Abstract
Divine conceptualism takes all abstract objects to be propositions in the mind of God. I focus here on necessary propositions and contemporary claims that the laws of logic, understood as necessarily true propositions, provide us with an epistemic bridge to theological predication—specifically, to the claim that God exists. I argue that when contemporary versions of DC say ‘G/god’ they merely rename the notion of necessary truth, and fail to refer to God. Given that God is incomprehensible, epistemic access to the state of propositions in the mind of God is extremely limited.
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Notes
Divine conceptualism attempts to reduce all abstract objects to ideas or concepts in the mind of God, not just propositions. Here I focus on propositions.
One way to achieve this asymmetrical relation between God and propositions is to say that propositions are essentially the objects of thought; they are parasitic on minds. This is true when propositions are thought to be truth-bearers. So if propositions are either true or false, they must be the objects of doxastic intentionality. In the case of necessary propositions, the doxastic intentionality can only be God’s. Thus the truth-bearing quality of necessary propositions is thought to imply the existence of a God. Alvin Plantinga claims that propositions are parasitic on minds, as do James Anderson and Greg Welty (see below).
The theologian will notice that this is in part a question of theological prolegomena.
This is less obvious for logical truths, perhaps, but we end up with the same result once logical truths become thoughts: like all thoughts, they must be about something.
I say doxastic intentionalities because, on (divine) conceptualism, for a proposition to have truth-value it must be more than a mere idea or mental representation; it must be believed or doubted or considered or affirmed or denied; it must be the object of doxastic intentionality. This is a problem unique to conceptualism in the sense that some epistemological account of truth must be introduced once propositions are recognized as essentially cognitive items or objects of thought; and divine (or non-divine) conceptualism is motivated in part by the idea that propositions are parasitic on minds. Plantinga writes, ‘truth is not independent of mind; it is necessary that for any proposition p, p is true only if it is believed, and if and only if it is believed by God. This is truth de dicto; but it is also true, de re, that every proposition has essentially the property of being true only if believed, and if and only if believed by God’ (Plantinga 1982, p. 68). So to follow through on this notion, it would appear to be inadequate simply to take propositions to be ideas in the mind of God, since ideas alone are not truth-bearers; so we must suppose that God believes or at least thinks the relevant propositions. Thus we expect of him some doxastic disposition or attitude. See Davis (2011), pp. 297–298. James Anderson and Greg Welty claim that the laws of logic are God’s thoughts about his own thoughts. On their account, God thinks the laws of logic: ‘The laws of logic are nothing other than what God thinks about his thoughts qua thoughts’ (Anderson and Welty 2011, p. 337). But presumably God doesn’t merely ‘think’ the laws of logic, if that means having them in mind and nothing more; on their account he must believe them to be true.
A strong Thomistic doctrine of simplicity makes a real mess of this, but set that aside. Many of the historical sources attempt to ease the tension by saying that the objects of God’s thoughts are the objects of his necessary will (himself only) and the objects of his free will, the latter being divisible between those he realizes and those he does not. All things not contrary to God’s nature being possible and realizable by God, God can know all possible things. The problem of God knowing actual things remains, however.
This also means that for any proposition \(P\), prior to actualizing a possible world, God cannot know \(P\) but only it is possible that P. So I suppose then that we would say God knows the embedded proposition \(P\) plus its modal qualifier. Prior to creation, God knows some propositions as possible in the same way that given the actual world God knows only in a modally qualified sense that I have red hair. Some Thomistic theologians will deny that we may draw a distinction between the cognitive state of God ‘before’ creating the actual world and ‘after’ doing so, since everything that God does constitutes a single, eternal, inseparable act identical with his being.
Anderson and Welty (2011), esp. pp. 335–336.
Anderson and Welty write, ‘We cannot imagine a possible world in which the law of noncontradiction is false’ (ibid., 326). And, ‘the law of noncontradiction is true not only in the actual world but also in every possible world’ (ibid., 325). The latter statement is trivial if taken on a conceptualist ontology of propositions (as suggested by the former). Suppose there are no possible worlds. In that case, a necessary proposition would be no more necessary than its negation. There are no possible worlds in which \(\sim \)P; so \(\square \)P. Equally, there are no possible worlds in which P; so \(\square \sim \)P. P and \(\sim \)P are both necessary. (I borrow this argument from Leftow (2012), pp. 58–59). So there must be at least one possible world for P to be true and \(\sim \)P false. And so for a necessarily true proposition such as the law of noncontradiction, to say that it is true in all possible worlds is just to say that there are possible worlds. A possible world just is a logically consistent state of affairs. This triviality encourages us to look for a truth-maker (or to satisfy the ontological truth-condition) for logically necessary truths—which is what Anderson and Welty do. On the other hand, Leftow says, ‘We can clearly conceive circumstances in which the truths of classical logic would not be true’ (ibid., 89). He then references the non-classical, three-valued logics of Kleene and Lukasiewicz and concludes: ‘If this sort of treatment is correct and there are gap propositions, then, PNC [the principle of non-contradiction] is not true (nor false)’ (ibid., 90). More below.
Yandell (2011), p. 287.
In Calvin’s view, this is the teaching of Scripture. See Ellis (2012).
I use the masculine pronoun, following the inspired writers of Scripture.
Scott Oliphint thinks of the creator/creature relationship, and a distinction between God as he is to himself and God in relation to creation, in terms of an eimi/eikon analogy. See Oliphint (2011), esp. pp. 89–93.
This would include the act of creation, so that God’s first act or decision ad extra constitutes condescension. Westminster Confession of Faith 7.1 reads, ‘The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant’.
Leftow (2012), pp. 11–12.
See ibid., 10–12. The principle theological deficiency in this section in Leftow’s text is hermeneutic consistency across the whole of the Bible. If we do our theology proper reading the NT through the OT, we may dismiss the Trinitarian complexity introduced in the gospel of John as more information than is necessary. This methodology might slip in undetected when we begin with “Western monotheism” generically conceived. But if we read the OT through the NT (as Christians tend to do with most other issues, and as is suggested by the notion of a completed canon), we must acknowledge that in the Hebrew Scriptures the scale tips toward mystery more than it does in the NT. So the question this raises is whether the less complete OT theology proper is merely less complete or whether it is, read on its own, potentially misleading. Obviously this question cannot be addressed here, nor, I suppose, would it be fair to expect Leftow to settle it before writing his book.
He even offers a word of consolation to ‘philosophers impatient with discussions of Biblical texts’ (3). I should also note that it is possible for the authority and necessity of revelation to contend with the same fallibility concerns as those which pester speculation and empirical investigation, or what I call here ‘finite natural conceptions of God’. Not everyone who holds a high view of revelation feels himself immune to modern critiques of metaphysics.
Assuming a number of things: that propositions have an ontology; that a weak ontology along conceptualist lines is false or in adequate; and that necessary propositions have truth-makers.
Leftow (2012), p. 50. For Leftow’s argument that ‘necessity does not explain’, see ibid., 48–54.
‘Explanations of distinct explananda are often not in competition, and in particular truthmaker explanation and explanation by necessity or mathematical explanation (if there by such) do not compete’ (ibid., 51).
Some philosophers hold that such propositions are trivial. See Cameron (2010). I do not believe this, but I think it is implied in some accounts of necessity.
The latter is Calvin’s view. See Ellis (2012).
References
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Shannon, N.D. The epistemology of divine conceptualism. Int J Philos Relig 78, 123–130 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9483-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9483-0