Thanks to emails with a presentist-inclining graduate student, I have come to realize that on eternalism there seems to be a really interesting disanalogy between the generation of an item and its destruction, at least in our natural order.
Insofar as you generate an item, it seems you do two things:
Cause the item to have a lower temporal boundary at some time t1.
Cause the item to exist simpliciter.
But insofar as you destroy an item, you do only one thing:
- Cause the item to have an upper temporal boundary at some time t2.
You certainly don’t cause the item not to exist simpliciter, since if an item is posited to exist simpliciter, it exists simpliciter (a tautology, of course). It is a conceptual impossibility to act on an existing item and make it not exist, though of course you can act on an item existing-at-t1 and make it not exist-at-t2 and you can counteract the causal activity of something that would otherwise have caused an item to exist. However, existing-at-t isn’t existing but a species of location, just as existing-in-Paris isn’t existing but a species of location.
I suppose one could imagine a world where generation always involves two separate causes: one causes existence simpliciter and another selects when the object exists. In that world there would be an analogy between the when-cause and the destroyer.
(Maybe our world is like that with respect to substance. Maybe only God causes existence simpliciter, while we only cause the temporal location of the substances that God causes to exist?)
I suppose one could see in all this an instance of a deep asymmetry between good and evil.
This seems confused to me.
ReplyDeleteIf an eternal God causes an item (understood eternalistically) to exist, he causes all the boundaries of it at once.
If I cause an item to come into existence at t1, it seems I cause it to exist-at-t1, while if I destroy it at t100, I cause it to not-exist-at-t101. Understood eternalistically, the item already existed simpliciter prior to t1 just as it will continue to exist simpliciter after t100.
Heath:
ReplyDeleteI don't think God causes all the boundaries at once *in the order of explanation*.
If you cause an item to come into existence at t1, then of course it was true prior to t1 that the item exists simpliciter. But the reason it was true then was because you would cause it to be true.
I don't think God causes all the boundaries at once *in the order of explanation*.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you mean here. Is causing-in-the-order-of-explanation different from some other kind of causing? Or is there an at-once-in-the-order-of-explanation that is different from temporal at-onceness? Sorry if I'm being thick.
If you cause an item to come into existence at t1, then of course it was true prior to t1 that the item exists simpliciter. But the reason it was true then was because you would cause it to be true.
Then it would seem that the asymmetry reduces to the fact that for an eternalist, there is no such thing as being destroyed simpliciter, while there is such a thing as being caused (created) simpliciter. Whereas a presentist does have the concept of destruction simpliciter. True enough.
I meant to distinguish what God does "at once in the order of explanation" from what is done at once in some other order.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think you're right about the ultimate source of the difference, the lack of destruction simpliciter on eternalism.
Isn't this a similar intuition to those who say that, on eternalism, evil is never actually conquered and got rid of? It exists simpliciter just as it always has. I do find that problematic....
ReplyDeleteFor me, I can't imagine ever getting over this powerful intuition that the eternalist is speaking nonsense, because, whenever someone asks "how long has X existed", the answer really ought to be "always" in every case. The spatialization of time means that a 4d description is akin to a 3d one: it just tells you the shape of the object. But every object has always existed, regardless of its 4d shape. Moreover, nothing ever changes. So, of course there's a problem with destruction! Even God Himself cannot now bring it about that something does not exist simpliciter. If He desired to make it the case that I cease to exist, He cannot do it. I am already the 4d shape that I have always been and will always be. He's stuck with me, even if He has eternally made it the case that my shape comes to a boundary in the next minute (spatio-temporally speaking).