Theistic Natural Law and the Euthyphro Problem

Theistic Natural Law (TNL) theory seems to be subject to the Euthyphro problem much as divine command theory (DCT) is. On DCT, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

1. Why did God command what he commanded rather than commanding otherwise?

On TNL, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

2. Why did God create beings with the natures he did rather than creating beings with other natures?

In both cases, one can respond by talking of the essential goodness of God, by virtue of which he makes a good choice as to how to fittingly match the non-normative with the normative features of creatures. In the DCT case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing what sorts of creatures to create and what sorts of commands to give them. In the TNL case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing the non-deontic and deontic features of natures and then creating creatures with these natures. Thus, in the DCT case, God has reason to coordinate the sociality of creatures with the command to cooperate, while in the TNL case God has reason to actualize natures that either both include sociality and the duty to cooperate or to actualize natures that include neither.

So in what way is TNL better off than DCT with regard to the Euthyphro problem? The one thing I can think of in the vicinity is this: TNL allows for there to be deontic features that necessarily every natural includes, and it allows for there to be some deontic features of creatures that are entailed by the non-deontic features. For instance, perhaps every possible nature of an agent includes a prohibition against pointless imposition of torture, and every possible nature of a linguistic agent includes a prohibition against lying. But I am not sure this difference is really relevant to the Euthyphro problem.

I do prefer TNL to DCT, but not because of the Euthyphro problem. My reason for the preference is that many moral obligations appear to be intrinsic features of us.

Of course, the above arguments presuppose a particular picture of how natural law works. But I like that picture.

The argument from highly intelligent saints who are Christians

1. There have been many highly intelligent saints who were Christians.

2. If there have been may highly intelligent saints who were Christians, then probably (insofar as the above evidence goes) the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

3. So, probably (insofar as the above evidence goes), the central doctrines of Christianity are true.

(An interesting variant is to replace “are true” in (2) and (3) with “are approximately true”, and then to combine the conclusion with my previous post.)

I do not plan to defend 1. That’s too easy. Note, though, that while easy, it’s not trivial. I am not claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were canonized “Saints” by the Catholic or Orthodox Church, though that’s true. Nor am I claiming that there were many highly intelligent people who were Christian saints. I am claiming that there are may highly intelligent people who were saints simpliciter, as well as being Christian.

What is a saint like? Saints are deeply morally good people who, insofar as it depends on them, lead a deeply flourishing human life. Their lives are meaningful and when seen closely—which may be difficult, as many saints are very unostentatious—these lives are deeply compelling to others. Saints tightly integrate the important components of their lives. In particular, those saints who are highly intelligent—and not all saints are intelligent, though all are wise—integrate their intellectual life and their moral life. Highly intelligent saints are reflective. They have an active and humble conscience that is on the lookout for correction, and this requires integration between the intellectual life and the moral life.

An intelligent saint who is a Christian is also a Christian saint. For Christianity is not the sort of doctrine that can be held on the peripheries of a well-lived life. Someone who is a Christian but to whose life Christianity is not central is neither a saint simpliciter nor a Christian saint. For a central part of being Christian is believing that Christianity should be central to one’s life, and an intelligent saint—in either sense—will see this and thus either conscientiously act on such a belief, making Christianity be central to her life, or else conclude that Christianity is false.

Now, the existence of a highly intelligent saint who is a Christian is evidence for coherence between central moral truths and the truth of Christianity. For if they were not coherent, the reflectiveness of the highly intelligent saint would likely have seen the incoherence, and her commitment to morality would have led to the rejection of Christianity. But it’s not just that the moral truths and the truth of Christianity cohere: the truths of Christianity support and motivate the moral life. For the saint who is a Christian is, as I just argued, also a Christian saint. And a Christian saint is motivated in the moral life by considerations central to Christianity—the love of God as shown in creation and in the incarnate Son’s sacrificial death on the cross.

It is difficult to have a coherent theory that includes in a highly integrated way deeply metaphysical beliefs and correct moral views in a way where the metaphysical beliefs support the moral ones. That a theory is such is significant evidence for the theory’s truth. More generally and loosely, I think that a person whose life is deeply compelling is likely to be right in those central beliefs of her that are tightly interwoven with what makes her life compelling. But the saint’s moral life is compelling, and if she is a Christian, then her central Christian beliefs are tightly interwoven with her moral life.

Hence, 2 is true.

Of course, the above is not all the evidence there is. What about highly intelligent saints who are not Christians? The existence of such may well weaken the argument. But at least, I think, the argument makes Christianity an intellectually serious option.

And there may be something we can say more specifically on a case by case basis about saints outside of Christianity. Crucial to my argument was that one cannot be a saint and a Christian and have the Christianity be peripheral to one’s moral life. But one can be a saint and an atheist and have the atheism be peripheral to one’s moral life. Atheism is a negative doctrine, after all. If one turns it into a positive motivational doctrine, one gets something like Russell’s “A Free Man’s Worship”. But that is too proud, too haughty, too cold, too dark to be the central motivational doctrine of a saint. A saint who is an atheist is, I suspect, not as likely to be an atheist saint as a saint who is a Christian is to be a Christian saint.

Eastern religions have their saints, but there is an obvious tension between the irrealism to which Eastern religions tend and moral truths about the importance of love of others, of corporal care for the needs of others. One can adhere to an irrealist philosophy and despite this live a life of service to others, but it is unlikely that the service to others be central to one’s life in the way that moral sainthood requires.

What about Jewish and Muslim saints? Well, it may be that many of the motivationally central parts of Judaism and Islam are shared by Christianity—though the converse is not true, given the motivational centrality of the Incarnation to Christianity. One might object that the transcendence and simplicitly of God as taught in Judaism and Islam is motivationally central. But classical Christian theism embraces the transcendence and simplicity of God—and the Incarnation and Trinity, too.

A modal approximative ontological argument

Here is an ontological argument that I haven’t seen:

1. Possibly, it is approximately true that God exists.

2. Necessarily, if it is approximately true that God exists, then it true that God exists.

3. If possibly God exists, then God exists.

4. So, possibly, it is true that God exists. (1 and 2)

5. So, God exists. (3 and 4)

Premise 1 is an interesting weakening of the familiar possibility premise from modal ontological arguments.

Premise 3 is also familiar, going back at least to Mersenne. We can say that God is the sort of being that couldn’t exist merely contingently: he either exists necessarily or he can’t exist at all—there is no room for mere possibilities in the case of God’s existence.

The thought behind 2 is rather similar to that behind 3: God is a kind of infinity that cannot be approximated. It is not possible for there to be a state of affairs merely approximating the existence of God.

A Trinitarian structure in love

On my view, love has a three-fold structure:

• benevolence
• appreciation
• union.

This three-fold structure has certain Trinitarian parallels. The Father is the benefactor: he gives being to the Son and thereby to the Holy Spirit. The Son admires the Father, is the Logos that reflects upon the Father’s goodness. The Holy Spirit unites the Father and the Son.

Some arguments about the existence of a good theodicy

This argument is valid:

1. If no good theodicy can be given, some virtuous people’s lives are worthless.

2. No virtuous person’s life is worthless.

3. So, a good theodicy can be given.

The thought behind 1 is that unless we accept the sorts of claims that theodicists make about the value of virtue or the value of existence or about an afterlife, some virtuous people live lives of such great suffering, and are so far ignored or worse by others, that their lives are worthless. But once one accepts those sorts of claims, then a good theodicy can be given.

Here is an argument for 2:

4. It would be offensive to a virtuous person that her life is worthless.

5. The truth is not offensive to a virtuous person.

6. So, no virtuous person’s life is worthless.

Perhaps, too, an argument similar to Kant’s arguments about God can be made. We ought to at least hope that each virtuous person’s life has value on balance. But to hope for that is to hope for something like a theodicy. So we ought to hope for something like a theodicy.

The above arguments may not be all that compelling. But at least they counter the argument in the other direction, that it is offensive to say that someone’s sufferings have a theodicy.

Here is yet another argument.

7. That there is no good theodicy is an utterly depressing claim.

8. One ought not advocate utterly depressing claims, without very strong moral reason.

9. There is no very strong moral reason to advocate that there is no good theodicy.

10. So, one ought not advocate that there is no good theodicy.

The grounds for 8 are pragmatic: utterly depressing claims tend to utterly depress people, and being utterly depressed is very bad. One needs very strong reason to do something that causes a very bad state of affairs. I suppose the main controversial thesis here is 9. Someone who thinks religion is a great evil might deny 9.

Let's not exaggerate the centrality of virtue to ethics

Virtues are important. They are useful: they internalize the moral law and allow us to make the right decision quickly, which we often need to do. They aren’t just time-savers: they shine light on the issues we deliberate over. And the development of virtue allows our freedom to include the two valuable poles that are otherwise in tension: (a) self-origination (via alternate possibilities available when we are developing virtue) and (b) reliable rightness of action. This in turn allows our development of virtue reflect the self-origination and perfect reliability in divine freedom.

But while virtues are important, they are not essential to ethics. We can imagine beings that only ever make a single, but truly momentous, decision. They come into existence with a clear understanding of the issues involved, and they make their decision, without any habituation before or after. That decision could be a moral one, with a wrong option, a merely permissible option, and a supererogatory option. They would be somewhat like Aquinas’ angels.

We could even imagine beings that make frequent moral choices, like we do, but whose nature does not lead them too habituate in the direction of virtue or vice. Perhaps throughout his life whenever Bill decides whether to keep an onerous promise or not, there is a 90% chance that he will freely decide rightly and a 10% chance that he will freely decide wrongly, a chance he is born and dies with. A society of such beings would be rather alien in many practices. For instance, members of that society could not be held responsible for their character, but only for their choices. Punishment could still be retributive and motivational (for the chance of wrong action might go down when there are extrinsic reasons against wrongdoing). I think such beings would tend to have lower culpability for wrongdoing than we do. For typically when I do wrong as a middle-aged adult, I am doubly guilty for the wrong: (a) I am guilty for the particular wrong choice that I made, and (b) I am guilty for not having yet transformed my character to the point where that choice was not an option. (There are two reasons we hold children less responsible: first, their understanding is less developed, and, second, they haven’t had much time to grow in virtue.)

Nonetheless, while such virtue-less beings woould be less responsible, and we wouldn’t want to be them or live among them, they would still have some responsibility, and moral concepts could apply to them.

Agents, patients and natural law

Thanks to Adam Myers’ insightful comments, I’ve been thinking about the ways that natural law ethics concerns natures in two ways: on the side of the agent qua agent and on the of the patient qua patient.

Companionship is good for humans and bad for intelligent sharks, let’s suppose. This means that we have reasons to promote companionship among humans and to hamper companionship among intelligent sharks. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the patients’ nature. Next, let’s suppose that intelligent sharks by nature have a higher degree of self-concern vs. other-concern than humans do. Then the degree to which one has an obligation to promote the very same good–say, the companionship of Socrates–will vary depending on whether one is human or a shark. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the agents’ nature.

I suspect it would make natural law ethics clearer if natural lawyers were always clear on what is due to the agent’s nature and what is due to the patient’s nature, even if in fact their interest were solely in cases where the agent and patient are both human.

Consider, for instance, this plausible thesis:

• I should typically prioritize my understanding over my fun.

Suppose the thesis is true. But now it’s really interesting to ask if this is true due to my nature qua agent or my nature qua patient. If I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua patient, then we could have this situation: Both I and an alien of some particular fun-loving sort should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but likewise both I and the alien should prioritize the alien’s fun over the alien’s understanding, since human understanding is more important than human fun, while the fun of a being like the alien is more important than the understanding of such a being. On this picture, the nature of the patient specifies which goods are more central to a patient of that nature. On the other hand, if I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua agent, then quite possibly we are in the interesting position that I should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but also that I should prioritize the alien’s understanding over the alien’s fun, while the alien should prioritize both its and my fun over its and my understanding. For me promoting understanding is a priority while for the alien promoting fun is a priority, regardless of whose understanding and fun they are.

And of course we do have actual and morally relevant cases of interaction across natures:

• God and humans

• Angels and humans

• Humans and brute animals.

Presentism and classical theism

1. If presentism is true, then everything that exists, exists presently.

2. Anything that exists presently is temporal.

3. God exists.

4. So, if presentism is true, then God is temporal.

5. But God is not temporal.

6. So, presentism is not true.

Some presentists will be happy to embrace the thesis that God is temporal. But what about presentist classical theists? I suppose they will have to deny (1). Maybe they can replace it with:

7. If presentism is true, then everything temporal that exists, exists presently.

Presentism is now longer an elegant thesis about the nature of existence, though.

Maybe a better move for the presentist is to deny (2)? There is some reason to do that. God while not being spatial is everywhere. Similarly God is everywhen, and hence he is in the present, too. But I am not sure if being in the present is the same as existing presently.

Musings on authority

I have a lot of authority to impose hardships on myself. I can impose hardships on myself in two main ways. I can do something that either is or causes a hardship or risk of hardship to myself. Or I can commit myself to doing something that is or causes me a hardship or risk of hardship (I can commit myself by making a promise or by otherwise putting myself in a position where there is no morally permissible way to avoid the hardship). I have a wide moral latitude to decide which burdens to bear for the sake of which goods, though not an unlimited latitude. The decisions between goods are morally limited by the virtue of prudence. It would be wrong to undertake a 90% risk of death for the sake of a muffin. But it's morally up to me, or at least would be if I had no dependents, whether to undertake a 40% risk of death for the sake of writing a masterpiece. I do have the authority to impose some hardships on my children and my students, but that authority is much more limited: I do not have the authority to impose a 40% risk of death for the sake of writing a masterpiece. My authority to impose hardships on myself is much greater than my authority to impose hardships on others.

One explanation of the difference in the degree of our authority over ourselves and our authority over others is that people's authority over others derives from people's authority over themselves: we give authority over us to others. That is what the contractarian thinks, but it is implausible for familiar reasons (e.g., there aren't enough voluntarily accepted contracts to make contractarianism work). I prefer one of these two stories:

1. Both authority (of the hardship-imposing kind) over self and authority over others derives from God's authority over us.
2. Of necessity, some relationships are authority-conferring, and different kinds of relationships are necessarily authority-conferring to different degrees. For instance, identity in a mature person confers great authority of x with respect to x. Parenthood by a mature person of an immature person confers much authority but less than identity of a mature person does.

What about God's authority? On view (1), we would expect God to have more authority to impose hardships than anybody else has, including more authority to impose hardships on us than we have with respect to our own selves. What about on view (2)? That's less clear. We would intuitively expect that the God-creature relationship be more authority-conferring than the parent-child one. But how does it compare to identity? It would be religiously uncomfortable to say that someone has more authority over me than God does, even if I am that someone. Can we give a philosophical explanation for this religious intuition? Maybe, but I'm not yet up to it. I think a part of the story is that all our goods are goods by participation in God, that our telos is a telos-by-participation in God as the ultimate final cause of all.

Suppose we could argue that God has more hardship-imposing authority over ourselves than we have over ourselves. Then I think we would have a powerful tool for theodicy. A crucial question in theodicy is whether it is permissible for God to allow hardship H to me for the sake of good G (for myself or another). We would then have a defeasible sufficient condition for this permissibility: if it would not be immorally imprudent for me to allow H to myself for the sake of G, then it would be permissible for God to allow H to me for the sake of G. This is a much stronger criterion than one that is occasionally used in the literature, namely that if I would rationally allow H to myself for the sake of G, then God can permissibly allow it, too.

The blink of an eye response to the problem of evil

I want to confess something: I do not find the problem of evil compelling. I think to myself: Here, during the blink of an eye, there are horrendous things happening. But there is infinitely long life afterwards if God exists. For all we know, the horrendous things are just a blip in these infinitely long lives. And it just doesn’t seem hard to think that over an infinite future that initial blip could be justified, redeemed, defeated, compensated for with moral adequacy, sublated, etc.

It sounds insensitive to talk of the horrors that people live through as a blip. But a hundred years really is the blink of an eye in the face of eternity.

Wouldn’t we expect a perfect being to make the initial blink of an eye perfect, too? Maybe. But even if so, we would only expect it to be perfect as a beginning to an infinite life that we know next to nothing about. And it is hard to see how we would know what is perfect as a beginning to such a life.

This sounds like sceptical theism. But unlike the sceptical theist, I also think the standard theodicies—soul building, laws of nature, free will, etc.—are basically right. They each attempt to justify God’s permission of some or all evils by reference to things that are indeed good: the gradual building up of a soul, the order of the universe, a rightful autonomy, etc. They all have reasonable stories about how the permission of the evils is needed for these goods. There is, in mind, only one question about these theodicies: Are these goods worth paying such a terrible price, the price of allowing these horrors?

But in the face of an eternal future, I think the question of price fades for two reasons.

First, the goods gained by soul building and free will last for an infinite amount of time. It will forever be true that one has a soul that was built by these free choices. And the value of orderly laws of nature includes an order that is instrumental to the soul building as well as an order that is aesthetically valuable in itself. The benefits of the former order last for eternity, and the beauty of the laws of nature—even as exhibited during the initial blink of an eye—lasts for ever in memory. It is easy for an infinite duration of a significant good to be worth a very high price! (Don’t the evils last in memory, too? Yes, but while memories of beauty should be beautiful things, memories of evil should not be evils—think of the Church’s memory of the Cross.)

Second, it is very easy for God to compensate people during an infinite future for any undeserved evils they suffered during the initial blip. And typically one has no obligation to prevent someone’s suffering when (a) the prevention would have destroyed an important good and (b) one will compensate the person to an extent much greater than the sufferings. The goods pointed out by the theodicies are important goods, even if we worry that permitting the horrors is too high a price. And no matter how terrible these short-lived sufferings were—even if the short period of time, at most about a mere century, “seemed like eternity”—infinite time is ample space for compensation. (Of course, it would be wrong to intentionally inflict undeserved serious harms on someone even while planning to compensate.)

Objection 1: Can one say this while saying that the fleeting goods of our lives yield a teleological argument for the existence of God?

Response: One can. One can be quite sure from a single paragraph in a novel that it is written by someone with great writing skills. But one can never be sure from a single paragraph in a novel that it is not written by someone with great writing skills. (For all we know, the author was parodying bad writing in that paragraph, and the paragraph reflects great skill. But notice that we cannot say about the great paragraph that maybe the author has no skills but was just parodying great writing.)

Objection 2: It begs the question to suppose our future lives are infinite.

Response: No. If God exists, it is very likely that the future lives of all persons, or at the very least of all persons who do not deserve to be annihilated, will be infinite. The proposition that God exists is equivalent to the disjunction: (God exists and there is eternal life) or (God exists and there is no eternal life). If the argument from evil presupposes the absence of eternal life, it is only an argument against the second disjunct. But most of the probability that God exists lies with the first disjunct, given that P(eternal life|God exists) is high. Hence, the argument doesn't do much unless it addresses the first disjunct.

Beatific vision and scepticism

One way to think of the beatific vision is as a conscious experience whose quale is God himself. Not a representation of God, but the infinite and simple God himself. Such an experience would have have a striking epistemological feature. Ordinary veridical experiences are subject to sceptical worries because the qualia involved in them can occur in non-veridical experiences, or at least can have close facsimiles occurring in non-veridical experiences. But while everything is similar to God, the similarity is always infinitely remote. Moreover, there is a deep qualitative difference between God in the beatific vision and other qualia. No other quale is a person or even a substance.

Thus, someone who has the beatific vision is in the position of having an experience that is infinitely different from all other experiences, veridical or not. This, I think, rules out at least one kind of sceptical worry, and hence the beatific vision is also a fulfillment of the Cartesian quest for certainty—though that is far from being the most important feature of the beatific vision.

Aquinas and God

It just occurred to me, while grading a comprehensive exam question on Aquinas, how deeply Jewish Aquinas’s approach to God is. In the structure of the Summa Theologiae, the primary attribute of God, the one on which the derivation of all the others depends, is God’s oneness or simplicity.

Computer consciousness and dualism

Would building and running a sufficiently “smart” computer produce consciousness?

Suppose that one is impressed by the arguments for dualism, whether of the hylomorphic or Cartesian variety. Then one will think that a mere computer couldn’t be conscious. But that doesn’t settle the consciousness question. For, perhaps, if one built and ran a sufficiently “smart” computer (i.e., one with sufficient information processing capacity for consciousness), a soul would come into being. It wouldn’t be a mere computer any more.

Basically the thought here supposes that something like the following is a law of nature or a non-coincidental regularity in divine soul-creation practice:

1. When matter comes to be arranged in a way that could engage in the kind of information processing that is involved in consciousness, a soul comes into existence.

Interestingly, though, a contemporary hylomorphist has very good reason to deny (1). The contemporary
hylomorphist thinks that the soul of an animal comes into existence at the beginning of the animal’s existence as an animal. Now consider a higher animal, say Rover. When Rover comes into existence as an animal out of a sperm and an egg, its matter is not arranged in a way capable of supporting the kind of information processing involved in consciousness. Yet that is when it acquires its soul. When finally the embryo grows a brain capable of this kind of information processing, no second soul comes into existence and hence (1) is false. (I am talking here of contemporary hylomorphists; Aristotle and Aquinas both believed in delayed ensoulement which would complicated the argument, and perhaps even undercut it.) The same argument will apply to those Cartesian dualists who are willing to admit that they were once embryos without brains.

Perhaps one could modify (1) to:

2. When matter comes to be arranged in a way that could engage in the kind of information processing that is involved in consciousness and a soul has not already come into existence, then a soul comes into existence.

But notice now two things. First, (2) sounds ad hoc. Second, we lack inductive evidence for (2). We know of no cases where the antecedent of (2) is true. If we were to generate a computer with the right kind of information processing capabilities, we would know that the antecedent of (2) is true, but we would have no idea if the consequent is true. Third, our observations of the world so far all fit with the following generalization:

3. Among material things, consciousness only occurs in living things.

But a “smart” computer would still not be likely to be a living thing. If it were, we would expect there to be non-“smart” computers that are alive, by analogy to how just as there are conscious living things, there are unconscious ones. But it is not plausible that there would be computers that are alive but not “smart” enough to be conscious. One might as well think that the laptop I am writing this on will be conscious.

This isn’t a definitive refutation of (2). God has the power to (speaking loosely) provide an appropriately complex computer with a soul that gives rise to consciousness. But inductive generalization from how the world is so far gives us little reason to think he would.

Permissibility of the natural

The usual way to argue that an action is permissible is to argue that the arguments against the action’s permissibility fail. But it would be really nice to be able to give a more positive argument for an action’s permissibility. Sometimes one can do so by showing that the action is obligatory, but (a) that doesn’t help with the permissibility of non-obligatory actions, and (b) often an argument for the obligatoriness of a positive action presupposes the action’s permissibility (e.g., the obligation to kill a dog that is attacking one’s child when no other means of defense is available presupposes the general permissibility of killing dogs with good reason).

Here is a place where Natural Law (NL) can provide something quite useful, namely this principle:

1. If A is a natural action, then normally A is permissible.

This principle could, for instance, be used to generate intuitively compelling positive arguments for such controversial theses as:

2. It is normally permissible to eat animals.

3. It is normally permissible for us to reproduce.

4. It is normally permissible for us to prefer those more closely related to us.

In addition to Natural Lawyers, theists in general might have reason to endorse (1), on the grounds that our nature comes from God.

Of course, there is always going to be a difficulty in determining whether the antecedent of (1) is true.

Non-theistic non-NL theories are unlikely to endorse (1) except as a rule of thumb. And it will be an interesting explanatory question on those theories why then (1) is true even as a rule of thumb.

Minds don't think

1. Only things with minds think.

2. Minds don’t have minds.

3. So, minds don’t think.

Corollary: We think with minds, hence we are not minds.

There might be an exception to (2) in the case of God. By divine simplicity, God is his own mind. So God's mind has a mind, namely itself.

Everything is beautiful

Consider something visually ugly, say one of my school painting projects. The colors are poorly chosen and the lines don’t do a good job representing what it’s meant to represent. (I am not being modest.)

But now suppose we live in an infinite universe or a multiverse, so that every possible intelligent species is realized. It is very likely that there will be some intelligent species whose electromagnetic spectral receptivities are such that the colors in the lines look gorgeous to it, and harmonize in a wonderful abstract way with the shape of the lines. This is, of course, a chance matter—I wasn’t making the painting for that mode of visual receptivity. Let’s say that the species is the xyllians. We can still say that what I made is an ugly work of art, but it is also a part of the natural world, and considered as a part of the natural world it is visually_x (i.e., as seen with the electromagnetic reception apparatus of xyllians) beautiful while being visually_h (i.e., as seen with human electromagnetic reception apparatus) beautiful.

Moreover, it is irrelevant whether the xyllians and humans exist. Whether they exist or not, my painting is visually_x beautiful and visually_h ugly. All that’s needed is that the xyllians and humans could exist. Thus, my painting really is both beautiful and ugly, even if we are the only intelligent species. And it is just as objectively beautiful as it is objectively ugly. I wasn’t supposing that the xyllians misperceive: just that they have a different pattern of spectral receptivities. We can suppose that xyllian visual perception is just as accurate in reflecting the world, including my unhappy artistic productions, as ours is.

This means that an argument from particular beauty for the existence of God must be run cautiously. Sure, sunsets and goldfish are beautiful. But so is any child’s scrawl, and quite likely any physical object is beautiful with respect to some possible sensory apparatus. Particular instances of beauty are easy to find and should not surprise us. What could surprise us, however, is:

1. That the particular sensorily beautiful things around us—such as sunsets and goldfish—are in fact beautiful with respect to the sensory apparatus of the intelligent species that dwells near them.

We might also attempt to mount arguments from beauty to God on the basis of these remarkable facts:

2. That there is such a property as (objective) beauty at all.

3. That we are able to perceive beauty.

4. That we enjoy beauty.

5. That we are able to make correct judgments of beauty.

And bracketing the question of arguing for the existence of God on the basis of beauty, the realization that all material things are beautiful should lead us to glorify God. For while I said that it’s chance that my poor attempts at painting are visually_x beautiful, that’s only so loosely speaking. God is omnirational, and that the paintings are visually_x beautiful is a redeeming quality that surely God did not fail to intend.

The variety of beauty

A crucial part of Diotima’s ladder is the progress from sensible beauty to the non-sensible beauty of mind, law and mathematics. From time to time I’m struck by how very strange it is that such very different things as paintings, faces, poems, minds and theorems have beauty in common.

If one has a view of beauty as that which gives a certain “aesthetic pleasure”, it’s easy to explain this: it is not that surprising that different inputs could give rise to the same kind of pleasure. But that view of beauty is false. (We would not make my preschool scribbles more beautiful than Monet’s mature paintings by brainwashing people into taking more aesthetic pleasure in the former than in the latter.)

Plato’s famous explanation is that all these different things participate in the same form. But that leaves mysterious why it is that a painting that exhibits a certain harmonious play of colors and a theorem that is illuminating and unifying in a certain way both end up necessarily participating in the form of beauty. There needs to be a connection between the configurations that give rise to beauty and the participation in the form of beauty. The historical Plato seems to have thought that there was a common mathematical structure in all these configurations, but this seems quite implausible given the great variability of them.

Perhaps a theistic explanation can make some progress. All beauty is a participation in God. But God is infinitely beyond all else, so this participation is from an infinite distance, and it is not so surprising that the infinite richness of God can be participated in in infinitely many different ways.

The difficulty with this explanation is that beauty is not the only property that’s a participation in God. Every positive property is a participation in God. And some positive properties—say, knowledge—are much more unified than beauty. Perhaps it helps, though, to have the medieval view that beauty, goodness and being are all in some sense interchangeable. So perhaps every participation in God constitutes beauty, and so the great variety of participations in God gives rise to the great variety of types of beauty.

What Galileo should have said

The big theological problem that Galileo's opponents had for Galileo wasn't the (not very convincing) biblical arguments that the sun moves and the earth stands still, but a theological objection to Galileo's inference from (a) the greater simplicity of the Copernican hypothesis over its competitors and (b) the fact that the hypothesis fits the data to (c) the truth of the Copernican hypothesis. The theological objection, as I understand it, was that Galileo was endangering the doctrine of divine omnipotence, since if there is an omnipotent God, he can just as easily have made true one of the less simple hypotheses that fit the data. (And, indeed, an earth-centered system can be made to fit the data just as well as a sun-centered one if one has enough epicycles.)

What Galileo should have said is that his argument does not, of course, establish the Copernican hypothesis with certainty, but only as highly probable, and that his argument had the form of the well-established theological argument ex convenientia, or from fittingness: "It was fitting for God to do it, God was able to do it, so (likely) God did it." Such arguments were widely given in the Middle Ages for theological views such as the immaculate conception of Mary. The application is that it is fitting for God to do things in the more elegant Copernican fashion, an omnipotent God was able to do things in such wise, and so (likely) God did it. Not only would the argument form have been one that Galileo's interlocutors would have been familiar with and friendly towards, but Galileo would have the dialectical advantage that he could not be reasonably said to be challenging divine omnipotence if his own argument depended on it. (Maybe Galileo did say something like this. I've seen the use of the argumentum ex convenientia in astronomy attributed to Kepler. Maybe Kepler got it from Galileo.)

And, to be honest, I think that all science is essentially founded on arguments ex convenientia. Which are good arguments.

Person is not a natural kind

1. God is not a member of any natural kind.

2. If person is a natural kind, then every person is a member of a natural kind.

3. God is a person.

4. So, person is not a natural kind.

Do God's beliefs cause their objects?

Consider this Thomistic-style doctrine:

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

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

2. B exists in all possible worlds

or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe. I don’t know.