Hmm interesting. So even if we posit a God who has self-existence as merely a property among other properties, we would still need an explanation for why he has a composition of self-existence + other properties. So the theistic personalist sort of has to appeal to a type of brute fact regarding the essence of God--that is, he is self-existent, and additionally all powerful, all knowing, all loving, etc. and that's just the way it is. And in order to stop this regress of explanations for composition we have to arrive at a simple being who needs to have no explanation for the unity of its various properties or parts. 

I want to play devil's advocate though. We know that certain material properties like blueness, roundness, and bounciness, all demand an explanation for their unity (e.g. why is it that this object is blue, round, and bouncy?). We could appeal, for instance, both to a cause in fieri and cause in esse to explain it. However, how can we be sure that this causal/explanatory principle applies to metaphysical properties--i.e. the distinct properties of the theistic personalist God? What does it even mean to have distinct metaphysical properties divorced from the material? I can perfectly conceive of blueness, roundness, and bounciness as distinct properties that require an explanation for their composition, but how can I conceive of these non-material properties demanding the same explanation for composition as material properties? 

Callum wrote:

I guess it all depends on the distinction between essence and existence. If we accept the PSR then there cannot be something that isn't self existent.

Regarding the question on whether the composition of metaphysical parts need an explanation, i'm not so sure. Do we need to explain why a triangle has the property of being three-sided?

Triangularity would just seem to be an abstract property itself. We would only need an explanation of its composition  if it was joined with other properties--e.g. a blue wooden triangle.

Last edited by RomanJoe (7/02/2017 1:28 pm)

We are confusing two separate issues here:
 
1. The first is about the existence of necessary beings in general. The theist can argue for God based on PSR concerns i.e. from the existence of contingent beings to a necessary being or from the possibility of a necessary being to its existence (because on S5 there are no merely possible necessary beings). This is not to argue for the existence of a special property 'necessary existence' or 'self-existence' - one can,like Scotus or modern Fregeans, have a deflationary view of existence and still hold to necessary beings.
 
Most philosophers will accept the Perfect Being definition of God (though we do not need to say Perfection is God's 'essence' in a committing way) and being a necessary being/having no conditions in which it could cease to exist stems from that. The classical theist can and historically has accepted this - they will just add Simplicity as a further great-making characteristic
 
2. The second is the composition argument for Divine Simplicity i.e. that if there were metaphysical composition in God some further, simpler principle would be needed to explain it ergo that composite being would not be truly ultimate. This is a bad argument as it supposes that for any two properties something additional is required explain it, a claim which goes against the anti-Humean truth that there are necessary connections in reality (necessary a posteriori). In reality there are many such necessarily co-existential properties e.g. colour and visual-spatial extension - the theist personality can just claim Divine Omnipotence and Omniscience for instance are also of this kind.
 
(A coda: one can still have Divine Simplicity without the identification of 'God as Being itself', or rather with that tag interpreted in a number of ways. Defenders of DS shouldn’t rush to conflate that stance with more specific Thomist claims about the Real Distinction.)
 
So to round up - there is no reason the classical theist need object to the theist personalist's positive claim that there exists a necessary being. Instead, they should focus on responding to that individual's arguments against Divine Simplicity. Here's two quick points:
 
1. A Divinely Simple being is a necessary being (if a merely possible being ask yourself- what could actualise its possibility, bring it into existence?) ergo if a Divinely Simple being is even possible it exists. If we know that DS implies other Divine Attributes like Omnipotence and have prior additional reasons e.g. PSR Cosmological Arguments or the Modal OA to believe in an Omnipotent necessary being, then on the basis of Parsimony we should consider them the same until we have reason to think otherwise.
 
If we make a positive case that DS is possible and implies attributes we have both an independent modal argument for God and an argument for the identification of any necessary being with certain attributes with our DS being.
 
2. A more sketchy positive argument. One prime way we infer the existence of necessary beings is from their indispensability e.g. we know that universals must exist in order to satisfy certain issues of reference or as truth-makers for facts of abstract reference. We are not required to give a reason for a being's necessity - see the above about the necessary a posteriori - however if we can make that necessity more transparent by giving an account of it we are surely at an explanatory advantage. Thus if we can shine some light on Divine Necessity as following from Simplicity we are offering something in the latter's favour. Caveat: this argument might not work so well against theistic personalists as they will argue - correctly - that such an 'elaboration' of necessity can be found in the Perfect Being principle. That leaves us with the task of arguing for Simplicity as a mark of perfection as Anselm did.
 
A general point: a major problem with Thomism is its fixation with occurent causality; it always attempts to frame the debate in terms of causation (reasoning from effects to causes or vis versa) and thus ends up poisoning the waters a lot of the time. Much of Theist Personalist Philosophy of Religion is fine – they just don’t go far enough along certain lines and need to be reminded of this (Leibniz was a Classical Theist too remember).

 

Last edited by DanielCC (7/06/2017 6:28 am)