A new Approach to Divine Conceptualism? (Haecceitistic Theistic Conceptual Realism)

 This is from an email I sent to James T. Anderson:

 This approach focuses on Haecceities, specifically, the Plantingian view on them. (Which he develops in his essays on Modal Metaphysics, and most popularly in The Nature of Necessity.)
 
There are four different motivations for this sort of view (as far as I can see), which are:

 1: Haecceities are metaphysically necessary existences, meaning they satisfy the "necessity condition" of Divine Thoughts. Haecceities are intentional - insofar as they have a sort of "aboutness" to them, In other words, My haecceity seems to be "about" me - with the same reasoning apply to any other haecceity. Haecceities seem to also be primitive in nature, similar to the primitive intentionality of a Divine Mind (This might be a stretch). There's also an infinite amount of them - corresponding to each possible individual, so they fulfill the plenitude criteria as well. If we don't identify them with Divine Thoughts, they seem to belong to a very different kind of existence, which for all intents and purposes, seems to be epistemically inaccessible to us. Another minor detail is that Haecceities are exemplified, rather than Instantiated, according to Plantinga. Which you from what I can gather, seem to think is true for Divine Ideas as well. They also exist separately from their exemplifications (My Haecceity would exist even in every possible world in which I don't exist). All of this seems to make them extremely good candidates for Divine Thoughts, even more than Possible Worlds it seems.

2: Consider the following argument:  If there are no Haecceities, then prior to the creation of the world it looks like God cannot decide to create you instead of me, since what would serve to individuate me from you could only be bare particulars, and there are none around. So it looks like while God can decide to create people, he doesn't know who he is creating, which seems to detract somewhat from the divine majesty. Or potentially cause some "Divine Paralysis". So it seems like there has to be a way in which God can individuate between these non-actual (or we could say merely possible) "Individuals". And what other than Haecceities could fulfill this role? Of course, we would want to fend off any sort of threats to aseity, or stipulate another Kind of existence, by denying that Haecceities exist wholly separate from God in any sense, but rather are simply Divine Thoughts. Which obviously, exist separately from the Individuals they're related to - exist necessarily - Individuate - and are Intentional. It's very easy to see how we can identify them with Divine Thoughts. This seems to be extremely good motivation for a theist to accept Haecceitism, and hence Theistic Conceptual Realism of this variation.

3: Haecceitism might also have an advantage over Propositional and Possible Worlds Realism, insofar as we can construct Conceivability Arguments for Haecceitism, which are plentiful in the literature regarding this topic. (Cowling, 2015 for example). They also have other, more important purposes. Such as solving the Problem of Individuation, and there are several different arguments for Haecceitism based upon Blackwell's Spheres. We could also potentially take a Chalmers-esque view, and make a claim like "Ideal Conceivability is a Prima Facie guide to/entails Metaphysical Possibility", and then build arguments for Haecceitism based on that - given S5. (Since haecceities are metaphysically necessary.)

4: This might also help us solve what is called "The Gap Problem" in regards to the Contingency Argument. Let us grant the following three assumptions:
- There is a necessary being (whom we have not yet identified as God).
- Haecceitism is true.
- Explained Necessity ought to be taken over Brute Necessity.

The idea here is that, if Haecceities were to exist, they'd either be Self-Explained (Or we could say, explained A se) or Brutely necessary. There's a lot of contention on whether or not Self-Explanation should be even considered as Explanation. But what should be accepted, is that a sort of Ab Alio explanation would be far more satisfactory for our best theories in terms of explanatory power. It's very easy to see where the argument goes now. Haecceities fulfill the criteria of being the Ideas of a Necessary Being, giving us a sort of Ab Alio Explanation. Given that, we should simply posit that the Necessary Being has a Mind - which has all these Divine Ideas in them, in order to explain all these Haecceities. Therefore, God exists. (Or atleast, a theory containing a necessarily existing agent in this regard has far more explanatory power than one which has a non-agent necessary being.) 

Haecceities also provide us with an account of Transworld Identity which would fall nicely with a Divine Conceptualist picture of Possible Worlds. This seems to motivate a sort of combined view on both giving us a far cleaner, elegant picture of Modal Space. 

Another minor point is that some of the objections to Haecceitism, which are usually taken to be knockdown objections - for example Robert Adams' or Vallicella's, could all be easily defeated if were to accept Haecceities as Divine Ideas.
One concern I would see is potentially some Bootstrapping Concerns, dealing with God's haecceity. Though It's not really clear to me how such a bootstrapping problem would look like in this context. Perhaps we can just take the same approach Welty mentions in his response to Craig, and potentially take a sort of Creator/Creature distinction as a way to deny God has a haecceity, or at least that it's a Divine Idea. God lacking an haecceity seems to fit into the 2nd Argument, in my eyes. (This definitely seems like an awkward move to make, But it might be tenable on some level). Or maybe go along with the Thomists and claim that God's essence lacks a principle of Individuation (atleast according to Nemes), or maybe even accept Leftow's view which he develops in "God and Abstract Entities (1990)" and include Actus Purus in our theory as a way to avoid such concerns, just like a Thomist might. "

- My Email

I think Anderson brings up a good response to the last point, regarding Bootstrapping concerns, in his follow up email:

"I don’t think there’s any good motivation for saying there’s a divine haecceity that God himself exemplifies, especially if we’re comfortable with divine simplicity. But I’m inclined to think that the doctrine of creation presupposes something like haecceities. Indeed, there seems to be biblical support for it in the doctrine of election. (How could God specifically choose Peter for salvation – as opposed to “some instantiation of Petrine properties” – prior to his creation of Peter?) So perhaps we should say that haecceities are not only a precondition of creation, but distinctive to creatures. And divine ideas would nicely “play the role” that haecceities are supposed to play, given their necessity, plenitude, and intentionality (Socraeity is “about” Socrates)."