Simplicity of Being

[Jac3510]

I hope you guys won't mind going through some pure philosophy for a bit. I'm going to divide this opening post into two parts, the first explaining the motivation and purpose of the thread, and the second dealing with the content of the argument. Feel free to skip the first if you aren't particularly interested in how this connects to discussions we've been having over the last few days, particularly objective morality. Otherwise, thanks for indulging me the few extra minutes for a few extra paragraphs.

I want to have a thread I can come back to repeatedly for future reference, since as long as I am here, the issue of divine simplicity will come up again and again. I see no reason to litter the forum with bits and pieces of its explanation here and there. The particular motivator was this exchange with Davin:

But more to the point, most (not all, but definitely most) Christian theologians and philosophers root morality NOT in God's command, but in His nature. He commands and forbids according to what He already is. Thus, morality is just as objective as His own existence. In fact, if you want to press this further and get into the issues of the nature of being and how it relates to morality and ultimately to divine simplicity, we can show that God's existence and His morality are exactly the same thing (I know that sounds odd - feel free to do some quick Googling on divine simplicity. Full disclosure: simplicity is the basis of classical theism as most fully articulated by Thomas Aquinas; it is deeply unpopular among theologians today for reasons I won't get into here, unless asked).

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks as if you're saying that this god has no sentience over morality which makes attributing it to the god meaningless because it's beyond the gods control, or that god is in control over it which would make it subjective.

I had presented Euthrypho's Dilemma to explore whether morality was rooted in God's command or itself and offered one of the standard objections: this is a false dilemma, that morality is actually rooted in God's nature. Davin responds here with the objection that if it is just part of His nature of which He has no control, then it is meaningless. He doesn't say why it is meaningless, but I assume it is because you are just using the word "God" as a stopgap to explain what couldn't be explained before, which is really no explanation. The other side is still that God issues moral decrees, which still makes it subjective. In other words, he still has the theist in a dilemma!

The only way to properly answer this is to get into a discussion on the nature of God. As my quoted comment above indicates, that requires a discussion of a concept called "simplicity" in classical theism. A thread on a variant of Pascal's Wager was no place to have that discussion.

A second reason for the thread is that almost every answer to issues pertaining to God ultimately boil back down to this for the classical theist. Since I am in that school and rely heavily on that point of view, I suspect I'll fall back on it repeatedly in our discussions. I don't want to derail threads unnecessarily. I'll just take discussions that go in that direction here.

So with that, what is this simplicity idea I'm rambling on about?

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First off, I'll start by noting that simplicity is very controversial today in Christian philosophical communities. It is mostly rejected, and I am very much in the minority on this issue. Second, even though arguments themselves are more important than authority or their origin, just so you have some background, if you would like additional information beyond what I'm providing here, I recommend the following:

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica, "The Simplicity of God in Eight Articles"
Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence
Joseph Owens: An Elementary Christian Metaphysics
Joseph Owens: An Interpretation of Existence
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Divine Simplicity"
Wikipedia: "Divine Simplicity"
William Lane Craig: "Question 111 - Subject: Divine Simplicity" (note: I include this because Craig is a leading voice that rejects DS in the philosophical community)

With that said, divine simplicity (hereafter DS) is the idea that God not a composition of any kind. While any form of composition in God must be rejected, there are three broad categories into which pretty much all compositions will fall:

1. Composition of parts - as the human body is composed of parts; as in form and matter, etc.

There are no individual parts in God. Thus, there is nothing to which we can point to in God that can be differentiated between anything else in God.

2. Composition of potentiality and actuality - as in, wood has the potential to be burned, but may not yet be; as in, I have the potential to to wake up tomorrow, but I have not yet. There can be no distinction between what God has done, is doing, and will do. Such tensing when we speak of God is anthropomorphism only and serves to make Him relateable to humans who live a tensed existence. God, properly speaking, is pure act.

3. Composition of essence and existence - as in, a unicorn may exist in my mind but not in reality, meaning a concept must exist to be real. There is no distinction between God's essence and His existence. Put differently, God's essence is existence.[/list]
The practical point for us is that, if DS correctly describes God, then we cannot point to any part of Him and make such statements as "God became angry" or "God loves you." It means that God has no emotions in the strict sense of the term. Further, even when we speak analogically of God's parts (i.e., His love, His wrath, His power), DS literally means that God's love is His omnipotence, and His omnipotence is His omniscience, and His omniscience is His omnipresence, etc. There are no distinctions within God.

What this means in practice is that we can't properly predicate any thing to God. We can't say that He is this or that, because any predication would imply parts. In God, everything is identical with no limitation. The closest thing we can say to what He is, the closest we can define His essence, is this: God is Being. He is existence. In philosophical terms, God is subsistent existence. In fact, when you come to grasp the terminology, the statement "God exists" is a tautology. It is tantamount to saying "Existence exists."

Classical Greek philosophy recognized this starting (I believe) with Parmenides. He deduced from this principle that everything is, in fact, One, and became, perhaps, the first philosophical pantheist. DS differs from pantheism in this: it is evident that we are not simple beings. We are composed of many things. At best, our being participates in the Divine Being, although the word "participation" is misleading. We can discuss this in detail if anyone wants to. The point is that we get our existence from subsistent existence, and yet we ourselves are not that existence. Our existence, like everything else we can possibly predicate to ourselves, is analogous to its.

This forms the basis of any ontological discussions of absolutely any kind. As it relates to the ontology of morality, I would argue that evil is not a thing in and of itself; it is a lack of a thing, just as darkness is a lack of light and coldness is a lack of heat. Evil actions are evil because they lack the goodness, which is a thing, and thus receives its being from the subsistent existence. Goodness, in this view, is that which operates according to the natural, intended order. Evil is that which does not operate according to the intended order. Murder, for instance, is evil, since it violates that order. By intention, people are supposed to be kind, generous, loving, etc. They are supposed to be that way because that is God's own nature. Yet, again, we cannot, philosophically speaking, say "God is kind" or "God is loving." It is more accurate to say "Kind is what God is," etc. The lack of kindness is cruelty, and thus, cruelty is evil. God's moral commands are in accordance with His nature. They are grounded in God's very existence, for kindness exists insofar as it serves to define the proper relationship of ordered things in a certain respect, and where that relationship is missing, we use the word "cruel."

I'm tempted to go on to talk about the virtues and their role in the entire discussion, but I think this is more than enough--to much, probably, already. The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world. Morality, on this view, is seen in terms of relations between beings. The "ought" is grounded in the proper intention of that relationship. The intention of that relationship is grounded in God's will (again, we see that His will is not to be distinguished from "anything else" in Him).

Please forgive the length. I just wanted to have a basis to return to for future reference. Everything here is, of course, subject to modification and even abandonment as study and discussion progresses. I'll not pretend to have read every word, or even most of them, on the matter. But this is, I believe from the extensive study I have done in this area, an accurate representation of the general concepts.

Your thoughts?

Edited for spelling

[SSY]

While there are several points I would take issue with in your (very well written) discourse, I think it would be nice to know why you believe this? What suggests to you that God is in fact, not a composition?

[Jac3510]

While there are several points I would take issue with in your (very well written) discourse, I think it would be nice to know why you believe this? What suggests to you that God is in fact, not a composition?

I believe this because it is the necessary result of the philosophical method I have adopted. Just like the scientific conclusions we reach are only valid if they properly follow the scientific method, philosophical conclusions are only valid if they follow an appropriate method. That isn't to say that conclusions reached by following wrong methods are necessary wrong. It just means that we likely have no reason to believe they are true and that they need to be properly demonstrated. To use a silly example, consider the following argument:

1. Jac has met all the women in the world;
2. All the women Jac has met are blond;
3. Therefore, all the women in the world are blond.

Now, this is a valid argument, but it clearly isn't sound, since (1) is just plain false. That doesn't mean, though that all women aren't blond! That has to be demonstrated some other way (like pointing to my wife). Likewise, if (3) is true, I need to prove it by a better argument.

The philosophical method I use is the study of being qua being. In other words, the fundamental question in philosophy is "What is reality?" Everything else flows from that. Consider the following (visually, not chronologically):

Hermeneutics - How do I understand what is communicated about what is known about what is That Which Is?
Linguistics - How do I communicate what I know what is That Which Is?
Epistemology - How do I know what is That Which Is?
Metaphysics - What is That Which Is?
Reality - That Which IS

That's the order of philosophy. If truth is defined as "that which corresponds to reality," then philosophy's greatest achievement is to define reality. Yet there is only one thing that all of reality has in common: being. Everything that exists, both in the mind and in itself, has in common being. If we are to know what a thing is, then, so that we can know how we know it, how to talk about it, and how to understand our communication, we first must know what being is.

Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

So says classical theism, anyway. As it stands, btw, this is also why I am a theist. There are many fine arguments for God's existence, but all of them are a shadow of this one. I use the word "shadow" on purpose, because, ultimately, all such arguments eventually presuppose this kind of thinking anyway (since we are talking about being). But that's another question. I'll address it in detail if it comes up. I'd rather not bring up things on my own, because that's how we fall into mere preaching! :p

[Davin]

I'm not sure what you're saying here. It looks as if you're saying that this god has no sentience over morality which makes attributing it to the god meaningless because it's beyond the gods control, or that god is in control over it which would make it subjective.

I had presented Euthrypho's Dilemma to explore whether morality was rooted in God's command or itself and offered one of the standard objections: this is a false dilemma, that morality is actually rooted in God's nature. Davin responds here with the objection that if it is just part of His nature of which He has no control, then it is meaningless. He doesn't say why it is meaningless, but I assume it is because you are just using the word "God" as a stopgap to explain what couldn't be explained before, which is really no explanation. The other side is still that God issues moral decrees, which still makes it subjective. In other words, he still has the theist in a dilemma!

What I said about it being meaningless was the attribution to god. Why attribute objective morality to something that is just as much a subject of objective morality as everything else?

And while this is all some decent reading, this concept essentially says that god cannot be defined, but we can attribute whatever we want to god. What if bad is god, and the lack of bad makes good? The lack of cruelty results in kindness, the lack of pain results in comfort, the lack of anger is happiness... etc. How do you test that god is good instead of bad? Given the concept that all good things are caused by the lack of gods evil presence, we should all live to disobey god and to try to live away from its presence.

My biggest problem however is how meaningless this makes god. God is so simple that calling it a god means nothing. If you're going to say that there is some basic thing that followed the laws of nature and that is where the universe came from, then I'm on board, but jump off as soon as you try to pin the god label on it. Why call that thing god? It's not sentient and no more distinguishable from anything else. Or that god is everything which equally makes calling everything a god meaningless. If you're going to say that everything that exists, exists, then I'm with you, but then to call existence god? What is the point?

Ultimately if it can't be falsified, I've no interest in it or discussing whether it's real or not, because there is no way to distinguish it from reality.

[i_am_i]

First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

[Jac3510]

What I said about it being meaningless was the attribution to god. Why attribute objective morality to something that is just as much a subject of objective morality as everything else?

God is not the subject of morality. He is that by which it is defined. He is that of out of which it springs.

Again, it is important to understand that in my view morality is intractably associated with order and relations. Things are supposed to operate in a certain manner. When we operate in a manner that is not intended, we bring disorder, which is what we mean by evil. Who, then, set that ordering in place? Obviously, in this view, God did. By what means did He do so? Not arbitrary commandment anymore than an engineer sets up his systems arbitrarily. Rather, He does so with reference to Himself and the way in which He, as pure existential act, operates. Thus, by way of application, to repeat for clarity what I said above, it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say, "God is good." Rather, we should say, "Good is what God is."

And while this is all some decent reading, this concept essentially says that god cannot be defined, but we can attribute whatever we want to god. What if bad is god, and the lack of bad makes good? The lack of cruelty results in kindness, the lack of pain results in comfort, the lack of anger is happiness... etc. How do you test that god is good instead of bad? Given the concept that all good things are caused by the lack of gods evil presence, we should all live to disobey god and to try to live away from its presence.

Strictly speaking, we don't attribute anything to God. Not goodness, not badness, not anything. We discover what God is by an exploration of His creation. Because the world is ordered in a certain way, we can know something about it. I could not care less about labels and semantics. If you want to use the word "evil" to label what we now use the word "good" to label, then fine. The important thing is the concept itself, not the word used to describe it. As it stands, though, we do have certain vocabulary, which includes words like good and bad. Good is that which in harmony with natural order. Bad is that which is not.

Blindness is the normal example used to illustrate this point. The eye is supposed to see (however perfectly or imperfectly it does isn't the issue). Blindness is an eye that is incapable of seeing. Strictly speaking, blindness is not a thing like seeing is. It is a privation. It is a lack of something. It is the lack of the ability to do what the eye is designed to do. Since blindness is not a thing, it cannot be abstracted and attributed as can perfections like "seeing" to God. In fact, since evil is philosophically defined as a privation, it cannot be logically attributed to God, because evil is actually nothing more than our conception of non-existence in certain contexts. You can't attribute non-existence to Being!

The trick is to make sure your order is correct. I said in the very first sentence of this post that we are doing pure philosophy here, not theology. We don't start with our concept of God and then take it to the real world. We don't say, "God likes this, so therefore, this is good." We don't say, "God designed this to be that way, therefore, that way must be good." That is the work of the theologian. We haven't come anywhere near that yet.

My biggest problem however is how meaningless this makes god. God is so simple that calling it a god means nothing. If you're going to say that there is some basic thing that followed the laws of nature and that is where the universe came from, then I'm on board, but jump off as soon as you try to pin the god label on it. Why call that thing god? It's not sentient and no more distinguishable from anything else. Or that god is everything which equally makes calling everything a god meaningless. If you're going to say that everything that exists, exists, then I'm with you, but then to call existence god? What is the point?

We haven't gotten around to sentience yet or personhood yet. But briefly, those things are perfections and thus included in the concept of subsistent existence. The question is whether or not there is such a thing as subsistent existence. I only mentioned that because it ties into the concept of simplicity, which is the main point of this thread. I mean that if there is a subsistent existence, it is a simple being. Not all simple beings are necessarily subsistent existence, however. There can only be one subsistent existence, and if that subsistent existence is, then you can call it nothing less than God, for it, by its very nature, would be sentient.

Ultimately if it can't be falsified, I've no interest in it or discussing whether it's real or not, because there is no way to distinguish it from reality.

This oft-repeated statement is true if it is kept in its proper place. One thing people often fail to note is that there are different kinds of facts. A scientific fact is not the same thing as a mathematical fact, which is not the same thing as a historical fact, which is not the same thing as a philosophical fact, etc. Each discipline deals with its own kinds of facts, and each discipline uses its own tools to discover the truth about its subject matter. When you apply a discipline in the wrong field, you get absurd results. For instance, can you give me a mathematical proof that George Washington existed? Of course not. You need a historical proof, and those you different kinds of facts than mathematical facts. Can you get me a historical proof of general relativity? No, you need math and science for that. We see that math and science are very closely related, but the two are not exactly the same thing. There is no scientific proof that one and one equals two, nor is any scientific issue purely mathematical (scientific issues are described mathematically, but mathematics, in and of itself, does not rely on observation in the same sense that science does).

All this holds true for philosophy as well. There are philosophical facts, the first of which is the law of non-contradiction. The great tragedy of the history of philosophy is that so many have thought they were doing philosophy when they were actually doing some other discipline. Descarte was doing math. Abailard was doing logic. Compte was doing sociology. Kant was doing Newtonian physics (for more on this, I highly recommend Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience).

Going back to your statement about falsifiability, you mistake a scientific rule for a philosophical one. As it stands, there is a great deal that is falsifiable in philosophy, but that is not the means by which we judge truth value as it is in science. Philosophy is in the method. It is that which flows from our studies, one to the next. Philosophy explains what we see in its relations. If it is falsified, it is because it conflicts with other philosophical facts that are known or at least accepted to be true. The issue, then, is positive, not negative. It is whether or not a proper case can be built that would lead us to conclude that existence does, in fact, subsist in itself. If the reasoning is valid and sound, the conclusion is true. If the reasoning is shown to be invalid or unsound, then we have no reason to accept the conclusion until better reasoning is offered.

As of now, I've attempted to offer no reason why I think that existence subsists in itself. I have offered a preliminary discussion on what DS and subsistent existence are. I've offered a few reasons why I think that subsistent existence must be a simple entity. I've offered the connection of these ideas to objective morality. My goals so far have been modest. As we progress into the roots of these and I have to become more ambitious, the arguments will become more robust.

[Jac3510]

First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

Historically? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything in our discussion.
Logically? No, because explaining a concept does not require fully understanding its more basic concepts. If it did, then science would be impossible, because we are forever explaining things that raise new questions that we don't understand. If we can't talk about something until we understand its more basic concepts, then we would never be allowed to talk about anything.

We are perfectly capable of discussing the notion of DS in the context of classical theism without offering a historical or logical explanation as to the origin of God. Nor do we have to prove that such a being exists before we can describe Him. Again, if that were the method, we could never know anything, because things have to be described first before we can test for their existence.

[i_am_i]

First, Jac3510, you need to explain to me where the idea of god came from.

Historically? I'm not sure what that has to do with anything in our discussion.
Logically? No, because explaining a concept does not require fully understanding its more basic concepts. If it did, then science would be impossible, because we are forever explaining things that raise new questions that we don't understand. If we can't talk about something until we understand its more basic concepts, then we would never be allowed to talk about anything.

We are perfectly capable of discussing the notion of DS in the context of classical theism without offering a historical or logical explanation as to the origin of God. Nor do we have to prove that such a being exists before we can describe Him. Again, if that were the method, we could never know anything, because things have to be described first before we can test for their existence.

Okay, but you have said: "The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

What is this God? Where did you hear about this God? What was it that convinced you that morality is grounded in God's nature and that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world?

[Jac3510]

Okay, but you have said: "The bottom line is that morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

What is this God? Where did you hear about this God? What was it that convinced you that morality is grounded in God's nature and that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world?

I understand how those words easily could be taken to mean I was talking about the real world. But do keep in mind that the purpose of this whole thread is to explain a particular philosophical construct. As I said in the very first line, we are talking pure philosophy. To use the scholastic distinction I've pointed out elsewhere, the quoted statement is of the second order of intentionality. In the context of this discussion, it should be read this way:

"The bottom line is that [in this view] morality is grounded in God's nature, because it is His nature that gives existence to the ordered world."

So as not to sound like I'm writing you off, because your questions are completely fair, this God is subsistent existence (that is, His essence is existence). I heard about this God my whole life, as I'm sure you did, from various sources. I discovered this particular discussion concerning Him during my investigation of philosophy. I was convinced that morality is grounded in this God by the definition of the terms. Once it is accepted that this God exists, His nature requires Him to be the ground of morality just as the nature of bachelors requires them to be unmarried. I was convinced that God's nature gives existence to the ordered world during my study of ethics, during which I came to reject Kant's deontology and came to accept Aquinas' virtue theory.

Now, these answers are all short and don't provide the evidence I think you are looking for. We have a long time yet to do all of that. I could sit here and write a book on why I believe what I do and why I think you should believe what I do because I think the philosophical evidence favors it. But this is a discussion board, not a book club. I prefer dialogue to monologue, and we can address those issues as they arise. We have to deal with one issue at time. DS was first on the docket because it came up in the discussion on objective morality. From this subsistent existence as come up. I imagine we will be discussing it before too long. But in the meantime, I'm sure you and the mods don't want some new theist coming in and showering your board with three hundred new threads on dozens of topics at the same time. There is, after all, and order to things.

[i_am_i]

If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

[Jac3510]

If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

That's fair. Would you mind point out which part I was unclear on? It doesn't do any of us much good if the ideas I'm presenting aren't being communicated in a way that they can be understood. Again, I think that's the point of discussion . . . to exchange ideas!

Thanks

[i_am_i]

If, though, you have specific questions you want answered right now you can always PM me or start a specific thread.

Thanks anyway. I'll wait until you're finished here. To be perfectly honest I don't understand what it is you're talking about.

That's fair. Would you mind point out which part I was unclear on? It doesn't do any of us much good if the ideas I'm presenting aren't being communicated in a way that they can be understood. Again, I think that's the point of discussion . . . to exchange ideas!

Thanks

No, that's okay. You carry on. Philosophy is an area I'm rather weak in, and anyway I think you're waxing intellectual about a concept that was made up by primitive human beings.

[SSY]

Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

Thank you for the time and effort you obviously put into your reply, however, I do not feel as though the matter of my original question has been fully explained. The passage I quoted comes closest, but it is still not really an explanation. Perhaps you could present argument in the form of premises and a conclusion that would suggest this DS view is the right one? You have done a good job of explaining your concept of DS, and also expounded plenty of philosophy, but not quite bridged the gap between in my view.

Again, there a few things I would disagree on, but I abandon for the sake of brevity. I look forward to your response.

[Davin]

God is not the subject of morality. He is that by which it is defined. He is that of out of which it springs.

If god decides what morality is, then morality is subjective. If god cannot decide what morality is, then god is subject to morality.

Again, it is important to understand that in my view morality is intractably associated with order and relations. Things are supposed to operate in a certain manner. When we operate in a manner that is not intended, we bring disorder, which is what we mean by evil. Who, then, set that ordering in place? Obviously, in this view, God did. By what means did He do so? Not arbitrary commandment anymore than an engineer sets up his systems arbitrarily. Rather, He does so with reference to Himself and the way in which He, as pure existential act, operates. Thus, by way of application, to repeat for clarity what I said above, it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say, "God is good." Rather, we should say, "Good is what God is."

Philosophy is subjective in itself, to say, "it is improper, philosophically speaking, to say[...]" is an error, because, philosophically speaking, there are several proper ways to say pretty much anything. However if what you meant by this is that using the philosophical concept that you set up it is improper to say this or that is perfectly fine, but not philosophy in general.

Strictly speaking, we don't attribute anything to God. Not goodness, not badness, not anything.

Just in this post you stated, "Good is what God is." That is attributing good to god. Like saying wet is what water is. However instead of logically following with "water is wet" you're stating that we cannot do that. To say that you can only attribute things one way and get no attributes from god is not something I can accept because in essence it's making god an attribute black hole where you can attribute anything to it, but get absolutely nothing from it. However if what you're saying is that nothing can be attributed to god, then this god is meaningless in that this god has no attributes, no definition and no meaning.

We discover what God is by an exploration of His creation. Because the world is ordered in a certain way, we can know something about it. I could not care less about labels and semantics. If you want to use the word "evil" to label what we now use the word "good" to label, then fine. The important thing is the concept itself, not the word used to describe it. As it stands, though, we do have certain vocabulary, which includes words like good and bad. Good is that which in harmony with natural order. Bad is that which is not.

I wasn't talking about changing the label of the meaning, but reversing the meaning itself. If I went from the philosophical position that god is evil, then all the same effects would result from the example I was responding to, but in reverse. Instead of absence of god being bad, the absence of god would be good. It's an equal philosophical statement from the opposite position, as if applying a negative mirror to the concept you presented. Both stand points (though opposite), in comparison of the effects, are indistinguishable from each other.

The trick is to make sure your order is correct. I said in the very first sentence of this post that we are doing pure philosophy here, not theology. We don't start with our concept of God and then take it to the real world. We don't say, "God likes this, so therefore, this is good." We don't say, "God designed this to be that way, therefore, that way must be good." That is the work of the theologian. We haven't come anywhere near that yet.

I brought no more theology into the discussion than you had, I had just made an opposite stand point to the concept you presented.

We haven't gotten around to sentience yet or personhood yet. But briefly, those things are perfections and thus included in the concept of subsistent existence. The question is whether or not there is such a thing as subsistent existence. I only mentioned that because it ties into the concept of simplicity, which is the main point of this thread. I mean that if there is a subsistent existence, it is a simple being. Not all simple beings are necessarily subsistent existence, however. There can only be one subsistent existence, and if that subsistent existence is, then you can call it nothing less than God, for it, by its very nature, would be sentient.

Previously you already stated that we can't attribute anything to god, sentience is an attribute. So because we cannot attribute sentience to god, we can't then go into defining god with sentience.

This oft-repeated statement is true if it is kept in its proper place. One thing people often fail to note is that there are different kinds of facts. A scientific fact is not the same thing as a mathematical fact, which is not the same thing as a historical fact, which is not the same thing as a philosophical fact, etc. Each discipline deals with its own kinds of facts, and each discipline uses its own tools to discover the truth about its subject matter. When you apply a discipline in the wrong field, you get absurd results. For instance, can you give me a mathematical proof that George Washington existed? Of course not. You need a historical proof, and those you different kinds of facts than mathematical facts. Can you get me a historical proof of general relativity? No, you need math and science for that. We see that math and science are very closely related, but the two are not exactly the same thing. There is no scientific proof that one and one equals two, nor is any scientific issue purely mathematical (scientific issues are described mathematically, but mathematics, in and of itself, does not rely on observation in the same sense that science does).

All this holds true for philosophy as well. There are philosophical facts, the first of which is the law of non-contradiction. The great tragedy of the history of philosophy is that so many have thought they were doing philosophy when they were actually doing some other discipline. Descarte was doing math. Abailard was doing logic. Compte was doing sociology. Kant was doing Newtonian physics (for more on this, I highly recommend Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience).

Going back to your statement about falsifiability, you mistake a scientific rule for a philosophical one. As it stands, there is a great deal that is falsifiable in philosophy, but that is not the means by which we judge truth value as it is in science. Philosophy is in the method. It is that which flows from our studies, one to the next. Philosophy explains what we see in its relations. If it is falsified, it is because it conflicts with other philosophical facts that are known or at least accepted to be true. The issue, then, is positive, not negative. It is whether or not a proper case can be built that would lead us to conclude that existence does, in fact, subsist in itself. If the reasoning is valid and sound, the conclusion is true. If the reasoning is shown to be invalid or unsound, then we have no reason to accept the conclusion until better reasoning is offered.

Even in philosophy, we can falsify a thing, the concept of falsifying comes from philosophy. Things can make sense philosophically, one can even say that if there are no contradictions then philosophically speaking it is true, however I've no reason to accept this kind of thing as true, because I define true as something that is verifiable, testable and demonstrable. It may be fun to speculate many things that aren't real, however there is little useful purpose in doing so. You made several references to reality and what is real, which means that you're talking about real things, not merely philosophical things. Either the references to things being reality are dropped from your argument, or I'm allowed to link it to reality. Those are the rules I'm willing to go by, but I'm not going to accept that you're allowed to make references to reality and I'm not allowed to use the philosophical tools necessary to determine what is real.

[Jac3510]

Davin, I only have time for one substantive reply tonight. I'll get to yours tomorrow.

Most philosophers don't start this way, which is why most philosophers reject DS. Most start with epistemology, which I think begs the question. If, then, you start with an investigation of being and are rigorous about it, I think you necessarily find yourself at a subsistent existence (that is, existence that exists in itself rather than in anything else). Such existence cannot, by its very nature, be a composition. Things can only be different if they differ by something. But if all things have in common being, then being itself cannot be differentiated. Thus, if being can be subsistent--if it can exist as its own nature--then it must be simple.

Thank you for the time and effort you obviously put into your reply, however, I do not feel as though the matter of my original question has been fully explained. The passage I quoted comes closest, but it is still not really an explanation. Perhaps you could present argument in the form of premises and a conclusion that would suggest this DS view is the right one? You have done a good job of explaining your concept of DS, and also expounded plenty of philosophy, but not quite bridged the gap between in my view.

Again, there a few things I would disagree on, but I abandon for the sake of brevity. I look forward to your response.

Fair enough. For the sake of argument and to get right to your question--why should we believe God is a simple being--I will assume His existence.

The key point in the notion of simplicity is that there is no potentiality in God; He is pure act. This is shown by an examination of the Thomistic Cosmological Argument (not Kalaam, which states that which comes into existence has a cause, the universe came into existence, therefore the universe has a cause), which is also called the Argument from Contingency. It states:

1. What we observe in this universe is contingent
2. A sequence of causally related contingent things cannot be infinite
3. A sequence of causally related contingent things must be finite
Thus, there must be a First Cause in a sequence of contingent things

It is important to note what is NOT being argued here. Aquinas is not arguing that there cannot be an infinite regress of past events. Aquinas actually thinks that is impossible to prove philosophically (I agree with him). The issue here is an infinite regression of contingent beings. Aquinas' example was a rock being moved by stick being moved by hand, but the modern example is a boxcar train. If you see a boxcar moving, how do you explain its motion? You notice it is being pulled by one in front of it, and one in front of it, and so on. It is evident, though, that this cannot go on to infinite, because then there would be no first mover to explain the total causation of movement in any of the boxcars. It is extremely important to note here the difference in an infinite per se and an infinite per accidens. The latter was illustrated by Aquinas by an infinite regression of fathers. My father was the efficient cause of me as I am of my child. My father, however, was not the efficient cause of my child. That he is my child's grandfather and connected causally is per accident--it is an accidental feature of his relationship with my child. That is not the case with the boxcars. Boxcar A is pulling B is pulling C, but that means that boxcar A is the efficient cause of the movement of boxcar C. It is the efficient cause per se. Contrary to William Lane Craig, there is no philosophical reason to suppose that an infinite regression of causally related events per accidens is impossible. Yet an infinite regression of causally related events per se is impossible. It wouldn't matter if you had an infinite of boxcars. They would not move without a first mover.

This requires comment on the word "first." We are not referring to temporal primacy as is the case with a regression per accidens (my father is temporally prior to me). We are talking logical efficient causality. Again, the boxcar example is sufficient. Boxcar A is pulling C in the present. The cause is coterminous with the action. By "first," then, we are referring to the primary mover, that which gives the causally sequenced chain motion.

The point is that since nothing causes its own motion (except sentient agents, and even we are contingently related to a host of realities!), there must be a non-contingent First Mover. (I strongly recommend this paper by Richard G. Howe for more details on the notion of infinite in Aquinas.)

Now, whether or not you accept this argument, the point is that the First Mover, so accepted, is seen to be in act (note: even if you reject the above argument, I'm sure you will agree that if God exists, if nothing else, then by definition He would be the First Mover, being a non-contingent thing, so while I have offered Aquinas' argument for a First Mover, it does not require that we accept his reasoning to continue with a discussion on the nature of the First Mover, which all Christians regard to be God). A first mover cannot be in potency, because that which is in potency is reduced to action only by that which is already in action. "For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality" (Summa, IIA3). However, something cannot be in both potentiality and actuality in the same way at the same time, which is to say, something cannot be both the mover and the moved in the same way at the same time. Thus, something cannot move itself, which means that everything put in motion (reduced from potentiality to actuality) is done so by something else (already in action). But, of course, the First Mover cannot be moved by something else, or else it would not be the First Mover. Thus, the First Mover cannot be in potentiality, but must be pure act.

From this, everything else follows regarding simplicity. If there is no potentiality in God, He cannot have a body, for a body is potentiality. If He has no body, He must be pure form (not a composition of form and matter), which means that He cannot exist as a composition of parts. If He is pure form, He must be identical to His essence (composite beings are not identical to their essence; I am a man, but I am not "man," because there things in my definition which are not part of the definition of man, being my particular body; yet where there is no body, the thing is identical with its essence). This means there can be no distinction between His essence and His existence, because existence is that which makes an essence actual; thus, essence is comparable to potentiality and existence to act, yet we have seen that in God, there is no potency. God's essence then must also be His existence.

All of this is to take some pains to demonstrate the second premise in the following argument:

1. There can be no potential in the First Mover
2. Where there is no potential, there is no composition
3. Therefore, there is no composition in the First Mover

If God is defined as the First Mover, it is evident that in God there is no composition. Thus, God must be simple.

I hope this is sufficient to answer your question about why I believe God to be a simple being.