From Aristotelian Modality to God

The Aristotelian account of modality is an incredibly popular theory modality in contemporary analytic philosophy and has broad acceptance among philosophers. This is evidenced by the fact that atheists like Alex Malpass and Graham Oppy and theists like Alex Pruss and Rob Koons hold to this view of modality. An uncontroversial consequence of this view is that there is a necessary being, and this entailment has been admitted by atheists and theists alike (see here: https://www.amazon.com/Actuality-Possibility-Worlds-Alexander-Pruss/dp/1441142045, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0QRtp07TbQ). I think that this conclusion can be pushed even further to show that this account of modality entails the existence of God. Here is a brief sketch of how this argument would run:


  1. X is possible if and only if x is actual or if there is some actual y which can initiate a causal chain resulting in x’s actuality.

  2. All causes must have more being than their effects.

  3. There beings which are actually finite

  4. So, there is at least one actually infinite being.

  5. So, there is actually one infinite being.

  6. So, God is actual.


Premise 1 is merely a statement of the Aristotelian account of modality and so need not be argued for here. Premise 3 should not be controversial given that everything we encounter which is actual is also finite. 


Premise 2 is merely a statement of the principle of proportionate causality, but I’ll provide some brief argumentation for this principle. The intuition behind this principle is, firstly, that causes must have at least as much being as their effects, otherwise there would be something in the effect which would have no cause. The reasoning behind the stronger claim that causes must be greater than their effects has to do with the fact that the effect is dependent on the cause. Recall that in a previous blog post I argued that everything God creates must be finite simply in virtue of the fact that it is created; the thought here is that to be uncreated is to be infinite and so if something were created, it would have to be finite (see here: https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com/2022/03/whatever-god-wills-apart-from-himself.html). A similar line of reasoning can be applied to all causes: effects must have less being than their causes because it takes a certain amount of being, as it were, to be a cause and since the effect is not the cause merely in virtue of the being the effect, it must have less being than the cause. This is just a brief sketch, but it provides some reason for holding to this principle.


Premise 4 follows from premise 1 and 3 as if there are actually finite beings, there are possibly finite beings, which is just to say that there are possibilities which are finite. 


Premise 4 follows from premise 1 and 2 and this needs some further explication. The idea behind this is essentially the Third Way; the reasoning of this argument is that there must be a necessary being to ground contingent reality otherwise there is a possible world where nothing exists, but this violates a basic principle of modal logic which is that the actual world is necessarily possible. My reasoning would then apply the principle of proportionate causality to this argument using the language of finite being rather than contingent being, and then inferring that the ground of finite actualities is something which is actually infinite. 


Premise 5 simply follows premise 4 once we apply the identity of indiscernibles, which I have defended elsewhere (see here: https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com/2022/02/some-thoughts-on-identity-of.html). The conclusion, that God is actual, follows from the fact that there is one infinite being, as I have discussed earlier (see here: https://theaspiringjesuit.blogspot.com/2021/12/a-modal-contingency-argument-for.html).

Comments

  1. Dominik KowalskiJune 14, 2022 at 6:34 AM

    "An uncontroversial consequence of this view is that there is a necessary being, and this entailment has been admitted by atheists and theists alike"

    You're right, but only somewhat. I'm not entirely sure how Malpass handles it (could be the ascription of necessity to the totality), but the way Oppy does it we only have a conditionally necessary being. We have a being in every possible world, but given that the singularity, his necessary being, ceases to be, I don't see how it could be necessary. Of course, he calls it an event, not a substance, but the fact alone that it by itself intrinsically changes should raise the alarm

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