Aristotelian abstraction

On the Aristotelian account of abstraction, we abstract the forms of things via perception. But here is a problem. First of all, we sometimes have better knowledge of things not perceived than of things perceived. Let’s say you read a detailed scientific book about pangolins, though you’ve never encountered one, while I once saw a koala in a zoo, but don’t much know anything more about them than that they are cute marsupials. It seems quite problematic to say I have the form of the koala in my mind, but you do not have the form of the pangolin. For that would make the mental possession of the form of the thing an unimportant flourish to what really epistemically matters, since clearly you are better off epistemically for reading the book about pangolins than I am for seeing the koala.

Of course, presumably, the author of the pangolin book presumably saw the pangolin. But that doesn’t seem to matter much, either. There are many dinosaur species where the paleontologist knows more about the species than I know about koalas, and yet no human ever perceptually interacted with a dinosaur, but typically only with minerals that have displaced their carcasses.

What should someone committed to the Aristotelian story about abstraction say? Two options come to mind, a modest and an expansive one.

Modest option: It really doesn’t really matter much epistemically whether one has the form of a pangolin or a koala in one’s mind. What matters is the propositional knowledge. However, it is essential to our possession of the propositional knowledge that our thoughts have intentionality, that they refer to the world. And it is crucial to securing intentionality that we have Aristotelian abstraction at the interface between the world and the mind. The triceratops expert’s intentionality with respect to triceratopses is derivative from the causal chain from triceratopses to their corpses to their fossils to the light reflecting from the fossils into the expert’s eyes to (eventually somehow) the expert’s thoughts. Where the causal chain crosses from the world to the mind, we need a transmission of form to ensure intentionality for the whole chain. Maybe the transmission happens when the minerals that have replaced the bones transmit their mineral forms to the expert’s mind, in some mysterious way mediated by the light.

Expansive option: Everything in the world carries the forms of everything nondivine that is causally upstream from itself. The triceratops corpse somehow has the form of the triceratops in it, and so do the bones of the triceratops, and so do the minerals that replace the bones, and so does the light modulated by reflection from the minerals, and so do the electrical impulses in the nerves from the retinal receptors to the brain. It is easier to extract the form when it comes from seeing a live koala than when it comes from seeing fossils, so that a layman can do the former while the scientist is needed to do the latter. Similarly, when you read a book about pangolins, the ink on the page, being causally modulated by the author’s knowledge, carries the form of the pangolin (in addition to any forms naturally contained in the ink, say those of the particles constituting the ink).

Medievals already said something like this about the modulated light, so it’s just a matter of extending the story. And while the problem I am concerned about is one that does not require any science or technology beyond what the medievals had—the medievals knew about the gaining of expertise from books (if anything, they might have overestimated it!)—in a modern setting we it feels like an Aristotelian has to do this. After all, it is hard to deny that one can gain the same kind of knowledge of koalas by looking at them through high-end augmented reality goggles as from directly seeing them with our eyes. Thus, on a form-transmission story, the electrical potentials of the capacitors in the computer memory in the goggles have to somehow carry the form of the koala. But given the many ways that computer memory can be realized (think of magnetized rings versus capacitors versus markings on a CD), it seems plausible that any effect will have to have to be admitted to carry the form of its cause. It is tempting to say the form is only found in substances where there is sufficient data to reconstruct significant information about the causally-upstream object the form is of, but I think is not tenable. Presumably each bacterium is a substance, and we could have a type of biological memory in augmented reality glasses where each bit of information is stored in a different bacterium.

This story coheres very nicely with the essentiality of origins. It is a kind of a reversal of the principle of proportionality of causation on which the reality of the effect is actually or eminently found in the cause: the formal reality of a cause is found in the effect. I think it’s a defensible story. But I also find it hard to believe.

Open theism and the Incarnation

Here is a very plausible pair of claims:

1. The Son could have become incarnate as a different human being.

2. God foreknew many centuries ahead of time which human being the Son would become incarnate as.

Regarding 1, of course, the Son could not have been a different person—the person the Son is and was and ever shall be is the second person of the Trinity. But Son could have been a different human being.

Here is a sketch of an argument for 1:

1. If the identity of a human being depends on the body, then if the Son became incarnate as a 3rd century BC woman in India, this would be a different human being from Jesus (albeit the same person).

2. If the identity of a human being depends on the soul, then God could have created a different soul for the Son’s incarnation.

3. The identity of a human being depends on either the body or the soul.

I don’t have as good an argument for 2 as I do for 1, but I think 2 is quite plausible given what Scripture says about God’s having planned out the mission of Jesus from of old.

Now add:

3. If the Son could have become incarnate as a different human being, which human being he became incarnate as depends on a number of free human choices in the century preceding the incarnation.

Now, 1, 2 and 3 leads to an immediate problem for an open theist Christian (my thinking on this is inspired by a paper of David Alexander, though his argument is different) who thinks God doesn’t foreknow human free choices.

Why is 3 true? Well, if the identity of a human being even partly depends on the body (as is plausible), given that (plausibly) Mary was truly a biological mother of Jesus, then if Mary’s parents had not had any children, the body that Jesus actually had would not have existed, and an incarnation would have happened with a different body and hence a different human being.

Objection: God could have created Mary—or the body for the incarnation—directly ex nihilo in such a case, or God could have overridden human free will if some human were about to make a decision that would lead to Mary not existing.

Response: If essentiality of origins is true, then it is logically impossible for the same body to be created ex nihilo as actually had a partial non-divine cause. But I don’t want the argument to depend on essentiality of origins. Instead, I want to argue as follows. Both of the solutions in the objection require God to foreknow that he would in fact engage in such intervention if human free choices didn’t cooperate with his plan. God’s own interventions would be free choices, and so on open theism God wouldn’t know that he would thus intervene. One might respond that God could resolve to ensure that a certain body would become available, and a morally perfect being always keeps his resolutions. But while perhaps a morally perfect being always keeps his promises, I think it is false that a morally perfect being always keeps his resolutions. Unless one is resolving to do something that one is already obligated to do, it is not wrong to change one’s mind in a revolution. I suppose God could have promised someone that he would ensure the existence of a certain specific body, but we have no evidence of such a specific promise in Scripture, and it seems an odd maneouver for God to have to make in order to know ahead of time who the human that would save the world is.

What if the identity of a human depends solely on the soul? But then the identity of the human being that the Son would become incarnate as would depend on God’s free decision which soul to create for that human being, and the same remarks as I made about resolutions in the previous paragraph would apply.

Trope theory and merely numerical differences in pleasures

Suppose I eat a chocolate bar and this causes me to have a trope of pleasure. Given assentiality of origins, if I had eaten a numerically different chocolate bar that caused the same pleasure, I would have had had a numerically different trope of pleasure.

Now, imagine that I eat a chocolate bar in my right hand and it causes me to have a trope of pleasure R, and immediately as I have finished eating that one chocolate bar, I switch to eating the chocolate bar in my left hand, which gives me an exactly similar trope of pleasure, L, with no temporal gap. Nonetheless, by essentiality of origins, trope L is numerically distinct from trope R.

To some (perhaps Armstrong) this will seem absurd. But I think it’s exactly right. In fact, I think it may even an argument for trope theory. For it seems pretty plausible that as I switch chocolate bars, something changes in me: I go from one pleasure to another exactly like it. But on heavy-weight Platonism, there is no change: I instantiated pleasure and now I instantiate pleasure. On non-trope nominalism, likewise there is no change. It’s trope theory that gives us the change here.

Qualitative haecceities

A haecceity H of x is a property of an entity such that necessarily x exists if and only if x instantiates H.

Haecceities are normally thought of as non-qualitative properties. But one could also have qualitative haecceities. Of course, if an entity has a qualitative haecceity then it cannot be duplicated, so one can only suppose that everything has a qualitative haecceity provided one is willing to agree with Leibniz’s Identity of Indiscernibles.

I am personally drawn to the idea that everything does have a qualitative haecceity, and specifically that the qualitative haecceity of x encapsulates x’s qualitative causal history: a complete qualitative description of x’s explanatorily initial state and of all of its causal antecedents. One might call such properties “qualitative origins”. The view that every entity has a qualitative origin is a haecceity is a particularly strong version of the essentiality of origins: everything in an entity’s causal history is essential to it, and the causal history is sufficient for the entity’s existence.

I suppose the main reason not to accept this view is that it implies that two distinct objects couldn’t have the same qualitative origin, but it seems possible that God could create two objects ex nihilo with the same qualitative initial state Q. I am not so sure, though. How would God do that? “Let there be two things satisfying Q?” But this is too indeterminate (I disagree with van Inwagen’s idea that God can issue indeterminate decrees). If there can be two, there can be three, so God would have to specify which two things satisfying Q to create. But that would require a way of securing numerical reference to specific individuals prior to their creation, and that in turn would require haecceities, in this case non-qualitative haecceities. So the objection to the view requires non-qualitative haecceities.

But what started us on this objection was the thought that God could say “Let there be two things satisfying Q.” But if God could say that, why couldn’t he say “Let there be two things satisfying H”, where H is a non-qualitative haecceity? I suppose one will say that this is nonsense, because it is nonsense to suppose two things share a non-qualitative haecceity. But isn’t there a double-standard here? If it is nonsense to suppose two things share a non-qualitative haecceity, why can’t it be nonsense to suppose two things share a qualitative haecceity? It seems that “what does the explaining” of why two things can’t share a non-qualitative haecceity is the obscurity of non-qualitative haecceities, and that’s not really an explanation.

So perhaps we can just say: Having a distinct qualitative origin is what it is to be a thing, and it is impossible for two things to share one. This does indeed restrict the space of possible worlds. No exactly similar iron spheres or anything like that. That’s admittedly a little counterintuitive. But on the other hand, we have a lovely explanation of intra- and inter-world identity of objects, as well as a reduction of de re modality to de dicto, all without the mystery of non-qualitative haecceities. Plus we have Leibniz’s zero/one picture of the world on which all of reality is described by zeroes and ones: we put a zero beside an uninstantiated qualitative haecceity and a one besides an initiated one, and then that tells us everything that exists. This is all very appealing to me.

The Non-Identity Theodicy (Scott Hill) SCP session

The Analytic Collective and SCP are having an inaugural online session on August 21 at 4-5:30 pm Eastern Time to discuss Scott Hill's fascinating paper "The Non-Identity Theodicy". I will be commenting on the paper.

Abstract: This paper defends a theodicy based on ideas discussed in the literature on the non-identity problem and the literature on origin essentialism. I then address a series of objections about the ethics of God's acts in my theodicy and about the metaphysics of origins on which my theodicy depends.

Join the Analytic Collective facebook group for a Zoom link.

This is a pre-read session. The paper is here. And my comments are here.

A solution to the problem of cross-time causation for presentism

Here is a controversial thesis that might, nonetheless, turn out to be true:

1. A is causally prior to B if and only if A ≠ B and it is impossible that B exist and A not exist.

If so, we get an account of causal priority in terms of purely modal notions. Rob Koons has explored such accounts. Of course, this requires strong essentiality of origins, and will also have controversial mereological consequences. But it’s really nice to get causation out of modality.

Here is another nice result. One of the main difficulties for presentism is the problem of cross-time relations, and especially of causation. But (1) with a presentist paraphrase avoids the problem of cross-time relations:

2. A is causally prior to B if and only if A ≠ B and it is impossible that B have existed, exist or will exist and A neither existed, exists nor will exist.

I guess my main problem with (1) and (2) as accounts of causal priority is that I think they get the order of explanation reversed: the reason it is impossible to have B without A is that A is causally prior to B.

Why did Alice make this lectern?

Converse essentiality of qualitative origins holds that if possible objects x and y have the same qualitative causal history—i.e., their initial state is qualitatively the same and the causes of that are qualitatively the same, etc.—then x = y. Kripke’s lectern argument basically makes it plausible to think that if converse essentiality of qualitative origins holds, so does essentiality of origins—the thesis that an object couldn’t have had a different qualitative causal history than it did.

If we reject converse essentiality of origins, then we have a thorny explanatory problem: When Alice took piece of wood W and shaped it into a lectern with shape S, what explains why lectern L₁ rather than, say, lectern L₂ resulted?

One way out of this explanatory problem is a partial occasionalism: Whenever an object comes into existence, while creatures may decide what the qualities of the object are, God causes the specific haecceity.

Another way out is to replace converse essentiality of qualitative origins with a converse essentiality of full origins thesis: if possible objects have the qualitatively and numerically (apart possibly from their own identity) causal history, then they are the same. Then when Alice takes W and shapes it into a lectern with shape S, only L₁ (say) can result. But if Alice’s identical twin Barbara did it, it would have been (say) L₂.

We thus seem to have three options as to the explanation of why Alice produced L₁ rather than L₂.

1. converse essentiality of qualitative origins

2. converse essentiality of full origins

3. partially occasionalistic haecceitism.

Maybe there are other good ones.

A Thomistic argument for essentiality of origins

Here is a suggestive Thomistic line of thought in favor of the essentiality of origins—i.e., the principle that the causes of things are essential to them.

Consider two possible cases where a seed is produced in the same apple tree T:

1. A seed is produced at t because of the tree’s exercise of seed-producing powers together with God’s cooperative exercise of primary causation.

2. A seed is created directly at t by God and not by the exercise of the tree’s powers.

And suppose that the seeds in the two cases are exactly alike, occur in the same place on the tree, etc.

I will argue that the Thomist should say that these will be numerically different seeds, and the best explanation of their difference is given by essentiality of origins.

For the Thomist is committed to there being a genuine difference between the two cases. Cooperative divine-creaturely causality is metaphysically different from divine primary causality. But where does the difference lie? Well, in (1) the tree’s causal powers are activated, while in (2) they are not. But it is a standard scholastic maxim that the effect is the actuality of the cause qua cause. Thus it seems that the difference between cases (1) and (2) should be found in the effect, namely the seed.

Furthermore, suppose that the difference between the cases is solely located in the cause, namely that in case (1) the tree’s causal powers are activated but not in (2), and that this activation is an accident A of the tree. The difference between cases (1) and (2) then is that in case (1), A occurs in the tree and in case (2) it does not. But for any accident of the tree, God could miraculously suppress any effects of that accident. Thus, there will be a case where A occurs in the tree and no seed results. And we could, further, imagine that:

3. Not only does God suppress the effects of A but he additionally directly miraculously produces an effect exactly like the one that A would have produced.

The difference between (3) and (1) can’t be in the activation of the tree’s causal power, since that is still there in (3). So we really should suppose a difference in the effects between (3) and (1). But a similar difference should exist between (2) and (1).

Note that the Thomist cannot say that there is a difference on the side of the causes lies in God, namely that in case (1), God’s causal power is unactivated but it is activated in (2) and (3). For an intrinsic difference in God between possible worlds would violate divine simplicity.

Thus, it is the effects, namely the seeds, that are numerically different, and they are different precisely because their causes are different. But the seeds are exactly alike. So the difference must be a metaphysical difference between the seeds. And this strongly suggests essentiality of origins. Indeed, it suggests that entities have encoded within them the identity of their cause.

Objection: The argument at most suggests that there has to be a numerical difference when something is produced by a finite cause (with God cooperating) and when something is produced directly by God. But why think there is also a difference when the effect is produced by one finite cause rather than another?

Response: The simplest metaphysical explanation of why it makes a difference whether God produces the effect or it is produced by finite causes is that the effect has metaphysically encoded in it what its cause was. In fact, my own view is that this may be found in the effect’s esse: perhaps an effect’s esse is to be caused by this-and-that.

Moreover, suppose that there need be no numerical difference between effects of different finite causes, but there is a numerical difference between direct effects of divine causation and the effects of finite causes. Then in principle scientists could have directly made the numerically same seed that the tree made in (1), but God couldn’t have directly made the numerically same seed. That seems unacceptable. (Of course, one might rejoin that essentiality of origins is unacceptable as it implies that God couldn’t directly make the numerically same seed that the tree could make. But when, as I suppose, an effect of necessity encodes in itself what its cause is, the impossibility of something’s being made by a different cause does not seem to be a limitation on that cause.)

A puzzle about being and being-caused

These claims are really plausible:

1. I exist because I was caused by my parents.
2. My having been caused by my parents is a fact about me.
3. My existence is explanatorily prior to all other facts about me.
4. There are no loops of explanatory priority.

But they seem to be contradictory. My being caused by my parents is explanatorily prior to my existence, but my existence is explanatorily prior to that, and that surely looks like a loop.

But actually there is no contradiction. To get the claim that my existence is explanatorily prior to my being caused out of (3), we need to add the premise that my being caused is a different fact about me from my existing. But why add a premise that makes for a contradiction? We should instead conclude that the fact of my existence is the same fact as my being caused by my parents.

But if it's the same fact, then we have an interesting ontological conclusion: My existing is my being caused by my parents (and presumably by all the other causes cooperating with them, including especially God). I've argued for something like this conclusion here, but this is a much neater argument.

There may be another corollary. It seems that my esse, my existence, is modally essential to me--I couldn't exist with a different esse. But if my esse is my being caused by my parents, then I couldn't have had other parents.

Objection 1: We should restrict (3) to facts about the present time. But my having been caused by my parents isn't like that.

Response: Run the argument in the first moment of my existence (assuming there is one; if not, run it for some creature which has a first moment of existence; presumably if the ontological thesis I am arguing for is true for some creature, it's true for them all).

Objection 2: If my existing is the same as my being caused by my parents, how can (1) be true: isn't (1), then, a claim that I exist because I exist?

Response: Even if the fact (or state of affairs or event--there are multiple ways to formulate the argument) of my existence is the same as the fact of my being caused by my parents, the proposition that I exist is not the same as the proposition that I am caused by my parents.

A new solution to the non-identity problem?

Molly Gardner in a piece that just came out offers an interesting new solution to the non-identity problem, the problem of making sense of benefits and harms to people who wouldn't exist were it not for our actions of benefiting or harming. Gardner's suggestion is:

A state of affairs, A, is a benefit for an individual, S, just in case if it were true that both S existed and A did not obtain, then S would be worse off in some respect.

This is a clever solution: normally when evaluating whether an action benefits or harms someone, we simply ask how they would have done had we not done the action; but Gardner wants us further to keep fixed that the patient exists.

But clever as it is, it looks to me that it fails. First, suppose that a strong essentiality of origins thesis obtains. Then whenever we benefit or harm a future person, that person couldn't exist without our action. But that means that Gardner's conditional becomes a per impossibile conditional. And concepts of ethical importance should not be defined in terms of something as poorly understood and as controversial as counterpossible conditionals.

Suppose now that there is no strong essentiality of origins thesis. Then, plausibly, a person who was conceived through coitus could also have been conceived through IVF, at least if the same sperm and egg were involved. Now suppose that where the couple lives, IVF technology is highly experimental and works so poorly that children conceived through IVF end up having all sorts of nasty health problems. The couple is wicked and doesn't care about the health of their children, but they also haven't even heard of IVF, and so they conceive Sally the natural way. Now let's consider Gardner's conditional. What would have happened had the child existed and the couple not engaged in coitus? Well, the closest possible worlds where Sally exists and the couple did not have intercourse are worlds where the couple engaged in a poorly-functioning IVF treatment, and hence worlds where Sally has nasty health problems. So the couple benefited Sally by engaging in coitus.

The conclusion that the couple benefited Sally by coitus is, I think, true. For I believe it is always good to exist. But it is clear that Gardner doesn't want to suppose that existence is always a good. And if existence is not always a good, then we can suppose a scenario like this: Sally is going to have an on-balance bad life if she is conceived by coitus, and an on-balance worse life if she is conceived by IVF. By Gardner's criterion, the couple has benefited Sally through coitus, even though Sally's life is on-balance bad. This is surely mistaken. One might say that the couple benefited Sally by engaging in coitus rather than IVF. But since they never even considered IVF, one can't conclude that they benefited Sally simpliciter. (If Sam gives Jim a mild electric shock, he harms Jim simpliciter, but he benefits Jim by giving him a mild rather than severe shock.)

And even if we grant--as in the end we should--that existence is always good, Gardner's conditional gives us the wrong reason for thinking that the couple benefited Sally. For the benefit to Sally has nothing to do with the fact that Sally would have been worse off in the nearby worlds where she existed through IVF.

And even if essentiality of origins is true, the argument concerning Sally works. For it is still true that, per impossibile, had Sally existed but without her parents having intercourse, she would have existed through IVF and hence had very poor health.

The problem with Gardner's approach is this: the worlds that are relevant to the evaluation of her counterfactual may simply be irrelevant to the question of benefit or harm simpliciter.

Essentiality of origins and the non-identity problem

I assume that a strong essentiality of origins thesis holds, so that for any action we could take but did not take, had we taken the action, none of the individuals who will in fact come into existence would come into existence. For the causal history of every individual coming into being in our future (i.e., in our future light-cone) includes the (often extremely minor) gravitational and other influences coming from our actions. Thus, any benefit or harm we do to future individuals is a benefit or harm we do to individuals who wouldn't have existed had we not done them that benefit or harm. This means that the non-identity problem--the problem of benefits and harms to individuals who wouldn't exist had they not been thus benefited or harmed--is always there when we consider benefits and harms to individuals who do not yet exist. The non-identity problem isn't just a special problem that arises in cases where people's reproductive decisions are caused by our actions (say, as when a couple procreates because the parents of one of them have established a generous trust fund for all future grandchildren), but it arises in regard to future individuals in everything we do.

Procreation and love

Start with this consequence of the essentiality of origins:

1. The identity of an individual depends on the exact time of her coming-into-existence.

(It's very plausible that it depends on coarse-grained time of coming-into-existence: I couldn't have come into existence a hundred years earlier. But there is also a well-known argument from that for the claim that it depends on the exact time.) Now, it seems that no action people can take prior to the origination of an individual determines the exact time of her coming-into-existence. There isn't any true counterfactual of the form of the form: "If we were to do A, then an individual would come into existence exactly at t." In fact, for any action we can take, quantum indeterminism will ensure a cluster of infinitely (if time is continuous) many or at least very many close-together possible resulting conception times. Moreover, each exact time will have a very tiny, perhaps infinitesimal or zero, probability of being the actual time of origination. Hence it seems:

2. There is no true probabilistic counterfactual of the form: "If we were to do A, then an individual would be not unlikely to come into existence exactly at t."

(Molinists will, of course, disagree. But Molinism is false, I take it.) Thus:

3. People cannot procreate out of love for the particular individual who would likely come into existence from the procreation.

For there is no particular individual such that she would likely come into existence from the procreation.

Now, notice that God in creating an individual--either ex nihilo or in cooperating with the joining of an egg and sperm--is under no such constraints. Thus it is possible for God to act in such a way that were he to act so, an individual would come into existence at a precise time. And the same is true for other features of the origination of the individual besides the time of its occurrence. So God could create out of love for the particular individual who would come into existence from the creation.

This fact suggests a weakness in premise (2) of my above argument. It could be that God has already decided what individual would result if a couple chose to procreate, and has resolved in particular that sperm and egg would meet at a particular time, as long as the couple chooses the procreate. God, thus, is resolved to control all the quantum phenomena to ensure a particular circumstance of origination. Thus it's up to the couple whether someone comes into existence, but there is a particular someone who would exist if the couple procreated. It would not be surprising if this were to happen in special cases, and it would be possible for it to happen in all cases. I don't know if it does, though.

The upshot of the above argument, thus, is that unless special theological assumptions hold, it is not possible for a couple to decide whether to procreate out of love for the particular child that would result.

First cause arguments of a Goedelian sort

We say that a proposition p precludes a proposition q provided that p and q cannot both be true. We say that x is purely good provided that x is good and there is no defect in x.

1. Necessarily, if x causes y, then it is impossible that y exists without x existing. (Follows from essentiality of origins.)
2. S5.
3. Being essentially the cause of every pure good other than perhaps oneself is a perfection.
4. If x is purely good and P is a perfection, then that something has P does not preclude that x exists and x is purely good and something has P.
5. Something is purely good. (For instance, a photon.)

Let x be the purely good thing. By (3) and (4), possibly x exists and x is purely good and something is essentially the cause of everything other than itself that is purely good. Call that something y. Then in some world w, y is the cause of x. By (1) and S5, y is actually the cause of x. By S5, y is also actually essentially the cause of every purely good thing other than itself. So:

6. There is something that is essentially the cause of every purely good thing other than perhaps itself.

We can run the argument without essentiality of origins with a tweak. Simply modify (3) to start "Being essentially the essential cause...", where the essential cause of something is a cause without which it cannot exist.

An argument against the compatibility of freedom and determinism with lots of auxiliary assumptions

Let L be the laws of nature. Suppose:

1. Everything in the causal history of the coming into existence of an entity is essential to the entity—it is impossible that that very entity exist without it. (Essentiality of origins)
2. The complete causal history H of the coming into existence of Bob together with L entails every action of Bob's. (Determinism-plus)
3. Bob cannot exist unless L is true. (Strong nomic boundededness)

It follows from these that it is metaphysically impossible for Bob ever to do otherwise. For Bob cannot exist if H or L is not true, and H and L entail every action of Bob's. But:

4. If it is metaphysically impossible for Bob ever to do otherwise, Bob is not free.

So:

5. Bob is not free.

Essentiality of origins is very controversial, but I think there are very good theoretical reasons to posit it. It yields, for instance, a very neat account of transworld identity.

Determinism-plus isn't just determinism. For suppose we live in an infinite deterministic universe and relativity theory holds. Then the backwards light cone of every action of yours is wider than the backwards light cone of your initial coming into existence, and there may be causal influences on your actions that did not influence your coming into existence. In such a setting, determinism-plus is false. On the other hand, determinism-plus is going to be true in a more Newtonian universe, where everything affects everything else instantaneously (say, via gravity), and so the causal history of your coming into existence contains all of the universe's state prior to your coming into existence. Also, in a some small finite relativistic universes, we might have determinism-plus.

Furthermore, determinism-plus's understanding of laws of nature rules out miracles. That's a serious problem. It may render determinism-plus incompatible with theism. Still someone, especially a non-theist, might think:

6. If freedom is compatible with determinism, freedom is compatible with determinism-plus.

For it really shouldn't matter for freedom whether we live in a small finite or infinite universe or whether miracles are possible. Still, determinism-plus is a definite weakness of this argument. It's false, I think.

And I know there are compatibilists who are willing to deny (4).

This is a pretty weak argument. Still, it's worth thinking about. For the problems with the premises don't seem to be such as to be deeply relevant to whether there is free will. Maybe there is some way of building a better argument out of these options. I leave that for the reader.

Salmon's argument against S4

Start with:

1. If x originates from chunk α of matter and β is a non-overlapping chunk of matter, then x couldn't have originated from β.
2. If x originates from chunk α of matter and α' is a chunk of matter that almost completely overlaps α, then x could have originated from α'.

Iterating (2), and assuming a finite sequence of almost completely overlapping chunks between α and β, we conclude that an object x that originates from α possibly possibly ... possibly (with a finite number of possiblys) originates from β. By S4, we conclude that x could have originated from β, contrary to (1). Nathan Salmon uses this as an argument against S4.

But this is a mistaken line of thought. For (2) is not significantly more plausible than:

3. If x could have originated from chunk α of matter and α' is a chunk of matter that almost completely overlaps α, then x could have originated from α'.

Both (2) and (3) embody the same prima facie plausible small-variation intuition. If one thought (3) was false, one would have little reason to think (2) is true.

But given (3), Salmon's argument can be run without S4—all we need is T (what is actually true is possible). Iterating uses of (3) and modus ponens, we conclude that (1) is false. In other words, we cannot hold both (1) and (3). And since (2) has little plausibility apart from (3), we shouldn't hold both (1) and (2). Thus, Salmon's argument is not an argument against S4, but an argument against the conjunction of (1) and (2). And I say we should reject (2).

An ontological argument from the essentiality of origins

1. (Premise) If a perfect being can't desire a state of affairs A, then A is not a good state of affairs.
2. (Premise) A perfect being can't desire any state of affairs incompatible with the existence of a perfect being.
3. (Premise) Necessarily, if a perfect being exists and if Jean Vanier (or Barack Obama or some other person you admire) exists, then Jean Vanier (etc.) is created by the perfect being.
4. (Premise) If x is not created by a perfect being, then x cannot be created by a perfect being. (Essentiality of origins)
5. (Premise) The state of affairs of Jean Vanier (etc.) existing is good.
6. So, a perfect being can desire Jean Vanier (etc.) to exist. (1 and 5)
7. So, Jean Vanier's (etc.) existence is compatible with the existence of a perfect being. (2 and 6)
8. So, possibly a perfect being exists and creates Jean Vanier (etc.). (3 and 7)
9. So, a perfect being created Jean Vanier (etc.). (4 and 8)
10. So, a perfect being exists. (9)

[Note added later: This was, of course, written before the revelations about Jean Vanier's abusiveness. I would certainly have chosen a different example if I were writing this post now.]

Haecceities and presentism

The following argument is valid:

1. (Premise) If there are no haecceities, then there are no propositions de re about non-existent individuals.
2. (Premise) If presentism is true, then Seabiscuit is a non-existent individual.
3. (Premise) That Seabiscuit was essentially a horse is a proposition de re about Seabiscuit.
4. Therefore, if presentism is true, there are haecceities.

If we add that there are no haecceities, we can conclude that presentism is false.

However, I think (1) is false, because I think contingent entities are wholly individuated by the histories of their origins, where their histories are described in wholly general terms (i.e., without de re reference to any individuals). Consequently, if H is such a history of Seabiscuit, the proposition in (3) can be expressed: "Necessarily, if H is instantiated, it is instantiated by a horse."

Haecceities, strong essentiality of origins and science

1. (Premise) If essentiality of origins doesn't hold, then every particle has a haecceity.
2. (Premise) A haecceity of x is an intrinsic property of x.
3. (Premise) A haecceity of x isn't a physical property of x or a function of any physical properties of x.
4. (Premise) There is a particle each of whose intrinsic properties is a physical property or a function of physical properties.
5. Therefore, there is a particle that lacks a haecceity. (2-4)
6. Therefore, essentiality of origins holds. (1, 5)

Why believe (1)? Because if there are no haecceities then the only plausible account of transworld identity is that x in w₁ is identical with y in w₂ if and only if x and y have the same origins. And this forces essentiality of origins.
I think the problematic premise is (4). But it is still somewhat plausible.

Essentiality of origins, determinism and free will

If determinism is true, then any possible world in which at t₀ I act differently from how I actually act at t₀ is a world where either (a) the laws are different from the actual world's laws or (b) the laws are the same but the past is different at every time prior to t₀. In case (b), it follows that my own causal history will be different in that world. But if essentiality of origins is true, my own causal history could not have been different. Therefore, if essentiality of origins and determinism are both true, then any possible world in which at t₀ I act differently from how I actually act at t₀ is a world where the laws are different from how they are.

On the plausible assumption that I cannot do something the doing of which entails that the laws are other than they are at @ (where "@" names the actual world), it follows that if determinism and essentiality of origins are true, then I cannot act otherwise than I do.

Or, to put it differently, if essentiality of origins holds, the compatibilist's "Had I wanted to, I would have acted differently" conditionals are counter-nomic. But it is most implausible that a counter-nomic conditional would suffice to capture our "could have done otherwise" conditionals.

Therefore, if essentiality of origins is true, either determinism is false or we are not free.

Radical Essentiality of Origins and a crazy theory of names

Radical Essentiality of Origins (REO) is the thesis that the complete origins of an entity x are necessary and sufficient to the identity of x. In other words, for any x, if D is a complete description of the origins of x (all the history prior to x, as well as x's initial state), then necessarily something is an x if and only if it has D. In other words, according to REO, origins function like haecceities.

REO has a number of benefits. It reduces the number of brute facts (one doesn't have to explain why I exist instead of someone just like me), it reduces transworld identity facts to REO and diachronic identity, it explains how God knows whom he will create, and so on. It has one cost: it reduces the number of possibilities, eliminating apparent possibilities that people might think are real (like the possibility that I might have lived your life, or had a slightly different causal origin, or that there be two indiscernibles). Moreover, Kripke's quantified modal logic has the deficiency that it has no room for names; but if REO is true, names aren't needed, as we can just use definite descriptions, pace Kripke.

Here's something really crazy you can do with REO. You can rescue something like the definite description theory of names. You say: a name functions as an abbreviation (in a broad sense—I will say a bit more) for a definite description in terms of origins. Thus, "Socrates" abbreviates: "The son of Phaenarete and Sophroniscus, grandson of ..., conceived at ..."

An apparent problem is that it seems that to grasp an abbreviation, you must grasp what it is an abbreviation for. But that may well be false. One can have the concept of the U.N. or of a someone's being a POW without knowing what the abbreviations stand for. (We could explain this datum by saying that there are in fact two words "POW"—one is an abbreviation and the other is a word in the idiolect of those who don't know it's an abbreviation. But the proposal that one can understand an abbreviation without knowing what it stands for is simpler.)

Maybe, though, some user of the abbreviation has to know what it's an abbreviation for. But suppose that Sally wrote down on a piece of paper some definite description, and sealed the piece in an envelope. Then she told me some facts about what satisfies the description, without telling me the description. Maybe it's a riddle and I'm supposed to guess what the description is. So I say: "Let 'D' abbreviate that definite description." I can then use "D" grammatically as a definite description. For instance, if Sally's hints imply that the description isn't (even de facto) rigid, then I can say: "D might not have been D." So I can use "D" in my language. Now, there is a question whether such use is sufficient for counting as grasp. It either does or does not. If it does, then there is no objection to the REO account of names—we just suppose that names function as abbreviations for definite descriptions of the origins, but we don't know what these definite descriptions are. But if it is not sufficient for counting as grasp, we can still say the same thing about how names function. We just have to say that we don't grasp names, though we are able to use them. Maybe only God grasps my name. Or, perhaps, the better thing to do is to distinguish different kinds of grasp. We have a sufficient grasp of a name to use it.

I don't know how this can be extended to fictional names. But Kripke's account of names has that problem, too.

A problem with this theory of names is that there isn't a unique definite description of origins. Conjuncts can be re-ordered, etc. I think to some people this isn't going to be a great cost—maybe a name is an ambiguous definite description (i.e., it's ambiguous which definite description it is), but the ambiguity does not affect extension in any possible world. (Then, maybe a fictional name is an ambiguous definite description where the ambiguity does affect extension?) I don't like that. Another problem this is that I actually think "Tully" and "Cicero" mean different things. To me, this is a very strong, maybe fatal, objection to the crazy REO-based theory of names. But it is a standard view that "Tully" and "Cicero" have the same sense, so to others this won't be much of an objection.

Enough fun for now.