¹ For recent physicalist argument cf. Jaegwon Kim, 2005, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, Princeton University Press and David Papineau, 2002, Thinking about Consciousness, Oxford University Press. For an example of a physicalist theology of mind cf. Nancey Murphy, 2006, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? Cambridge University Press and Peter van Inwagen, 2007, “A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person”, in Persons: Human and Divine, edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, Oxford University Press. According to Murphy, “we are our bodies – there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit. […] This ‘physicalist’ position need not deny that we are intelligent, moral, and spiritual. We are, at our best, complex physical organisms, imbued with the legacy of thousands of years of culture, and, most importantly, blown by the Breath of God's Spirit; we are spirited bodies” (Murphy 2006: p. ix). Van Inwagen states his positions as follows: “I myself believe that we are material substances. I am therefore in one sense of the word a materialist. I am, as one might say, a local materialist. I oppose local to global materialism. A global materialist believes that everything (or every concrete thing) is material. I am not a global materialist, since I believe that God exists and that God is neither material nor abstract” (van Inwagen 2007: p. 206). For a general introduction into panentheistic thinking cf. Cooper, John W., 2006, Panentheism. The other God of the Philosophers, Baker AcademicGoogle Scholar. For detailed discussions see the volume edited by Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, 2004, In Whom we Live and Move and Have our Being. Panentheistic Reflections on God's Presence in a Scientific World, Eerdmans Publishing Co.

² Even the parts of the universe of which the I is not aware of exist in the I. These parts are comparable to subconscious states which also exist in the I without the I being aware of them.

³ From a systematic point of view one could hold either thesis and deny the other. One could be an idealist in the sense specified without supposing God to be at all, and one could be a panentheist in the sense specified while holding that the I is just one particular amongst others within the causal relations of the world.

⁴ Plantinga calls these properties which are constitutive of individual essences world-indexed properties where a property P is world-indexed, if “there is a world w and a property Q such that P is equivalent to the property of having Q in w or to its complement – the property of not having Q in w” (Alvin Plantinga, 2003, Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, Oxford University Press, p. 69). The idea behind world-indexed properties is to enable us to account for the properties particulars exemplify in different possible worlds from a world-neutral point of view. Independently of which world is the actual world, we can specify which properties a particular would have exemplified if a certain possible world had been actual. For instance, that a particular p exemplifies the world-indexed property of being F in the possible world w means that if w had been actual, the particular would have exemplified F. If w is the actual world, then the particular exemplifies F and (trivially) also the world-indexed property of being F-in-w. World-indexed properties are structurally analogous to dispositions in terms of which we can specify how particulars would act or behave in certain counterfactual circumstances. Particulars are not identical with their individual essences, but exist in a possible world if and only if their individual essence is exemplified in that world. Particulars therefore exist essentially, although not necessarily. That a particular p does not exist in a maximal consistent exemplifiable modal determination of particulars means that p's individual essence is not exemplified in that maximal modal determination of particulars. Since it is not the case that any maximal consistent modal determination of particulars entails that p’s individual essence is exemplified – because p’s individual essence is not exemplified essentially – it is not necessarily true that p exists.

⁵ When I speak of empirical properties I mean those properties which are exemplified within the natural order of the universe without a world-index. Not every actually exemplified property might be directly empirically available. Because we are dealing with the metaphysics of individual essences and not with epistemological matters, we can ignore this point, however.

⁶ On physicalist premises the idea is that I myself am identical to a particular human body or to a particular human brain such that I am a purely physical particular. According to reductive physicalism I exemplify only physical properties, and according to non-reductive physicalism my being a physical particular does not preclude the exemplification of genuine mental properties which for the physicalist in turn at least globally supervene on the physical properties to be found in the actual world. On dualist premises I myself am constituted of a material and an immaterial component such that the immaterial part is the exemplifier of my mental and the material part the exemplifier of the physical properties of the composite human being Benedikt. Both accounts differ only as regards the ontic interpretation of the human psycho-physical unit. But, on both accounts, the psycho-physical unit exists within the world ontologically, i.e. it exemplifies existence as in the case of the table.

⁷ Cf. E. J. Lowe, 2002, A Survey of Metaphyics, Oxford University Press, pp. 84–86, for an argument to this extent. Although there is no contingent identity among particulars, our reference to particulars and properties is contingent. If another world had been actual, we might have referred to another particular with a name we now counterfactually use rigidly to refer to something else.

⁸ That is, in the case that the actual world is replaced by the duplicate world such that what in fact is the actual world is no longer actual.

⁹ Swinburne argues for a similar conclusion in a slightly different context. According to Swinburne, a world W2 is conceivable “in which for each substance in W1 there is a substance which has the same properties as it and conversely (and any physical matter underlying the properties is the same in both worlds), but where a person S who exists in W1 does not exist in W2. The person who lives in W2 the life (physical and mental) which S lives in W1 is not S. And surely this world could be different solely in the respect that the person who lived my life was not me. For it is not entailed by the full description of the world in its physical aspects and in respect of which bundles of mental properties are instantiated in the same substance that I, picked out as the actual object of certain mental properties, have the same substance the particular physical or mental properties which I do and am connected with the body with which I am connected” (Richard Swinburne, 2007, “From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism”, in Persons: Human and Divine, edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, Oxford University Press, p. 164). Cf. also Stephen Priest who is more explicit on the matter: “I might not have been that psycho-physical human being born in a certain place at a certain time in England who authored this note. That very psycho-physical human being might well have existed, but it could have been someone else. It is an extra fact about that individual that I am that individual.” (Stephen Priest, 1999, “Aquinas's Claim ‘Anima mea non est ego’“, in The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 40 (2), p. 210.

¹⁰ Priest reaches the same conclusion with a different argument. His argument is in terms of facts: “If all the facts are empirical facts or modal facts or metaphysical facts and if being me is a fact but not an empirical fact nor a modal fact then being me is a metaphysical fact. Being me is a fact. It follows in a fairly precise sense that I am out of this world.” (Priest, Stephen, 2000, The Subject in Question, Routledge, p. 152Google Scholar).

¹¹ We can ignore the identity relations obtaining in the world because we already showed that the I itself is not identical to any particular in the world.

¹² It is interesting that this state of the I in which it is empty of the created world has, historically, served to support prima facie different metaphysical conclusions. It seems that for the Buddhist something like this state of the emptiness of mind shows the ultimate non-existence of the I as such. According to Christian speculation, this state is the unio mystika, or the cloud of unknowing in which the I and God meet under a veil of darkness. Cf. Meister Eckhart: “And you must know that to be empty of all created things is to be full of God, and to be full of created things is to be empty of God” (Meister Eckhart, 1981, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, edited by Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, Pauline Press, p. 288). From a systematic point of view, I suspect that the disagreement about this state of the I itself is due to a mutual misunderstanding of the others understanding of being.

¹³ Can we specify further the nature of subjectivity? Although this is not the place to elaborate further on the I as subjectivity, let me just clarify a small point: while it may be tempting to ask “What is subjectivity?”, this is only prima facie a legitimate question because questions of the kind “What is x?” are questions asking for the individual essences of x. To ask “What is subjectivity?” therefore presupposes that subjectivity is a particular with an individual essence. Because subjectivity is not a particular, we cannot ask “What is subjectivity?”.

¹⁴ In different terms, Meister Eckhart is concerned with much the same point in his German Sermons: “I have sometimes said that there is a power in the spirit that alone is free. Sometimes I have said that it is a guard of the spirit; sometimes I have said that it is a light of the spirit; sometimes I have said that it is a spark. But now I say that it is neither this nor that, and yet it is a something that is higher above this and that than heaven is above the earth. And therefore I now give it finer names than I have ever given it before, and yet whatever fine names, whatever words we use, they are telling lies, and it is far above them. It is free of all names, it is bare of all forms, wholly empty and free, as God in himself is empty and free. It is so utterly one and simply, as God is one and simple, that man cannot in any way look into it” (Meister Eckhart, 1981, p. 180).

¹⁵ Does this entail solipsism? If what I really am is without an inner principle of individuation which would make it this rather than that in reference to a higher category, then how could what you really are be different from what I really am? One might argue that for us to be different would entail that there is a higher category under which both of us fall such that in reference to the higher category I am what you are not and vice versa, and one might suggest that this is the category of I's or souls. What could distinguish us considered as subjectivity? One might suggest that it is a different kind of me-ness which is the inner principle of individuation in reference to the higher category of subjectivity. However, as argued in the text, this would entail that the I itself as subjectivity is an object, which is impossible. So, solipsism after all? Not necessarily. That the I itself is not this or that in reference to a higher category does not entail that there is only one I but only that the relations amongst different souls are not like the relations among particulars which fall under a higher category. My intuition, which I hope to argue for in the future, is that different I's are distinct in some sense through indistinction.

¹⁶ Cf. Sobel, Jordan Howard, 2004, Logic and Theism. Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God, Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar, for a thoughtful study which argues that from a logical point of view none of the proofs for the existence of God is sound.

¹⁷ In more detail, according to the objectual interpretation of the existential quantifier, a well ordered formula of the form ∃x Fx or ∃x x = x is true if and only if there is an object in the universe of discourse which satisfies the open sentence Fx or x = x.

¹⁸ In more detail, on the substitutional interpretation of the quantifier, a well ordered formula of the form ∃x Fx or ∃x x = x is true if and only if there is a true substitution instance of it – regardless of whether the term substituted for x has denotation.

¹⁹ Cf. Marcus: “On a substitutional semantics of [a] first-order language, a domain of objects is not specified. Variables do not range over objects. They are place markers for substituends. Satisfaction relative to objects is not defined.” (Marcus, Ruth Barcan, 1993, Modalities. Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press, p. 119)Google Scholar.

²⁰ For many philosophers and theologians there is no problem in this. They argue that God is one thing amongst others existing in possible worlds and who exemplifies properties which no other particular does. He exists necessarily, he is omniscient, omnipotent and morally perfect, just to name a few of his properties. Particularly within the tradition of the analytic philosophy of religon we find philosophers and theologians applying the means of formal logic to God. For them, God is one object amongst others with some rather unique properties.

²¹ In other words, it's all about the proper understanding of divine causation. The likely response to this kind of neoplatonic argument among those who favour the object view of God is as follows: human beings can both cause things to be F and to be non-F regardless of whether they themselves are F or non-F. God, in a similar way, can cause things to be F or non-F regardless whether he Himself is F or non-F. However, this is not a good counterargument because it is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the ultimate cause. The ultimate cause is that in and through which things have their very being and their thisness. Human beings only act on previous matter which is already potentially F or non-F and do not ultimately cause F-ness or non-F-ness to be a potential to be found in the things. A second point concerns proofs for and against the existence of God. If God really is the ultimate cause of everything, then there can be no proof for the existence of God as anything which could be used to prove his existence already presupposes it.

²² Denys Turner observes that this point was also seen by Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius: “For it is by virtue of the divine nature's excluding every possible specification – that is to say, by virtue of excluding every differentia whatever – that God's nature is such as to exclude all exclusion; hence, God stands in no relation of any kind of exclusion with anything whatever. God, as Eckhart says, is distinct in this exactly, that God alone is ‘indistinct’– not, as Thomas observes, by virtue of an ‘indistinctness’ which is an excess of indeterminacy taken to the point of absolute generalised vacuousness, but by an excess of determinacy, taken to the point of absolutely total plenitude: ‘There is no kind of thing’, the pseudo-Denys says, ‘which God is not’, or, as Thomas himself put it, God is ‘virtually’ everything that there is, containing, as it were, every differentia as the cause of them all, but such that ‘what are diverse and exclusive in themselves pre-exist in God as one, without detriment to his simplicity’.” (Turner, Denys, 2004, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God, Cambridge University Press, p. 189CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)

²³ This is the essential advantage of panentheism over pantheism and theistic transcendentalism: whereas the problem of pantheism is that it identifies the finite and the infinite in a way which is not adequate to either, the problem of transcendental theism is much worse: often, transcendental theism is not able to understand the problem which obtains where it is assumed that here is the finite world and there is an infinite being.

²⁴ The being of the I is esse indistinctum insofar as the I itself is the subjectivity which encapsulates the being of the universe in an act of saturation, while the being of God is esse indistinctum insofar as God is the ultimate cause of the organon of possible worlds being and being what they are.

²⁵ In what follows I ignore the Holy Spirit and concentrate on the Son. Just a quick word: the Holy Spirit is that which enables intersubjectivity between otherwise indistinguishable souls; it is that element which brings in a threefold inwardness of the universe.

²⁶ It seems to me that Meister Eckhart had quite a similar thought on the matter: “So when someone once asked me why God had not created the world earlier, I answered that he could not because he did not exist. He did not exist before the world did. Furthermore, how could he have created earlier when he had already created the world in the very now in which he was God? It is false to picture God as if he were waiting around for some future moment in which to create the world. In the one and the same time in which he was God and in which he begot his coeternal Son as God equal to himself in all things, he also created the world. ‘God speaks once and for all’ (Jb. 22:14)” (Eckhart, Meister, 1981, The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, edited by Colledge, Edmund and McGinn, Bernard, Pauline Press, p. 85Google Scholar)

²⁷ I am grateful to Klaus Müller, Alexander Norman, and Stephen Priest for valuable discussions of earlier drafts of this paper. For more on how thoughts similar to the ones developed here can be used as a means against physicalism cf. my, ‘Priest and Nagel on Being Someone: A Refutation of Physicalism’, in: The Heythrop Journal, Vol. 49 (4), 648–651. For more on the relation between the actuality of the universe within the soul and time cf. my ‘God, Soul, and Time in Priest and Swinburne’, in: New Blackfriars, Vol. 89 (1024), 730–738. For more on the inwardness of the universe within the soul and solipsism cf. my ‘From Phyicalism to Theological Idealism’, in: Gehirne und Personen, edited by Fürst, Martina et al, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 234–246Google Scholar.