Can you clarify claim (2)? I cannot tell what it means. I can understand a claim that God is identical to his act of willing, but I can't understand the claim that any composite agent is.

Claim (3) also doesn't seem to be true to me. It's not a truth of human agency, at least. A single action might consist (for instance) of several objects ordered to each other. For instance, in moving my hand up and down I pump the water and poison the inhabitants of the house: one act, two objects. Am I reading it incorrectly?

ccmnxc wrote:

Say you decide to sit in a chair. This act of willing to sit in the chair is identical to you. Had you decided to sit in the adjacent chair, that act of willing would have been identical to you. In that case, however, since the act is different, the person is different.

How could one of my acts of willing be identical to me? I am a human being and any one of my acts of willing is an accident in me.

ccmnxc wrote:

With regards to (3), it should say "Different objects signal different acts." Thus, if the object of the will is directed toward thing 1, the act is differentiated by the object of the will being thing 1. If the object of will (or thought) is directed toward thing 2, the act is different.

Ok. So I still think this is false, because acts can have multiple objects. One act might have the object of moving my hand up and down (thing 1) and poisoning the inhabitants (thing 2). This doesn't imply that my act is distinct from itself.

I suppose one could say that act's are individuated by their set of objects. Then nothing that does not include moving my hand up and down and poisoning the inhabitants (along with some other, possibly indefinite list of objects) could be the same act. I am probably willing to accept that.

However, I imagine the interest in (3) is its application to modal contexts, since that seems to be what crops up in Position 3. The proposal, I suppose, would have to be that if an act in the actual world has such-and-such objects, then in any other possible world, an act is either the same act or has different objects.

It's sort of hard to think about because we usually don't look for conditions of identity for human actions in that way. I am not sure the claim is true, though. I could imagine that an act could have different objects in different possible worlds--it might be individuated, say, by its remote end and not by its means, and the same act might have different means in different possible worlds. That doesn't seem incoherent to me. So I also don't feel much constraint to deny the parallel, limit case principle that would contradict a point often brought up in discussions of classical theism and the contingency of God's creating: that God's willing his own good is all that he need do in all possible worlds, and all that provides cross-world identity conditions for his action.

ccmnxc wrote:

Say God decides to create world A. This act of will is identical to Him. Had he created world B, that act of willing would have been identical to Him. In that case, however, since the act is different, God Himself would be different and thus given that we have the God we do, he would have been necessitated to create the world He did since the will to create said world is identical to Him.

The standard Thomist response is to deny that God's act is different when he creates world B.

This response is sort of like Position 1, although it doesn't have to deny claim (2): If God is identical to his act of willing, then if two acts of willing are different, they cannot both be God.

ccmnxc wrote:

they would say that an act with a set of objects identical to the actual world would simply be our world, and any different set would be a different world. And thus the question boils down to whether or not God could have actualized a world with a different set as its object.

The set of objects is not the created world in either of the cases. The objects of God's will when he creates world A are himself and world A. The objects of God's will when he creates world B are himself and world B.

This is where the deniability of (3) is salient; as I said before, I don't think it's true. In the case of human action, it's plausible that certain objects are "privileged" with respect to providing cross-world identity criteria for actions. I think it's even more plausible in God's case, since we know that God's willing anything other than his own goodness could not be necessary for him (for that would imply a lack) even though he does will something in our world.

ccmnxc wrote:

How are you using possible-worlds in your response. Is it in line with more contemporary possible worlds semantics built upon possible worlds without contradiction and the like, or is it more scholastic-based with the possible being based upon the actual?

It is based on the actual, and I don't think that real possibility is just logical possibility.

I don't intend to make a substantial assumption by using the language of possible worlds. I think it's plain enough to think that "God might have created a different world, or perhaps none at all", but such a statement requires us to make distinctions. Sometimes a statement about what's possible imputes potentiality to something, though not all statements about possibility need to do that. So I think one could distinguish between "It is possible that God creates something else" and "God possibly creates something else" - I regard the latter as false, while the former is true. I don't claim that this is an obvious distinction as the terms are usually used, just that it's a distinction worth flagging. The former is naturally read as "In some possible world God creates something else", whereas the latter is closer to "God has the potential to create something else" - which I think is false.