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Meanderings of a theistic agnostic.
Evan has some interesting thoughts about van Inwagen’s modal ontological argument. I plan to comment as soon as I get a second to breathe. Check it out for yourself here and here.
Stray Sheep
I guess my thought is that how could I ever hope to define or recognize perfection. Perfection seems a concept that is just that, a concept, so how can I fully understand a reality from a concept? To me, that means that rather than seeking after the concept, perfect being, I ought rather to seek to relate to the person, God.
For example, I can think of the perfect wife. But that is not a reality, it is a concept. My time is better spent seeking to know my wife, and appreciating her positive attributes. As I discover them, I love her and understand her more and more. Of course, the analogy breaks down with God, since with him I don’t need to overlook any annoying habits.
Perfect being theology is the theology of philosophic theists. It is used for the sake of argument and stems partly from Anselm’s famous ontological argument. What is interesting though is that many non-philosophical, run-of-the-mill Christians implicitly hold to a perfect being theology. Think about how God is normally conceived, “every good gift is from him,” “there’s no evil in him,” “he’s omniscient and omni-present,” “he’s sovereign.” Those who are expressly opposed to a perfect being theology tend to be “liberal” (open theists, process theists, Emergent Village, etc.), a very unfortunate and derogatory misnomer.
Thanks for the reference! However, I don’t think the author’s appreciating PVI’s point (just in case he hasn’t read it, PVI’s 1997 paper, “Modal Epistemology”, provides the contextual backround and argumentation for why he’s a modal skeptic). Also, I’m not sure if what he lists as “reasons” are really helpful or relevant for determining whether the existence of a maximally great being is metaphysically possible.
Best,
EA
Exapologist,
I have read PVI’s paper, but I am not sure if my concerns are addressed therein. In any case, my post(s) are not supposed to be a robust argument against modal skepticism. PVI endows the “knowno” with an equal measure of possibility as a perfect being. This strikes me as wrong for several reasons, not the least of which is that the theist can martial evidence for his belief in the possibility of a perfect being, while it is unclear how anyone can martial evidence for belief in the possibility of a “knowno”. My point is this: the “knowno” and perfect being are not on equal modal footing. This seems to raise an interesting epistemic question about an agent having evidence for p, while not having evidence for the impossibility of q—which p entails.
In my view, there are numerous reasons for belief in the possibility of a perfect being. PVI (in the article under review) does not provide any reasons for the possibility of a “knowno”.
I hope I am not missing anything blatantly obvious.
ET
Hi ET,
You’re probably familiar with the recent literature on modal epistemology, but just in case: (perhaps) excluding Chalmers and Jackson’s views on the matter, most modal epistemologists claim that a modal claim must pass what Yablo calls “the modal appearance test”. That is, it must *appear* to be possible (as opposed to merely *not* appearing to be *impossible*). Van Cleve calls the former ‘strong conceivability’, and the latter ‘weak conceivability’. The ability to weakly conceive that P isn’t sufficient to provide prima facie justification that P is metaphysically possible, since such sorts of conceivings admit of counterexamples.
I’m not sure, though, what evidence you have in mind for the metaphysical possibility of an Anselmian god, beyond being able to find an incoherence in the concept — i.e., beyond, roughly, the ability to weakly conceive of such a being (although, as you know, it’s not easy to spell out an account of the divine attributes). If that’s all you mean, then both God and Knowno are on a par, no?
If the evidence is some sort of evidence that such a being is *actual*, then of course the modal ontological argument is superfluous. I have a feeling, though, that you have more to say on the matter that might help clarify and justify your claim.
All the best,
EA
Whoops, sorry: 2nd paragraph, first line should read, “…beyond being *unable* to find an incoherence in the concept…”
EA
EA,
Let me (loosely) follow Van Cleve’s model as it relates to the perfect being/knowno distinction I am attempting to draw. My argument is affirming that we can ‘strongly conceive’ of a PB—therefore qualifying it for metaphysical possibility—while we can only ‘weakly conceive’ of a knowno.
In truth, it is difficult for me to conceive of a being that *knows* a PB does not exist. However, I am hesitant to say that my difficulty in conceiving of such a being coupled with my acceptance of the conceivability of a perfect being should entail my belief that a knowno is impossible. Yet this is exactly what belief in the possibility of a PB necessitates. I think this raises the epistemic question of whether my primitive belief in the possibility of a PB (assuming it is justified) deflates any justification for belief in a knowno. Or, if I want to construe it in a deontological way, is my epistemic responsibility removed if I have good reason for accepting a proposition p that entails the impossibility of q, even if my reasons for p do not directly militate against the possibility of q?
As for what counts as evidence for belief in the possibility of a PB, I think your previous blog article might be of some help. In that piece you assert that all (or most) of the counterexamples to the conceivability-possibility inference are cases in which the thing under review is weakly conceivable. You take (1) of the modal ontological argument as a case of the former, therefore the argument fails to accomplish what it claims. I, predictably, deny that a PB is merely weakly conceivable, and therefore I think that (1) lives to fight another day. I have reasons for this claim, but I think, in light of your article and response to me, there are a few things I would like clarified before we proceed.
1)How is the weak conceivability in play when we consider Goldbach’s Conjecture and Evening Star/Morning Star analogous to belief in a PB?
2)Why isn’t belief in PB analogous to your belief in what might have been of your surfing career or the alternative coloring of your car? I am not sure what you mean by “just see” as it relates to strong conceivability. If there is a criterion imbedded here, I am curious to know its details.
3)Following (2), it is not clear why evidence for the possibility of a PB cannot include evidence for its *actual* existence. If I ask x to countenance the possibility of a PB in P1, and x believes that Anselm’s God (PB for this purpose) is conceptually coherent, attested to in the sacred text, and is even made manifest through a personal religious experience (in the actual world of course), how can x avoid these factors in his epistemic position toward accepting the possibility of a PB in P1, even if this comes at the cost of x’s belief in the metaphysical impossibility of the knowno.
Out of curiosity, have you read Richard Gale’s account (1993) of the modal ontological argument? I do hope we are not headed in the direction—clashing modal intuitions—where he supposes this debate stops. I appreciate your interaction.
Regards,
ET
Hi ET,
For my part, my ability to conceive of a PB and a Knowno are an a par — I can only weakly conceive of each; that is, I when I consider each, I fail to find an incoherence in each concept. To focus on the Knowno case: I see no incoherence in the notion of a being who has enough modal insight to clearly and distinctly conceive of a world wholly devoid of divine beings. From this, he makes the simple deduction that there is no divine being who exists in *all* possible worlds (having just clearly and distinctly conceived of at least *one* possible world at which no such being exists).
I see nothing wrong with your inference from the ability to strongly conceive of a PB to the inability to strongly conceive of Knowno (the same goes for your construal in terms of epistemic rights and duties: if it’s epistemically permissible to believe that a PB is possible, then it’s epistemically permissible to believe that a Knowno is impossible). Unfortunately, I share no intuition this strong. Rather, I can only fail to see an incoherence in the notion of such a being (i.e., I can only weakly conceive of a PB).
Now you mention what you take to be evidence that a PB is metaphysically possible, but I’m not clear as to how any of the things you cite actually constitute evidence of a necessary being. So, for example, apparent conceptual coherence is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for justifying the claim that a PB is metaphysically possible; evidence from a sacred text? Assuming we have sufficient evidence that, say, the Bible is the word of God, still, I don’t recall the Bible attributing modal properties to God beyond *actual* existence; a similar point applies to religious experience: when you are aware of God, are you aware of his modal property of necessity? What is it about your experience that pushes your evidence beyond a maginificent yet contingent being — or (and sorry if this sounds facetious, but I really don’t mean it that way) even just a relatively powerful, smart, and kindly poltergeist? Thus, so far as I can see, none of the lines of evidence you mention, even if good ones, gives us evidence of a necessarily existent being (as opposed to, say, Swinburne’s contingent god).
As for weak conceivability as it relates to Goldbach’s Conjecture and the Hesperus/Phospherus cases: these are standard counterexamples to generic formulations of conceivability-possibility inferences in the modal epistemology literature, as well as to weak conceivability as evidence of metaphysical possibility in particular. Thus, I fail to see an incoherence in the proposition that Goldbach’s Conjecture is false; the same goes for Goldbach’s Conjecture being true. But neither is evidence that it’s metaphysically possible for GC to be either true or false. The H/P case is a little trickier. With this example, the people doing the conceiving have to be ignorant of the discovery that H=P. But there have been a lot of people in human history who lived prior to that discovery — and even many alive *today* who are ignorant of the discovery. Such people can imagine a coherent scenario in which H exists without P, and vice-versa, but of course this scenario is metaphyically impossible. Now of course, as post-Kripkean thinkers, we have to clean up the way I put the point here Yablo does a nice job in his 1993 paper), but once the language is cleaned up and put in terms of Kripkean epistemic counterparts, the same result falls out.
Re: the difference between my “surfing” case and the PB case: Van Cleve would put the point by saying that in the former case, I directly intuit that P is possible; in the latter, I merely fail to intuit that P is impossible. Thus, Van Cleve’s account makes the relevant sorts of intuiting out to be primitive, incapable of further analysis and explanation. On my own account of modal epistemology (which plays a crucial role in my dissertation, so I’m biased. But that’s okay, ’cause I of course have the sober truth on the matter ;), the difference lies in the fact that the former case is analogous to token events in the actual world — there are people very much like me, but who haven’t the slightest interest in surfing — and since whatever is actual is possible, I have some decent inductive evidence that the “surfer” case is possible. However, in the latter case, the thing conceived or imagined is significantly relevantly disanalogous to any token state of affairs I’ve experienced in the actual world; thus, I lack the corresponding inductive basis to move from the actual to the possible. In my dissertation, I label conceivings depicting states of affairs siginificantly and relevantly similar to tokens of those in the actual world, “low-flying thought experiments; conceivings involving tokens of states of affairs significantly and relevantly dissimilar to those in the actual world I label as “high-flying thought experiments”. One of my main theses is that only low-flying thought experiments are prima facie justified, since they’re backed by an inductive argument of the sort mentioned above, while the latter are not.
I think I have read the Gale article you mention, but not for about a decade or so.
Hopefully, I’ve at least given enough of a sketch of an account of the justification of certain sorts of conceivings/thought experiments to provide a basis to move beyond conflicting intuitions!
Best wishes,
EA
EA,
I will do my best to post a response tomorrow. Is there a possible world in which life does not get in the way of modal epistemology? Now that is a world I wish was actual. Thank you for your interaction thus far.
Regards,
ET
Hi ET,
Please take your time. It’s end-of-the-quarter madness for me at the moment.
Best,
EA
Let us consider weak conceivability as it relates to a PB. You have admitted that you can fail to see incoherence in the concept of such a being. I take this to mean that you can conceive of a PB whose attributes do not stand in contradiction to each other. From your view, this is not a very strong claim seeing as you can, in the same way, conceive (weakly) of a being that *knows* a PB does not exist.
I, however, take this concession as significant in light of the perfect-being theology that it assumes. Consider the following argument:
1) A perfect being is possible.
2) Necessary existence is a perfection.
3) A perfect being necessarily exists. [From 1, 2]
4) There are reasons r1…r9 for belief in the actual existence of the Christian God.
5) The Christian God is a perfect being.
6) The Christian God necessarily exists. [From 2, 3, 5]
7) There are reasons r1…r9 for belief in the necessary existence of the Christian God. [From 3, 4, 5, 6]
8) Therefore, there are reasons r1…r9 for belief in the necessary existence of a perfect being. [From 4, 5, 7]
(1)-(3) is simply van Inwagen’s modal argument. (1) is of course susceptible to both the argument from weak-conceivability and the knowno argument, but I think (2)-(8) deflate the force of those objections. If not, so much the worse for (1) and the rest of my argument.
Van Inwagen brings this partially to bear in the text, but (2) is in step with Anselm’s project, and is as convincing as many of the other perfections delineated in perfect-being theology. If we accept the project—as it seems we should if we write in terms of a “perfect being—(2) is not objectionable.
The same qualifiers I gave for (1) apply for (3).
(4) seems obvious, but my use of “r1…r9” need explaining. By “reasons”, I am casting a very wide net. I am referring to the entire project of natural theology, arguments from religious (Christian, in this case) experience, and even arguments that work to justify Christian theism without the evidential constraints (e.g., Reformed Epistemology). If my argument is to proceed there must be something in “r1…r9” such that if the Christian theist adduces one of the options, she is in a more favorable epistemic position than if she adduces none of the options. I suspect you accept this as I do (regardless of our religious convictions, or lack thereof), so I will argue given that assumption.
While I think it is debatable on several grounds, most of analytic philosophy of religion (as it relates to Christianity) accepts (5) as a starting point, in keeping with Anselm’s project. I would beg the question if I use the former as evidence for truth of (5), but it is out of the scope of this argument to weigh and alternate views of the Christian God. Most likely, those who are interested in (1)-(8) assume its truth; I will leave it at that.
(6) follows from (3) and (5).
As for (7), obviously, I have admitted all of the evidence (r1…r9) for the actual existence of the Christian God as fair game in consideration of the necessary existence of the same being.
(8) follows from (4)-(7). If you are willing to concede that a PB is weakly conceivable, it is seems plausible that this conception points at a being that has necessary existence as one of its perfections. If this same PB is the Christian God—which those defending the ontological argument and criticizing it both seem to accept—then reasons admitted for the actual existence of the Christian God must count for the necessary existence of a PB. I think this move defeats the knowno objection by making available a myriad of reasons for belief in the necessary existence of a PB that are simply not available for belief in a knowno. This brings us back to my epistemic point from before, which you do not find objectionable.
In sum, I think it is plausible to include necessary existence into the bundle of perfections (or maximal attributes) that comprises a PB in the above argument. If this is true, arguments for the actual existence of the Christian God are pointing at the same being to which your weak conceivability points. Hence, these arguments serve to justify the claim of necessary existence since the being to which they point has the perfection of necessary existence.
Of course, there is still the question whether the purported success of (1)-(8) raises the conceivability of a PB from ‘weak’ to ‘strong’. Or, to put it in your terms, whether my conceiving a PB is now a ‘low-flying thought experiment’ by virtue of all the options available to you in r1…r9. I think this question hinges on what you think of the potency of the arguments available for the actual existence of the Christian God. And even if the strongest argument that ties religious experience to perception works, perhaps it is still disanalogous to the strong inductive evidence you have in virtue of watching other people surf, or others cars with red paint. Even if this is the case, or if you find little plausibility in any argument for the actual existence of a Christian God (and hence, a PB), it is at least the case that belief in a PB is not in the same epistemic position as belief in a knowno. Whether this calls for a gradation in weak conceivability and strong conceivability, or a reformulation of the knowno objection, I am not sure.
At the least, I am looking to show that weakly conceiving of a PB with necessary existence as a perfection opens up the door for (4)-(8) where arguments for the actual existence of the Christian God count as arguments for the necessary existence of a PB, seeing as the Christian God is a PB.
Again, thanks for the continued interaction. I do hope this semester is not closing in on you too violently. Have an excellent day.
Regards,
ET
The eighth premise above was not intended to be cute but it seems that WordPress wants to make a smiley face out of ‘8’ when written with a parentheses.
Thanks,
ET
[…] Over at Stray Sheep an interesting discussion has kicked up over my previous post’s on van Inwagen criticism’s of the modal […]
Hi ET,
I’ll get back with a fuller reply when I’m able to come up for air, but let me make a quick reply for now. I worry that you’re not picking up on the weak conceivability/strong conceivabliity distinction, and why weak conceivability is not sufficient evidence for possibility.
As far as I can tell, you seem to think that
1) I fail to see that a PB is (broadly) logically impossible.
entails or prima facie justifies
2) I see that a PB is (broadly) logically possible.
Otherwise, I can’t see why you would think that my granting (1) entails, or otherwise provides sufficient evidence for, (2). But, to repeat, (1) just isn’t sufficient evidence for (2). If it were, then by parity of reasoning, we should say the same thing about the possible existence of Knowno, the possible truth and falisity of GC (which would entail that CG is only contingently true(!)), the possible distinctness of Hesperus and Phospherus, the possible distinctness of water and H20, etc. So by reductio, (1)-type propositions aren’t sufficient evidence for (2)-type propositions.
Also, I see that you want to use the Bible and religious experience, etc., as evidence for a PB. That way, you can say that you can infer, from that claim and the claim that necessary existence is a perfection, the modal property of necessary existence from the Bible and religious experience, without having to be directly aware of this modal property. But I think you would be hard pressed to get an Anselmian PB from the Bible or from religious experience. The same goes for other arguments from natural theology: I worry that there are arguments that are both (i) sound, and (ii) have the implication that God is a PB. But in any case, as I alluded to a couple of posts ago, if you had a case for such a god from other arguments from natural theology, then the modal ontological argument is superfluous if your goal is to provide independent evidence for God’s existence.
That’s how I see it at the moment anyway. Perhaps I’m mistaken?
Best,
EA
Whoops! Last paragraph, middle: “…I worry that there *aren’t* arguments from natural theology that are both (i) sound, and (ii) have the implication that God is a PB.
EA,
I am not denying the distinction between strong conceivability and weak conceivability. It is a hasty move to take my argument as simply adducing the latter as justification for the former. Of course, all sorts of absurdities follow via parity of reasoning if my argument does this, but the express purpose of my argument is to show that the notion of a PB, when unpacked, opens up a myriad of justificatory options for belief in the possibility of a PB, because that PB is the Christian God. These options are not available to the ‘would be’ believer in the possibility of GC, the knowno, and H/P. My argument attempts to explicate the notion of a PB under the pretense of perfect-being theology. According to the modal argument (and most other arguments in philosophy of religion) the Christian God is a PB—a bundle of perfections or maximally great attributes. It seems that the modal property of necessary existence is a good candidate for inclusion among these perfections (as PVI argues).
I do not think that arguments from natural theology and religious experience establish this modal property (insofar as they establish anything). However, if I accept that the Christian God is a PB, it is hard to see how justification for the actual existence of this is not transitive to considerations of possible existence, and therefore necessary existence. Obviously, you may just deny that the Christian God is a PB and that Anselm’s conceptual project to establish the former (prior to any natural theology) is successful. If so, then there is not much progress ahead.
Nevertheless, why am I precluded from any of the options in ‘r1…r9’ in an attempt to justify belief in the possibility of a PB? If my conception of a PB as a bundle of perfections is, in some part, conceptually prior to any argument for the actual existence of the Christian God (and therefore a PB), then it is not incumbent upon me to show that arguments for actual existence must directly argue for the modal property of necessary existence. Yet it I cannot see how arguments for actual existence do not directly help justify necessary existence if the object of the argument thought to be metaphysically necessary from the outset—which is precisely the case under the lights of perfect-being theology.
Again, if I can weakly conceive that an Anselmian PB is possible, it seems I have opened the door to justification options (‘r1…r9’) that afford me a much better epistemic stance than the analogies of weak conception that you have offered.
How this fits into the literature on modal epistemology (that I am familiar with at least) is not clear to me. Although I suspect that garden-variety examples of weak-conceivability are simply not analogous to the conceivability under consideration here. And of course, acceptance of perfect-being theology, though not without its reason, is problematic.
By way of autobiography, I think the modal ontological argument does not work (for other reasons than we have discussed). Nor am I a proponent of perfect-being theology. I am just exploring possible options for the perfect-being adherent that finds a PB that has necessary existence as a perfection to be intuitively attractive, and wants a response to PVI’s criticisms.
I appreciate your patience and consideration,
Regards,
ET (or Evan, if you are not in the movie mood)
Hi ET,
Thanks for your reply. I’ll reply as soon as I get a chance.
Best,
EA
Hey agnosis!
I looked forward to reading your posts, but I haven’t seen any new ones for a while.
Hope all is well,
EA
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