Abstract
While the failure of the so-called classical theory of concepts—according to which definitions are the proper way to characterize concepts—is a consensus, metaphysical philosophy of religion still deals with the concept of God in a predominantly definitional way. It thus seems fair to ask: Does this failure imply that a definitional characterization of the concept of God is equally untenable? The first purpose of this paper is to answer this question. I focus on the representational side of the matter. My goal is to analyze the extent to which the most important problems raised against the classical view of concepts affect a definitional-representational approach to the concept of God. The second purpose of the paper is to deepen into these issues, arguing for a pluralistic view of concepts and outlining a hybrid special theory of concepts, called the theory of ideal concepts. The theory is special because it deals with a special sort of concepts that I call ideal concepts; it is hybrid because, in addition to definitions, it uses another structure in the characterization of concepts: ideals. My goal is to argue that when applied to the concept of God and added to a pluralistic view of concepts, this theory can function as a tenable representational theory of the concept of God.
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Notes
Some people will add a third one: the issue of rational doxastic warrant.
Locke seems to assume something very close to the classical theory when he gives an account of the concept of sun, for example: “[T]he Idea of the Sun, what is it, but an aggregate of those several simple Ideas, Bright, Hot, Roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain distance from us, and, perhaps, some other” (Locke, 1690/1975, pp. 298–299). Plato’s use of what might be seen as the basic tenets of the classical theory can be found in the Euthyphro and Aristotle’s in the Categories.
In order to distinguish between the concept of God and the (possible) instance of this concept, I will refer to the latter using capital letters. Thus, while “God” means the concept of God, “GOD” means the entity which supposedly falls under the concept of God (although most of the time I will use the complex expression “concept of God”).
The properties we choose and the way we interpret them give rise to different views on GOD. Examples of this are classical theism, open theism, process theism and deism (which denies that GOD has the property of being known through divine revelation).
Although many aspects of my analysis might also apply to this special theory (the classical theory applied to the concept of God) seen as a T-theory.
It is important to notice that this claim does not exclude views such as open theism and process theism, nor is it an application or reaffirmation of the basic principle of perfect being theology. It is perhaps true that open theism and process theism do not take on the properties of omniscience and omnipotence, respectively, in a maximal way. Nevertheless, at least one other divine attribute is seen in this idealized, maximally perfect way by these views. And that is all the claim entails: that some aspect of the concept of God can be seen in a maximally perfect way; other aspects might be seen differently. It is also important to notice that the claim that concept c is IMP abstract does not imply that an object C that falls under it is an ultimate reality and therefore something that deserves our unconditional concern (although at least one IMP abstract concept, namely the monotheistic concept of God, is generally seen this way).
From this one might conclude that pantheism does not fit this account of God. Even though it fits in the sense that even the pantheistic concept of God might be seen as an IMP abstraction - after all, in pantheism GOD is identified with the cosmos, so that the maximal aspect is certainly there; some pantheists, such as Zeno of Citium, for example, have defended that nothing is better than the cosmos, incorporating then some type of perfect being theology - one might claim that pantheism clearly sees GOD as concrete. That is not necessarily the case. If we understand the cosmos as the whole (ordered) universe, then the cosmos is not concrete in the sense of having a spatiotemporal location, since time and space are part of the cosmos. That is one way to account for pantheism. This should not be seen, of course, as an endorsement of pantheism as a monotheistic view. (I am obviously aware that pantheism is generally not seen as a monotheistic view, although it does claim that there is only one GOD.) Rather, it should be simply seen as an (extra) indication of the comprehensiveness of my approach.
Although abstract objects is a controversial topic, this is a view accepted by many contemporary philosophers. For space reasons, I will not be able to elaborate here on its pros and cons. For that, as well as for alternative views, see (Rosen, 2020).
Commenting on this view of abstract objects, Gideon Rosen (2020) writes as follows: “It is widely maintained that causation, strictly speaking, is a relation among events or states of affairs. If we say that the rock—an object—caused the window to break, what we mean is that some event or state (or fact or condition) involving the rock caused the break. If the rock itself is a cause, it is a cause in some derivative sense. But this derivative sense has proved elusive. The rock’s hitting the window is an event in which the rock ‘participates’ in a certain way, and it is because the rock participates in events in this way that we credit the rock itself with causal efficacy. But what is it for an object to participate in an event? Suppose John is thinking about the Pythagorean Theorem and you ask him to say what’s on his mind. His response is an event—the utterance of a sentence; and one of its causes is the event of John’s thinking about the theorem. Does the Pythagorean Theorem ‘participate’ in this event? There is surely some sense in which it does. The event consists in John’s coming to stand in a certain relation to the theorem, just as the rock’s hitting the window consists in the rock’s coming to stand in a certain relation to the glass. But we do not credit the Pythagorean Theorem with causal efficacy simply because it participates in this sense in an event which is a cause. The challenge is therefore to characterize the distinctive manner of ‘participation in the causal order’ that distinguishes the concrete entities. This problem has received relatively little attention. There is no reason to believe that it cannot be solved. But in the absence of a solution, this standard version of the Way of Negation must be reckoned a work in progress.”.
Although (EAM) entails (AM), the converse is not true. I come back to this point later.
I borrowed this terminology from George Murphy, who divides his section on the problems of the classical theory into two subsections: “in-principle arguments” and “empirical problems” (Murphy 2002, p. 16–24), although my classification does not completely matches his. For a comprehensive overview of the main problems faced by the classical view of concepts see (Rosch, 1978), (Smith and Medin, 1981, p. 26–51), (Laurence and Margolis, 1999, p. 8–27) and (Murphy, 2002, p. 11–24).
Notice that these claims should be understood in a conceptual, non-empirical context. For example, when I say that chairs are furniture I am not saying that all chairs are furniture, which would be false, but that the property of being a furniture belongs to the list of property conditions that defines the concept of chair (if we characterize the concept of chair according to the classical theory, of course).
I am using the expressions “view on GOD” and “concept of God” with different meanings. Although a view on GOD usually corresponds to some concept of God, it might be fuzzy enough to correspond to more than one concept of God or perhaps to no concept of God at all. Second, a view on GOD already presupposes the existence of some superlative being; that is why I use “GOD” instead of “God”.
For example, according to orthodox Christianity, GOD is a trinitarian entity. This appears very clearly, for example, in the Athanasian Creed. Out of its 44 theses, three of them state as follows: (1) “We worship GOD in Trinity and Trinity in Unity… Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.”; (2) “So the Father is GOD, the Son is GOD, and the Holy Spirit is GOD.”; (3) “And yet they are not three GODS, but one GOD.” Islam, on the other hand, emphasizes that GOD is strictly singular (tawḥīd), unique (wāḥid) and inherently One (aḥad) (Esposito, 1998, p. 88). In its turn, the so-called “Hindu bible”, the Bhagavad-gītā, while stating that GOD (who is identified with the speaker of the text, Kṛṣṇa) is oneHe is the great Lord of all the worlds (5.29), the Supreme Divine Person (10.12), the God of the gods (10.14) and their origin (10.12, 11.38); no one is equal to or greater than Him (11.38),claims that He is identical with everything (7.19, 11.40) (Resnick, 1995, p. 7–9;13–17). One might reply that these brief descriptions are not conclusive about whether we have three different concepts of God. That is true. However, from the surface, these descriptions of God undeniably contain divergent and conflicting conceptual elements. The same can be said about the descriptions of many other religious traditions. Moreover, it seems that the burden of proof lies with the one who maintains that these views share the same concept of God. Therefore, unless there is a very compelling argument against it, I maintain what seems to be most likely: that the plurality of religious views on GOD involves a plurality of concepts of God.
It should be noted that Weiskopf does not refer to the classical theory in his paper.
George Lakoff, for example, writes as follows (1987, p. 76): “Many categories are understood in terms of abstract ideal cases—which may be neither typical nor stereotypical. […] Naomi Quinn (personal communication) has observed, based on extensive research on American conceptions of marriage, that there are many kinds of ideal models for a marriage: successful marriages, good marriages, strong marriages, and so on. Successful marriages are those where the goals of the spouses are fulfilled. Good marriages are those where both partners find the marriage beneficial. Strong marriages are those likely to last.” The emphasis is mine.
I am assuming that m itself is not an exemplar of the category of ideal husbands, although it is an exemplar of the category of husbands. The reason for that is that the concept of ideal husband already embodies an idealization maximal perfection; differently from the concept of husband, there is not much to be perfected.
To minimize terminological confusion, I have so far preferred the expression “IMP abstract concept” over the expression “ideal concept”, even though they are synonymous (see Sect. 2, where the terms are first introduced). From now on I will relax this and allow myself to use freely the term “ideal concept”. The reader however should keep in mind that while “ideal concept” refers to the kind of concept I have so far referred to by the expression “abstract IMP concept”, the term “ideal” refers to a kind of abstract object, a special, idealized member of a category.
The question of what those desirable properties are is answered by specific D-concepts of God (see below). For example, while possessing intellect and will are in the list of properties of the concept of God linked to most monotheistic views, they are not in the list of the pantheistic concept of God (assuming that pantheism can be included in the class of monotheistic views on GOD). A more fundamental issue comes from the following objection. Most exemplars of beings we know possess the properties of corporeality and complexity. These properties obviously conflict with incorporeality and simplicity, which are often attributed to GOD. Therefore, it seems false that God is an exemplar of the category of beings. In reply to this, I would say that the result of maximally perfecting a property P might be something quite different from P; it might even be something incompatible with P. Considering the perishable nature of material bodies, the result of maximally perfecting the property of corporeality might be its very opposite, that is to say, incorporeality, which of course does not exclude that God has an imperishable non-material body.
When referring to polytheism, I will use the expressions “god” and “concept of a god”, instead of “God” and “concept of God”, which I keep reserving to the monotheistic view.
Because of that, the following alternative account is not feasible: having only one ideal to represent a generic concept of god, and the several monotheistic and polytheistic concepts being attempts (D-concepts) to characterize it. According to the account I am proposing, the Nordic concept of a god and the concept of God of classical theism, for example, are not on the same level: while the former would take the shape of a D-concept meant to characterize the ideal g’, the later would correspond to a D-concept meant to characterize a different ideal, that is g.
I am assuming that, although believers in the polytheistic traditions attach great value to the gods, and may even place greater value on one specific god, no god has an ultimate value like that of God in monotheistic traditions.
Let PC be the proposition that there is an object which falls under concept C. C is a possible concept iff PC is a possible proposition. On the other hand, the claim that PC is a plausible proposition is one of the things that might appear as conclusion of an argument for the existence of GOD, in this case an inductive or evidential argument. It does not seem to concern with the concept of God itself.
With the help of these general criteria of conceptual plausibility we could compare, for example, the concept of God with the concept of a god. But what are these criteria? Keeping in mind that answering that question is definitely beyond the scope of this article, here are some ruminations that might be proved useful. First of all, for a concept to be plausible it must be coherent: possibility is a precondition of plausibility. Second, fruitfulness seems to be a desideratum of conceptual plausibility. A concept is fruitful if it has a high explanatory power. In its turn, a concept has a high explanatory power if it is an indispensable part of a very compelling explanation of phenomena for which there is no consensually accepted explanation. Third, it also seems desirable that a plausible concept be simple, or as simple as the other constraints allow. Finally, all that makes sense only if the concept is precise, in the sense of being described in clear terms.
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Silvestre, R.S. On the Representation of the Concept of God. Philosophia 50, 731–755 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00413-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00413-8