Restricting the PSR to things with a finite past

A correspondent asked me why not to simply believe in a restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) that says that everything contingent that has a beginning in time has an explanation. (Graham Oppy has once proposed such an idea.)

One of the reasons for accepting the PSR is that without it we fall into skepticism. If violations of the PSR are possible, they have no meaningful probabilities, and in particular cannot be said to be unlikely. E.g., without the PSR, we have to say it is not unlikely that we just popped into existence five minutes ago for no reason at all, and so we cannot say that skeptical hypotheses about the past are improbable.

There are two types of skepticism. On weak skepticism about X, we conclude we can’t know about X. On strong skepticism about X, we conclude that we can’t have a reasonable belief about X. Weak skepticism is not a big deal. Strong skepticism is. This is strong skepticism about the past.

The specific case of the five minute past doesn’t survive if we have the PSR restricted to things with a beginning. But another argument does. Suppose the full PSR is false but the restricted PSR is true. Now consider the scenario where reality consists of a large number of persons who for an infinite amount of time have been caught in an endless five minute loop of experiences just like mine. Violations of the PSR have no meaningful probabilities, so we cannot say that this hypothesis is unlikely. So, we get skepticism. Of the strong kind.

Randomness and identity

Suppose an amoeba biologically symmetrically splits into two cells, A and B. Here are the main options for what happens metaphysically:

1. The parent perishes and the child cells are new organisms.

2. The parent becomes a scattered two-celled organism.

3. The parent becomes A, and B is a new organism.

4. The parent becomes B, and A is a new organism.

Typically, philosophers dismiss options (3) and (4) as arbitrary in cases where the splitting is symmetric. Option (2) is implausible, so that leaves option (1).

But now consider an option that the above argument for (1) does not consider:

5. Indeterministically, the parent has chance 1/2 of becoming A, with B being new, and chance 1/2 of becoming B, with A being new.

(Technically, this is not another option, but a further specification of (3) or (4).) Rule (5) is perfectly symmetric between A and B, so there is no arbitrary preference in the rule—though of course the random result may be said to be arbitrary.

I expect that the main reason (5) is usually not considered is that it is assumed that the answer as to which of (1)–(4) happens supervenes on qualitative biological features of the amoeba and offspring system. But if we have a “further fact” view about identity, or if we are dualists about amoebae—say, because we think that an amoeba has a non-physical soul or form that—then I think (5) is not at all crazy. There could well be indeterministic laws of how the “further fact” behaves or where the soul goes.

Of course, (5) is not the only indeterministic symmetric option that avoids scattered individuals. One could have a view where there is a 1/3 chance for each of options (1), (3) and (4). Or where there is a 2/3 chance of (1) and a 1/6 chance of each of (3) and (4).

Some people will think that amoebae do not have “further facts” or souls, but are entirely physically reducible. I am far from confident of that. But in any case, whether the indeterministic solution works for amoebae, it could well work for humans, whether in actual cases of early twinning or in science-fictional brain splitting thought experiments.

Here is another metaphysical difficulty where an indeterministic answer might work. Consider beginning and end of life issues: when do constituents come together as a new organism and when do organisms depart from life? It feels arbitrary to suppose, say, that when the damage exceeds some threshold, the organism must die there and then. But what if we suppose that there is a continuous distribution—say, something like an exponential one—with parameters continuously depending on the degree of damage, governing the random point at which the organism departs from this life if the damage is not changed? Of course, this kind of a story only makes sense on a non-naturalistic picture where there is some further unobservable fact about life.

I wonder what other metaphysical questions might have random answers.

The antisymmetry of temporary parthood

Sider suggests this four-dimensionalist characterization of “temporary parthood” in terms of temporal parts:

1. Necessarily, x is part of y at t iff x and y each exist at t, and x’s temporal part at t is part of y’s temporal part at t.

Somehow I never noticed something that is probably pretty obvious to people who work on this: temporary parthood defined thus is not antisymmetric (where a relation R is antisymmetric provided that xRy and yRx implies x = y). For consider myself, x, and my temporal part, x_t, at t. Then x_t ≠ x, but x_t is a part of x and x is a part of x_t, assuming plausibly that the temporal part of x_t at t is x_t (otherwise, we get a weird infinite regress where each temporal part at t has a distinct temporal part at t).

Is this a problem? I think so. We do after all seem to have an ordinary notion of parthood at a time, and that notion is antisymmetric: two distinct objects can’t be mutually parts of each other at the same time. If you are a part of a club at t, the club isn’t a part of you at t, even if you are the only member at that time.

We can avoid the above temporal part counterexample to asymmetry by modifying (1) to be:

2. Necessarily, x is part of y at t iff x and y each exist at t, and x’s temporal part at t is part of y’s temporal part at t, and y is not a proper part of x.

But that’s not good enough. For consider non-instantaneous temporal parts, such as myself from time a to time b (both inclusive): x_[a,b]. Then x_[0,3] and x_[1,4] have the same temporal part at t, and so by (2) they are still mutually parts of each other at t, since neither is a proper part of the other simpliciter.

But perhaps we can argue that temporary parthood is not antisymmetric. Consider this story:

• t₁: you have a lump of unbaked clay

• t₂: the clay has been formed into a statue

• t₃: the statue has just been gilded

• t₄: the gilding has just been removed

• t₅: a piece of the clay has been pinched off in order to improve the appearance of the statue’s nose.

Consider the cloud of molecules of the original lump of clay. This cloud persists through the whole story. Initially, it does not form a statue, and at the end it forms more than the statue (since the pinched off bit is a part of the cloud but not the statue then). It seems clear that:

1. The cloud is a part of the statue at t₃, with the gold being the other part at t₃

But the cloud did not become a temporary part of the statue when it was gilded. Thus:

2. The cloud is already a part of the statue at t₂.

Conversely:

3. The statue is a part of the cloud at t₅.

But the statue does not become a temporary part of the cloud when a bit is pinched off. Thus:

4. The statue is a part of the cloud at t₄.

But there is surely no difference in the temporary relationships between the statue and the cloud at t₂ and t₄, so:

22. The statue is a part of the cloud at t₂.

But since the statue is not the cloud, (ii) and (v) imply that parthood at t₂ is not antisymmetric.

If we have a strong intuition that temporary parthood should be antisymmetric, the above example suggests that we should have a restricted view of composition, one on which at least one of the cloud and the statue does not exist.

An argument for reincarnation

Here’s a fun argument:

1. We are responsible for something.

2. To be responsible for anything that is not a choice, we have to have been responsible for choosing it.

3. To be responsible for anything that is choice, we have to be responsible for the features of our character by which we made the choice.

4. So, if we are responsible for something, we have made an infinite sequence of choices.

5. So, we have made an infinite sequence of choices.

6. We have not made an infinite sequence of choices in any one life.

7. So, we have had an infinite sequence of lives.

Famously, Galen Strawson makes the 2–4 part of this argument, and concludes that since we have not made an infinite sequence of choices, we are not responsible for anything. But I think it is more reasonable to believe in reincarnation (or some other way of having had infinitely many choices—say, a supertask) than to disbelieve in responsibility.

That said, I don’t think we should take the above as providing significant evidence for reincarnation. For even if we had made an infinite number of choices, I don’t think that would get us out of the point Strawson is making. There would still be a sense in which we wouldn’t be responsible “for the regress”. This observation has applications beyond free will: an infinite regress of causes doesn’t explain the universe.

My own preferred way out of Strawson’s argument does not involve infinite regresses, but simply denying premise (3). Premise (3) is plausible when our character determines the choice, but less so when it does not. Take a paradigm example of someone freely and indeterministically making a choice with conflicting desires and reasons for different options. Then imagine that they were brainwashed into having these very desires and reasons. That doesn’t affect the freedom with which they choose on the basis of those desires and reasons.

Causal finitism/countabilism and 4D unrestricted composition

Assume four dimensional unrestricted composition (or mereological universalism). Plausibly, there is a world where on Monday there are infinitely many things, and on Tuesday Alice and Bob cause a sofa to go into the living room.

Also plausibly:

1. If x and y cause z at t, then anything composed of x and y at t causes z at t.

Why? Well, anything composed of x and y at t has the causal powers of x and y at t, and these causal powers are activated, and their activation results in z, so it seems that anything so composed causes z.

But on Monday there were infinitely many things. Thus, by four dimensional unrestricted composition, there are infinitely many things composed on Monday of some of the infinitely many things that exist on Monday and composed on Tuesday of Alice and Bob. By (1), each of these things is the cause of the sofa’s entry into the living room.

Thus, infinitely many things are the cause of the sofa’s entry into the living room. This violates causal finitism. Hence we have an argument from causal finitism against 4D unrestricted composition.

In fact, we have an argument from causal countabilism against 4D unrestricted composition, since there are uncountably many things composed on Monday of the infinitely many things that exist then and composed on Tuesday of Alice and Bob.

Causal countabilism

Causal finitism says that every item has a finite causal history.

A weaker view is causal countabilism, that all the causal histories of items are at most countably infinite.

Is there any evidence for causal countabilism? Well, of course, any argument for causal finitism is an argument for causal countabilism. But is there any other evidence?

I can think of one piece. It would be good if we could come up with a metaphysical account of the countable, maybe to resolve the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, or to help provide a metaphysical characterization of the natural numbers. A causal countabilism that isn’t a causal finitism could do that: a set is countable if and only if it is the same size as a possible causal history of an event. If a theory can help accomplish an important task, maybe that’s some evidence for the theory. (That said, causal finitism can also account for countability, as I discuss in my infinity book.)

Are there any known applications for causal countabilism? Before today, I would have said “no”. But I now know two. One is that the “technical assumption” in my last version of the Meyer cosmological argument is entailed by causal countabilism. A second will be in my next post today.

An argument against 4D unrestricted composition

1. How many objects exist at t is not even partly grounded in facts about how things are at times later than t in worlds without backwards causation.

2. If standard four-dimensional unrestricted composition is true, then how many objects exists at t is partly grounded in fact about how things are at times other than t.

3. Standard four-dimensional unrestricted composition is false.

I think (1) is very plausible. What about (2)? Bracket God. Consider a world w₂ without backwards causation whose timeline consists of two moments, t₁ and t₂, and where there is a simple a existining only at t₁ aand a different simple b existing only at t₂. On standard four-dimensional unrestricted composition, there are three objects in existence in w₂: a, b and a + b. Of these, two objects, namely a and a + b, exist at t₁. Now consider a world w₁ just like w₂ but without b, and hence without anything at t₂. There is only one object, namely a, at t₁ in w₁.

What grounds the difference between the number of objects at t₁ in the worlds is whether b exists at t₂, contrary to (1).

The best escape from this argument is to suppose what I call five-dimensional unrestricted composition, where all modal profiles are filled. On that view, in both worlds there are infinitely many objects—probably beyond cardinality—at t₁. But that has other plausibility problems.

Arguing for a first cause without assuming transitivity of causation

This is another technical research note.

Here is a cosmological argument that does not assume causation is transitive.

Suppose the set of causes forms a directed acyclic graph where the edges are cases of causation. Say that x weakly causes y provided that there is a chain of causation from x to y.

Suppose that any internal chain C of causes that is reverse well-ordered under weak causation is founded, i.e., there is a weak cause c of everything in the chain except c itself. Assume there are no causal cycles. Suppose the following technical condition:

• There is no sequence of causes considered with respect to weak causation that is reverse-order isomorphic to ω₁.

Finally assume there is at least one cause. It follows (assuming the Axiom of Choice) that there is an uncaused cause.

The technical assumption seems pretty plausible. Nobody to my knowledge has proposed a model of the universe where the causal history contains a reverse copy of ω₁. It would be like thinking the past has not only an infinite but an uncountable number of days. (An uncountable number of past moments is tame—though of course it violates causal finitism—but an uncountable number of past days would be wild.)

Sketch of proof: Let G be the directed acyclic graph whose vertices are causes and where (a,b) is an edge iff b causes a. Let R be the partial order generated by the edge directions. Our technical assumption says that ω₁ does not order embed into G. Let C be any well-ordered R-chain of vertices in G. If we can show in general that C has an R-upper bound, by a standard refinement of Zorn’s Lemma it will follow that G has an R-maximal element, and that’s an caused cause.

Since ω₁ does not embed in G, C is countable. Passing to a cofinal (with respect to R) subset of C that is isomorphic to ω, we can assume C has order type ω. Now insert finite paths between all pairs of successive vertices of C (this uses AC, and the acyclicity implies that the paths all run in the same direction as the order on C). The resulting set C′ of vertices is an internal chain with respect to graph direction, and so it has an R-upper bound by the foundedness assumption on chains.

Two kinds of causal chains

Some of my posts are basically research notes to self, stored publicly. This is one of those. It is unlikely to be of much interest to others.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been trying to make the assumptions in the Meyer cosmological argument as weak as I could. In particular, I’ve been trying to drop the assumption that causation is transitive. A crucial assumption in the Meyer argument is that every chain C of causes is founded—i.e., there is a cause x that is causally prior to every item in C other than perhaps x itself (in case x is in C).

In the transitive case, the notion of a chain is straightforward: a chain of causes is a set C of causes such that for any distinct x and y in C, either x causes y or y causes x. But without transitivity, we have a choice between two notions of a chain:

1. Ambient chain: For any distinct x and y in C, there is a finite sequence c₁, ..., c_n such that c_i causes c_i + 1 and either c₁ = x and c_n = y or c₁ = y and c_n = x.

2. Internal chain: For any distinct x and y in C, there is a finite sequence c₁, ..., c_n of items in C such that c_i causes c_i + 1 and either c₁ = x and c_n = y or c₁ = y and c_n = x.

Any ambient chain is an internal chain, but the converse is not true. Let say that we have a sequence of causes c₁, ..., c₁₀₀ where c_i causes c_i + 1 but due to a bad failure of transitivity there is no other causation—the only time c_i causes c_j is if j = i + 1. Then the even- (or odd-) numbered causes are an ambient chain but not an internal chain.

So I now had a decision point: Do I assume that every ambient chain is founded or merely that every internal chain is founded? I was able to make the argument go in the ambient case in the blog post I linked above, but then I tried to prove it in the internal case.

To that end, I needed to apply Zorn’s Lemma in the case of a relation that need not be transitive. Assuming the foundedness of ambient chains, this was easy: I just applied Zorn’s Lemma to the transitive closure of the causal relation. But in the internal case, what I needed was a genuine generalization of Zorn’s Lemma. This (or maybe an extension that doesn’t assume acyclicity) was what I needed:

Conjecture. Let G be a nonempty directed acyclic graph. Let R be the partial order generated by the connection relation. Suppose that the vertices of every unilaterally connected subgraph linearly ordered under R have an R-upper bound in G. Then G has an R-maximal element.

Here, a unilaterally connected directed graph is one where there is a unidirectional path between any pair of vertices.

Given this conjecture, I would be able to take the edges of the graph to be the reverses of causal relations, assume the founded internal chain condition, and show there is an uncaused cause.

Alas, today I finished proving that the conjecture is false. For the record, here is the counterexample. Let G be a directed graph which has two types of vertices: members of ω₁ and pairs (a,b) with a < b where a, b ∈ ω₁. Let the edges of G run from a to (a,b) and (a,b) to b, and let there be no other edges. Then it turns out that any unilaterally connected subgraph linearly ordered under R is countable (indeed has order type ω), and hence has an upper bound in G. The proof isn’t hard if you can visualize the graph.

(Two days ago, I wasted many hours trying to nudge (free) AI to settle the conjecture. The AI was very confident that the conjecture was true, and gave me a sequence of fallacious proofs!)

Is the counterexample to this conjecture anything one should worry about if one is trying to prove the existence of a first cause? I don’t think so. Causally, it corresponds to a case where we have an infinite regress with order type being the reverse of ω₁ (already weird), massive failures of transitivity (more weirdness), and maybe (assuming one interprets “cause” as full cause) massive systematic overdetermination or at least overcausation (yet more weirdness). Nothing like this is a plausible model of reality. It would be nice to formulate more precisely just how weird a causal system would need to be to provide a counterexample to the conjecture.

Guerilla projection

Suppose I make a drawing on a one inch square of transparency, and then project it to cover one side of an 40 foot cubical building.

How big is my work of art? Is it a 2D one inch square or a 2D 40 foot square, or a 3D square frustum with one side being a one inch square and the other a 40 foot square, all filled with light?

I think normally we would think of the artwork here as a 2D 40 foot square. But the artwork is made of light. The artwork would then be a thin slice of the light reflected from the wall, right by the wall. But the artwork is something we see. And if it’s the light that we see here, then why is it the thin slice right around the wall that we see, rather than, say, a thin slice a foot in front of the eyes? In both cases, the light in the slice will travel to the eyes. It’s hard to say why the slice by the wall would be privileged.

This suggests that the piece of art is actually the 3d square frustum. But then we don’t actually see all of the piece at any given time—we don’t see the light as filling the intervening space—which is counterintuitive.

Perhaps what we see is the one inch square, through the magnificatory mediation of the wall? But that means that the large size of the piece is an illusion.

If artifacts exist, then sometimes the size of an artifact seems hard to specify.

Yet another argument against artifacts

Suppose I find on the ground a thin layer of sand. Painstakingly, I remove piece of sand after piece of sand, until what is left is a very fragile picture of a cat made out of grains of sand none of which were moved by me. If artifacts exist, this picture is an artifact and exists. But note that in the story I have not causally affected any of the grains of sand that remain in the picture. And, plausibly:

1. If an object is composed of some parts, it is not possible to cause the object to exist without causally affecting any of the parts.

I conclude that the picture here doesn’t exist. And neither do artifacts in general.

Choice and Zorn for plurals

Here’s one version of the axiom of choice for pluralities in terms of superplurals:

• AC(plural,superplurals): For a superplurality xxx of disjoint pluralities, there is a plurality zz that contains exactly one item from each plurality yy in xxx.

And here’s Zorn’s Lemma for pluralities and and partial order formulas:

• Zorn(plural,formulas): Given a partial order formula ϕ(y,z) and plurality xx, if every subplurality of xx that is a ϕ-chain has a ϕ-upper bound in xx, then xx has a ϕ-maximal element.

(A partial order formula ϕ(x,y) is a formula such that the expression ϕ(x,y) satisfies the axioms of x ≤ y for a partial order ≤. A ϕ-chain and ϕ-upper bound are defined in the natural way.)

Interestingly, AC(plural,superplurals) does not entail Zorn(plural,formulas). For consider a model of plurals and superplurals where the domain is the natural numbers, the plurals are interpreted as non-empty sets of naturals, the superplurals as non-empty sets of non-empty sets of naturals, and we have all the arithmetical predicates, all within a model of ZF where the Axiom of Dependent Choice fails for some relation and there is a predicate expressing that relation. Then AC(plural,superplurals) holds in this model, because the naturals are well-ordered. However, Zorn(plural,formulas) with the naturals being the domain yields Dependent Choice for that relation (since we can encode finite sequences of naturals as naturals).

The Meyer cosmological argument revisited

I’m playing with an alternative way to run the Meyer cosmological argument (with slightly weaker assumptions).

Suppose there is at least one cause, and there is a set of all causes.

Suppose causation is transitive. (If it’s not, replace “x causes y” with “there is a finite chain of causes running from x to y” throughout the argument.)

Define a causal circularity as a set of at least two causes such that for any distinct x and y in the set, x causes y and y causes x.

Define a causal chain as a set of causes such that for any distinct x and y in the chain, x causes y or y causes x but not both.

A causal chain S is reverse-well-ordered provided that any non-empty subset of it contains a unique effect, i.e., for any non-empty subset U of S, there is a z in U such that everything else in U is a cause of z.

The reverse well-order condition ensures, among other things, that each cause in the chain that is not the first cause in the chain has an immediate predecessor, and hence rules out “continuous chains”. This makes the chains more intuitively “chain-like”, and hence should make us feel more secure about applying our intuitions to them.

Say that a set S of causes is unfounded provided that there is no cause x that causes all the items in S perhaps other than itself.

Say that it is externally unfounded provided that there is no such cause outside the set S.

Then, given the Axiom of Choice, at least one of the following three is true:

1. There is an unfounded reverse-well-ordered causal chain.

2. There is an externally unfounded causal circularity.

3. There is an uncaused cause.

Hence we get an argument for an uncaused cause assuming all reverse-well-ordered causal chains are founded and any causal circularities are externally founded.

Proof: Suppose (1) and (2) are false. Write x ≤ y if x causes y or x = y. Write x ∼ y if x ≤ y and y ≤ x. For x a cause, let [x] be the equivalence class of x under ∼ in the set of all causes. Let C be the set of all equivalence classes of causes, and extend ≤ to C in the obvious way to provide a partial order on C.

Let U be a reverse-well-ordered ≤-chain in C. By the Axiom of Choice, let V be a set containing exactly one member from each ∼-equivalence class that is a member of U. This is a reverse-well-ordered causal chain. It must be founded by the falsity of (1). Thus, there is an x in V such that x ≤ y for all y in V. Thus [x] is a ≤-lower bound for U. By a slight generalization of Zorn’s Lemma requiring only well-ordered chains (this proof yields this generalization), there is a [u] in C that is ≤-minimal. If [u] is a singleton, then u is an uncaused cause. Suppose [u] has more than one member. Then [u] is a causal circularity, and hence has an external cause v by the falsity of (2). Then [v] ≤ [u] and [v] ≠ [u], contrary to [u] being ≤-minimal. Hence [u] cannot have more than one member, and we are done.

Molinism and prophecy

Suppose Bob offers a cookie to Alice who is free to accept or reject it. God would like to manifest his omniscience to Alice by announcing to her whether she will accept or reject the cookie. To that end, God uses his middle knowledge to consider the following conditionals:

1. Were God to announce that Alice will accept, Alice would accept.

2. Were God to announce that Alice will reject, Alice would reject.

God then follows the following algorithm:

1. If (i) is true and regardless of (ii), God announces that Alice will accept.

2. If (i) is false but (ii) is true, God announces that Alice will reject.

3. If both (i) and (ii) are false, God refrains from making an announcement.

But there is a problem. Both (i) and (ii) seem to be necessary truths! For God cannot lie and cannot be mistaken. Thus, following the algorithm, God will always announce that Alice will accept, and indeed she will. Hence God can with certainty get Alice to freely accept the cookie—which seems wrong! So there is something wrong with Molinism.

However, I wonder whether the Molinist has to say that (i) and (ii) both have to be true. Granted, their necessity follows from the following plausible rule for subjunctive conditionals:

4. Necessarily: If p is possible, and p entails q, then were p to hold, q would hold,

assuming that the antecedents of (i) and (ii) are possible and given S5. (And one can avoid S5 by assuming that necessarily the antecedents of (i) and (ii) are possible, and that the entailment between God announcing something and its being true is not only necessary but necessarily necessary.)

But perhaps (4) is not as obviously true as it seems. Consider a case where free will is not involved. There is a perfectly reliable sound-activated light. God is debating whether to announce “There will be no miracle and yet the light will not turn on.” It seems that it would be reasonable for God to reason that were he to make that announcement, the light would turn on (since it’s perfectly reliable, it would take a miracle for it not to), and hence the announcement would be false. Yet God’s making the announcement is possible (there is no problem about God making the announcement in a world where the lightbulb is broken).

So perhaps the Molinist can say that there can be subjunctive conditionals of free that are true even though the antecedent entails the negation of the consequent. If so, then (i) and (ii) could still be contingent.

I am still dubious of a logic of subjunctives where the subjunctive can violate an entailment. But perhaps it’s not as bad as I once thought it (compare this old paper of mine).

Molinism and correlations

Assume Molinism.

Suppose T is a set of character traits that makes one be equipoised between freely taking and refusing a $5000 bribe for a city contract. Let C₁, C₂, ... be distinct and highly specific possible circumstances of Curley being offered such a bribe, differing in morally unimportant ways that are not very relevant to Curley’s character. Perhaps he is offered the bribe in an Italian restaurant, or in a Thai restaurant, or while walking in the park. Perhaps the bribe is being offered by a man or by a woman. Maybe it’s in the morning or the evening. Etc.

Consider the counterfactual of free will:

• Q_i: Were Curley to have T and be offered a $5000 bribe for a city contract in C_i, he would accept the bribe.

Intuitively, P(Q_i) ≈ 1/2 for any i. Let’s accept that intuition. But now here is an interesting question: What kinds of statistical correlation is there between Q₁, Q₂, ...?

The intuition behind van Inwagen’s re-run thought experiment says that if Curley were offered a sequence of exactly similar bribes, with memory erased in between, then Curley’s acceptance/rejection decisions would behave like an independent sequence of random variables. That intuition suggests that Q₁, Q₂, ... are also statistically independent.

On the other hand, one might have the conflicting intuition that Q_i and Q_j are more correlated when the circumstances C_i and C_j are more similar.

On the third hand, one might think that although each of Q_i has probability around 1/2, the probabilities of conjunctions of the Q_i are undefined, and hence it makes no sense to talk about their correlations.

These seem to me to be the three most plausible views on the correlation question. Call these the Independence, Similarity, and Undefined views.

On Molinism plus Independence, God has a vast amount of providential power. He is nearly certain to be able to get Curley (or any other free agent) to freely do anything he wants, simply by choosing minor and unimportant features of circumstances. Given independence, it is extremely unlikely that all the Q_i have the same truth value. Thus, God can just choose the circumstances to get the truth value he wants—to get Curley to accept or to get Curley to reject the bribe. In particular, on Independence, free will does not do much to help the theist.

On the Similarity view, there are some more serious constraints of God’s providential power. However, I think there is another problem with the Similarity view. On Similarity, there is presumably some complicated function from the degree of similarity between circumstances to the degree of correlation (say, measured by covariance) between the truth values of the corresponding counterfactuals. Where does this function come from? Normally correlations between events are explained by laws of nature. But counterfactuals of free will are prior to laws of nature. I suppose the correlation function would have to be something necessary. But it does seem mysterious.

I think that if I were a Molinist, I would find the Undefined view somewhat appealing. The version of it that seems most plausible would be that P(Q_iQ_j) is not defined as a number, but can be represented as the interval [max(0,P(Q_i)+P(Q_j)−1),min(P(Q_i),P(Q_j))]. But I still find it a bit odd that P(Q_i) and P(Q_j) are defined but P(Q_iQ_j) is not. Nonetheless, this seems possible.

Defining parthood in terms of life

A couple of days ago I blogged that van Inwagen is right that we should not expect an answer to the General Composition Question.

Now I am not so sure. Suppose van Inwagen is right about the Special Composition Question having the answer he thinks it has: Necessarily, the xs compose another thing if and only they have a life together.

The following is then plausibly true:

1. Necessarily, y is a part of z if and only if y = z or there is a life L and xs such that (a) the xs live life L together, (b) z itself lives life L, and (c) y is among the xs.

But if so, then we have a non-mereological definition of parthood, and if substitute that into the definition of composition, we get a non-mereological account of when the xs compose y.

Maybe the problem with (1) is that it commits one to an ontology that quantifies over lives (which are presumably some kind of event), rather than just having some plural predicate like “are jointly lifewise active”.

But one can perhaps escape even that. Perhaps we can suppose a plural predicate S(xx,yy) which expresses the idea that the xx and yy same-co-live. One might want to paraphrase that as “the xx live the same life as the yy do”, but that would commit one to quantifying over lives. And then we can say:

2. Necessarily, y is a part of z if and only if y = z or there are xx that have y among them such that S(xx,z).

Yet another argument against Molinism

Assume Molinism. Let maximal transworld depravity be the claim that for any circumstances C in which an agent x would be freely choosing between options A₁, A₂, ..., the agent would choose an option than which they could not choose a worse. If Molinism is true, maximal transworld depravity seems possible.

Suppose God finds there to be maximal transworld depravity, and consequently chooses not to create anything. Nonetheless, wouldn’t it be a very bad thing that maximal transworld depravity holds? After all, it prevents God from having all sorts of great possibilities. But how could there be anything bad in a world where only God exists?

So, we have an argument against Molinism. If Molinism is true, it is possible that God alone exists and yet reality has something very bad about it.

Theism and the Special Composition Question

Given theism, I suspect there is no answer to van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question, which asks for non-mereological necessary and sufficient conditions for a plurality of things to compose a whole.

The basic idea is this. Proper parthood is a real relation. God can simply insert or delete new instances of a real relation into the world as long as he does not violate the logic of this relation. Then imagine that God simply deletes all instances of proper parthood from this world. The logic of proper parthood is not violated by this. But we cannot non-mereologically describe the difference between our world and the resulting mereologically nihilistic world, and yet our world is one where (I assume) there is non-trivial composition, and the modified world is one where there isn’t any. Hence, we cannot give non-mereological necessary and sufficient conditions for a plurality to compose.

One might object that the whole depends on the parts (a similar argument can be given if the parts depend on the whole, with the same response), and so God cannot delete the parthood relation between me and my parts, as that will make my parts disappear from reality. But as Aquinas argues, what creatures can do, God can do it without help from creatures. So if my parts can keep me in existence, God can keep me in existence without any reliance on these parts.

Here is a theistic argument directly aimed at van Inwagen’s organicism. Any creature that exists must be sustained by God. God could keep on sustaining my parts without sustaining me, so I drop out of existence. It would still be true that my former parts are engaging in the kind of activity that define life for van Inwagen, but they would no longer compose a whole.

Composition and laws of nature

I’ve for a while wondered if mereology can’t be nomically strongly emergent, namely whether there couldn’t be laws of nature of the form:

1. If the xs satisfy F, then the xs cause there to be a y composed of the xs.

This is a species of Markosian’s brute composition theory: There is no set of finite informative conditions that are necessary and sufficient for composition.

One might think that above nomic story has an informative necessary and sufficient condition for composition:

2. The xs compose something if and only if there is only one x or there is a law of the form (1) that the xs satisfy the antecedent of.

Condition (2) wouldn’t count as an answer to van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question because it uses mereological vocabulary on its right hand side (since (1) uses the word “composed”). However, (2) would still be pretty informative. Nonetheless, (2) shouldn’t be acceptable to a theist, because the kind of thing that can happen by a law of nature could also be directly produced by God apart from any law: God can make the xs compose y.

Promises and permissibility

Here is an initially plausible idea:

• A promise can take an action that absent the promise is merely permissible and turn it into an action that is obligatory, but it cannot take an action that absent the promise is impermissible and turn it into an action that is obligatory.

I wanted to use this idea in an argument. But I have since come to a fairly definitive refutation. Suppose last year I promised you that today I would drive to Waco airport and sit for one minute on a bench and come back home. (Maybe we were playing some game, and this was the agreed-upon penalty for losing.) Plausibly, I am obligated to do so. But absent the promise, it would be impermissible for me to do it, because it would be pointless, and it is wrong to drive pointlessly, since each time one drives one (a) endangers human life and (b) contributes to environmental degradation.

Of course, a promise can’t take an action that is intrinsically wrong and make it obligatory.

Withholding and withdrawing treatment, once again

Consider one more pair of cases to challenge the standard view that there is no significant moral difference between withholding and withdrawing treatment.

A patient’s knee became inflexible with age. The only treatment available is an artificial replacement. The patient is competent, informed, free, but eccentric. Consider two cases:

1. The patient doesn’t agree to an artificial replacement, because the patient thinks that if their leg is flexible, they will be expected to do half of the chores in their two-person household, whereas right now they are getting away with doing only a quarter on account of their bad knee.

2. The patient has already received an artificial replacement, but is dismayed by the fact that they are now expected to do half of the chores, so they demand that a physician inject epoxy into the artificial knee to restore the inflexibility they enjoyed prior to the replacement.

In case 1, it is clear that it is a violation of the patient’s bodily integrity and autonomy to force the knee replacement on them, even if one thinks that the patient’s reason for refusal is terrible.

But in case 2, it would be reasonable for a physician to refuse to inject the epoxy, as this would violate the do-no-harm principle which forbids performing medical procedures, even ones requested by the patient, that on balance harm the patient.

Refraining from implanting an artificial knee is an instance of withholding medical treatment. Refraining from injecting epoxy into the artificial knee is an instance of withdrawing medical treatment by disabling a medical device. It’s a different way of disabling than just by throwing a switch, but it is the least damaging way to disable the artificial knee (removing the artificial knee would be tantamount to amputating the leg above the knee).

The judgment that in case 1, acceding to the patient’s refusal is clearly right, while in case 2, refusing the patient’s request for discontinuation of the artificial knee treatment for joint inflexibility at the very least can be right. Hence withholding and withdrawing are not morally equivalent.

Withholding, withdrawing, and the magic of medicine

Consider two cases where a patient ended up with an implanted device D that benefits the patient by ameliorating an otherwise fatal medical condition.

1. Alice got in a fight with Carl the hospital janitor. The janitor grabbed the first weapon at hand—an injector for device D—and stabbed Alice with it, thereby ensuring that Alice now has D implanted in her.

2. Alice’s twin sister Brenda got D duly implanted by Carl’s sister Dr. Diana, a physician at the hospital.

Now suppose that Alice and Brenda both demand a physician to remove D.

It seems that Alice’s demand is completely on par with the demand to remove a bullet or a kidney stone. But normally a physician needs to make a judgment that a procedure requested by a patient is likely to on-balance benefit the patient, and ought to refuse otherwise. If a physician is asked to remove a bullet or a kidney stone, but professionally judges that the patient will die without the bullet or kidney stone, they must refuse the request. It thus appears that the physician ought to refuse to remove D from Alice, unless there are significant burdens from D to Alice (maybe D is not a burden at all, but Alice just wants to die).

But in the case of Brenda, removing D is not just “a procedure”, but it constitutes the withdrawing of a medical treatment. On a standard view, just as one must withhold a medical treatment when a patient competently demands withholding it, even if the treatment would save the patient’s life, a demand for withdrawing is exactly on par, and hence must be honored, even if D does not impose any significant burden on Brenda.

Suppose the standard view is right. Then the above shows you can have two patients who are in exactly the same physical state, and are making exactly the same demand, but the demands are treated differently by standard medical ethics. The reason they are being treated differently is that in Alice’s case, D’s presence does not constitute a medical treatment because D was injected by the janitor in the course of a fight, while in Brenda’s case, D;’s presence does constitute a medical treatment because D was duly injected by a physician.

I find this troubling. It seems to be taking medicine as something magical, as if the status of D inside Alice’s and Bob’s became different when D came to be present “medically”.

Maybe one way to avoid the “magical” thinking is to think that consensual medical implantations come with an explicit or implicit agreement between the patient and the provider (the medical professional or maybe the medical institution) to withdraw the item should one so demand it? Then the magic is not due to medicine but due to promising. (I don’t think this completely resolves the questions, because not all promises need to be kept.)

A problem for Van Inwagen's life condition for composition

Van Inwagen thinks that a plurality of xs composes something if and only if either there is only one thing among the xs or the xs have a life together.

He also agrees that the fundamental particles making up a cell in a multicellural organism have a life together, and so there are cells.

Here is a problem. The following seem true:

1. It is possible to have two overlapping cells in a multicellular organism neither of which is a part of the other.

2. The cells of a multicellular organism together with any intercellular fundamental particles have a life together.

Why think (1)? Because, first, conjoint twins show that multicellular organisms can have “proper overlap”: i.e., they have a part in common but neither is a part of the other, and it seems hard to deny that cells, too, could in principle be like that. Second, it seems plausible that mid-way through a process of mitosis we have two cells that properly overlap.

It seems hard to deny (2), assuming there are cells.

But now consider a multicellular organism which happens to have two overlapping cells. Its cells, together with any intercellular fundamental particles, have a life together. Hence, by van Inwagen’s famous account of composition, the cells and the intercellular fundamental particles compose something. But van Inwagen’s definition of composition includes a no-overlap condition: if the xs compose y, no two xs overlap. And yet in our case we have life and overlap.

What should van Inwagen do? One move would be to weaken the Special Composition Question. Instead of asking when the xs compose something, he could ask when non-overlapping xs compose something. But that makes his view rather less informative than we might think, if overlap between cells is fairly common. Presumably in a body of my size, at any given time, mitosis is occuring in a number of cells (I haven’t done the math, but it seems likely).

Withholding and withdrawing treatment

I have heard that there is a consensus on the equivalence of the actions of withholding medical treatment and withdrawing it, even when the withdrawal requires a positive action from the medical professional (e.g., disconnecting a machine).

Here is a reason to doubt this consensus.

Consider first this pair of cases. In both, the following facts hold. A patient will die within hours without a ventilator, and competently requests that they be on a ventilator. However, an enemy of the patient has very credibly threatened the doctor with death if the patient is on a ventilator tomorrow. The only way the enemy can get at the patient is through the doctor, and there is no way to protect the doctor from the enemy. The difference between the two cases, however, is that in one case, the patient is already on a ventilator and in the other the patient is not yet on it.

If the patient is already on the ventilator, the doctor should refuse to disconnect the patient because of the enemy’s threat. Disconnecting the patient would be a wrongful cooperation in murder, and one should die rather than do that. Disconnecting the patient would be tantamount to murder. On the other hand, if the patient is not yet on the ventilator, then it would be supererogatory for the doctor to ventilate the patient at the expense of the doctor’s life. The doctor does not have the duty to save the patient’s life at the nearly certain expense of their own life. And even if one thinks it is a duty, failure in this duty is far below the wickedness of murder.

But disconnecting is withdrawal and failure to connect is withholding. Thus the two are not equivalent actions, because they can differ in moral evaluation even when done for the same reason (avoidance of the threat).

One might think the two become equivalent when the patient refuses to consent to the treatment (whether its continuation or initiation). It seems odd to think that the patient’s refusal somehow turns both actions equivalent.

But anyway, consider a reversal of the threat case. A “friend” of the refusing patient informs the doctor that they will cut off the doctor’s thumbs unless the patient is on a ventilator tomorrow, and suppose that the ventilation in question is invasive. It seems pretty plausible that in the case where the patient is not yet on the ventilator, the doctor should refuse to invasively ventilate them. For to invasively ventilate the patient would be an assault on the patient’s bodily integrity, and one should suffer a greater loss to one’s own bodily integrity rather than impose a lesser loss on another.

But in the case where the patient is already on the ventilator, it seems that the doctor has no obligation to suffer a greater loss themselves in order to respect the patient’s wish to be disconnected from the ventilator.

Thus, even in the case where the patient refuses consent, withholding and withdrawing are not equivalent.

Length and the memory theory of personal identity

1. That there is an entity that is 25 inches long in 1973 and 72 inches long in 1993 is not even partly grounded in facts about anybody’s memory.

2. If the memory theory of personal identity is true, the existence of such an entity is at least partly grounded in facts about my memory.

3. So, the memory theory of personal identity is false.

Premise (1) is a raw appeal to intuition.

Premise (2) follows from the following:

1. Normally an existentially quantified fact is grounded in each of its instances.

2. I was 25 inches long in 1973 and 72 inches long in 1993.

3. I was a person.

4. The case at hand is a relevantly normal case.

I suppose the memory theorist just needs to deny (1).

Van Inwagen is right: We should not expect an answer to the General Composition Question

Van Inwagen’s General Constitution Question (GCQ) is to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the xs to compose y in non-mereological terms. Van Inwagen is skeptical of whether the GCQ has any non-trivial answer. Here is a reason to think he’s right to be skeptical.

It might well be true that atomism is necessarily true, namely that every object has a simple part. But given atomism, the following is true:

1. Necessarily, z is a part of y if and only if there are xs that include z and that compose y.

(Proof: The right to left part is trivial: if the xs compose y, they are parts of y. Conversely, suppose z is a part of y. Let the xs consist of z and all the atomic parts of y that aren’t parts of z. It is easy to see that the xs compose y.)

Thus, if atomism is true, an answer to GCQ will provide a non-mereological account of all of mereology. That seems to be too much to expect.

Even if atomism is true, an answer to GCQ will provide a non-mereological account of the parthood of all wholly non-gunky objects (where an object is partly gunky provided that it has some part that has no simple parts). That is also more than we should expect.

Why does God create those he knows will reject him?

Question: Suppose Alice goes to hell, having conclusively rejected God’s grace. Given that God knew that Alice will reject his grace, why did this knowledge not lead him to refrain from creating Alice?

Answer: It is impossible that the following two claims are true:

1. God refrains from creating Alice.

2. God knows that Alice will reject his grace.

For 1 entails:

3. Alice won’t exist

while 2 entails:

4. Alice will reject God’s grace

which in turn entails:

5. Alice will exist.

(Of course, if Molinism is true, one can ask a very similar question to the one I started with. But Molinism is false.)

Animalism without biologism

Animalism holds that we are animals. This is a pretty common-sense view. We are clearly mammals, and mammals are animals.

However, there is a common objection: cerebrum transplants. As the objection goes, if your cerebrum is transplanted from your skull to a different skull (or to a supportive vat), you follow the cerebrum, while the animal stays with the lower brain and the rest of the body. So you are not the animal.

Let me say something that will sound silly: This objection is guilty of biologism about animals. The biologism here consists in the claim that we should take how biologists think about the continuity of animal life to be normative for how we should think about the identity of animals. You might think it’s obvious that we should engage in biologism about animals. But biologists are not metaphysicians, and the question of the metaphysical identity over time of animals does not really enter into the empirical investigations biologists engage in.

On what I think is the correct metaphysics of animals, the identity of an organism over time is grounded in the persistence of the animal’s soul or form, a metaphysical feature of the animal which is largely beyond the interest of contemporary biologists. Moreover, the animal’s form is responsible for its teleological structure, which defines what the animal’s flourishing is, and what is and is not central to that flourishing. It is plausible—though not necessary—to think that the form tends to remain with those components of the animal that are more central to its flourishing as the kind of thing it is.

In the case of homo sapiens, central to its flourishing is the exercise of the excellences of intellect and will. And the cerebrum is more directly involved in these exercises than any other part of the body, so it is plausible to think that the human animal goes with the cerebrum in a transplant.

Biologistically speaking, it is tempting to think of the intellect and will as subserving the animal functions of homeostatic maintenance, growth and reproduction. But that is a mistake. In a human, the functioning of the intellect and will is more central to flourishing than the animal functions.

This may seem discontinuous from other animals. Some will be happy with the discontinuity and some will think it’s a reductio ad absurdum of the view. But I think there is less discontinuity than seems to be the case. Think of dogs. It seems that their social life, with one another and with humans, constitutes more of their flourishing than their performance of the functions that define biological life. The social life presumably evolved because it promoted nutrition, growth and reproduction, but the social life appears more valuable. Given the likely ties between this social life and the cerebrum, it would not surprise me if dogs went with their cerebra in a cerebrum transplant.

The questions here are ones of value, and we should avoid biologism about value, even in non-human animals.

Classical theists should take externalism in philosophy of mind more seriously

After Kripke, pretty much everyone nowadays accepts moderate mental externalism: the content of our thoughts depends on the extra-mental world. On earth where the predominant colorless liquid with such-and-such properties, the word “water” refers to water (i.e., H₂O), while on twin-earth where it is XYZ that has these properties, the word “water” refers to XYZ, and the thoughts that are expressed with sentences using “water” have a content involving water and XYZ, respectively, even if they are grounded in the same internal states of the brain and/or soul.

But there are stronger forms of mental externalism. First, we could have much more radical mental content externalism. Perhaps in one world the very same internal state means that there is water in the lake and in another world it means that the lake is dry but full of elephants. Second, we could have externalism about the subjective experience—the qualia—of mental activity. Thus, perhaps, depending on how extra-mental reality is, in one world one has the experience of seeing a red cube and in other that of smelling a daisy, despite having the same internal state in both worlds.

These stronger forms of mental externalism are rather counterintuitive and strange.

The point of this post, however, is that those of us who accept classical theism should take them much more seriously than we have tended to do. For on classical theism, God is simple and yet knows contingent extra-mental reality. This means that in different worlds God has different knowledge, while yet by simplicity remaining exactly internally the same. Hence we have an extremely strong mental content externism in the case of God: the very same state could mean that the universe consists of a lake with water and that it consists of a mountain covered by elephants. Moreover, if we add—as surely we should—that God’s knowledge is a conscious “vision” of reality, we also have to admit that externalism about subjective exerience is true of God.

Now, we cannot simply go from these externalisms being true of God to their being true of us. But I think we should take the externalisms in our case to be a very serious possibility.

A first attempt at exploring this kind of externalism in the case of subjective experience is here.