Omnipotencia, acciones básicas y la paradoja de Fitch
Abstract
En este artículo discutiré algunos problemas lógicos de la omnipotencia que van más allá de las clásicas paradojas ligadas a esta noción. Presentaré una versión refinada de la paradoja de Fitch sobre la omnipotencia que tiene en cuenta la distinción entre acciones básicas y derivadas, así como la distinción entre la capacidad de hacer algo y la mera posibilidad metafísica de hacerlo. También explico cómo esta paradoja puede reformularse para obtener una versión afín a la paradoja del mentiroso que afecta a la consistencia de ciertas nociones de omnipotencia. Por último, evalúo algunas posibles respuestas disponibles para el teísta y un intento de usar la paradoja de Fitch como argumento a favor de la existencia de Dios.
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Frederic Fitch, in a fascinating article, most regrettably
ignorod by philosophers of religion, proves the following theorem
on omnipotence: If for each situation that is the case it is logically
possible that that situation was brought about by some agent, then
whatever is the case was personally brought about by that agent.
This is a mightily perplexing result. It seems to say that an omnipotent
agent, in this sense, must personally have brought about
every actual state of affairs that obtains. Yet many theologians
have held that God is omnipotent while not being a universal
agent. The free will defense, ~ for example, seems to require that
there should be some actual states of affairs not (personally, at
any rate) brought about by God. Whether and how God acts is
puzzling in its own right. But in any case it has often been
assumed that God is omnipotent, at least minimally in Fiteh's
sense, without being a universal personal agent.
PROVIDENCE AND SCIENCE IN A WORLD OF CONTINGENCY: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action by Ignacio Silva. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022. 170 pages. Paperback; $52.95. ISBN: 9781032002781. *Ignacio Silva (DPhil, Oxford) is an Argentinian theologian who specializes in the dialogue between science and theology. This book is a proposal for fellow scholars and others to reconsider the contribution of Thomas Aquinas's metaphysics as a means of resolving the question of divine action in the light of science. Although Aquinas is the thirteenth century's most famous friar and Catholicism's most renowned theological authority alongside Augustine, he is often viewed today as contributing few insights as regards an allegedly "modern" argument. *Silva argues that Aquinas supplies a way of getting beyond two mistaken views held by people today: (1) on the one hand, that God needs the natural world to be fundamentally open to outside influence; and (2) on the other hand, that God causes things to exist in a way that is similar to the way other natural causes cause things to occur. *Silva's goal is to get beyond the current situation in which "many today find it necessary to search for a lack of natural causation so as to find a space for God to act" (p. 139). According to this way of thinking, God's actions are only localized occasions, hence the school of thought known as occasionalism. Conversely, another tendency is for believers to argue that God's powers are self-restricted in order to account for natural powers. The latter point of view is sometimes stipulated in terms of the biblical concept of kenosis ("Christ ... emptied himself," Phil. 2:7). *Silva's main point concerns a correct notion of causation such that we not restrict divine providence to an inadequate understanding of causation: "the idea of requiring insufficient causation for God to act depends on a deterministic notion of causation that, ultimately, renders God to act as a cause among causes" (p. 49). Silva holds that much causation is subject to chance contingencies. Thus, Silva's strategy is to think of causation in the context of potency and act. This allows a fresh and fuller way of dealing with the four parameters of divine providence: God's omnipotence, God's involvement with nature, nature's autonomy, and the success of science. The scope of the inquiry is enormous and Silva's handling of the thought of Thomas Aquinas is, unsurprisingly, difficult, yet hugely beneficial. *On the one hand, readers must be prepared for a dense tutorial in accounts of causality, powers, natures, and other metaphysical categories in order to appreciate the argument of this book. On the other hand, the argument over the relationship between God as the creating cause of the world and the secondary causes that act to create other effects in the world, is startlingly simple. It is best understood as a form of instrumental causality according to Silva. It is analogized (as so much of Aquinas's theology is) as follows: "The knife is moved by the man to cut, and to do it in such a manner. Without the man's power, the knife could not cut, but without the edge of the knife, the man could not cut in this manner ... the effect is both produced completely by God and by the natural agent ... (p. 129)." *Thus, without God, nature would not have the necessary powers to cause the effects it possesses. Without those natural efficient causes, God's power could not be effective. There is no split between divine and natural causation in any given effect; both are completely causal of any given effect. It is analogically helpful, although Silva does not discuss this idea, to invoke here the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: he is both fully divine and fully human, not half of each. *God acts in three ways: through creation itself, through natural (secondary) causes, and through three types of miracles--although, sadly, the latter do not receive much attention in this book. But the threefold action of God is intended to counter, on the one hand, the view that causality is always deterministic and, on the other hand, that God's action in the universe endangers nature's autonomy. *For some readers, the most difficult aspect of the argument will be the presentation of natural entities' powers of operation in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. The key is to think of causation in context. From Aristotle, change is a key feature of contingency. Change is organized into potency and act, essence and accident. These categories explain how causation results in real life. Moreover, theologically speaking, for Aquinas, "affirming that natural things do not operate, and that it is only God who does, diminishes the divine power" (p. 98, quoting the Summa contra Gentiles III, c 69). This is the counterintuitive power of the Thomist position. It opposes the view that attributes all natural causes to God's intervention. Holding that view would mean, in the end, that God actually does not create anything apart from God. But for God to create a world means to distinguish something apart from God and to allow contingency to exist in the spatio-temporal realm. The key point about the distinction between the eternal and the temporal realms is to ask why God creates in this way. Silva casually mentions that "God acts through natural causes because of the immensity of his goodness ..." (p. 101). So, it is not a matter of metaphysical necessity that lies behind the Thomist view, it is God's goodness that is the key. *The position that created natural things are themselves creative needs to be exactingly well laid out; otherwise this position will be perceived as a way of extracting God from the world altogether. Here, Silva stipulates that "God's causality penetrates most intimately the causality of created natural things," while God upholds the creation "in its being" (p. 99). This is uncontroversial, but the provision for miracles is bound to raise questions about why God would act in this way. What Silva could have used are some examples of why some philosophers dissent from Aquinas on miracles, with responses to those dissents. *Silva covers an enormous amount of reflection on the notion of causality, including some original and highly potent insights. He claims that final causality is the "cause of the efficient cause in terms of its causality" (p. 71). This relationship, as well as the relationship between the material and formal cause, as first demarcated by Aristotle, is laid out in dense, logical prose. The book ends with some subtle yet significant comments on the differences between Aquinas's views and those of twentieth-century thinkers such as Austin Farrer, who referred to Aquinas in proposing a double agency account of creation while resorting to fideism. Farrer refused to suggest any explanation for the causal joint between God's creation and the world's operation. This analysis is original and should have been given more prominence. There is, indeed, a great deal of difference between fulsome and evasive double agency accounts of created causality; however, Silva ignores almost completely the medieval development of the theorem of the "supernatural," which came about because of the theoretical stance taken by Philip the Chancellor (d. 1236). This lapse is not critical, but it does exemplify the lack of a historical dimension to the book's argument. *Another quandary concerns the book's form of exposition. It is largely descriptive. While its argument details Aquinas's metaphysics of causal relations and the universe's created dependency on God, it lacks a dialectical edge. Although the argument is sufficiently sound, it is in need of an engagement with the open theists and others who would contest the account of divine power that Thomas Aquinas developed. There are quite a few references to other contemporary positions on providence and causality, especially in the final chapter. The names of William Carroll, Robert Russell, and Michael Dodds appear, but there could have been a more probing engagement of these contemporary voices. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is treated in the light of the proposed view of moderate determinism in contrast to the non-interventionist, objective (NIODA) view of divine action in Robert Russell. Here, I'm unsure whether NIODA has been properly interpreted. Although I think Silva's position is correct, is Russell's understanding of God's causality really reducible to natural causality as Silva contends? The textual citations for this allegation are not convincing. *Finally, despite what I take to be a largely satisfying account of God's creative action, the issue of evil and theodicy are not dealt with in this book. Aquinas makes contingency (and accidents in general) central for the notion of creation. Silva sees contingency as a sign of the perfection of divine providence, but this contradiction (between created contingency and the fact of natural "evil") is a real difficulty for God's involvement with evil or deficient effects in creation. Regardless, altogether this is a provocative, dense volume that could easily have been double the length if key problems had received more comprehensive treatment. *Reviewed by Paul Allen, Academic Dean, Corpus Christi College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1J7.
The Oxford Handbook of Causation provides an overview of topics related to causation, as well as the history of the causation debate from the ancient Greeks to the logical empiricists. Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge, and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in ethics, whether there is a moral distinction between acts and omissions and whether the moral value of an act can be judged according to its consequences. In addition, causation is a contested concept in other fields of enquiry, such as biology, physics, and the law. The articles, which are all written by leading experts in the field of causation, provide surveys of contemporary debates, while often also advancing novel and controversial claims.
Medieval philosophers used the language of cause and effect as frequently as philosophers do now. Viewed very, very broadly, they had in mind a similar notion, at least when they were speaking of efficient causality (and even the three other types of Aristotelian cause - material, formal, and final - can be brought loosely under this concept): causes are in some sense prior to their effects, which they produce and the existence of which they explain. Viewed more closely, medieval notions of causality are sharply different from contemporary ones, and these differences are especially evident in explicit discussions of causation. This article discusses the idea of essential causation. It looks at the aspect of medieval thought about causation that seems to come closest to the modern debates instigated by Hume, the supposed medieval occasionalists such as the Islamic thinker al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and the Parisian Arts Master and student of theology, Nicholas of Autrecourt (d. 1369), and the critiques of occasionalism offered by Averroes (c.1126-98), who wrote in Muslim Spain, and Aquinas.
Preface 1. Contingentism and Necessitism 2. The Barcan Formula and its Converse: Early Developments 3. Possible Worlds Model Theory 4. Predication and Modality 5. From First-Order to Higher-Order Modal Logic 6. Intensional Comprehension Principles and Metaphysics 7. Mappings between Contingentist and Necessitist Discourse 8. Consequences of necessitism Methodological Afterword Bibliography Index
Spandrel" is an architectural term for something created as a side effect of another design, for instance the wall space enclosed between two arches. The leading idea of Jc Beall's very rewarding study is that the semantic paradoxes should be seen analogously as spandrels of a deflationary truth predicate, one fashioned purely for purposes of generalisation. It is in this spirit, rather than that of an Hegelian metaphysics of contradictory reality, that Beall's dialetheist treatment, articulated with great clarity and a minimum of technicality in this short book, is to be understood. The account offered is unique among recent treatments of the paradoxes for saving a perfectly transparent truth predicate, whereby x and x is true are fully intersubstitutable. This feature, and its stabilisation within a bivalent framework, give the book considerable specialist interest. But the informality of the treatment, achieved without significant compromise of rigour, provides in addition for a remarkably effective and readable introduction to the contemporary debate about the paradoxes. Crispin Wright, New York University Liar sentences directly or indirectly assert their own untruth. From the minimalist view that True(
) is always equivalent to p, plus very minimal principles of logic, it follows that if a Liar sentence is either true or not true, then it is both. Minimalists must therefore either reject some instances of excluded middle or accept some contradictions. Dialetheists choose the latter course, in a logic designed to prevent the spread of contradiction. But although paradoxes such as the Liar have provided the main motivation for dialetheism, it is remarkable that previous dialetheic theories do not preserve the minimalist view of truth. Spandrels of Truth is the first dialetheic attempt to do so, and it addresses the main problems (e.g. the conditional) that a dialetheic minimalist must face. It is a very welcome addition to the literature.
This is a position paper or trailer for a larger work in progress and having the same title. My hypothesis is that the world is a world of states of affairs. I think that I am saying the same thing as those who have held that the world is a world of facts not things. So it may be in order to begin by saying why I use the phrase ‘state of affairs’ rather than the word ‘fact’. This is all the more in order because it is customary among those who patronize facts to use ‘state of affairs’ to mean no more than possible fact. My states of affairs, however, are all existents.
I have argued that without an adequate solution to the knower paradox Fitch's Proof is- or at least ought to be-ineffective against verificationism. Of course, in order to follow my suggestion verificationists must maintain that there is currently no adequate solution to the knower paradox, and that the paradox continues to provide prima facie evidence of inconsistent knowledge. By my lights, any glimpse at the literature on paradoxes offers strong support for the first thesis, and any honest, non-dogmatic reflection on the knower paradox provides strong support for the second.Whether verificationists want to go the route I've suggested is not for me todecide. As in the previous section my aim has been that of defending the mere viability of verificationism in the face of what many, many philosophers have taken to be its death-knell, namely Fitch's Proof. But, as the final objection makes clear, showing that verificationism can live in the face of Fitch's Proof is one thing; showing that it should live is another project. If nothing else, I hope that this papershows that verificationists still have a project to pursue; Fitch's Proof, contrary to popular opinion, need not bury verificationism.This paper arose in response to Colin Cheyne's ‘Fitch's Proof and Beyond’ (typescript), which was read at the 1998 AAP(NZ) conference at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, NZ. The paper has undergone significant revision in the face of comments from two anonymous referees, comments for which I am very grateful. Thanks to John Bishop, Colin Cheyne, Jay Garfield, Fred Kroon, and especially Graham Priest and Greg Restall for very helpful discussion.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a partial logical analysis of a few concepts that may be classified as value concepts or as concepts that are closely related to value concepts. Among the concepts that will be considered are striving for, doing, believing, knowing, desiring, ability to do, obligation to do , and value for . Familiarity will be assumed with the concepts of logical necessity, logical possibility, and strict implication as formalized in standard systems of modal logic (such as S4), and with the concepts of obligation and permission as formalized in systems of deontic logic. It will also be assumed that quantifiers over propositions have been included in extensions of these systems.