Growing Block and a time bias

Here’s a curious argument against Growing Block. Other things being equal, it is better to receive goods earlier in life and to receive bads later in life if Growing Block theory is true. For the earlier you receive X in life, the larger the portion of your life during which X is a part of your life. For X becomes a part of your life at its time, and on Growing Block remains a part of your life forever.

Thus, if you live to 70, and eat a chocolate cake at age 10, then for the next 60 years you are alive with a life that includes that happy event. But if you eat the cake at age 50, then it is only for 20 years that you are alive with a life that includes that happy event.

On Growing Block, this seems to be a good reason to put good things earlier in life and bad things later. But surely one does not have such a reason! So, we have evidence against Growing Block.

Two kinds of time bias

In our philosophy of time seminar, we have been thinking about time biases. Humans appear to discount future goods and bads so that a good or bad with value λ at temporal distance T in the future has effective value f(T)λ for some monotonically non-increasing function f. We might call this a relational time bias—the bias is based on the temporal relation between us-now and the goods and bads we are thinking about.

But there are also structural or non-relational time biases. Thus, as is well known, we think that a life of improvement is better to a life of deterioration, even if the total amount of good is the same. In other words, we think it’s better if the goods are rearranged in life to go closer to the end of life. Putting them closer to the end of life is also usually putting them further in the future, but the concern here is purely structural, not about how far or close the goods are to the present as such.

What is real change?

I am starting to think that it’s rather mysterious what real change—i.e., non-Cambridge change—is. (Cambridge change is illustrated by examples like: Alice became shorter than her son Bob because Bob grew.)

It is tempting to say:

1. x undergoes non-Cambridge change if and only if there is an intrinsic property that x gains or loses.

But it could well turn out that one can undergo non-Cambridge change with respect to relational, and hence non-intrinsic, properties. The radical, but I think quite possibly correct, example is that it could turn out that all creaturely properties are relational because they all involve participation in God. (Thus, to be green is to greenly participate in God.)

However, there could be less radical cases. For instance, plausibly, shape properties are constituted by relations between an object’s parts and regions of space. But an object’s changing shape is a paradigm example of a non-Cambridge change. Or it might be that a Platonism on which we have an “eye of the soul” that changingly gazes at timeless Platonic objects. It seems like the change in the eye of the soul in coming to gaze on Beauty Itself could be entirely relational and fundamental. In particular, the “gaze” might not be constituted by any non-relational features of the eye of the soul. And yet the change is not a Cambridge change.

It seems to me that this worry gives one some reason to accept this Aristotelian account:

2. x undergoes non-Cambridge change if and only if x has a passive potentiality that is actualized.

I would rather not do that—I have long tried to avoid passive potentialities—but I don’t right now know another alternative to (1). I dislike passive potentialities sufficiently that I am actually tempted to deny that there is an account of the difference between Cambridge and non-Cambridge change. But that would come at a serious cost: it would be hard to account for divine immutability.

A compositional fine-tuning argument

Assume naturalism about the human mind. Our best naturalistic account of the human mind is functionalism. But functionalism faces multiple too-many-minds problems. The most famous of these are the Chinese Room and its variants like Schwitzgebel’s consciousness of the United States argument. But a more troubling bevy of problems comes from abundant ontologies. Thus, as Dean Zimmerman noted (building on Unger), where I am there are many clouds of atoms that differ from me in an insignificant way—say, an atom in some insignificant skin cell. On functionalism, each of these clouds should have the same conscious states as I do. Or, as Johnston argued, I have many personites—temporal parts of my life that are intrinsically just like the life of a person could be. On functionalism, they will have the same conscious states as me. The clouds of atoms and personites are not just a consequence of functionalism but also of other naturalistic accounts of mind.

But why are the too-many-minds problems problems, beyond the fact that they are counterintuitive? After all, we have good reason to think that the mind is mysterious enough that the true theory will have some counterintuitive consequences.

I think the best answer is ethics. If a country has a person-level mind, then it would be a murder-suicide for the citizens to vote to dissolve the country. But it is not wrong for the citizens to vote to dissolve a country for, say, economic reasons. If the Zimmerman argument is right, then where there is a person feeling pain, there are many other beings with human-level consciousness feeling the same pain. But the number of being that coincide with a specific person rapidly increases with the size of the person—the more cells they have, the more clouds of atoms there are that differ with respect to a few insignificant atoms. Consequently, if we have a choice between relieving an equal pain in two smaller persons or one much larger person, we should always relieve the pain in the larger one, because the number of conscious atom clouds coinciding with the larger person is likely much larger than the total number of atom clouds coinciding with the smaller ones. In other words, crucial intuitions about equal treatment of people are undercut. Something similar is true on the Johnston arguments if the number of personites is finite, and if it’s infinite we have other ethical problems. On the other hand, there is no immediate serious ethical problem in saying the Chinese Room is conscious.

Given functionalism, I think there is only one way to block the ethically problematic too-many-minds cases: deny that the alleged entities exist. There are no countries. There is only one human-shaped cloud of atoms where I am. There are no personites. But we better not go all the way to blocking all complex objects—we will get other ethical problems if we conclude with the early Unger that humans don’t exist. In other words:

1. If functionalism and ethical realism are true, restricted composition is true.

Restricted composition says that some but not all (proper) pluralities of atoms compose a whole. Note that (1) also applies to some other naturalistic theories than functionalism.

But it’s not enough that restricted composition be true. What we need is a carefully fine-tuned restricted composition. If we restrict composition too much, there will be no humans—and that’s ethically unacceptable. If we don’t restrict composition enough, there will be too many minds of an ethically problematic sort. In other words, restricted composition must be fine-tuned to fit with human ethics.

That’s difficult to do. For instance, van Inwagen’s life-account—that a plurality composes a whole if and only if it has a life together—has the problem that clouds of atoms that differ from me insignificantly have a life together just as I do.

Given naturalism, I think any restricted composition account that fits with ethics will involve seemingly arbitrary choices. Thus, one might start with van Inwagen’s account, but have an incredibly fine-grained account of what counts as “a life together” such that only one of the clouds of atoms nearly coinciding with me has a life together—namely, the cloud constituting me. But such a fine-grained account will have a ton of free parameters, and will be an implausible candidate for a metaphysically necessary account of restricted composition. Thus, the account will not only be fine-tuned but will likely be contingent.

How do we explain the fine-tuning of restricted composition for ethics? It’s hard to see how to do it other than by supposing that fundamental reality is value-driven. There are two main value-driven theories of fundamental reality: theism and axiarchism, where the latter is something like the view that reality must be for the best. Thus we have an argument for theism or axiarchism. And axiarchism, as Rescher noted, plausibly implies theism, since it’s for the best that there be a perfect being. So, either way, we get theism.

We can also run this argument in a Bayesian way. Assume naturalism about the earth ecosystem as a background belief, and assume as part of the background that the physical simples are arranged as they are. On atheism, it is extremely unlikely that composition is fine-tuned for ethics. On theism, it is at least moderately likely. So, we have significant evidence for theism.

Objection: God can’t control which cloud of atoms composes a whole, because whatever is the answer, the answer is metaphysically necessary.

Response: First, as noted above, it is likely that any ethically fine-tuned restricted composition theory has a bunch of parameters that appear contingent, and hence is likely contigent. Second, God is creator and has power over being itself. It seems quite plausible that where there is a bunch of particles God can lend his power to create an entity composed of the particles. Third, if God exists, likely modality itself is grounded in God—all reality necessarily reflects the goodness of God. But if so, then divine goodness may help to explain surprisingly good features of necessary truths, such as a fine-tuned but necessary theory of composition. Fourth, we don’t need to be certain of any of the above. All we need is that one of these stories is an order of magnitude more likely on theism than the fine-tuning of restricted composition is given naturalism (where the probabilities are all epistemic).

If my argument succeeds, it yields a dilemma:

2. Either naturalism about humans is false or God exists.

One may ask whether some variant of the above fine-tuning argument applies if naturalism about humans is true. I expect it does, but the exact shape of the bump under the rug will be different for different non-naturalistic stories. For instance, on Cartesian theories, there will be the question of why there is exactly one soul per human body. On strong emergence, we can ask why consciousness arises in exactly one of the human-shaped clouds of atoms where I am.

Avoiding temporal parts of elementary particles

It would be appealing to be able to hold on to all of the following:

1. Four-dimensionalism.

2. Elementary particles are simples.

3. There is only kind of parthood and it is timeless parthood.

4. Uniqueness of fusions: a plurality of parts composes at most one thing.

But (1)–(4) have a problem in cases where one object is transformed into another object made of the same elementary particles. For instance, perhaps, an oak tree dies and then an angel meticulously gathers together all the elementary particles the oak ever has and makes a pine out of them, which he shortly destroys before it can gain any new particles. Then the elementary particles of the oak seem to compose the pine, contrary to (4).

One common solution for four-dimensionalists is to deny (2). Elementary particles have temporal parts, and you can’t make the old temporal parts of the oak’s particles live again in the pine. But there are problems with this solution. First, you might believe in a patchwork principle which should allow the old temporal parts to get re-used again. Second, it is intuitive to think that elementary particles are parts of the oak. But on the temporal part solution, this violates the transitivity of parthood, since the elementary particles will have temporal parts that outlive the oak. Third, the temporal parts of particles seem to be just as physical as the particles, and you might think that it’s the job of physics and not metaphysics to tell us what physical objects there are, so positing the temporal parts steps on the physicist’s toes in a problematic way. Fourth, and I am not fully confident I understand all the ramifications here, we need some kind of primitive relation joining the temporal parts of the particle into a single particle, since otherwise we cannot distinguish the case where two electrons swap properties and positions (and thereby reverse the sign of the wavefunction) from the case where they don’t.

The second common solution is to deny (3), distinguishing parthood from an irreducible parthood-at-t, and then say that trees are merely composed-at-t from elementary particles. I find an irreducible parthood-at-t kind of mysterious, but perhaps it’s not too terrible.

I want to offer a different solution, with an unorthodox four-dimensionalist Aristotelianism. Like orthodox Aristotelianism, the unorthodox version introduces a further entity, a form. And now we deny that a tree is composed of the elementary particles. Instead, we say that a tree is composed of form and elementary particles. One minor unorthodox feature here is that we don’t distinguish the parthood of a form in a substance and the parthood of a particle in a substance: there is just one kind of parthood. The more unorthodox thing will be, however, that we allow elementary particles to outlive their substances. The resulting unorthodox four-dimensionalist Aristotelianism then allows one to accept all of (1)–(4), since the pine is no longer composed of parts that compose the oak, as the oak’s form is not a part of the pine.

But we still have to account for parthood-at-t. After all, it just is true that some electron e is a part of the oak at some but not other times. And this surely matters—it is needed to account for, say, the mass and shape of the oak at different times. How do we that? Well, we might suppose that even if in our unorthodox Aristotelianism particles can outlive their substances, they get something from the substance’s form, even if it’s not identity. Perhaps, for instance, they get their causal powers from the substance’s form. (We then still need to say something about unaffiliated particles—particles not inside a larger substance. Perhaps when a particle, considered as a bit of matter, gets expelled from a larger substance and becomes unaffiliated, it gains its own substantial form. It loses that form when it joins into a larger substance again. At any given time, it gets its causal powers from the substance’s form.) So we can say that e is a part of the oak at t if and only if e gets its causal powers from the oak’s form at t.

Aristotelianism and fundamental particles

A number of contemporary Aristotelians hold to the view that when a fundamental particle becomes or ceases to be a part of an organism, the particle perishes and is replaced by another. The reasoning is that the identity of parts comes from the whole substance, so parts are tied to their substances.

I’ve long inclined to this view, but I’ve also always found it rather hard to believe, feeling that a commitment to this view is a significant piece of evidence against Aristotelianism. I think I may now have found a way to reduce the force of this evidence.

Consider one of the main competitors to Aristotelianism, a non-Aristotelian four-dimensionalism with standard mereology that includes strong supplementation:

1. If y is not a part of x, then y has a part z that does not overlap x.

Together with antisymmetry (if x is a part of y and conversely, then x = y), it immediately follows that:

2. If everything that overlaps x also overlaps y and conversely, then x = y.

Now, suppose that we have a chair made of some fundamental particles. The planks from the chair are ripped off and reassembled into a model trebuchet, with no fundamental particles added or gained. Suppose the fundamental particles are simples. Then any z that overlaps the chair had better overlap at least one fundamental particle u of the chair (the Aristotelian will deny this: it might instead overlap the form) and since fundamental particles are simples it must have u as a part. But u is also a part of the trebuchet. Thus z overlaps the trebuchet, and so anything that overlaps the chair overlaps the trebuchet. And the converse follows by the same argument. Thus, the chair is the trebuchet, which is absurd.

Here is a standard solution to this: fundamental particles are not actually simples, because they have proper temporal parts, and temporal parts are parts. What are the true simples are the instantaneous slices of fundamental particles. Thus a z that overlaps the chair in a fundamental particle u need not overlap the trebuchet as the overlap can happen in disjoint temporal parts of u.

The main competitor to Aristotelianism, thus, has to suppose that fundamental particles are actually made up of their instantaneous slices. Now suppose the Aristotelian accepts this ontology of instantaneous slices of fundamental particles, but denies that there are fundamental particles composed of the slices. Problem solved! We don’t have the problem of fundamental particles persisting beyond the substances that they are parts of, because there are no fundamental particles, just instantaneous slices of fundamental particles.

Is there much cost to this? Granted, we have to deny that there are electrons and the like. But our non-Aristotelian four-dimensionalist mereologist either also denies that there are electrons or else has to construct the electrons out of electron slices, presumably by supposing some sort of a diachronic relation R that relates slices that are to count as part of the same electron. But if we have such a relation, then we can just paraphrase away talk of electrons into talk of maximal sets of electron-slices interrelated by R. If anything, we gain parsimony.

And if we cannot find such a diachronic relation that joins up electron-slices into electrons, then our non-Aristotelian four-dimensionalist has a serious problem, too.

Beyond persons?

I wonder if creation includes beings that are qualitatively as high above mere persons like us as mere persons are qualitatively above non-persons. Persons have agency and intellectuality (let’s say) and that gives them a dignity above non-persons. Is there some quality Q that is even more impressive than agency and intellectuality and that is actually found in some creatures?

We have no idea what that quality Q would be, and just as personhood is surely inconceivable to a non-person, Q would likely be inconceivable to us.

I think our only approach to the question is through divine revelation, and it may be that divine revelation just does not include enough information.

Here is my best line of thought towards a negative answer. Jesus Christ is king of creation. Moreover, plausibly, he is king of creation not just as God, but as a human being. As God, he presumably would have Q. But as a human being, he lacks Q. But just as having personhood seems a prerequisite for being king over persons, it seems that having Q would be a prerequisite for being king over those with Q.

On the other hand, one might think that God might want to make the possessors of Q humble, and being ruled over by a human being might be a good way to do that. So I don’t think we have a decisive answer.

Two kinds of change

I ran across this old post of mine and it made me think that there is an interesting distinction between two kinds of change which one might label as objectual and factual change. Objectual change is change in objects, including both an object’s acquiring or losing properties and an object’s coming or ceasing to be. Factual change is change in reality itself—the facts of reality themselves change, with future facts coming to be present (and on open future views getting filled out) and present facts coming to be past. We can put this in terms of change of facts, change of truth value of (“fully closed”) propositions, or change of reality as a whole.

When A-theorists accuse B-theorists of having a static picture of the universe and B-theorists respond with the at-at theory of change (change is a thing’s having a property at one time and lacking it at another), they are talking past each other to some degree. The A-theorist is talking of factual change. The B-theorist is talking of objectual change. The A-theorist is simply right that on the B-theory there is no factual change: the facts about reality were, are and will ever be the same. That there is objectual change on the B-theory does not contradict this. But at the same time, the A-theorist’s accusation of static factuality is something the B-theorist should proudly admit as a feature and not a bug: truth does not change.

That there is objectual change is a part of our uncontroversial data about the world. That there is factual change is the A-theory in a nutshell, and hence begs the question against the B-theorist.

At this point it seems we have an impasse. Where should the debate go? I think one thing to figure out is whether one of the kinds of change depends on the other. Suppose it turns out that objectual change would need to depend on factual change. Then the A-theorist has won: the B-theory has no change at all. Note that the at-at theory of change is not a sufficient response to a claim that objectual change depends on factual change. For the at-at theory depends on the concept of time (change is having different properties at different times), and if time itself requires factual change, then the at-at theory itself requires the A-theory. This suggests that if the at-at theory is going to be the B-theorist’s response, the B-theorist owes the A-theorist an account of what makes time be time (McTaggart insisted on the latter point).

What about the other direction? That one is kind of interesting, too. One might think that factual change would need to arise from objectual change. Aristotle apparently did. It’s not clear, however, how one gets the A-theorist’s change of reality, where future facts become present and present facts become past, out of changes in objects. Perhaps one can read McTaggart’s infamous argument against the coherence of the A-theory as an attempt to show that this task can’t be done, at least in the special case where the objects are events.

Can we offer such an argument? Maybe. We aren’t going to be able to get factual change simply from the fact that objects have different ordinary properties at different times, say a light being green at t₁, orange at t₂, and red at t₃. For there is no way to use such facts to ground which of these times are past, present or future. So it seems that if we’re to get factual change from objectual change, we’re going to have go the route McTaggart suggests, and try to ground it in terms of objects’ temporal A-properties, say this light’s being past, present, or future. But that seems problematic. For the change between past, present and future does not happen in the lifetime of the light. During the lifetime of the light, the light is always present—it is only past after its existence and it is only future before its existence! But a change that does not happen during an object’s lifetime is, of course, a Cambridge change, like a horse’s becoming posthumously famous. And Cambridge change must always be relative to something else changing really. But then it is in the latter change that we should be grounding our factual change. And now we are off on a vicious regress, much as McTaggart (perhaps for somewhat different reasons) thought.

This suggests to me that just as the B-theorist denies that objectual change depends on factual change, the A-theorist should deny that factual change arises from objectual change. As more than one philosopher has noted, the A-theorist should respond to McTaggart by taking A-temporality, understood as factual change, as primitive.

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.

Octopuses, aliens, squirrels and AI

I’ve been toying with an argument for dualism along these lines:

1. Octopuses are conscious.

2. Technologically advanced aliens are or would be conscious.

3. Squirrels are conscious.

4. Current LLMs are not conscious.

Claims 1–3 require a pretty strong multiple realizability. On materialism, our best such multiple realizability is a functionalism. But it is likely that our current LLMs have more sophisticated general intelligence than squirrels. Thus, a functionalism that makes 1–3 true also violates 4.

Dualism, on the other hand, can allow for all of 1–4 by supposing the hypothesis that all and only intellectually sophisticated living things have souls.

Could a physicalist do the same? I think the difficulty is that life is very fuzzy on physicalism, in a way in which consciousness should not be. On dualism, however, we can suppose that God or the laws of nature have a seemingly arbitrary threshold of what life is.

A Stoic thesis

Combine these two rather Stoic theses:

1. No one can make the fully virtuous person worse off

2. Doing what is morally wrong always makes you worse off

and you get:

3. No one can make the fully virtuous person do what is morally wrong.

It is going to be crucial to this post that (3) includes cases of inculpably doing what is morally wrong. I myself think (1) is false, say for the that Aristotle cites, namely that severe pain makes even the virtous worse off. But nonetheless I want to defend (3).

It may be possible to first destroy a virtuous person’s virtue, and then get them to do what is morally wrong. Hitting someone on the head or brainwashing them can severely damage the psyche in a way that can remove the rational habits that constitute virtue. I do not count this a counterexample to (3), because in this case when the victim performs the wrong action, they have previously lost their virtue.

One might try to rule out the case of head injury and brainwashing by restricting (3) to culpable wrongs, but I don’t want to do that. I want to defend (3) in the case of inculpable wrongs, too.

A consequence of (3) is a fairly strong source incompatibilism about our action. Not only is it that neural manipulation cannot make you perform a free action, but it cannot make you perform an action. This fits well with dualism, but does not require it, because it might be that brain states that constitute acts of will have to have functional characteristics incompatible with outside control.

As a final clarification, I understand “making” as reliable, but not necessarily 100% reliable. Someone with significant free will cannot be 100% reliably made to do wrong, even if they are not virtuous. But at the same time, while a fully virtuous person cannot be reliably tempted away from right action, they might still have significant free will and be able to do wrong, so a temptation might unreliably get them to do wrong. Furthermore, I am thinking of “making” on something like a specific occasion. Thus, perhaps, if you tempt a virtuous person a million times, while restoring their brain to the pre-temptation state between temptations, by the law of large numbers you can expect them to fail at least once.

Let’s think about (3) some more.

Threats aren’t going to reliably get the fully virtuous person do the wrong thing. Sometimes, it is reasonable to bow to a threat. If someone holds a gun to your head and tells you to cover the side of your neighbor’s house with a giant smiley face graffiti, it’s reasonable to go along with it. But morality is reasonable, and where it is reasonable to bow to a threat, doing so is not only not culpable but simply not wrong. Indeed, it would typically be a failure of respect for human life to refuse to paint the graffiti when one’s life is threatened. In cases, however, where it is unreasonable to knuckle under, the fully virtuous person will reliably withstand the threat.

Physical control of another’s body or brain isn’t going to produce morally wrong action, because it doesn’t produce action at all. It is not wrong to kill someone by being pushed off a cliff on top of them, because it’s not an action to fall off a cliff. Similarly, if someone implants a remote control for one’s muscles, even if in the brain, then the resulting muscle spasms are not actions, and hence are not morally wrong actions.

Cases of omissions are interesting. It is easy to make someone fail to do what they promised, say by imprisoning them. If one thinks that such a failure counts as an inculpable wrongdoing, and if (3) is supposed to apply to omissions as well, then we have a counterexample. I do want (3) to apply to omissions. But I think that all that’s morally required by a promise is a reasonable amount of effort—where what counts as reasonable depends on the case. If you promise to come to a party but are in the hospital after a serious accident, it’s not morally required—indeed, it’s morally forbidden—that you rip the IV out of your arm and drag yourself on hands knees to the party. Indeed, (3) is a part of my reason for thinking that promises only require reasonable effort, so this is the first example where I have (3) giving us evidence for a substantive moral thesis. I think something similar is true in the case of commands, legislation and the like. You can’t ask for more than reasonable effort! Asking for more adds insult to injury. The parents whose children starve because the parents were unjustly imprisoned have not done wrong in failing to feed them.

Cases of ignorance are also interesting. If Alice is serving wine to her guests and Bob pours poison in the wine whe she isn’t looking, some might say that Alice has done wrong in poisoning her guests. Certainly, actual-result act utilitarianism implies this. But so much the worse for actual-result act utilitarianism. It is much better to say that Alice has done no wrong, as long as it was reasonable for her to have no suspicion of Bob. Cases of ignorance of through-and-through moral facts, on the other hand, are arguably incompatible with full virtue.

Where I think (3) becomes most interesting is in cases where we have a normative power over what is right or wrong for another to do. Using our normative powers, we can make someone who would otherwise have done wrong not be doing wrong. There is a story of a hasid whose house is being robbed, and when the thief is carrying his property away, the hasid yells: “I renounce my property rights.” In doing so, the hasid releases the thief from the duties of restitution, and makes it be the case that the thief is not sinning by continuing to carry the goods away.

Are there cases where we can use our normative powers to reliably make someone do wrong? Definitely. You can know that someone under your authority will very likely refuse to follow a certain command, and you can nonetheless issue the command. But this is obviously a case of someone who is lacking full virtue.

I think the best bet for using our normative powers to reliably make someone perfectly virtuous do wrong is when our exercise of normative powers creates a duty but does so in a way that the perfectly virtuous person does not know about. For instance, one might command the fully virtuous person in circumstances where they will likely not hear the command. Or one might pass legislation that they won’t know about. There are two ways to defend (3) in these cases. The first is to have a communication condition on commands and legislation—they are only morally binding when person subject to them either is informed about them or ought to be informed about them. The second is to say that all that’s morally required is that one make a reasonable effort to obey commands and laws in general, not that one make a reasonable effort to obey each specific command or law (since if one doesn’t know about a command or law, one doesn’t need to make a reasonable effort to obey it). I somewhat prefer the first option of a communication condition—the vicious lawbreaker does wrong in disobeying a specific law, and not just law in general (though according to James 2:10, they are also doing wrong in disobeying law in general).

In any case, I think (3) puts some significant constraints on the shape of moral obligation and the nature of action, but these constraints seem defensible. Though maybe I am failing to notice some better counterexample.

Existing and existing at a time

If we accept growing block or eternalism as our theory of temporal reality, we have to make a distinction between existing simpliciter (i.e., being in the domain of unrestricted quantifiers) and existing-at-a-time (including tensed existence at the present). To exist at time t is not the same as its being the case at t that one exists simpliciter.

Suppose, for instance, closed-future growing block. Then we can say the following about Bucephalus (circa 355 BC–326 BC):

1. In 330 BC: Bucephalus exists-in-330-BC.

2. In 330 BC: Bucephalus exists simpliciter.

3. In 2025: Bucephalus exists simpliciter.

4. In 2025: It’s not the case that Bucephalus exists-in-2025.

5. In 3000 BC: Bucephalus does not exist simpliciter.

6. In 3000 BC: Bucephalus exists-in-330-BC.

Existence-at-a-time is not really existence—it is just spatiotemporal locatedness. (Of course, we have a grounding problem about how on closed-future growing block facts about the future are grounded, but bracket that.)

Now, on both growing block and eternalism, if something exists-now it exists simpliciter. Could one have a theory on which this inference is denied?

Perhaps Platonism denies it. Only timeless and unchanging things really are. Changing things in time become rather than really are. Similarly, it is said that God said to St Catherine of Siena: “I am he who is and you are she who is not.”

But is there a theory of time on which the inference is denied? I once explored a version of B-theory like that. Now I want to consider a version of A-theory like that.

Consider pastism, on which to exist simpliciter is to exist pastly, and take a version of pastism on which there are moments of time (probably the best version of pastism on offer is one where there are no moments). Suppose t₁ is the first moment of Bucephalus’ life. Then on pastism, at t₁ Bucephalus doesn’t exist, but Bucephalus exists-at-t₁. Is this coherent? It does have this odd consequence. Suppose t₁ is also the last moment of time (so Bucephalus exists at exactly one moment). Then Bucephalus exists-at-t₁, but it is never the case that Bucephalus exists simpliciter. Still, it’s not clear that a logical contradiction has occurred.

Nonetheless, it does seem absurd to suppose that something exists-now but doesn’t exist, even if it’s not strictly contradictory.

Presentism and B-theory

It’s common to say that presentism entails the A-theory. But that’s not so clear. Suppose that time can pass in the absence of change. Now imagine a world of with a beginning or an end of time, objects, but no change, no temporal parts, and no events except ones that last for all time. In that world, we automatically have a kind of presentism: all the objects and events that exist always exist presently. Yet a B-theorist could accept the possibility of such a world, too: the world need not have a distinguished present moment of time. Thus, a B-theorist could say that A-theory is impossible (say, because of McTaggart’s dubious arguments) but presentism is possible—though contingently false.

We obviously don’t live in such a world. Though Parmenides may have thought he did.

Theism, pantheism, panentheism and cosmopsychism

If God didn’t create anything, pantheism (everything is God), panetheism (everything is in God or is God) and cosmopsychism (the whole of reality is conscious) would be true. And it’s possible for God not to create anything.

Some odd theories of temporal reality, with eschatological applications

The three major theories of temporal reality are presentism (reality includes only the present), growing block (reality includes the present and past) and eternalism (reality includes past, present and future).

A recent option that has been considered is thick presentism on which reality includes a short segment of time including the present. This lets one have some of the intuitive advantages of presentism (dinosaurs and Martian settlements don’t exist) while at the same time neatly solving the problem of diachronic causation. Moreover, it raises an interesting explanatory problem: why does our world have the kind of temporal reality it does.

I think that if thick presentism is metaphysically possible, likely so are a number of other views:

1. Very thick presentism

2. Time-variable thickness thick presentism

3. Growing block

4. Space-variable thickness thick presentism

5. Swiss-cheese temporal reality.

On very thick presentism, the band of reality in thick presentism becomes extremely thick, say a million years. For there seems to be no compelling reason why the band of reality posited by thick presentists would have to be thin.

On the time-variable thick presentism, we have a thick presentism where the thickness varies with time. This is likely something that the thick presentist has to countenance. For, plausibly, some moment within the thick present has to be distinguished as “very present” to avoid violating the law of non-contradictions (since objects will have contradictory properties within the thick present). Suppose that that moment happens to be at the middle of the thick present. Then when the very present gets closer and closer to the beginning or end of time, the band of reality must get thinner and thinner. Or suppose the moment happens to be at the end of the thick present (I think that may be the better theory). Then when the very present gets closer to the beginning of time, the band of reality gets thinner and thinner. We also get time-variable thick presentism by applying patchwork principles to recombine worlds with thick presentisms of different thicknesses.

Growing-block with a finite past is just a time-variable thickness thick presentism where the very present is at the end of the thick present and the thickness of the thick present at t is equal to the duration from the beginning of time to t. And if we allow it with a finite past, why not with an infinite one—assuming an infinite past is possible?

Applying patchwork principles to thick presentisms with different thicknesses, we can get a space-variable thick presentism—here, the present may be ten minutes thick, but there it may be ten years thick.

Once we allow that, why not go all the way and allow a swiss-cheese temporal reality, where at any given time various chunks of the four-dimensional manifold are included or left out in a pretty arbitrary fashion (perhaps subject to some restrictions to make causation work)?

Now, here’s a fun theological speculation. Some thinkers are worried about eternalism and growing block on theological grounds: they worry that these theories imply that horrendously evil events like the Holocaust will eternally be a part of reality, and that this is inappropriate. But once we have expanded the range of options as we have, we can have some interesting theological theories.

For instance, perhaps, growing block is true between now and the Second Coming. Then at the Second Coming the band of reality gets very thin, so that after the Second Coming, the band of reality includes only the times from the Second Coming to the then-present. We can think of this as giving a surprising reading of the “Behond, I make all things new” of Revelation 21:5—the past events and object suddenly get wiped out of reality. Or, as a variant, perhaps partial eternalism becomes true after the Second Coming: reality now includes all times from the Second Coming on.

But one may worry that that wipes out too much—for instance, it wipes out the glory of the Cross (I am grateful to a graduate student for this worry). Very well. Then we go for a swiss cheese version where we have selective removal from reality—the Holocaust goes but the Cross stays, say.

All this has a certain resemblance to Hud Hudson’s hypertime story. But it’s different in two ways. First, it doesn’t need hypertime. Second, I am assuming here a variant of a standard presentist picture on which there are tensed truths, and the tensed truths function according to standard temporal logics. Thus, if it is true that p, it will always be true that it was true that p. What changes is what events and substances fall within the domain of restricted quantifiers—quantifiers do not commute with “at t” and other temporal operators.

For instance, on the “I make all things new” theories, right now all three of these are true:

1. There exists an x such that at 327 BC: x is a horse named “Bucephalus”

2. At 327 BC: there exists an x such that x is a horse named “Bucephalus”.

3. At 2000 AD: there exists an x such that at 327 BC: x is a horse named “Bucephalus”.

After the second coming, when the past objects and events are wiped out, we still have (b) and (c) holding, but (a) does not hold.

On a hypertime variant of “I make all things new”, once the past was wiped out, we would have none of (a)–(c).

I do not endorse any of these odd possibilities, because I am a die-hard B-theorist.