A Mereological Argument for Theism

This argument, as far as I know, is novel. It mirrors an argument for the existence of God in Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God, which argues for the existence of God from otherwise inexplicable brain and mental event correlations.

Consider the Special Composition Question: "What necessary and jointly sufficient conditions must any xs satisfy in order for it to be the case that there is an object composed of the xs?"[1]

Ned Markosian has argued that every answer yet suggested for answering this question has failed. He argues that we ought to take composition to be brute: "There is no true, non-trivial, and finitely long answer to SCQ." [2] Let's agree with Markosian that all previous answers to this question have failed and hold off on endorsing his answer to the question.

Suppose however, that none of the views above work, but it is still the case that the some xs are such that the xs compose some y but some zs are such that they do not compose some w. That is to say, some, but not all mereological simples compose something. There should be some fact of the matter about this too. In theory, we should be able to draw up a list of all of the composite objects and their simples with their properties. On brutalism, there is not going to be any explanation for why these simples with these properties compose something, rather than not. The set of correlated xs with their properties and composite ys will be brute, with no explanation.

Brute explanations are only epistemically permissible if there is no uneliminated explanation. [4] I submit that there is an uneliminated explanation. The correlation of xs with their properties and composite ys has a personal cause, a la Swinburne. [5] In fact, whether or not humans are composite physical objects, they will be unable to make it the case that these correlations are true. This is easy to see, there was a time before the first human. It is not plausible to think that the advent of humans started making trees out of xs shaped tree-wise. So, if there is a personal explanation, then it is not a human person. Furthermore, the personal cause must be a mereological simple himself otherwise, he would be insufficient to explain his own composition out of some xs. God fits this description and it is more plausible that the correlations of simples and their properties and the objects they compose are the result of the action of a divine personal cause than that they are brute.

So,

1. There are correlations between simples and composite objects.

2. If there are correlations of this sort, then said correlations are either explained or they are brute.

3. Said correlations are either explained or they are brute. (MP 1, 2)

4. If the correlations are explained, they are either explained by some form of Contact (and all strengthened forms, up to Fusion), Life-ism, Nihilism, Universalism or have a personal explanation.

5. It is false that they are explained by some form of Contact, Life-ism, Nihilism, or Universalism. (Not argued here, between van Inwagen and Markosian every one of these is dispatched). [6]

6. If the correlations are explained, they have a personal explanation.

7. Said correlations either are explained by a personal explanation or they are brute.

8. It is more probable that there is a personal explanation than that they are brute.

9. If there is a personal explanation, then there is a God. (see argument above).

10. It is more probable that there is a God than that the correlations are brute.

Even if this argument works, it has a modest conclusion. As with Swinburne's argument from mental/physical event correlations, it works best as part of a cumulative case.

I'm interested to hear what people think. I have my doubts about premises 5 and 8.

[1] Markosian, Ned, "Brutal Composition" Philosophical Studies 92: 211-249, 1998., 212

[2] Ibid., 214.

[3] Ibid., 223.

[4] I take it that this is plausible. However, I haven't the foggiest idea how to argue for it.

[5] Swinburne, Richard The Existence of God, 2nd Edition(Clarendon Press: Oxford), 2004, 35-51.

[6] van Inwagen, Peter, Material Beings, ( ), 1990.

On the Nature of Numbers

The following definition of the number 2 has been brought to my attention: "[t]he set of all pairs." Against this definition, I raise the following objections:

I. It seems viciously circular: if 2 is the set of all pairs, what are pairs other than a set of two objects? The same objection seems to hold for defining 3 as the set of all triples, etc.

II. Even if this kind of definition can be used for the natural numbers, I am at a loss to understand how numbers such as fractions, irrational roots, pi, imaginary numbers, and negative numbers are to be defined in terms of sets of objects.

III. If “pairs” is understood to mean “pairs of physical objects,” then it would seem that in a possible world with only two physical objects, numbers larger than two could not exist, since e.g. “the set of all triples” would be empty.

IV. Or again, take two possible worlds which each contain only twenty physical objects, with the stipulation that each world contains objects that are entirely different than the objects in the other. In this case, it would seem that “2” in one world would not be identical to “2” in the other, since the set defined as “the set of all pairs” would have different members in each possible world.

Thales' Well

The origin of this blog's name, from Theaetetus:

"[T]hey say Thales was studying the stars... and gazing aloft, when he fell into a well; and a witty and amusing Thracian servant-girl made fun of him because, she said, he was wild to know about what was up in the sky but failed to see what was in front of him and under his feet. The same joke applies to all who spend their lives in philosophy."[1]

This blog will be dedicated to the pursuit of looking aloft and will avoid discussion of what is at our feet.

[1] Plato, Theaetetus, trans. M.J. Levett, rev. Myles F. Burnyeat, from Plato: Complete Works ed. John M. Cooper, Hackett: Indianapolis, IN, 1997., 174a.

Aristotle on Knowledge and Necessity

The determinist’s argument in De Int. 9 (as given by Aristotle and interpreted by Richard Sorabji[1]) runs as follows: it is either true or false that event X will occur. If the statement “X will happen” turns out to be true, then it will have been true in the past. But if the statement “X will happen” was true in the past, then there is no point to deliberating whether or not to bring it about that X, since “X will happen” was true in the past, and the past cannot be altered. Thus, “X will happen” is necessarily true.

As Sorabji points out, Aristotle seems to accept the inference from the premise that any given statement is either true or false to the determinist conclusion. According to what Sorabji calls the traditional interpretation, Aristotle answers the determinist by arguing that predictive statements like “X will happen” are not yet true or false, but become true or false when X actually happens (or becomes inevitable). Sorabji finds this response unsatisfying, because e.g. if a statement’s being true means that it corresponds to a state of affairs in the world (which was a fairly common understanding of “true” for the Greeks) then the statement “there will be a sea battle tomorrow” is true (when uttered) if in fact it corresponds to a state of affairs, viz. the sea battle happening tomorrow; to speak of it as “not yet true” seems odd (Sorabji 101).

Sorabji’s own solution is to deny the inference between the premise that any given statement is either true or false to the determinist conclusion by making reference to one’s power, or lack of power, to bring about a state of affairs. Thus, if the statement “X will happen” turns out to be true, i.e. actually happens, then I do not have it in my power to make it the case that not-X, since X has already happened and I cannot alter the past. But, Sorabji thinks that this scenario is disanalogous to a situation in which I have been told “X will happen,” but X has not yet happened. Sorabji argues that since the event X still lies in the future, we still have the power to bring about not-X, and thus even if the statement “X will happen” does turn out to be true, it is not necessarily true, as the determinist thinks.

However, it seems to me as though something like Sorabji’s reply was addressed by Aristotle. At 19a7-23, Aristotle argues that it is false that all events happen of necessity: before an event X happens, both X and not-X are possible states of affairs. Since not-X is possible, then if X happens, it cannot have happened necessarily since it was in some agent’s power to bring about not-X. This passage seems to mirror Sorabji’s discussion of irrevocability in the first paragraph on p. 102, and Aristotle seems to argue here for the same disanalogy between past events and future events that Sorabji does.

Returning to Sorabji’s objection that it seems as though statements about the future should be said to be actually true or false depending on whether they in fact correspond to a state of affairs, it seems to me that Aristotle could answer that they are not yet true or false simply because they do not yet correspond to a state of affairs, and that only when they can truly be said to correspond, or fail to correspond, to a state of affairs can they be said to be true or false. It seems to me that this is the line Aristotle takes in his conclusion to this section at 19b1. Thus it appears that Aristotle argues both for a qualified principle of bivalence (cf. Sorabji p. 94-95) and against the determinist’s belief that all events happen of necessity.

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[1] Sorabji, Richard. “Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory.” Duckworth, 1980, pp. 91-103.