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- Sleety Dribble
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God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Summary: which (if either) of the following is correct:
A. God's existence is necessary if and only if something else other than God exists
B. God's existence is necessary
Details:
A range of arguments for God's existence have, as premisses, the observation that there exists change, or contingency, and so on. In other words, those arguments begin with the existence of something other than God and move from that to show that since those things exist, God's existence is necessary. But it seems important to see that those arguments say nothing about the neccessity (or actuality for that matter) of God's existence if nothing else existed.
But I was going back over one of Ed's older blog posts[1] about the whole somthing-from-nothing debate, and noticed his ending:
"The classical theist's claim is...'There could not have been nothing, and the reason is theism' "
That sounds like a stronger position; namely that God's existence is necessary, period. He's "there", and must be there, regardless of whether anything else exists.
Questions:
1. Am I interpreting that closing remark correctly -- i.e. does it mean that God necessarily exists, period?
2. If so, how can I find out more about the argument leading to that conclusion? Does it have a name? Who developed it?
thanks.
[1] "Steng Operation", April 23 2012 (As a forum newbie I can't post links yet)
- DanielCC
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Sleety Dribble wrote:
Summary: which (if either) of the following is correct:
A. God's existence is necessary if and only if something else other than God exists
B. God's existence is necessary
2. If so, how can I find out more about the argument leading to that conclusion? Does it have a name? Who developed it?
This used to worry me somewhat way back when I first came to philosophy
The answer is definitely B. To say God is necessary is to say that He cannot fail to exist, that His non-existence would entail a (Broadly) Logical contradiction. In Analytical speak God exists in all possible worlds.
Thomists claim that the Five Ways Cosmological Arguments (at least the first two) demonstrate the existence of a being in which essence and existence are one, a being which exists off its essence. Those favouring the Leibnizian version of the argument drawing on the PSR point out that their argument de facto establishes the existence of a necessary being, and since to exist in all possible worlds just is what it means to be a necessary being ergo we can conclude that God exists in worlds were there are no contingent beings (to be contingent just is to exist in some worlds and not in others).
So if they work then they do indeed show God is necessary in the 'strong' sense you outline in option 2.
Another famous argument for establishes God’s necessity straight off is the Modal Ontological Argument, one of the non-controversial (as in most atheists accepting mainstream modal logic will accept it) premises of which shows that if God exists in one possible world then He exists in all of them, which would include all those containing no contingent beings.
Last edited by DanielCC (9/30/2015 1:32 pm)
- Dennis
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Isn't it Richard Swinburne who thinks that God exists but is not metaphysically necessary?
But I was going back over one of Ed's older blog posts[1] about the whole somthing-from-nothing debate, and noticed his ending:
"The classical theist's claim is...'There could not have been nothing, and the reason is theism' "
That sounds like a stronger position; namely that God's existence is necessary, period. He's "there", and must be there, regardless of whether anything else exists.
[1] "Steng Operation", April 23 2012 (As a forum newbie I can't post links yet)
I would start by saying, that God's existence is known to be metaphysically necessary if and only if, there's something which is metaphysically contingent. I thought the classical theist's position was that, because there is something metaphysically contingent, there's something metaphysically necessary, and that's the only way to ground the existence of something that is contingent. Something that which is metaphysically necessary, cannot fail to exist. However, if we're going to assume that nothing was or is, then how do we get to God?
Avicenna's Argument from Contingency Part I & II.
St. Thomas Aquinas's Third Way as presented by Christopher Martin.
Edward Feser's Aquinas counts as well.
EDIT: I wanted to give an Amazon link to Dr. Feser's Aquinas, and now, that's done.
Last edited by Dennis (9/30/2015 2:24 pm)
- jmh1001
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Summary: which (if either) of the following is correct:
A. God's existence is necessary if and only if something else other than God exists
B. God's existence is necessary
I think B is the correct claim.
The classical arguments for God's existence are simply ways of demonstrating that, given the nature of the world, there must be something that is metaphysically ultimate that explains the existence of that world. They do not claim that God's existence depends upon the world, but rather that the world's ultimate explicability depends upon God.
- DanielCC
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Isn't it Richard Swinburne who thinks that God exists but is not metaphysically necessary?
Yes, Swinburne has what can only be called moronic views on necessity and indeed the nature of the logic in general. John Hick was another one (there’s a good article where Harteshorne rips him apart on this). This used to be a common problem with Anglophone theists in mid-20th century due to toxic overtly contradictory Tractatarian tenants about necessity.
- Scott
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
A range of arguments for God's existence have, as premisses, the observation that there exists change, or contingency, and so on. In other words, those arguments begin with the existence of something other than God and move from that to show that since those things exist, God's existence is necessary. But it seems important to see that those arguments say nothing about the neccessity (or actuality for that matter) of God's existence if nothing else existed.
Two points to be careful of here.
First: as others have noted with varying degrees of explicitness, the argument of the Third Way shows only that if even one contingent being exists, then a necessary being exists. That doesn't mean that if the antecedent is false (i.e., if no contingent beings exist), then no necessary being exists. At most, it would mean that the argument is silent on that point.
But second, and more fundamentally: as others have also at least alluded to, you're confusing two senses of "necessary." The arguments of the First, Second, and Third Ways show that if certain facts obtain, it necessarily follows that God exists. That is not what is meant by God's necessarily existing.
To say that God exists necessarily, in Thomistic thought, is to say that God, in and of Himself, can't not exist -- that He's a necessary being, not that His existence is the conclusion necessitated by the premises of an argument. The latter is a sort of epistemological necessity, not the metaphysical sort that Thomists and other classical theists ascribe to God.
And even here we can make a distinction: Aquinas differentiates between a necessary being Who has His necessity from Himself (that is, God), on the one hand, and on the other, necessary beings whose necessity is conferred on them by another (the human soul, for example; it's immortal, but only because God created it thus).
- Sleety Dribble
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
First: as others have noted with varying degrees of explicitness, the argument of the Third Way shows only that if even one contingent being exists, then a necessary being exists. That doesn't mean that if the antecedent is false (i.e., if no contingent beings exist), then no necessary being exists. At most, it would mean that the argument is silent on that point.
Yep. Thats what I meant when I said: "those arguments say nothing about the necessity...of God's existence if nothing else existed".
But second, and more fundamentally: as others have also at least alluded to, you're confusing two senses of "necessary." The arguments of the First, Second, and Third Ways show that if certain facts obtain, it necessarily follows that God exists. That is not what is meant by God's necessarily existing.
Absolutely. And I don't believe I'm confusing that at all. That use of "it necessarily follows" is simply another way of saying "it is logically implied" and that's not at all what I mean by the necessity of God's existence.
To say that God exists necessarily, in Thomistic thought, is to say that God, in and of Himself, can't not exist -- that He's a necessary being, not that His existence is the conclusion necessitated by the premises of an argument. The latter is a sort of epistemological necessity, not the metaphysical sort that Thomists and other classical theists ascribe to God.
Again, I get the difference. But my point is that in practice -- e.g. in the Summa Theo. -- the notion of God's ontological necessity *is* typically argued (i.e. taken to be epistemically necessary) from some premises (e.g. "There is change" or "There is contingency"), and I'm interested in finding out if there is another way of justifying that (ontological) necessity -- one that does not arise from inference from premisses.
Put another way: you note that in Thomist thought, "To say that God exists necessarily ... is to say that God...can't exist". Now suppose I was to challenge the Thomist to justify that assertion, but I was to challenge them to do it without recourse to premises such as "There is change" or "There is contingency". How would they do that? (In fact, to make it a worthy challenge, I'd like it to be done also without recourse to Anselm, or Plantinga, or anyone else offering a form of the ontological argument).
Bottom line, as I said in the title, I want to know how it can be justified that God's (ontological) necessity is (ontologically) neccesary, or if it is merely contingent; i.e. (epistemically) necessitated by premises such as "There is change"
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Thread Starter- Dennis
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Bottom line, as I said in the title, I want to know how it can be justified that God's (ontological) necessity is (ontologically) neccesary, or if it is merely contingent; i.e. (epistemically) necessitated by premises such as "There is change"
Here's another way of saying this, the state of something metaphysically necessary not existing, is an unactualizable affair. If you, or someone else would like to say, "Well, it's possible for nothing to exist, have existed." This in itself would demonstrate your modal priorities, where some people would ask you, "What is this possibility grounded on?"
Last edited by Dennis (10/02/2015 4:21 am)
- John West
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Hi Sleety,
Can your question be rephrased: “Can God's existence be deduced using only truths about a world in which no contingent or non-God necessary beings exist?” (I've avoided writing “in which only God exists” to avoid confusion over potential question begging.)
- Scott
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Re: God's necessity -- is it itself necessary, or contingent?
Alexander has asked pretty much what I want to know.
You say you're not confusing the two sorts of necessity in question, but you write:
I want to know how it can be justified that God's (ontological) necessity is (ontologically) neccesary, or if it is merely contingent; i.e. (epistemically) necessitated by premises such as "There is change"
I'm not clear what it would mean for ontological necessity to be ontologically necessary (and, if possible, I'm even less clear what it would mean for it not to be). But leaving that aside, you seem to be saying that the proposition "God exists" being a conclusion epistemically necessitated by premises that do not themselves appear to be necessarily true is equivalent to ("i.e.") God's existence itself being metaphysically contingent. That sure looks like the very confusion I was describing, and if it isn't, I don't know what you do mean.
The argument you're addressing is intended precisely to show that, given the (epistemically contingent, if you like, but it doesn't seem to matter) premise that metaphysically contingent beings exist, it follows with epistemic necessity that there is a metaphysically necessary being (which, with further argument, we can identify as God). That argument, if successful, surely shows that God's existence is not metaphysically contingent; why the two sorts of necessity are somehow at odds I do not see.
Are you perhaps asking how we would know that such a being existed if there were no contingent beings from which to start the argument? If so, the short and somewhat flip answer is that we wouldn't know any such thing, because under that hypothesis, neither we nor any other contingent beings would exist.
Are you asking how we do know that this metaphysically necessary being would still exist (and still be metaphysically necessary) even if there weren't any metaphysically contingent beings? If so, then the answer is that since contingent beings do exist (and we know it) and we therefore know that such a metaphysically necessary being exists as well, we also know that this being would exist (or have existed) even in the absence of contingent beings (i.e., even if God hadn't created or if all created beings were to cease to exist).
I hope I'm not being obtuse here, but I'm honestly not sure what else you might possibly want to know. Anything else you could be asking seems to be an invitation to build the metaphysically necessary being into the premises of the argument, i.e., to beg the question.
Last edited by Scott (10/03/2015 9:52 am)
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