Abstract
Evan Fales has argued that divine causation is not possible. His central argument involves an analysis of causation that requires that there has to be a mapping feature to guarantee that the particular effect follows the particular cause. He suggests that being related in space and time will provide the means to map the right effects onto their causes. In this paper, I argue that the spatial relation between cause and effect is not necessary to the causal relation. In cases of volition, it appears that the mapping of particular effects onto volitions is achieved by the intentional content of the volition. Therefore, spatial relations are not necessary to causation and the impossibility of divine causation has not been shown.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Evan Fales, Divine Intervention: Metaphysical and Epistemological Puzzles. (New York: Routledge, 2010). Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. All citations to Divine Intervention will be parenthetical. In his preface, Fales announces that his book is ‘about the God of traditional monotheistic theologies, the theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.’ I will assume this concept of God when engaging Fales’ argument.
Fales is responding to Robert Larmer, Water into Wine: An Investigation of the Concept of Miracle (Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 1988).
One referee objected to each of these implications for what seem to me to be good reasons. Platonism about properties is highly contentious (the reviewer thought it was ‘almost certainly false’). The nomic web implies that my touching a key on my keyboard has a property that is essentially causally connected to a property of a particle of dust a hundred light years away. While this claim is hard to believe, I will leave these criticisms aside. My own critique of Fales’ position can grant these notions.
Not every case of a rock hitting a window will cause the window to break, of course. It must be a case of the rock hitting the window with sufficient force and there being in place whatever other necessary conditions are relevant for the window to break when a rock hits it in this way. When I refer to the event of a rock hitting the window in a particular way, I shall assume all of these other conditions are satisfied. For simplicity, I will continue to write as if what stands in causal relations are events. I have become convinced that this is not the case. Substances stand in causal relations. See E J Lowe, Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Most philosophers writing on the subject today hold that God is in some sense temporal. The traditional view is that God is not temporal. For contemporary discussions, see the essays in Gregory E. Ganssle ed., God and Time: Four Views (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2001), and in Gregory E. Ganssle and David M. Woodruff ed., God and Time: Essays on the Divine Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Jaegwon Kim has introduced what he calls the ‘pairing problem’ as a challenge to dualism. His pairing problem is close to Fales’ problem of particularity, although Fales does not refer to or discuss Kim. See Jaegwon Kim, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005): 78–88. See also ‘Lonely Souls: Causality and Substance Dualism,’ in Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons ed., Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001): 30–43.
Lillian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Sang for the Birds (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1998).
Even if dualism is true, the human being is embodied and thus it makes sense to describe one book as being on the left and the other as being on the right. Since God is not embodied, he will pick out the books without reference to the spatial description of being on the left or being on the right.
David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding. Third Edition ed., PH Nidditch (Oxford University Press: Clarendon Press, 1975) 62. All references to this book will be cited parenthetically.
There is only one proximate cause, assuming for simplicity’s sake, that there is no causal overdetermination at work. In cases of causal overdetermination, there are comparatively few proximate causes.
If there are other objections to appealing to intentionality in order to solve the problem of particularity, these will have to be met. Fales raises no other objections, so as far as his case is concerned, the way is open to appeal to intentionality.
Acknowledgements
I benefitted greatly from the discussion of this paper at the Notre Dame Philosophy Club. Especially helpful were comments there by Cameron Cortens, Katie Finley, Ryan Solava and Luke Potter. I also presented this work at the Society of Christian Philosophers northeast regional conference at Fordham University in Manhattan, March 18-19, 2011, the regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, April 9, 2011, and the national meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in November of that year. I presented much ofthis material as the Rivendell Integration Lecture on January 23, 2012. I am grateful for the helpful discussion at these events as well. Anonymous reviewers for this journal were especially helpful.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ganssle, G.E. Evan Fales on the Possibility of Divine Causation. SOPHIA 54, 25–34 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0425-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0425-1