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.

Possible futures

Given a time t and a world w, possible or not, say that w is t-possible if and only if there is a possible world w_t that matches w in all atemporal respects as well as with respect to all that happens up to and including time t. For instance, a world just like ours but where in 2027 a square circle appears is 2026-possible but not 2028-possible.

Here is an interesting and initially plausible metaphysical thesis:

1. The world w is possible iff it is t-possible for every finite time t.

But (1) seems false. For imagine this:

2. On the first day of creation God creates you and promises you that on some future
   day a butterfly will be created ex nihilo. God never makes any other promises. God never makes butterflies. And nothing else relevant happens.

I assume God’s promises are unbreakable. The world described by (2) seems to be t-possible for every finite time t. For the fact that no butterfly has come into existence by time t does not falsify God’s promise that one day a butterfly will be created. But of course the world described by (2) is impossible.

(It’s interesting that I can’t think of a non-theistic counterexample to (1).)

So what? Well, here is one applicaiton. Amy Seymour in a nice paper responding to an argument of mine writes about the following proposition about situation where there are infinitely many coin tosses in heaven, one per day:

3. After every heads result, there is another heads result.

She says: “The open futurist can affirm that this propositional content has a nearly certain general probability because almost every possible future is one in which this occurs.” But in doing so, Seymour is helping herself to the idea of a “possible future”, and that is a problematic idea for an open futurist. Intuitively:

4. A possible future is one such that it is possible that it is true that it obtains.

But the open futurist cannot say that, since in the case of contingent futures, there can be no truth about its obtaining. The next attempt at accounting for a possible future may be to say:

5. A future is possible provided it will be true that it is possible that it obtains.

But that doesn’t work, either, since any future with infinitely many coin tosses (spaced out one per day) is such that at any time in the future, it is still not true that it is possible that it obtains, since its obtaining still depends on the then-still-future coin tosses. The last option I can think of is:

6. A future is possible provided that for every future time t it is t-possible.

But that fails for exactly the same reason that the t-possibility of worlds story fails.

Here is one way out: Deny classical theism, say that God is in time, and insist that God has to act at t in order to create something ex nihilo at t. But God, being perfect, can’t make a promise unless he has a way of ensuring the promise to come true. But how can God make sure that he will one day create the butterfly? After all, on any future day, God is free not to create it then. Now, if God promised to create a butterfly by some specific date, then God could be sure that he would follow through, since if he hadn’t done so prior to the specified date, he would be morally obligated to do so on that day, and being perfect he would do so. So since God can’t ensure the promise will come true, he can’t make the promise. (Couldn’t God resolve to create the butterfly on some specific day? On non-classical theism, maybe yes, but the act of resolving violates the clause “nothing else relevant happens” in (2).)

This way out doesn’t work for classical theism, where God is timeless and simple. For given timelessness, God can timelessly issue the promise and “simultaneously” timelessly make a butterfly appear on (say) day 18, without God being intrinsically any different for it. So I think the classical theist has reason to deny (1), and hence has no account of “possible futures” that is compatible with open futurism, and thus probably has to deny open futurism. Which is unsurprising—most classical theists do deny open futurism.

Why I can't believe in a God other than of classical theism

I can’t get myself to believe in a God who is an old bearded guy in the sky. That would be just a fairy tale.

What’s wrong with such a concept of God? It’s the beard! Seriously, the problem is that a guy who has a beard has parts and changing. Whether the parts are material or immaterial does not seem of very deep metaphysical significance. But having parts or changing, either one of these is an absurd anthropomorphism.

And hence I can’t get myself to believe in a God who changes or has parts. That leaves classical theism and atheism as the options. And atheism leads to scepticism, I think.

Divine speech acts and classical theism

Here is a question I have wondered about and have never heard or seen much discussion of:

1. What does it mean to say that God engaged in some speech act, such as commanding or asserting?

The more anthropomorphic one’s theism, the easier the question can be answered, because the closer the analogy between divine speech acts and ours. But the setting that interests me here is classical theism (both because it’s the truth theory of God and because it’s more challenging). In particular, let’s take on board divine immutability and simplicity.

Let’s think about the human case first. We’re going to have to pay close attention to such factors as intention and context. Thus, the same words in the same tone are an assertion in an ordinary conversation but not an assertion when spoken on a stage. The same handwritten sentence can be a command in one case and in another can be a handwriting exercise. Theorists will differ as to the balance between intention and context in the correct theory. But I think it is easy to argue that an important part of the distinction between assertion and play-acting or between command and handwriting exercise will be constituted by intentions. For instance, it is not simply being on a stage that makes one’s words not be assertions. The actor on stage can yell “Fire!” upon seeing the flames licking the back of the room, and that will be an assertion—even if that word happens to be exactly what the script calls for at this time. (It may be an assertion that is not taken up, though, much as an assertion might not be heard in a loud rooom.)

Very roughly speaking, to engage in a speech act of kind K, one has to form the intention to be taken by one’s audience as engaging in a speech act of kind K.

Now, there are natural rock formations that look like faces. Suppose that somewhere in the solar system there is a natural rock formation that spells out “God exists”, and one day an English speaking astronaut comes across it. Is it an assertion by God?

It is certainly something made by God. For God made everything other than himself. But did God make it with the intention that it be taken as an assertion? Or is it just a formation of rocks intended for some other purpose than to be taken as an assertion? (Presumably, it’s not a handwriting exercise, since God doesn’t need to practice being already perfect.)

On more anthropomorphic theisms, there is no special problem here about the God case. God can form the intention to make an assertion just as a human being can or, just as a human being, he can fail to form that intention. But if divine simplicity is correct, then there are no contingent intrinsic divine properties. There is just God. Any contingency is on the side of creation. In particular, there cannot be two worlds that are exactly alike except with respect to divine intentions intrinsic to God. Divine intentions must supervene on creation and on necessary truths about God. But what contingent facts about creation and necessary truths about God can make it be that the rock formation is or is not a divine assertion?

One might try to make use of divine reasons. I have argued that divine simplicity entails divine omnirationality: whenever God does something, he does it for all the good reasons there are for doing it, rather than choosing which of the good reasons to act on. Now, suppose that in fact the astronaut’s faith in God is strengthened by the rock formation. That’s a good thing. Goods provide reasons. So, God has a good reason to make the rock formation in order to strengthen the astronaut’s faith. But the astronaut’s faith is presumably strengthened by her taking the formation as a divine assertion. So, God has a reason to have the astronaut take the formation as a divine assertion. And, thus, by omnirationality, God is acting on that reason, and the rock formation is an assertion.

But take a variant case. Our astronaut lands on a planet with a rock formation that says “Kneel!” But, now, kneeling is both good and bad for the astronaut. Perhaps it is spiritually good but physically bad, because our astronaut has bad knees. The astronaut takes it as a command. That’s a good and a bad thing: she kneels, hurts her knees, and the mission is in jeopardy. But she spent a few minutes in prayer, and that was good for her. And, in fact, in a complex world there will generally be pluses and minuses of anything. Even in the case of the “God exists!” rock formation, there is some benefit to believing without such overt signs, perhaps a greater maturity of faith.

We could try to make the intention condition work something like this: God counts as intending that something assertion-like or command-like (structured symbolically in the right way) be taken as an assertion or command provided it’s good in some way that it be taken as such. But that seems overbroad. Or we could say it’s an assertion or command provided it’s good on balance that it be taken as such. But when we are dealing with incommensurable values, there may be no “on balance”. These objections aren’t fatal: but they point to a need to do serious philosophical work here.

Here is a possible different solution. We don’t need to advert to speaker intentions in every case to figure out whether something is a speech act of the right sort. When yelled from the stage, we may need to know whether “Fire!” is intended as a warning or as part of the script. But when yelled from the seats, there is no reasonable doubt. There are contexts where no reasonable person in the relevant audience would fail to take something as a certain kind of speech act. You come across the Summa Theologica in a heath. Of course, it’s a speech act, of whatever sort a theological discourse is (a series of arguments and assertions). Every reasonable person who knew the language (that’s perhaps the relevant audience component) would take it as such.

Perhaps we can now say this:

2. In contexts where every reasonable person in the relevant audience who knew the relevant context sufficiently well would take something to be a divine speech act of a certain kind, it is a primary case of a divine speech act of that kind.

For primary divine speech acts, we need some kind of reasonable luminosity: they need to be the sort of thing that one couldn’t reasonably doubt to be divine speech acts if one knew the relevant circumstances. Perhaps God builds into our nature an ability to recognize divine speech acts.

And then we have derivative cases of divine speech acts, which are when the initial audience is enlarged by means of the members of the initial audience becoming heralds of the message, and the process continues. When the herald is being faithful to the message, what the herald says counts as a speech act of the original speaker. So, the heralds pass on the word of God. And since the heralds are human, their intentions are relevant and raise no deep ontological concerns.

This story would lead to a rather restrictive view of divine speech acts. The rock formations, in a vast universe, could be reasonably doubted. So they aren’t primary divine speech acts. The primary divine speech acts may, rather, be more like cases of prophecy, where God makes it reasonably impossible for the prophet to doubt what kind of a speech act it is.

I am not very happy with any of the stories above. This is just a vague and inchoate start. I don’t really want to finish off this task. It would make a really interesting philosophical theology dissertation, though.

If classical theism rules out open theism, then classical theism rules out presentism

If presentism and most, if not all, other versions of the A-theory are true, then propositions change in truth value. For instance, on presentism, in the time of the dinosaurs it was not true that horses exist, but now it is true; on growing block, ten years ago the year 2019 wasn't at the leading edge of reality, but now it is. The following argument seems to show that such views are incompatible with classical theism.

1. God never comes to know anything.

2. If at t₁, x doesn’t know a proposition p but at t₂ > t₁, x knows p, then x comes to know p.

3. If propositions change in truth value, then there are times t₁ < t₂ and a proposition p such that p is not true at t₁ and p is true at t₂.

4. It is always the case that God knows every true proposition.

5. It is never the case that anyone knows any proposition that isn’t true.

6. So, if propositions change in truth value, then there are times t₁ < t₂ and a proposition p such that God doesn’t know p at t₁ but God does know p at t₂. (by 3-5)

7. So, if propositions change in truth value, God comes to know something. (by 2 and 6)

8. So, propositions do not change in truth value. (by 1 and 7)

I think the only controversial proposition is (1). Of course, some non-classical theists—say, open theists—will deny (1). But non-classical theists aren’t the target of the argument.

However, there is a way for classical theists to try to get out of (1) as well. They could say that the content of God’s knowledge changes, even though God and God’s act of knowing are unchanging. The move would be like this. We classical theists accept divine simplicity, and hence hold that God would not have been intrinsically any different had he created otherwise than he did. But had God created otherwise than he did, the content of his knowledge would have been different (since God knows what he creates). So the content of God’s knowledge needs to be partially constituted by created reality. (This could be a radical semantic externalism, say.) Thus, had God created otherwise than he did, God (and his act of knowledge which is identical to God) would have been merely extrinsically different.

But exactly the same move allows one to reconcile the denial of (1) with immutability. The content of God’s knowledge is partially constituted by created reality, and hence as created reality changes, the content of God’s knowledge changes, but the change in God is merely extrinsic, like a mother’s change from being taller than her daughter to being shorter than her daughter solely due to her daughter’s growth.

I agree that denying (1) is compatible with God’s being intrinsically unchanging. For a long time I thought that this observation destroyed the argument (1)-(8). But I now think not. For I am now thinking that even if (1) is compatible with immutability, (1) is a part of classical theism. For it is a part of classical theism that God doesn’t learn in any way, and coming to know is a kind of learning.

Here is one way to see that (1) is a part of classical theism. Classical theists want to reject any open theist views. But here is one open theist view, probably the best one. The future is open and propositions reporting what people will freely do tomorrow are now either false or neither-true-nor-false, but tomorrow they come to be true. An omniscient being knows all true propositions, but it is no shortcoming of omniscience to fail to know propositions that aren’t true. Then, our open theist says, God learns these propositions as soon as they become true. This is all that omniscience calls for.

Now, classical theists will want to reject this open theist view on the grounds of its violating immutability. But they cannot do so if they themselves reject (1). For the presentist (say) classical theist can reject (1) without violating immutability, so can our open theist. Indeed, our open theists can say exactly the same thing I suggested earlier: God changes extrinsically as time progresses, and the content of God’s knowledge changes, but God remains intrinsically the same.

So, what do I think the classical theist should say to our open theist? I think this: that God doesn’t come to know is not just a consequence of the doctrine of immutability, but is itself a part of the doctrine of immutability. A God who learns is mutable in an objectionable way even if this learning is not an intrinsic change in God. But if we say this, then of course we are committed to (1), and we cannot be presentists or accept any other of the theories of time on which propositions change in truth value.

I think the best response on the part of the classical theist who is an entrenched presentist would be to deny (1) and concede that classical theism does not rule out open theism. Instead, open theism is ruled out by divine revelation, and revelation here adds to classical theism. But it seems very strange to say that classical theism does not rule out open theism.