_t3, etc. This is because the temporally variant state of affairs that is actual at α_t1 ceases to be actual at α_t2, etc. Thus, for the actualist, temporal and modal operators are analogous. Just as the actualist prohibits moving from “dragons exists in W” to “dragons exist,” the actualist will also prohibit going from “JFK exists in α*+α_t” to “JFK exists,” which is precisely what presentists maintain.[3] Indeed, many presentists, when pressed about what “is present” means, will insist that it just means “exists” or “is real.” F. M. Christensen, for example, says that “to be present is simply to be, to exist, and to be present at a given time is just to exist at that time—no less and no more.”[4] Actualism, or so it seems, entails presentism.[5]

Here is a second line of thought that might go from actualism to presentism. The problem giving rise to actualism was the conanical view’s implying there are, or could be, things that do not exist, or merely possible objects. Notice that this problem seems to be exclusively about contingent objects—objects, like dragons—that do not exist in the actual world, but do exist in other possible worlds. Merely possible objects, as they’re called. As such, the problem is not about necessary objects, like numbers or other abstract objects, which do exist in the actual world and every other, and moreover could not have not existed in the actual world or any other. Now, I wonder how closely connected contingent objects are with a temporal mode of existence. Do contingent objects have an essentially temporal character to them? Paradigm cases of a contingent property is one that an object exemplifies at some time t but does not exemplify at some other time t*. So contingent objects could be those that exist at some time t but do not exist at some other time t*. If this is right, then what the actualist really says is that there are no, nor could there have been, contingent things that do not exist, where “exist” is contingent, temporal existence. t and t* are analogous to, if not coextensive with, the times at which a different actual world obtains. But to affirm that there are no temporal things that do not exist is to affirm presentism. So, if contingent existence is essentially a temporal mode of existence, then actualism entails presentism.[6]

This same issue comes up in a slightly different way. As several philosophers have noted, the problem of possible but nonexistent objects is precicely parallel to the problem of temporal but non-present properties prosed by McTaggart’s paradox as follows. The canonical view seems to entail that an object can have the mutually exclusive properties of being actual and being merely possible: some contingent object that exists in the actual world, say, you or I, are actual in the actual and are merely possible in worlds in which we do not exist. But how can something be both actual and merely possible? Actualism avoids this denying that there are any such things as merely possible objects. The same problem can be raised against the concept of intrinsic change. If every object is identical to itself, how can an object exemplify a property at t and another property at t* and still be the same object? The presentist responds by denying that the object possesses only the properties it presently has. The same object did have some property p at t, but now has p* at t*. There are no exemplified properties that are not presently exemplified. William Lane Craig, quoting Robin Le Poidevin, concisely summarizes:

Now actualism is precisely parallel to presentism. As Le Poidevin admits, “the doctrine that only the actual world is real avoids the modal paradox just as the doctrine that only the present is real avoids McTaggart’s paradox.”* Since these two problems and their solutions are parallel, consistence demands that they must be accepted or rejected together. Either accept both actualism and presentism or else hold that just as all moments of time are equally real, so all possible worlds are equally real.[7]
___________
*Le Poidevin, Change, Cause, and Contradiction, p. 35.

The solutions to the “modal paradox” and McTaggart’s paradox are, therefore, are actualsim and presentism, respectively. Actualism and presentism, at least as solutions to these problems, are parallel in the same way that, say, parodies of the ontological argument are parallel to their parodied versions: like love and marriage, you can’t have one without the other. This seems like something less than actualism entailing presentism just as such, though.

According to the foregoing analysis, then, the following seems initially plausible:

(1) If actualism is true then presentism is true.

Now suppose we adopt the perspective of someone who is attracted to a robust ontology of possible worlds. Couple (1) with a few other, less controversial assumptions:

(2) Either actualism is true or concretism is true.[8]
(3) If the tenseless theory of time is true then presentism is false.

From these three assumptions, some really interesting implications follow:

(4) If presentism is false then actualism is false.
(5) If the tenseless theory is time is true then actualism is false.
(6) If actualism is false then concretism is true.
(7) If the tenseless theory of time is true concretism is true.[9]

These implications, with the exception of (6), are as interesting as they are puzzling. Implications (4) and (5) seem so jarring that they might even be seen as more obviously false than (1) itself.  Furthermore, although the tenseless theory of time is widely embraced by philosophers and scientists alike, hardly anyone at all embraces concretism. Many think it is just absurd (hence, the “incredulous stare”). Thus, this argument could be seen by many, if sound, to be a reductio (of sorts) against the static theory of time.

[1] Plantinga, Profiles, p. 91.
[2] ibid., p. 90-91.
[3] Thanks to Alexander Pruss, who originally expressed this thought to me this way.
[4] Christensen, Space-like Time (Toronto, 1993), p. 168. See Also Arthur Prior, “The Notion of the Present,” Studium Generale 23 (1970), pp. 245-248.
[5] I must say that I’m not confident this is right. Plantinga didn’t seem to think so, but the passage cited above strongly suggests it, if I’m understanding it correctly.
[6] Isn’t it obvious that contingent existence isn’t temporal existence? Surely there are possible worlds where there are contingent objects that could, but simply do not, fail to exist. Yes, there are such possible worlds. But are such objects really contingent? They seem to be better fit the bill of what Richard Swinburne calls  “factually necessary.” See Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1993), ch. 13. If metaphysical necessity and contingency are mutually exclusive and exhaustive modes of existence, then the argument in the text is unsound. But I see no reason not to admit different kinds of necessity that characterizes objects that could, but simply do not, fail to exist.
[7] See William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity (Crossway, 2001), p. 153
[8] Lewis himself suggests that if he is wrong, actualism is right. He writes:

You might say that, strictly speaking, only this-worldy things really exist; and I am ready enough to agree; but on my view this ‘strict’ speaking is restricted speaking, on a par with saying that all the beer is in the fridge and ignoring most of all the beer there is. When we quantify over less than all there is, we leave out things that (unrestrictedly speaking) exist simpliciter. If I am wrong, other-worldly things fail simpliciter to exist.  David Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 6.

Lewis seems to be saying here that if he is wrong, the actualist is right: there are no other-worldly (i.e., possible) things that do not exist.
[9] Where A = actualism, C = concretism, P = presentism, and T = the tenseless theory of time, the argument can be fomalized:

There are, of course, outliers; but the above three beliefs are fairly widely held among philosophers (for whatever that fact is worth; it’s also worth noting that these beliefs are eminently defensible, not to mention widely defended). Where A = actualism, C = concretism, P = presentism, and S = static theory of time, here is an interesting argument, predicated upon the above three assumptions:

(1)	A ↔ P…………………….P
(2)	A ∨ C……………………..P
(3)	S → ~P………………….P
(4)	(A → P) · (P → A)…1, ME
(5)	(A → P)…………………4, Simp
(6)	~P → ~A………………5, Trans
(7)	S → ~A…………………3, 6, HS
(8)	~A → C…………………2, MI
(9)	S → C…………………..7, 8, HS

As you can see, given those three beliefs (1-3), the static theory of time entails concretism. But an even more widely-held belief among philosophers is that concretism is absurd. Therefore, insofar these beliefs are true, the static theory of time entails an absurdity. Thus, this argument could be seen by many, if sound, to be a reductio (of sorts) against the static theory of time.

Note: a more modest version of this argument can be constructed given only A → P instead of the stronger A ↔ P. In that case, one could reach the same conclusion in two less steps.

We are imitating God’s creativity, but not just his creativity as such. We are imitating a special kind of creativity—a kind that is not just pragmatic, but has a deep aesthetic element to it as well.

Any act of God’s will be an expression of—or at least logically consistent with—his essential nature. God cannot bring about gratuitously immoral or logically impossible states of affairs because God’s nature delimits what is moral and logically possible. Hence, God’s creativity cannot be immoral.

But if what we’re doing when we do art is imitating God’s creativity, then we cannot be doing art when we do things that are immoral. Immoral art is an oxymoron. When one produces something that is immoral, it is not art. An artifact, no doubt. But not art (note: ‘bad’ is ambiguous. There could be a such thing as ‘bad’ art. My claim is only that there is no such thing as immoral art).

How does one know whether an alleged piece of art is immoral or not? It’s really hard to say. And our knowledge of such is fallible. I’m sure there are cases when one (or many) thinks a piece of art is immoral when it is not, and and cases when one does not think a piece of ‘art’ is immoral when it is. But I take it that there is a truth of the matter, and this truth, moreover, could very well be synchronic.

The above is grotesquely vague. But vague positions usually admit of at least one interpretation on which it is true. I imagine that a position that is grotesquely vague can even admit multiple interpretations on which it is true.