The Providential Collapse Argument Against Classical Theism

The simple modal collapse argument doesn't work. But does the classical theist's response to the argument collapse divine providence? That's the question I explore in this video.

OUTLINE

0:00 Intro & Prelims
2:06 Providential Collapse
3:28 The Argument
13:15 Objection One: Tu Quoque
18:47 Objection Two: Luck Objection?
31:55 Rejoinder: Hyperintensionality
38:34 Five Replies to the Rejoinder
44:15 Objection Three: No Intuition?

RESOURCES

[alessandrofiore]

Hi Joe, great work as always. I agree with basically all the arguments that you present in this video but I do not think the providential collapse argument is a difficulty for Classical Theism as such, but only for a particular version of CT, which may be popular among some contemporary defenders of CT but I would not say it is the historically prominent version.
The Providential Collapse Argument (PCA) is not a difficulty for the version of CT that was (plausibly) held by Aquinas and (probably) Augustine. I don't think you want to say that they were not classical theists. So if I'm right, the PCA is not a problem for CT per se.
Here I will copy much of the comment I posted on your previous video since it is highly relevant.

I don’t think you are characterizing "traditional DDS" correctly, even though I do not think it is (entirely) your fault: unfortunately, many contemporary proponents of DDS are defending a different doctrine than that of Augustine and Aquinas. For Aquinas, DS implies an “absolute real simplicity” in God, which does not exclude a certain “relative” complexity (see Trinitarian relations) or an “intentional/ideal” complexity in God’s mind. I recommend reading (for example) Summa Theologiae, prima pars, questions 14 and 15. When Aquinas talks about God’s knowledge, he explicitly recognizes that God has “proper knowledge” of creatures: “To have a proper knowledge of things is to know them not only in general, but as they are distinct from each other”; he also explicitly recognizes that there are “multiple” ideas in God’s mind, corresponding to the specific “types” of things. This does not entail a “real plurality” in God as the plurality is only the intentional plurality of the “content” side of the unique divine idea, entitatively speaking.
Also, Aquinas would have rejected (by my lights) an indeterministic model of Divine causation. He has even been interpreted as holding a rather deterministic view of God’s causal role in acts of human freedom, and he explicitly recognizes that without a specific intention towards the creation of X or Y, an indeterministic causation of X or Y would amount to chance: See prima pars, Q15, art. 1:
“In all things not generated by chance, the form must be the end of any generation whatsoever. But an agent does not act on account of the form, except in so far as the likeness of the form is in the agent, as may happen in two ways. For in some agents the form of the thing to be made pre-exists according to its natural being, as in those that act by their nature; as a man generates a man, or fire generates fire. Whereas in other agents (the form of the thing to be made pre-exists) according to intelligible being, as in those that act by the intellect; and thus the likeness of a house pre-exists in the mind of the builder. And this may be called the idea of the house, since the builder intends to build his house like to the form conceived in his mind. As then the world was not made by chance, but by God acting by His intellect, as will appear later (I:46:1, there must exist in the divine mind a form to the likeness of which the world was made. And in this the notion of an idea consists.”
It is true that Aquinas affirms that God knows all things through the Knowledge of His essence (which has led some to think that in the end He knows only His essence in a proper way). But this does not mean that there are no “ideas” (or “types” of things) in God’s mind, just that they are a secondary object of Divine knowledge, known as degrees of “participability” of the Divine essence: “every creature has its own proper species (in the Divine mind), according to which it participates in some degree in likeness to the divine essence”. (Something like saying that an architect has an idea of a window, even if he imagines the window as just a part of the unique idea of the whole house).
Thus, God can have specific intentional states (of knowledge, love, ecc.): actually, he probably has an infinity of intentional states all at once, if we look at the “content” side of the Divine mind, but just one intentional state if we look at the “entitative” side of God’s mind, which is identical to God’s essence.


So, I argue, Providential Collapse or “intentional modal collapse” arguments have no force against traditional DDS or CT (of this historically prominent brand). How about other modal collapse arguments? Well, we would have to enter some detail, but I maintain that CT fairs pretty well too. The contents in God’s mind (the particular ideas) are contingent only in the sense that they represent the contingency of creatures intentionally, but they do not posit any contingent “thing” in God (just as, conversely, Joe thinking “God-necessary-being” does not posit any necessary “thing” in Joe). The ideas in God’s mind are also sufficient to cause contingent creatures: the existence of contingent creatures is “necessary” only in the sense that it is “hypothetically necessary” (Aquinas would say “by assumption”), in the sense that if God simply wills a contingent creature (or knows it will exist), the contingent creature will infallibly be. This does not destroy the distinction between necessity and contingency as any contingent thing can be hypothetically necessary in some way or other, and contingent creatures have nothing in themselves that entail their own existence. One could push the difficulty further by enquiring if God’s practical knowledge of some “X” contingently existing is necessary, and what relation there is between God’s Knowledge of contingent beings and His essence (or the knowledge of His essence), but I will not go into that now... I will just say that any metaphysical model that posits a necessary entity has the problem of explaining the relation between the necessary and the contingent part of reality. I would argue this CT has the upper hand, by putting the demarcation line at the level of the “(Divine) Idea”, recognizing a primitive and irreducible distinction between the entitative/real and necessary side of the Idea and its intentional content, which reflects (in part) – precisely because of its intentionality – the contingency of creatures, not of God Himself.
Misinterpretations on the issue of simplicity can arise on the interpretation of the word “real”. I have seen you using this term in various videos to mean something like “whatever exists in some way or other” (like when we say “all of reality”). This is not however the only meaning of “real” especially in medieval and ancient philosophy. Your use of the word corresponds to an existential meaning, but “real” (reale/realis) can also mean “genuine”, or – more to the point – extramental reality (“reale” as in “in rerum naturae”, as opposed to “esse intentionale/idealis”).

In sum, this version of CT can use many of the tools that non classical theists would use to respond to "collapse" worries.
Just a note on the objection that says that positing "reasons" in God's mind would make Him dependent on (or "moved by") those reasons. I don't see how this is the case in God (as opposed to humans, that go from potency to act in taking action). The "reason" relation in God's mind represents the dependency of created things ("why the thing is or could be"). It represents the reason for God's "act" only in the sense that the total act (say the creative act) also includes the things being created. Even in God's mind, the reasons actually depend on God Himself, not the other way around. For example, if ">" is a dependence relation in God's mind, we could say (in a very simplistic way): Jesus born in Bethlehem > the Incarnation > contingent things should participate in God's perfection > Divine Essence.... where only the last element is the primary and necessary object of the Divine Will.

[naparzanieklawiatury]

Stellar work, thanks for that.

One side note tho, I wasn't aware that Cosmic Skeptic has published papers as early as 1999, bro that's some hot news

[naturalisticallyinclined]

Nice video man! Unrelated question, but what are your thoughts on Josh Rasmussen's argument from arbitrary limits?

[VeNeRaGe]

can you please cover Joshua Rasmussen's argument from geometry as well?

[calebp]

Yo Joe, have you read Stephen Meter’s ‘The Return of the God Hypothesis’? I realise that Intelligent Design is a rather controversial subject (especially online) so I respect if you’d rather not interact with it, but it presents quite a thought-provoking case, especially with how it handles Multiverse responses to fine-tuning. Just thought I’d point it out. :)

[kumarb]

Off topic question: should the Foundation Theory of reality be seen as the most plausible account, aside from the arguments for it, because on this theory disparate theories of reality such as Naturalisim and Theism can find a good deal of unification, overlap and convergence thereby increasing the probability that the Foundation Theory is correct? One rebuttal might be that Foundation Theory is predicting divergent and contradictory theories of Naturalsim and Theism and therefore it's a bad theory. But to me it seems the overlap and unification of Naturalism and Thesim to a certain extent is the strength of the Foundation Theory.

[TheologiaEvangelica]

If God's extrinsic acts (contingent acts) just is the motion from potency to act of creation, what does it mean to say 'God creates p', other than to say that p comes to exist, and the bare existence of God is a necessary condition for p coming to exist?

I mean, how does the classical theist distinguish between God creating p, and God with p being necessarily cofactual for p?

The property 'such that 2+2=4' is a necessary condition for p coming to exist, but we would not say that this property of the world is not a cause for p coming to exist. Surely there must be some robust meaning of cause which is indistinguishable from mere cofactuality.

[Abdullah]

In the Euphro Dillema if there is an external standard that determines true goodness beyond God, couldn't I just say how do I know that external standard isn't arbitrarily determining true goodness, then would I need another external standard for that external standard at infinitum? Why can't an absolute point just be reached, something like God which can verify objectively existence unlike us who have to make assumptions about reality, I know someone is gonna say well how do you know God isn't arbitrarily deciding good, but if you choose the latter which is the infinite externals, that's more absurd, anyway thoughts on this? Because I say that his objective nature reveals plus him knowing everything or infinitly grants him knowing what true Good is? And needing an external to verify true goodness almost implies that God learned from that external standard but how could they be the case if both are eternal and if god knows everything

[legron]

12:00: _"If DDS is true, then fixing all the facts about God and his act is perfectly compatible with the obtaining of any possible divine effect among an arbitrarily large range of possible divine effects."_

I think that certain Thomists can and would deny this premise since, based on the principle that 'actio est in passo' (action is in the patient), they hold that (transitive) action is extrinsic to the agent (e.g., see W. Norris Clarke _The One and the Many_ p. 189). On this position, it is false that fixing all the facts about God *and his act* is compatible with the obtaining of any possible divine effect, since it is a fact about God's action that this particular world is actualized.

[emilioestrada]

Joe, could you do a video on your thoughts about the TAG as exposed a Jay Dyer? It'd be nice to see you debate him

[dantedocerto]

i think he confuses the logically possibility with actualizability just because something is logically possible does not mean there will arise a circumstance in which it will be realized, or to put simply the power for things to be different is no the same as the option for things to be different. what could be is not what would be by virtue that it could be. though i suppose that means there is only one actual world, but don't we already assume that possible worlds are not actual excepting the one?

[TheologiaEvangelica]

I am not sure how you argue that God's transworld identical act of being, does not limit the worlds God could create to a subset of possible worlds, eg., good worlds.

[Rakhujio]

No bonus soccer clip?
disliked. unsubbed. reported.

[ObsidianTeen]

Where exactly do you the place the indeterminism in a libertarian free action, MoR? I'm struggling to see how this doesn't affect LFW. You still have a cause that is not "set on" A or B. So it's luck.

25:09 "Posterior to God's one, absolutely simple act, any possible effect (and hence, any possible world) could indeterministically arise. And *precisely because* of this, God is surely not in control over *which precise effect* arises."

Compare to LFW: posterior to the agent-cause, any effect (and hence, choice A or B) could arise. And *precisely because* of this, the agent is surely not in control over *which precise effect* arises. In LFW, there's just the extra step of having a mental awareness of the effect (the choice) which deterministically leads to a detectable action. If your argument against the classical God's having control were applied consistently to creaturely LFW, then creatures would have no control over which choice arises. The choice arises [the outcome], and only then does the choice control a detectable action, like picking up a grape soda can [part of the outcome, but not the choice]. Since the mental awareness is part of the outcome and not productive of it, I don't see how the lack of this step in classic God means he distinctively lacks control.

It seems we must say that either both had (indeterministic) control or both did not.

30:27 "On O'Connor's view, Tim 'had the power to choose to continue working or to choose to stop, where this is a power to cause either of these mental occurrences. That capacity was exercised at t in a particular way (in choosing to continue working), allowing us to say truthfully that Tim at time t causally determined his own choice to continue working' (*ibid*)." But the classical theistic God--unlike the non-classical theistic God and Tim--cannot causally determine a given outcome."

Highlight on "capacity...exercised...in a particular way (in choosing to continue working)." Remember that there's one power (albeit a two-way power), one cause, and two effects. Since the cause is the same prior to both effects, whether the cause gains the status of "exercised to keep working" is an extrinsic predication. It's the occurrence of the effect (choice to work) that retroactively makes it the case that the power was exercised "in a particular way." It's not like the power was (intrinsically) set on keeping working. While the power did cause the effect, it's imprecise (and significantly so!) for O'Connor to say it *causally determined* the effect. No; the causation was indeterministic. Otherwise, if the choice were determined, then there was only one possible effect from the power (here, a power-set-on-keeping-working) contra LFW.

Tim and God both cause/control (or don't control) the outcome, but neither determine the outcome. It's just that in Tim, there's the added step of a mental awareness (as I explained below the first quote), but that's part of the outcome not causative (is that a word?) of it.

[person]

If modal collapse leaves a classical theist with no choice but to stick with an argument you don't think works, then modal collapse seems no less successful than the argument you've made here