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.

Proper parts and dependence

Consider this initially plausible thesis:

1. If x has a proper part, and all of x’s proper parts depend on y, then x depends on y.

Add:

2. An effect depends on its cause.

3. Nothing depends on itself.

We conclude:

4. Nothing that has proper parts is a cause of all of them.

This has a nice theological application.

5. God is the cause of everything that is not God.

6. Therefore, if God has proper parts, he is the cause of all of them.

7. So, God has no proper parts.

However, I am dubious of premise 1. I think (1) depends on a story about parthood on which a whole is made of its parts. But if we don’t have that story, we could imagine a simple thing that then goes on to produce a proper part for itself. And so we lose the nice argument for divine simplicity. Which is too bad, but there are others.

Omniscience and vagueness

Suppose there is metaphysical vagueness, say that it’s metaphysically vague whether Bob is bald. God cannot believe that Bob is bald, since then Bob is bald. God cannot believe that Bob is not bald, since then Bob is not bald. Does God simply suspend judgment?

Here is a neat solution for the classical theist. Classical theists believe in divine simplicity. Divine simplicity requires an extrinsic constitution model of divine belief or knowledge in the case of contingent things. Suppose a belief version. Then, plausibly, God’s beliefs about contingent things are partly constituted by the realities they are about. Hence, it is plausible that when a reality is vague, it is vague whether God believes in this reality.

Here is another solution. If we think of belief as taking-as-true and disbelief as taking-as-false, we should suppose a third state of taking-as-vague. Then we say that for every proposition, God has a belief, disbelief or third state, as the case might be.

Perfect vision

One of the major themes in modern philosophy was concerns about the way that our contact with the world is mediated by our “ideas”. Thus, you are looking at a tree. But are you really seeing the tree, or are you just seeing your sense-impression, which doesn’t have much in common with the tree? Even direct realists like Reid who say you are seeing the cat still think that your conscious experience involves qualia that aren’t like a tree.

Thinking about this gives us the impression that an epistemically better way to relate to the tree would be if the tree itself took the place of our sense-impressions or qualia. Berkeley did that, but at the cost of demoting the tree to a mere figment of our perception. But if we could do that without demoting the tree, then we would be better kinds of perceivers.

However, that on some theory we would be better kinds of perceivers is not a strong reason to think that theory is true! After all, we would be better perceivers if we could see far infrared, but we can’t. It’s not my point to question the orthodoxy about our perceptions of trees.

But now think about beatitude, where the blessed see God. If seeing God is like seeing a tree in the sense that there is something like a mediating supersense-impression in us, then something desirable is lacking in the blessed. And that’s not right. Such a mediated vision of God is not as intimate as we could wish for. Would it not be so much more intimate if it were a direct vision of God in the fullest sense, where God himself takes the place of our qualia? We shouldn’t argue from “it would be better that way” to “it is that way” in our earthly lives, but in beatitude it does not seem such a terrible argument.

But where this kind of argument really comes into its own is when we think of what the epistemic life of a perfect being would be like. The above considerations suggest that when God sees the tree (and it is traditional to compare God’s knowledge of creation to vision), the vision is fully direct and intimate, and the tree itself plays the role of sense-impressions in us. We would expect a perfect being’s vision to be like that.

Now notice, however, that this is an account of God’s vision of the world on which God’s vision is partly extrinsically constituted: the tree partly constitutes God’s conscious experience of the tree. This is the extrinsic constitution model of how a simple God can know. We have thus started with us and with considerations of perfection, and have come to something like this model without any considerations of divine simplicity. Thus the model is not an ad hoc defense of divine simplicity. It is, rather, a model of the perfect way to epistemically relate to the world.

God's forebeliefs are soft facts

The most commonly discussed argument against the compatibility of foreknowledge and free will is based on the “fixity of the past”—that nothing you can do can affect how things were, and hence nothing you can do can affect what God had believed.

However, everyone except the logical fatalist agrees that the “fixity of the past” does not apply to so-called “soft facts”. An example of a soft fact (an expansion of an example of Richard Gale) is to suppose that Alice drank a cup of poison, but hasn’t died yet. Alice would survive if Bob calls 911, but he’s not going to. Then it’s a fact that Alice drank a fatal cup, but this is a soft fact, and there is no difficulty in saying that Bob can make this fact not to have obtained. It is only the hard facts about the past that are supposed to be fixed.

Thus, much of the discussion has focused on the question of whether God’s past forebeliefs could be soft facts. In this post, I want to note that classical theists have very good reason to think that God’s past forebeliefs are soft facts.

Start with the following plausible principle:

1. If a fact F expressed by a past-tense statement is partly grounded in a fact G about the present or future, then F is a soft fact.

Of course, defining a fact “about the present or future” is just as difficult as defining a soft fact, but I am not trying to give a definition of a soft fact, just giving a sufficient condition for being one.

Now, on classical theism, God is simple and hence has no intrinsic accidental features. God’s beliefs about contingent realities then have to be partly constituted by those contingent realities (this is the extrinsic constitution model, and it is unavoidable). Such partial extrinsic constitution is a type of grounding. Thus, God’s belief in a fact is partly grounded in that fact.

Hence, God’s having believed in a fact about the present or future is partly grounded in that fact, and thus by (1) is a soft fact. And everyone except the logical fatalist agrees that soft facts are not subject to the fixity of the past, and hence soft facts about God’s forebeliefs do not threaten free will.

Beyond metaphysical immutability

For years I was convinced that the extrinsic constitution model of divine knowledge, which theists who accept divine simplicity must accept, solves the problem of divine immutability in an A-theoretic world where truth changes. The idea was that God’s knowledge of contingent facts is constituted by God’s unchanging essential features (which given simplicity are God himself) together with the changing contingent realities that God knows, that God’s gaze extends to. (This idea is not original to me. Aquinas already had it and probably many contemporary people have independently found it.)

But I now think that this was too quick. For let’s take the idea seriously. The point of the idea is that an unchanging God can have changing knowledge. But now notice that God’s knowledge is conscious. The language of “God’s gaze” that I used above (and which Boethius also uses in his famous discussion of divine knowledge of free actions) itself suggests this—God sees the changing reality. At one time God sees Adam sinless. At another time God sees Adam sinful. This is a difference in conscious state. Granted, this difference in conscious state is entirely metaphysically constituted by the changing reality. But it still means that God’s conscious state changes. It changes in virtue of its extrinsic constituent, but it is still true that God at t₁ is conscious of one thing and God at t₂ is conscious of something else instead. And I submit that that is incompatible with divine immutability.

I think there are two responses the classical theist who believes in changing truths can give. The first is to deny that God is conscious of the changes. I think this is unacceptable. The more vivid and the more vision-like knowledge is, the more perfect it is. The idea that God has merely unconscious knowledge of contingents does not do justice to the perfection of omniscience.

The second response is to bite the bullet and say that God’s conscious state changes but this is compatible with immutability as long as this does not involve an intrinsic change in God. I think this is untenable. That God’s conscious state does not change is, I think, a central part of the content of immutability, regardless of whether this conscious state is intrinsically or extrinsically constituted. For a non-physical being, change of conscious mental state is a paradigmatically central kind of change—regardless of the metaphysics of how that change of conscious state comes about. When God says in Malachi 3:6 that he does not change, it seems very implausible to think that the listener is supposed to say: “Sure, but sometimes God has one conscious state and sometimes another, and because this change is grounded extrinsically, that’s OK.” Malachi isn’t doing heavy-duty scholastic/analytic metaphysics. Similarly, when the early Church Fathers say that God is unchanging I doubt they would tolerate the idea that God’s conscious state changes. The extrinsic constitution story is an explanation of what makes God’s conscious state change, and I expect the Church Fathers wouldn’t have cared what the explanation would be—they would just deny the change.

Jumping from the Church Fathers to the modern period, Calvin says that God “cannot be touched with repentance, and his heart cannot undergo changes. To imagine such a thing would be impiety.” But if God’s conscious states are extrinsically constituted and can change, there would be nothing to prevent the idea of God’s “heart” undergoing changes: when people behave well, God feels pleased; when people behave badly and deserve vengeance, God feels vengeful. The differences in God’s feeling would be, one could imagine, constituted by the differences in human behavior and divine response to it. But it would be implausible to think that Calvin would say “Well, as long as the change is extrinsically constituted, it’s OK.” We then wouldn’t need Calvin’s famous story—itself going back to the Church Fathers—of the accommodation of divine speech to our needs. When Calvin insists that God’s heart cannot undergo changes, he isn’t just concerned about divine metaphysics. He is rightly concerned about a picture of a God with a changing mental life. And here at least, Calvin is with the mainstream of the Christian tradition.

If I am right in the above, there is a disanalogy between how God’s mental state behaves across possible worlds and across times. We have to say that in different possible worlds God has different (extrinsically constituted according to divine simplicity) conscious states. But we cannot say that God has different conscious states at different times.

Some thinkers, especially open theists, want the doctrine of divine immutability not to be about metaphysics but about the constancy of God’s character, purposes and promises. I think they are wrong: the doctrine of immutability really does include what we might call metaphysical immutability, that God has no intrinsic change. But metaphysical immutability is not enough. A mental and especially conscious immutability is also central to how we understand divine immutability.

And this is not compatible with the A-theory of time, given omniscience. Which is too bad. While I myself am a B-theorist, the reasoning in yesterday’s post was giving me the hope that we could detach the A- and B-theoretic debate from theism, so that the theist wouldn’t need to take a stand on it. But, alas, I think a stand needs to be taken.

From three or four problems of omniscience down to one

The three most influential problems of omniscience are:

1. Boethius’ problem of foreknowledge: What is known is necessarily so, and thus if God knows what you will do, you will necessarily do it.

2. Pike’s problem of foreknowledge: If you can act otherwise, you can thereby make it be that either God didn’t exist or that God wasn’t omniscient or that God had believed otherwise than God actually did, and you just can’t do that.

3. The simplicity and knowledge of contingents problem: If the world had been different, God’s beliefs would have been different, which implies that God’s beliefs are accidents of God, contrary to divine simplicity.

Of these, (1) is fully solved by Boethius/Aquinas by distinguishing between necessity of consequence and necessity of consequent. The problem in (1) is just a simple matter of a fallacy of modal scope ambiguity. It’s a non-problem.

I now want to argue that the most widely accepted solution to (3) also solves (2).

This solution, likely already known to Aquinas, is that God’s belief in contingent facts is partly extrinsically constituted by creatures, and all the contingency is on the created side. For instance, God’s belief that there are zebras is grounded in essential facts about God that do not vary between possible worlds and the actual existence of zebras, which only obtains in some possible worlds.

Suppose we apply this solution to (3). Then God’s belief that you will ϕ at t is partly grounded in your ϕing at t and partly in essential facts about God. At this point it is obvious that:

4. If you were not to ϕ at t, God wouldn’t have believed you would ϕ at t.

For the contingent part of the grounds of God’s believing that you would ϕ at t is your actually ϕing at t, so when you take that away, God’s belief goes away. And if instead you ψ at t, your action thereby constitutes the contingent part of the grounds of God’s believing that you would ψ at t, and so:

5. If you were to ψ at t, God would have believe you would ψ at t.

If God’s past belief is partly constituted by our actions, it is no surprise that there is counterfactual dependence between our actions and God’s past belief. In other words, the classical theist who accepts divine simplicity has a way out of Pike’s argument that is motivated completely independently of considerations of time and freedom, namely by embracing counterfactuals like (4) and (5) that Pike considers absurd.

Of course the extrinsic constitution of divine beliefs is somewhat hard to swallow, notwithstanding excellent work by people like W. Matthews Grant to make it more plausible (I myself have swallowed it). But once we do that, problem (2) is gone, and problem (1) was never there as it was based on a fallacy.

There is a fourth problem, a more recondite one, which is about the incompatibility between God’s knowledge of what time is objectively present (assuming the A-theory of time) and divine immutability. Probably the most extensive pressing of this problem is in Richard Gale’s On the Nature and Existence of God. But Aquinas (according to the very plausible interpretation by Miriam Pritschet in an excellent paper I heard yesterday at the ACPA) responds to the fourth problem precisely by using the extrinsic constitution of God’s knowledge of continent facts (indeed this is why I said that the solution to the simplicity problem was likely known to Aquinas). So even that fourth problem reduces to the third—or just doesn’t get off the ground if the B-theory of time is true.

Mononoetism

Every so often I come against someone who is defending a Christological view I want to call “mononoetism”: that Christ has only one mind. While the Third Council of Constantinople condemned the errors that Christ has only one will (monothelitism) or only one natural operation (monoenergism), I do not know of any conciliar condemnation of mononoetism. Nonetheless, I think the reasoning behind the condemnations of monothelitism applies to mononoetism.

Mononoetism could in principle come in three sorts: Christ has only one mind and it’s a human mind; Christ has only one mind and it’s a divine mind; Christ has one hybrid human-divine mind. I think the first and second options are non-starters. If Christ has only a human mind, he’s not consubstantial with the Father. If Christ has only a divine mind, he has not taken on the human nature. So we should only consider the hybrid human-divine mind view.

But a hybrid human-divine mind view seems to be the kind of “confusion and mixture” between human and divine natures that the Council of Chalcedon objects to. Indeed, the letter of Pope Agatho, approved by the Council, shows that the opposition to monothelitism is just a working out of the teaching of earlier Councils, and Agatho’s reasoning applies just as much to the mind. Just replace “will” with “mind” here:

While if it is asserted that there is but one will in him (which is absurd), those who make this assertion must needs say that that will is either human or divine, or else composite from both, mixed and confused, or (according to the teaching of all heretics) that Christ has one will and one operation, proceeding from his one composite nature (as they hold). And thus, without any doubt, the difference of nature is destroyed, which the holy synods declared to be preserved in all respects even after the admirable union. Because, though they taught that Christ was one, his person and substance one, yet on account of the union of the natures which was made hypostatically, they likewise decreed that we should clearly acknowledge and teach the difference of those natures which were united in him, after the admirable union. Therefore if the proprieties of the natures in the same our one Lord Jesus Christ were preserved on account of the difference [of the natures], it is congruous that we should with full faith confess also the difference of his natural wills and operations, in order that we may be shown to have followed in all respects their doctrine, and may admit into the Church of Christ no heretical novelty.

Next, let’s think about the Trinity, and ask if there are three minds or one in the Trinity. On the mononoetism under consideration, Christ has to have the hybrid mind without also having a divine mind (or else he would have two minds: a hybrid one and a divine one). Then if all three Persons have one mind, it follows that the Father and Holy Spirit also have a hybrid human-divine mind, which is plainly absurd—it implies a partial Incarnation by the Father and by the Holy Spirit. So the mononoetist has to hold that each Person of the Trinity has a distinct mind. Mononoetism about Christ implies trinoetism about God.

Trinoetism about God seems to violate divine simplicity, but a trinoetist about God is likely to deny that, holding that mind does not go with the single divine substance or ousia but with the three Persons or hypostases. But let’s think this through. The argument from mononoetism about Christ to trinoetism about God is a special case of a general principle that what there is one of in Christ there is three of in God and vice versa. If the general principle holds, then we have to hold that there is one will in God. For if there were three wills in God, we would have one will in Christ, and that’s the condemned heresy of monothelitsm about Christ. Furhermore, the idea of three wills in God requires a story about why it is metaphysically impossible for these wills to disagree (for if they could disagree, then the three persons couldn’t each be omnipotent!). The best story would be a subordinationist one—the Son and Holy Spirit’s wills are obedient to the Father. But this seems contrary to the equality of the Trinity.

So let’s take it that God has but one will. Mononoetism about Christ has, however, led us to the idea that God has three minds. How does one will in three minds work? A will decides between options presented by a mind. But now things start to fall apart again. Even if the contents of the allegedly distinct minds of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same, there is still the question of which mind is the one that is informing the one divine will. If only one or two minds are informing the divine will, we lose the equality of Persons in the Trinity—one or two Persons are partly left out of decisions. So probably one has to say that the one divine will, uniquely, is equally and overdeterminately informed by three minds. This doesn’t seem right. For a person’s will looks to the person’s own mind. (Objection: If Alice loves Bob, she looks to Bob’s mind in her decisions. Response: Yes, but only indirectly by mirroring the contents of Bob’s mind in her mind.) And, besides this, it seems that divine simplicity requires that the divine will and the divine mind are the same thing, which completely rules out the idea of one will with three minds.

We can repeat the argument of the previous paragraph with operations or energeiai. Monoenergism about Christ is condemned. Christ has two operations. On general principles, then, we would expect one operation in the Trinity, just as one will. But if there are three minds, it seems there are three operations, since a mind operates (its operation grounds the thinking of the person or persons who with the mind).

Next, let’s think about the alleged hybrid human-divine mind of Christ. In forming this hybrid mind, the divine mind of Christ seems to have changed—it has hybridized. For if it has not changed, then we still have the divine mind in addition to the hybrid one. But divine minds cannot change, since God cannot change! Indeed, the divine mind is presumably timeless. If it is timeless, it eternally exists. Thus it seems that on mononoetism Christ does have two minds after all, and so we do not have mononoetism: he has the hybrid mind and the eternally existing divine mind. This is, however, a kind of difficult argument to run. Can one not make the exact same objection to the Incarnation? How can the divine Person not change in the Incarnation? Well, orthodoxy says that the divine Person remains a divine Person. But on the hybrid human-divine mononoetism, the divine mind does not remain a divine mind, or else Christ would have two minds.

Perhaps, though, the mononoetist can try for a “smaller” version of the Incarnation: just as the divine Person comes to take on humanity, so we have one Person with two personal natures, human and divine, the divine mind comes to take on human mentality, so we have one Mind with two mental natures, human and divine. Perhaps ths would allow one to avoid the rather monstrous sounding “hybridization” that I have been assuming earlier. But here is a problem. By divine simplicity, the only distinctions in God are relational distinctions between the Persons. If God has one mind, that mind is identical to God. As argued earlier, if there is one mind in Christ, there are three in God, one per Person. But by the only-relational-distinctions principle, the mind of each person must be identical to the Person. If then the divine mind of the Logos comes to take on human mentality, so that it is both a human mind and a divine mind, like the Logos taking on humanity so that the Logos is both human and divine, then since the divine mind is identical with the Person, the Logos, it follows that the Person also takes on human mentality. Thus, the Logos is now three things: God, human and a human mind. We can say that the Logos became man, but we can also the Logos became a man’s mind. This requires a kind of inhuman relationship between the man and the man’s human mind: Jesus is Jesus’s human mind (which on this version of mononoetism is also identical with Jesus’s divine mind). Of course, Cartesians who think you are your mind won’t think there is anything strange about that. But they are wrong! And it would be very odd if Cartesianism were true about Jesus but about no one else. That would seem to undercut the idea that Jesus is like us in all human things but sin.

It is thus quite difficult to hold to mononoetism about Christ while rejecting monothelitism and monoenergism. And in any case there is a neat inductive argument: two wills, two operations, so probably two minds.

Divine willing

A correspondent asked me how a simple God can choose. I've thought much about this, never quite happy with what I have to say. I am still not happy (nor is it surprising if "how God functions" is beyond us!) but the following helps me a little.

Suppose I am choosing between making a brownie or a smoothie, and end up making a smoothie. Then there are four stages with each stage causing the next:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and any other options).

2. An internal intention for a smoothie.

3. Physical movements.

4. Output: smoothie!

At Stage 1, I am still open between brownie and smoothie. Starting with Stage 2, I am internally set on the smoothie, and at that point I become morally responsible for setting myself on the smoothie.

Now one great thing about God’s power is that God doesn’t need means: he can produce effects directly.

In particular, God will omit stage 3: he doesn’t need moving limbs (nor anything else beyond himself) to produce the smoothie in the way that I need them.

Now suppose we apply perfect being theology to God. It’s a perfection of power not to need means. But stage 3 is not the only means in the above story: stage 2 is also a means. If God really doesn’t need means, then stage 2 will also be omitted in God, and we will have the two (non-temporal) stage production:

1. Deliberation between brownie and smoothie (and infinitely many other options).

2. Output: smoothie!

In particular, nowhere in this account is there an internal intention. It’s not needed: God acts directly on the external world.

We might ask: How does God know that he intends to create a smoothie? I think it’s by direct observation of the output, stage B in the divine case. (And God’s knowledge of contingencies is extrinsically grounded in the contingencies.)

If that sounds wrong, let’s ask how we know what we intend. Sometimes we know what we intend by introspection: by observing the internal intention of stage 2. But not always. Sometimes stage 2 is not conscious—we deliberate, we presumably form an internal intention but we are not directly aware of it, and then we act. When we deliberate whether to do something minor like whether to lift the left or the right hand, sometimes the first thing we are aware of is not an internal intention or specific act of will, but the movement of the hand itself. Thus, even in us, knowledge of our intentions is sometimes read off from stage 3.

Moreover, in some cases, for us, stage 3 is not distinct from stage 4. For we have bodies that we move, and sometimes—as in the hand-lift case—the output is the same as the physical movements. In some such cases, then direct knowledge of the merges stages 3 and 4 is how we know our own intention. There may even be rare cases where stage 3 and stage 4 are distinct, but in our consciousness, the knowledge of stage 4 comes first. Suppose I am deliberating whether to press the space-bar or the enter key in response to the computer saying “Press any key”. I choose to press the space-bar. It may well be that in the order of consciousness, I first feel the impact of my finger on the keyboard, then I discern the subtler kinesthetic sensation of my finger having moved through the air, and then only then do I realize what key I intended to press. I don’t know if this is how it happens—it’s too fast to be confident of phenomenology—but it seems like an intelligible possibility.

In any case, there is nothing absurd about knowing an intention by direct observation of the output.

While writing the above, it occurred to me that perhaps we shouldn’t be all that confident that we always have a stage 2. In the cases where our knowledge of what we intend comes from knowledge of stage 3 or 4, and we do not have direct conscious access to an internal act of intention, the internal act of intention is a mere theoretical posit. Perhaps that theoretical posit is correct, but perhaps it is not. If it is not, then one can intend a specific output without having an internal specified act of intention.

Divine thought simplicity

One of the motivations for denying divine simplicity is the plausibility of the claim that:

1. There is a multiplicity of divine thoughts, which are a proper part of God.

But it turns out there are reasons to reject (1) independent of divine simplicity.

Here is one reductio of the distinctness of God and God’s thoughts.

2. God is distinct from his thoughts.

3. If x’s thoughts are distinct from x, then x causes x’s thoughts.

4. Everything caused by God is a creature.

5. So, God’s thoughts are creatures.

6. Every creature explanatorily depends on a divine rational decision to create it.

7. A rational decision explanatorily depends on thoughts.

8. So, we have an ungrounded infinite explanatory regress of thoughts.

9. Ungrounded infinite explanatory regresses are impossible.

10. Contradiction!

Here is another that also starts with 2–5 but now continues:

11. God’s omniscience is identical with or dependent on God’s thoughts.

12. None of God’s essential attributes are identical with or dependent on any creatures.

13. Omniscience is one of God’s essential attributes.

14. Contradiction!

Anthropomorphism about God

Consider an anthropomorphic picture of God that some non-classical theists have:

1. God is not simple, and in particular God’s beliefs are proper parts of God.

2. God’s beliefs change as the reality they are about changes.

Putting these together, it follows that:

3. I can bring about the destruction of a part of God.

How? Easy. I am now sitting, and God knows that. So, a part of God is the belief that I am sitting. But I can destroy that belief of God’s by standing up! For as soon as I stand up, the belief that I am sitting will no longer exist. But on the view in question, God’s beliefs are parts of him. So by standing up, I would bring it about that a part of God doesn’t exist.

But (3) is as absurd as can be.

And of course by standing up, I bring it about that a new divine belief exists. So:

4. I can bring about the genesis of a part of God.

Which is really absurd, too.

Arguing for divine simplicity

I want to defend this argument:

1. If God is not simple, then some of God’s parts are creatures.

2. If some of the parts of x are creatures, then x is partly a creature.

3. God is not even partly a creature.

4. So, God is simple.

I think (2) is very plausible. Premise (3) follows from the transcedence of God.

That leaves premise (1) to argue for. Here is one argument:

5. If God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

6. Anything that is not God is a creature.

7. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is a creature.

Premise (5) is true by definition of “simple”. Premise (6) follows from the doctrine of creation: God creates everything other than God.

But perhaps one doesn’t believe the full doctrine of creation, but only thinks that contingent things are created. I think we can still argue as follows:

8. If God is not simple, then God has contingent parts that are not God.

9. Anything contingent that is not God is a creature.

10. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

Why think (8) is true? Well, let’s think about the motivations for denying divine simplicity. The best reasons to deny divine simplicity are considerations about God’s contingent intentions or God’s contingent knowledge, and the idea that these have to constitute proper parts of God. But that yields contingent parts of God.

Now, what if one rejects even the weaker doctrine of creation in (9)? Then I can argue as follows:

11. If God is not simple, then God’s contingent thoughts are proper parts of God.

12. God is contingently the cause of each of his contingent thoughts.

13. Anything that God is contingently the cause of is a creature of God.

14. So, if God is not simple, then God has a part that is not God.

Again, the idea behind (11) is that it flows from the best motivations for denying divine simplicity.

In search of real parthood

In contemporary mereology, it is usual to have two parthood relations: parthood and proper parthood. On this orthodoxy, it is trivially true that each thing is a part of itself and that nothing can be a proper part of itself.

I feel that this orthodoxy has failed to identify the truly fundamental mereological relation.

If it is trivial that each thing is a part of itself, then that suggests that parthood is a disjunctive relation: x is a part of y if and only if x = y or x is a part^* of y, where parthood^* is a more fundamental relation. But what then is parthood^*? It is attractive to identify it with proper parthood. But if we do that, we can now turn to the trivial claim that nothing can be a proper part of itself. The triviality of this claim suggests that proper parthood is a conjunctive property, namely a conjunction of distinctness with some parthood^† relation. And on pain of circularity, parthood^† is not just parthood.

In other words, I find it attractive to think that there is some more fundamental relation than either of the two relations of contemporary mereology. And once we have that more fundamental relation, we can define contemporary mereological parthood as the disjunction of the more fundamental relation with identity and contemporary mereological proper parthood as the conjunction of the more fundamental relation with distinctness.

But I am open to the possibility that the more fundamental relation just is one of parthood and proper parthood, in which case the claim that everything is a part of itself or the claim that nothing is a part of itself is respectively non-trivial.

I will call the more fundamental relation “real parthood”. It is a relation that underlies paradigmatic instances of proper parthood. And now genuine metaphysical questions open up about identity, distinctness and real parthood. We have three possibilities:

1. Necessarily, each thing is a real part of itself.

2. Necessarily, nothing is a real part of itself.

3. Possibly something is a real part of itself and possibly something is not a real part of itself.

If (1) is true, then real parthood is necessarily coextensive with contemporary mereological parthood. If (2) is true, then real parthood is necessarily coextensive with contemporary mereological proper parthood.

My own guess is that if there is such a thing as parthood at all, then (3) is true.

For the more fundamental a relation, the more I want to be able to recombine where it holds. Why shouldn’t God be able to induce the relation between two distinct things or refuse to induce it between a thing and itself? And it’s really uncomfortable to think that whatever the real parthood relation is, God has to be in that relation to himself.

Perhaps, though, the real parthood relation is a kind of dependency relation. If so, then since nothing can be dependent on itself, we couldn’t have a thing being a real part of itself, and real parthood would be coextensive with proper parthood.

All this is making me think that either real parthood is necessarily coextensive with proper parthood, or it is not necessarily coextensive with either of the two relations of contemporary mereology.

Models of libertarian agency, and some more on divine simplicity

Here is a standard libertarian picture of free and responsible choice. I am choosing between two non-mental actions, A and B. I deliberate on the basis of the reasons for A and the reasons for B. This deliberation indeterministically causes an inner mental state W(A), which is the will or resolve or intention to produce A. And then W(A) causes, either deterministically or with high probability, the extra-mental action A.

Now notice two things. First, notice that my production of the state W(A) is itself something I am morally responsible for. Imagine that I have resolved myself to gratuitously insult you. If it turns out that my vocal chords are paralyzed, my resolve W(insult) is itself enough to make me guilty.

Second, note that that my production of W(A) could involve the production of a prior second-order state of will or resolve, a willing W(W(A)) to will to produce A. For there are times when it’s hard to resolve ourselves to do something, and in those cases we might resolve ourselves to resolve ourselves first. But at the same time, to avoid an infinite regress, we should not adopt a view on which every time we responsibly produce something, we do so by forming a prior state of willing or resolve or intention. In light of this, although my production of W(A) could involve the production of a prior second-order state W(W(A)), it need not do so. In fact, phenomenologically, it seems more plausible to think that in typical cases of free choice, we do not go to the meta level of producing W(W(A)). We only go to the meta level in special cases, such as when we have to “steel” ourselves to gain the resolve to do the action.

Thus we have seen that, assuming libertarianism, it is possible for me to be responsible for indeterministically producing a state of affairs W(A) without producing a prior state of willing or resolving or intending in favor of W(A). The state W(A) is admittedly an inner mental state. But the responsibility for W(A) does not seem to have anything to do with the innerness of W(A). We are responsible for W(A) because our deliberation indeterministically but non-aberrantly results in W(A).

Here is a question: Could there be cases where we have libertarian-free actions where instead of our deliberation indeterministically non-aberrantly resulting in W(A), and thereby making us responsible for W(A) as well as A, our deliberation directly indeterministically and non-aberrantly results in the extra-mental action A, without an intervening inner mental state W(A) that deterministically or with high probability causes A, but with us nonetheless being responsible for A?

Once we have admitted—as a libertarian has to, on pain of a regress of willings—that we can be responsible for producing a state of affairs without a prior willing of that state of affairs, then it seems hard to categorically deny the possibility of us producing an extra-mental state of affairs responsibly without an intervening prior willing. And in fact phenomenology fits quite well with the hypothesis that we do that. We do many things intentionally and responsibly without being aware of a willing, resolve or intention to do them. If we stick to the initial libertarian model on which there must be an intervening mental state W(A), we have to say that either the state W(A) is hidden from us—unconscious—or that these actions are only free in a derivative way. Neither is a particularly attractive hypothesis. Why not, simply, admit that sometimes deliberation results in an extra-mental action that we are responsible for without an intervening willing, resolve or intention?

Well, I can think of one reason:

1. It seems that you can only be responsible for what we do intentionally, and we cannot do something intentionally without intending something.

But note that if this reason undercuts the possibility of our responsibly directly doing A without an intervening act W(A) of intention, it likewise undercuts the possibility of our responsibly directly producing W(A) without an intervening W(W(A)) act, and sets us on a vicious regress.

I actually think (1) can be accepted. In that case, when we directly responsibly produce W(A), the intentionality in the production of W(A) is constituted by the non-aberrant causal connection between deliberation and W(A), rather than by some regress-engendering intention-for-W(A) prior to W(A). And the occurrence of W(A) means that we are intending something, namely A.

But what would it be like if we were to directly responsibly produce A, without an intervening act of intention W(A)? How would that be reconciled with (1)? Again, the intentionality of the production of A would be constituted by the non-aberrant causal connection between deliberation and A. And the content of the intention would supervene on the actual occurrence of A as well as on the reasons favoring A that were instrumental in the deliberation. (There are some complications about excluded reasons. Maybe in those cases deliberation can have an earlier stage where one freely decides whether to exclude some reasons.)

Call the cases where we thusly directly responsibly produce an extra-mental action A cases of direct agency.

A libertarian need not believe we exhibit direct agency. Perhaps we always have one level of resolve, willing or intention as an inner mental state. But the libertarian should not be dogmatic here, given the above arguments.

Our phenomenology suggests that we do exhibit direct agency, and indeed do so quite commonly. And if God is simple, and hence does not have contingent inner states, all of God’s indeterministic free actions are cases of direct agency.

In fact, independently of divine simplicity, we may have some reason to prefer the direct agency model in the case of God. Consider why it is that sometimes we go to the meta level of W(W(A)): we do so because of the weakness of our wills, we have to will ourselves to will ourselves to produce A. It seems that a perfect being would never have reason to go to the meta level of W(W(A)). So, the remaining question is whether a perfect being would ever have reason to go to the W(A) level. I think there is some plausibility in the idea that just as going to the W(W(A)) level is a sign of weakness, a sign of a need for self-control, going to the W(A) level is also a sign of imperfection—a sign that one needs a tool, even if an intra-mental tool, for the production of A. It seems plausible, thus, that if this is possible and compatible with freedom and responsibility, a perfect being would simply directly produce A (where A is, say, the action of the being’s causing horses to exist). And I have argued that it is possible, and it is compatible with freedom and responsibility.

Divine simplicity and responsibility for creation

Libertarians believes something like this:

1. If an agent has primary responsibility for a state of affairs A, then the agent gained that resposibility by intentionally indeterministically causing A.

Here, primary responsibility is distinguished from the kind of derivative responsibility that someone who freely got drunk (and hence has primary responsibility for getting drunk) has for the accident caused while drunk.

Next, add this plausible thesis:

2. If an agent gains primary responsibility for a state of affairs A by intentionally causing A, then the agent has primary responsibility for an intention relevantly connected to A.

Now, combine (1) and (2). Suppose Alice has primary responsibility for A. Then she had an intention I = I₁ relevantly connected to A that she had primary responsibility for. Applying (1) and (2) to I₁, we conclude that Alice had primary responsibility for an intention I₂ relevantly connected to I, and primary responsibility for an intention I₃ relevantly connected to I₂, and so on, ad infinitum.

But of course we don’t have an infinite chain of intentions. So we must break out of the chain. I think there is only one way to do so: at some point, I_n = I_n + 1. In other words, the intention relevantly connected to I_n just is I_n once again: there is no further intention. Rather, one’s intention to produce I_n is just constituted by I_n.

This means that it is possible for one to be primarily responsible for a state of affairs A—say an intention I_n—when the intention with which one caused A is itself at least partly constituted by A.

Now, I take it that something like this is what happens when a simple God creates something: God’s intention to create horses is partly constituted by horses, rather than simply by some inner state of God’s.

There is a lesson here: The primary worry that one has about a simple God’s contingently creating things—namely, that a simple God cannot have contingent inner states—is mirrored by a parallel worry about a libertarian agent’s production of intentions.

God's vision of reality

Consider the simple theory of visual sensation on which for me to have a visual sensation as of y is for x to stand in a “vision relation” to y, with the relation being external to x so that x is no different intrinsically when x has a visual sensation as of a red cube and when x does not.

We know that this simple theory is false of us for the obvious reason that we suffer from visual hallucinations or illusions: there are cases where we have a visual sensation as of a red cube in the absence of a red cube. Our best explanation of visual misperception is that visual sensation is mediated by an internal state of ours that can occur in the absence of the apparently visually sensed object. Thus, we have internal modifications—accidents—of visual perception.

But now consider what I think of as the biggest objection to the doctrine of divine simplicity: God’s knowledge of contingent facts. This objection holds that God must be internally different in worlds where what he knows is different, or at least sufficiently different. This objection is based on the intuition that knowledge is written into the knower, that it is an intrinsic qualification of the knower.

Let’s, however, think what a perfect knower’s knowledge would be like. My knowledge divides into the dispositional and the occurrent: I dispositionally know my multiplication table, but at most one fact from that table is occurrent at any given time. It is clear that having merely dispositional knowledge is not the perfection of knowledge. A perfect knower would know all reality occurrently at once. Moreover, my knowledge varies in vividness. Some things, like perhaps the fundamental theorem of algebra, I know “theoretically” (in the modern sense of the word, not the etymological one) and “discursively”, and some facts—such as my visual knowledge of the screen in front of me—are vividly present to my mind. The vivid knowledge is more perfect, so we would expect a perfect knower to know all reality occurrently at once in the liveliest and most vivid way, more like in a vision of reality than in a discursive mental representation.

Let’s go back to the simple theory of visual sensation. Our reason for rejecting that theory in our own case was that it did not accord with the fact that humans are subject to visual misperception. But suppose that we never misperceived. Then we could easily believe the simple theory, at least until we learned a bit more about the contingent causal processes behind our visual processing.

Thus, the reason for rejecting the simple theory in our case was our imperfection. But this leaves open the possibility that something like the simple theory could hold for the vision-like knowledge of reality that a perfect knower would have. Such a knower might not have any internal state “mirroring” reality, but might simply have reality related to it in a relation of being-known which is external on the knower’s side. In the case of a perfect knower, we have no need to account for a possibility of misperception. Thus, the perfect knower may know me simply by having me be related to it by a relation of being-known, a relation external to the knower.

Objection 1: How do we account for God’s knowledge of absences, such as his knowledge that there are no unicorns? This cannot be accounted for by a relation between God and the absence of unicorns, since there is no such thing as the absence of unicorns.

Response: In the case of an imperfect knower, absence of knowledge is not knowledge of absence, since there is always the possibility of mere ignorance. But perhaps in the case of a perfect knower, knowledge of absence is constituted by absence of knowledge.

Objection 2: This account makes the perfect knower’s “knowledge” too different from ours for us to use the same word “knowledge” for both.

Response 1: We have good reason to think that all words applied to us and the perfect being to be applied merely analogously. A perfect being would be radically different from us.

Response 2: While the simple theory is false of us, given dualism we may have a somewhat more complex theory that is not so different from what I said about God. We have significant empirical reason to think that the brain is modified by our visual experiences, and that our visual experience is in some way determined by an internal state of the brain. However, if we are dualists, we will not think that the internal state of the brain is sufficient to produce a visual experience. There could be zombies with brains in the same state that we are in when we are seeing a red cube, but who do not see.

We can now give two different dualist theories about how I come to see a red cube. Both theories suppose an internal red-cube-mirroring state r_b of my brain. On the causal theory, the state r_b then causes an internal state r_s of the soul (=mind) which mirrors the relevant features of r_b, and I have a red-cube experience precisely in virtue of my soul hosting r_s. But the causal theory is not the only option for the dualist. There is also a relational theory, on which my red-cube experience is constituted by my soul’s standing in an external relation to the brain state r_b.

The two theories yield different predictions as to possibilities. On the causal theory, it is possible for me to have a red-cube experience in a world where God and my soul (and my soul’s states and me-constituted-by-my-soul) are all that exists—all that’s needed is for God to miraculously cause r_s in my soul in the absence of r_b. On the relational theory, on the other hand, I can only have a red-cube experience when my soul stands in a certain external relation to a brain state, and in that God-and-my-soul world, there are no brain states.

The causal theory of our visual perception is indeed very different from the external-relation theory of divine knowledge. The relational theory, however, is more analogous. The main difference is that our visual experiences come not from our mind’s direct relation to the external world, but from our mind’s (=soul’s) direct relation to a representing brain state. And that is very much a difference we would expect given our imperfection and God’s perfection: we would expect a perfect knower’s knowledge to be unmediated.

We have reason independent of divine simplicity not to opt for the causal theory in the case of God. First, on the causal theory, we seem to have great power over God: every movement of ours causes an effect in God. That seems to violate divine aseity. Second, the causal theory in the case of God seems to lead to a nasty infinite causal chain: if God’s vision-like knowledge of y is caused by y, then we would expect that God’s knowledge of his knowledge of y is caused by his knowledge of y, which leads to an infinite causal chain. Moreover, God would know every item in this infinite sequence, which leads to a second causal chain (God’s knowledge of God’s knowledge of … the first chain). This would violate causal finitism, besides seeming simply wrong.

Do we have independent reason to opt for the causal over the relational theory in our case, or perhaps the other way around? I don’t know. Until today, I assumed the causal theory to be correct. But the relational theory makes for a more intimate connection between the soul and brain, and this is somehow appealing.

Divine simplicity and knowledge of contingent truth

I think the hardest problem for divine simplicity is the problem of God’s contingent beliefs. In our world, God believes there are horses. In a horseless world, God doesn’t believe there are horses. Yet according to divine simplicity, God has the same intrinsic features in both the horsey and the horseless worlds.

There is only one thing the defender of simplicity can say: God’s contingent beliefs are not intrinsic features of God. The difficult task is to make this claim easier to believe.

It’s worth noting that our beliefs are partly extrinsic. Consider a world just like ours, but where a mischievous alien did some genetic modification work to make cows that look and behave just like horses to the eyes of humans before modern science, and where humans thought and talked about them just as in our world they talked about horses. If a 14th century Englishman in the fake-horse world sincerely said he believed he owned a “horse”, he would be expressing a different belief from a 14th century Englishman in our world who uttered the same sounds, since “horse” in the fake-horse world doesn’t refer to horses but to genetically modified cows. Their beliefs about rideable animals would be different, but inside their minds, intrinsically, there need be no difference between their thought processes.

But it is difficult to stretch this story to the case of God, since it relies on observational limitations. Moreover, it is hard to extend the story to more major differences. If instead of fake horses, the alien produced tauntauns, no doubt the minds of the people in that world would be intrinsically different in thinking about riding tauntauns from our minds when think about riding horses (even if accidentally their English speakers used “horse” to denote a tauntaun).

While our beliefs are partly extrinsic, God’s contingent beliefs are radically extrinsic according to divine simplicity. There are no intrinsic differences in God no matter how radical the differences in belief are.

This feels hard to accept. Still, once we have accepted that beliefs can be partly extrinsic, it is difficult to mount a principled argument against radical extrinsicness of divine belief. All we really have is that this extrinsicness is counterintuitive—but given God’s radical difference from creatures, we should expect God to be counterintuitive in many (infinitely many!) ways.

But I want to share a thought that has helped me be more accepting of the radical extrinsicness thesis about divine belief. There is something awkward in talking of God’s having beliefs. The much more natural way to talk is of God’s having knowledge. But knowledge is way more extrinsic in us than belief is. For you to know something, that something has to be true. So what you know depends very heavily on the external world. You know that your car is in the garage in part precisely in virtue of the fact that your car is in the garage. If your car weren’t in the garage, you wouldn’t have this knowledge.

In us, belief and knowledge are separable. Belief is much more of an intrinsic state, while knowledge is much more of an extrinsic one. When we know something outside ourselves, what makes it be the case that we know it is both a state of belief and a state of the external world. This separation makes error possible: it is possible to have the belief without the external world matching up.

But in a being that is epistemically perfect, there is no possibility of belief without knowledge. I want to suggest the plausibility of this thesis: in a being that epistemically perfect, there is not even a metaphysical separation between knowledge and belief. For such a being, to believe is to know. But knowledge of contingent external states of affairs is significantly extrinsic. So if to believe for such a being is to know, then we would expect beliefs about contingent external states of affairs to be significantly extrinsic as well.

In other words, the extrinsicness of belief that divine simplicity requires matches up with an extrinsicness that is quite plausible given considerations of the perfection of divine epistemology.

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.

Causation and Thomism

Assume a Thomistic metaphysics, including the primary/secondary causation model from Aquinas. Thus, whenever a created cause has an effect, it has the effect it does only because God, through primary causation, cooperates with the created cause. If God did not cooperate with the created cause, the creature’s secondary causal power would be impotent to produce the effect. On the other hand, God can directly cause something by primary causation without the secondary causes doing anything.

Suppose that I strike a match, but God doesn’t cooperate in the frictional causing of fire. Then the match is struck, and does everything a struck match does, except that no fire results. Now imagine these two scenarios:

1. I strike a match which, in the ordinary way and with God’s cooperation, causes fire.

2. I strike a match, but God does not cooperate with me; however, God miraculously causes a fire just like the one in (1).

These two scenarios are different. So they must differ in something. They cannot differ in God, since that would violate divine simplicity, a core commitment of Thomistic metaphysics. So they must differ on the side of creatures. If so, they differ in the match striking or in the fire (or, more precisely, in the match and in that which is on fire, given a substance-accident ontology), God’s cooperation or lack thereof making the match-striking or the fire different.

Suppose God’s cooperation makes the match-striking different. Then in scenario (1), created reality includes the event of divinely-cooperated-match-striking. This event surely doesn’t need any further divine cooperation, or else we’d have a regress. But no item in created reality is sufficient on its own to produce an effect witout God’s cooperation being added to it on the primary/secondary causation model.

So, it is the fire that must be made different by God’s cooperation. In scenario (1), the fire is caused by the match and God while in (2), it is caused by God alone, and that makes the fire different between the scenarios. I would like to say that the esse of the fire is different in the two cases: in the ordinary case its esse is at least in part being caused by the match with God’s cooperation while in the other case the match doesn’t enter into its esse. But the details don’t matter for this post: what matters is that the fire is different between scenarios (1) and (2).

But this has an unfortunate consequence: If the fire must be different in some metaphysical way in cases (1) and (2), it follows that God cannot directly and independently of creation cause the same effect as the match caused. And this violates the Thomistic principle that whatever a finite cause suffices for can be produced by God directly. God cannot directly produce a fire-caused-by-the-match; that would be a contradiction.

So we have a conflict between a number of Thomistic principles:

3. Divine simplicity

4. Divine omnipotence

5. The primary/secondary causation model

6. God can directly cause anything he can cause in cooperation with a creature.

It seems to me that 3-5 are more central to Thomism than 6. So, I am inclined to reject 6, perhaps replacing it with the weaker principle that for any item x that God can cause in cooperation with a creature, God can cause an item x^* which is qualitatively just like x.

Perhaps I was too quick when I said that (1) and (2) must differ in the match or the fire. Perhaps they differ in something “in between” the match and the fire, a token causal relation. I think this is a problematic solution for two reasons. First, it is central to Aristotelianism that all that exists are substances and their accidents. The token causal relation, if it’s not “in” any creature, would violate this. Second, it seems that the match strike plus this “in between” thingy are now sufficient to produce the fire, or else we can run the above argument with the match strike and the “in between” thingy in place of the match strike. But no mere creature is sufficient to produce an effect without God’s cooperation.

Deflating particular normative states of affairs?

Some actions lead to a future normative state of affairs. A promise or valid command leads to a future state of affairs of my or someone else’s being obliged to fulfill it. A wrongful action leads to a state of obligation to repent. And so on.

Here are two views of these states of affairs:

• Deflationary: There is nothing more to these states of affairs than general conditional moral normative facts, such as the facts that you should keep your promises, together with the fact of the triggering action, such as that you’ve promised to ϕ.

• Non-Deflationary and Causal: These states of affairs are metaphysically irreducible aspects of reality that are caused into existence by their triggering actions.

In fact of the deflationary view is that it’s deflationary, and hence supported by Ockham’s Razor.

But I think there are some reasons to accept the non-deflationary view. First, suppose you now come to the time where the normative state of affairs obtains: you must now fulfill your promise or you must now repent. Then the deflationary view implies an odd sort of “tyranny of the past”. What obliges you is not anything about the present, but something about the past. Your present obligations, on the deflationary view, do not supervene on the present state of the universe. This might especially bother presentists, but I think it’s also a bit worrying to eternalists like me.

Second, the “general conditional moral normative facts” the deflationary approach deals with will have to have extremely complex antecedents. For instance, for a command, there will be a fact of the form:

• If you were validly commanded to ϕ, and you have not yet fulfilled the command, and the command wasn’t changed by a higher authority, and circumstances have not relevantly changed, and …, then you should ϕ.

My worry about this is that there might be an infinite number of possible ways for a command obligation to disappear that would have to be put in the “…”. But perhaps not. Perhaps all I’ve said above is enough.

However, there is some reason not to be persuaded by this consideration. It is reasonable to think that human beings have normative powers: our actions can create reasons and obligations for ourselves and others. But one way for the obligation from a promise or command to disappear is for the non-normative circumstances to change. For instance, if I promised to do a minor errand, and a giant herd of yaks blocked my way, so that I could only do the errand via an unreasonably large detour, I might be off the hook normatively. But it seems implausible that a herd of yaks has the causal power to annihilate normative facts. So, it seems, even the non-deflationist may want the normative states of affairs to be conditional: “I should do the errand unless it becomes unreasonable.”

Third, the phenomenology of being released from an obligation—say, by being forgiven or a promisee’s releasing you—is an experience as of a load being removed. That “load” felt like a real thing which was annihilated.

Fourth, being forgiven changes your obligations by removing your guilt, at least assuming repentance. But it seems that God could forgive you a sin without announcing the forgiveness in any way, or in any other non-normative way changing the world. In such a case, God’s forgiveness would have a contingent normative effect. But God is simple, and hence all contingent facts about God are grounded in necessary truths about God and contingent facts about creation. But then if there is no non-normative change in creation due to the forgiveness, there must be a normative change in creation due to it.

On the non-deflationary causal view, divine forgiveness consists in God’s destroying the normative state of affairs of your being guilty. On the deflationary view, it’s got to be grounded in something like a divine “I forgive you” speech act, whether specific to your case (e.g., God telling you in your heart that you’ve been forgiven), or general (e.g., God’s announcing that anything the Apostles forgive is forgiven by God in John 20:23). But in the case of our forgiving someone the speech acts are announcements of a contingent state of affairs of forgiveness that goes beyond the announcements. That state of affairs, in the case of a simple God, cannot be internal to God. And it seems like it’s normative.

I find the last two considerations fairly powerful, but not conclusive. Of course, I accept divine simplicity, but the claim that God can forgive without any announcement isn’t completely obvious. Divine forgiveness could be like a Presidential pardon, which must be promulgated.

For us non-naturalists, it would be cool if we could argue for the non-deflationary view. For on this view, naturalism is false: we have causal powers that go beyond those described by the sciences, namely the causal power to produce normative states of affairs.

Update: Here's an argument in favor of deflation. While a particular obligation feels like a something ("a load"), what we cite as reasons for action is often not a resultant normative state but the original triggering action: "You promised!" or "I need to make it up to her given what I did." But on the causal non-deflationary view, the original triggering action is not even a part of the reason for action: it is, rather, a cause of the normative state, and the normative state itself is the reason. Of course, this isn't conclusive, because it could be that we mention the triggering action as evidence for the resultant reason. We likewise say: "I need go home because I left the kettle on." That I left the kettle on is no reason to go back home. That the kettle is still on is a reason to go home, and that I left the kettle on is evidence that that the kettle is still on.