The Metaphysical Incoherence of Foreknowledge
I don't believe foreknowledge is incoherent btw kek
As some of you may know, Christopher Menzel, one of the most profound and well-established Philosophers in metaphysics in the 20th Century I'm aware of, has published a paper named "Temporal Actualism and Singular Foreknowledge"" in 1991 (which you can easily find online), which attempts to show both a metaphysical and semantic problem included in our concepts of Foreknowledge as traditionally defined. In this post, I hope to simply attempt make this problem more well-known, but to be even more clear, this post is in no way some sort of dunk on Menzel's paper. My aim is to simply offer a few responses and actually just give this problem more recognition. I think Menzel is definitely right - all the solutions stipulated do invoke some heavy ontological commitments - however, I disagree with him on whether or not these views same other problems besides that. It seems like this problem ultimately makes the traditional theist commited to a slightly controversial metaphysical view, which I take to be the force of the argument. But besides that:
Menzel lays out the problem as so:
"Suppose we believe that God created the world. Then surely we want there to have been some rational basis for its creation. We don't want it to have been a divine accident that, say, the laws of motion are as they are, or that there are people. Rather, we want to say, God intended, in some sense at least, to create this world.' Along the same lines, most theists want to hold that God didn't just guess or hope that the world would take one course or another, but rather that he knew precisely what was going to take place in the world he planned to create. Call this familiar conception of divine knowledge and, more generally, intentionality, the standard conception. Now, among the facts that make up the world there are particular, or singular, facts-facts involving specific individuals. Thus, one might reason, since God intended that this world exist, then among the things that he intended before creation was that Reagan exist; and among the things he knew was that Prior would be a philosopher. Indeed, scripture itself appears to lend support here: "all things were known to the Lord God before they were created," one reads in Ecclesiasticus. At the same time, however, it seems that, before creation, God could not have intended or known any such things. For at the time there just wasn't any such person as Reagan to serve as the object of God's intentions; there wasn't any such person as Prior for God to know anything about. So the standard conception appears to be at odds with the appealing and commonsensical view that there are no "future" individuals beyond those that already exist in the present. Call the latter view temporal actualism, or actualism for short. This is of course not a new problem. But past solutions to it involve metaphysical commitments that are, by my lights anyway, wholly unbecoming. In this paper, after canvassing previous approaches, Iwill propose a solution that seems to preserve both actualism and a suitably robust form of the standard conception while avoiding the pitfalls of the past. "
To simplify the issue: Before God created the Universe, he supposedly had foreknowledge of what he was going to create. This includes individuals too - or in this case, God knew that if he were to actualize some world, he'd also know all of the individuals which would come with this world. Call this the standard conception. But this means that God knew that "Hyku will exist" before I existed on the standard conception. But there are is a clear issues here: What is this knowledge about? It can't be about me, since I don't exist. But what else could it be about? What could serve as a stand-in (or proxy) for "me" when I don't exist? It's obvious to see what sort of absurdities can arise if we don't provide a good metaphysical account of God's knowledge and intentions here as an answer.
The first point Menzel makes is that someone might jump on the "temporal" actualist part. Perhaps someone could say that given God's timelessness, he percieves the world in an atemporal/transtemporal manner - percieving everything that was, is, or ever will be from his standpoint. So in that sense, God would have access to what sort of individuals "would" exist eternally, and those could serve as the objects of God's desires or Intentions.
This solution is multiply problematic, and for obvious reasons.
Firstly, it relies on the reasonably controversial notion of Divine Timelessness. A notion which I think is reasonably dubious (although I personally don't think it's false). So this sort of argument would be ineffective against who takes it that God is temporal.
There are other, more serious objections of course.
“Second, though, it's not clear that the move to timelessness really buys us anything, since the same issue that spawns the move seems to arise anew in a modal guise. Specifically, theists characteristically hold that God could have created some other world than this one, and hence that he knew prior to creation (or knew eternally) not only what was going to happen, but what could have happened as well. This seems a natural extension of the standard conception. However, it could have happened that there were things other than the things that actually exist. Had that happened, there would have been singular facts about those things, and hence such singular possibilities are among the things that could have been. Thus, by the standard conception, God knew those possibilities prior to creation (or eternally). But as above, timelessness notwithstanding, it doesn't seem that God could have known any such thing, since there would never have been a time when the subjects of those purported possibilities existed; they would never have been there at any time to be the subjects of the modal information in question. So, timelessness notwithstanding, the standard conception appears to be at odds with the appealing and commonsensical view -modal actualism- that there are no "possible" individuals other than those that actually exist”
To simplify, Menzel is essentially saying that God would not only need to have foreknowledge of this world and all the individuals which would come with it, but that this knowledge necessarily needs to extend to every world and all the individuals which come with each specific world. This seems blatantly obvious too, once you consider God’s choice between possible worlds pre-creation. But if this is the case, then the temporal solution simply remains silent on singular possibilities/possibilities about non-actual individuals, and how God knows those. Hence, the temporalist solution is simply unsatisfactory once we move into the modal part of this issue.
Menzel briefly considers a sort of modal analog to the trans-temporalist issue, claiming that someone could perhaps claim that God not only views the entire timeline in this trans-temporal viewpoint, but all possible worlds in a sort of trans-modal viewpoint as well. Hence, in the same way God is outside “time”, he is “outside” Modal space in a similar manner.
Menzel quickly dismisses this view, shrugging his shoulders in a way, claiming that this view is hardly coherent, and very few people would be heroic enough to hold this view. However, I think this is where I begin to disagree with Menzel. I think it is fully coherent to hold this sort of Model, and it’s not hard to see why. Here are a few examples:
One could hold the Leibnizian Divine Conceptualist view on Possible Worlds as notably defended by Alvin Plantinga, Leibniz, Pruss and Greg Welty among many others. The core idea of this view is that Abstract Objects, as traditionally conceived, exist as Divine Ideas, Thoughts and Concepts - or are the product of a sort of Divine Intellectual Activity (when we deal with Sets and Worlds being Sets of Propositions, for example).
On this view, Possible Worlds are some of those Abstract Objects, and are usually cashed out as Divine Ideas. But what we clearly get is that God is in a way “outside” of all these worlds (although, they are not outside of him). God could simply oversee all of these Ideas at once, looking into all singular and non-singular possibilities in his mind, securing his Knowledge of them. There are of course metaphysical issues with this view, which I think can be solved once we outline and syntheize this with another view I’m going to give later on. Yet, I don’t see anything strictly “hardly coherent” about this form of view.
One attempt which might work is if we adopt some Branching Model of Possible Worlds, and take it that each Branch represents a sort of concrete world (similar to Alastair’s Quantum Modal Realism, though his model is diverging as opposed to Branching.) then it’s very easy to see how God could exist “outside” this sort of Tree and yet foresee all the sort of branches, each being their own metaphysically possible world, branching off from some initial point. However, God would need to exist “prior” to the Initial State on this model, and in that case, he’d still need to have knowledge of all these singular possibilities beforehand. But there are no branches - and hence nothing which these possibilities could be “about”, in-order for God to have this type of knowledge. This is made even more clear if we think of the Branching Process temporally, which anyone sensible would. However, this might be exactly what we need in-order for the trans-temporalist solution to actually work. If we simply apply it here, then there’s no such problem. Since all the Branches are eternally present from God’s point of view. Hence, there are actually objects which could act as the bearers of God’s knowledge and desires. Whether or not any of these accounts “work” is surely a different story, but I take them to be at the very least coherent, and perhaps preferable accounts in the case of the Divine Conceptualist theories. (I do want to note that I think Branching Models are complete horse-shit, but that probably deserves it’s own post). This remains an option for the Theist.
One might find this view incoherent. Anything which is possible exists “in” a possible world. Saying that God is “outside” of this space of possible worlds, and that he doesn’t exist “in” any, just sounds like you’re saying God is impossible! However, I think this sort of objection is a bit confused. For clarity, we need to bring in Robert Adams’ “Truth-in” and “Truth-at” a possible world distinction. Certainly. It’s not true that God exists “in” any world. However, the proposition “God exists” is true at every world. If this distinction is confusing, then we can appeal to a simpler Lewisian distinction - Existing “in” a world and Existing in standpoint of a world. Lewis develops this sort of view with regards to Numbers and Sets. If one couldn’t figure out these distinctions or really understand them by name already, I really can’t do much lmao. Though perhaps a temporal analog might help: If God is timeless, it’s still true that “God exists” in every time t you utter it in. But that’s not to say God exists “in” time, the proposition is just true “at” point in time.
Possibilism
This part now is really where the interesting shit is. Menzel brings up Possibilism as a potential solution, the idea that there “are” merely possible, but non-actual individuals. Who have “being”, but not “existence”, similar to Meinongian objects. These could very well serve as the objects of God’s knowledge and desires.
One solution which can also be found in Islamic Thought which was inspired by Avicenna comes from Sadr-Al-Din-Al-Qunawi. A lesser known debate between the Kalam Schools of Thought which seems to have been at stake since the 9th Century is the debate between the Ash’ari school and the Mu'tazilite schools of thought had to do with the Nonexistent. The Mu'tazilites developed and defended the view that there are non-existent “things” waiting to receive Existence, in light of some Qur'anic exegesis. This is essentially the meinongian/possibilist view as known today, but with some minor variations. This debate is important, because it caused those who were part of the Sufi Philosophical Tradition to give their own thoughts. With the most important one, or the one of relevance for us at least, being Sadr-Al-Din-Al-Qunawi. Al-Qunawi was partially with the Mu’tazilites, believing that there are “things' which have “being” but not Existence. He claims that these things reside in God’s knowledge, as opposed to made manifest in the created world. Before God creates something, it remains “Hidden”, in the recesses of the Divine Mind. Al-Qunawi proceeds to make a simple argument, saying that since God knows what he can make before he makes it. If God knows about these items, they must have some kind of Metaphysical Status, but certainly not “existence” (unless we’re haecceitist, but we can get to that later). So not only does Al-Qunawi’s argument support this notion of non-existent things subsisting in the Divine Intellect, but this entire problem actually lends credence to this idea the more we look at it. It should be important that Al-Qunawi distinguished his view from that of the Mu’tazilites. Al-Qunawi drew this distinction in his letter to Al-Tusi, in which he claims that these possibilia in God’s mind are actually more real than that which he creates. Al-Qunawi seems to refer to these possibilia as sorts of “paradigms' ', or as he calls them, “patterns”. There is of course more nuance to this which has to be elaborated because of the underlying sufi metaphysics behind these views, but I think that’s a separate issue. I also want to remain neutral on whether or not these possibilia are “paradigms” or more “real” as Al-Qunawi states - rather, I simply want to shed light on the conception that these Possibilia subsist in the Divine Intellect, owing their being to God, but not their “existence” as they’re purely non-existent. This is very similar to the view Aquinas pushes, and we can probably even call them Exemplars. (I’m certain this is where Aquinas got his view from since he leeched everything from Islamic philosophy).
Brief note, Al-Qunawi’s arguments are not question-begging when seen through the lens of this problem.
I think once we accept this type of view, we are more than ready to tackle Menzel’s criticisms of this view. Briefly, I want to bring up the relevance this has to the Divine Conceptualist account. One could ask what sort of status these Divine Ideas have. Are they actual but non-obtaining? Do they exist but are they non-actual? All of these options seem dubious. For example, if one adopts the standard traditional actualist conception between being “Actual” and “Obtaining”, then it seems like all of these Possible Worlds exist regardless of God’s say so. And even worse,he’s really not even “creating” any world, let alone ex nihilo. He just picks whichever world he finds suitable and decides to make it “obtain” as opposed to actualizing it. But if we were to simply adopt the Possibilist view as outlined above, we have a complete picture of how to think of these Worlds which fits nicely with the arguments given above and fully answers our problem. Simply, it seems like Qunawi’s view and the Leibnizian view work well together. Perhaps this might be a really good move for the Theist to make.
Before moving on, I’d like to note that Menzel is criticizing the view that Possibilia exist wholly independent of God and are just floating around on Metaphysical Space waiting to be actualized by God. In that case, I think his objections go through, however, I don’t think anyone sensible would adopt that kind of view (except Losers like Avicenna). Hence, I’ll attempt to show why these objections are simply inadequate against this type of Model as outlined above - even though they aren’t the type of possibilism they are directed towards, it’s still very relevant. He gives objections to a similar theory when he criticizes Exemplar Theory later on.
Menzel gives a few different general criticisms against the Possibilist view, starting with:
Menzel brings up that there’s a dubious distinction between “Being” and Existence which the Possibilist theory makes central. I do actually agree with him here. It’s not clear how this distinction really works and if we’re really better than the actualist when it comes to distinctions, but I think all the contemporary work on Meinongianism, or simply non-existent objects, makes this distinction a bit less acceptable. Menzel however doesn’t push this point, and brings up how there are more serious theological problems with this view.
For one, Menzel brings up how this sort of diminishes Creatio ex nihilo. God really isn’t creating “nothing” here, he’s simply giving previously subsisting possibilia the property of “Existence” (Funnily enough, I ran a similar criticism against Necessitism on a previous post, pls read it thnx).
We can modify this Creation Ex Nihilo in a slightly harmless manner: God still really creates “from” nothing. There is nothing which God is “taking” from in-order to actualize these possibilia. Sure, the act ultimately boils down God giving previously subsisting Possibilia in his head this property of “Existence”, but It’s hard to see how this conflicts with traditional conceptions of Creation Ex Nihilo. Especially since God is still not acting as a sort of “material” cause in this instance. There is nothing which “exists” which God is creating “from”. This does give us the consequence that the Creation of the Universe does actually turn out to be change in some manner, which conflicts with what Aquinas thinks - if one were to run that “criticism” (lmao). It’s important to note that Aquinas was strictly actualist himself, so his conception of Creation Ex Nihilo was under that specific framework - there’s no reason to extend this treatment to the possibilist framework too.
Menzel’s next objection is the most pressing, to quote him:
“Moreover, if this is how it works, then presumably possibilia subsist necessarily, since God knows all singular possibilities necessarily, and there wouldn't be such possibilities without the possibilia they involve. But this raises a dilemma. For either God creates -hence necessarily creates- the possibilia or he doesn't. If he doesn't, then this seems to compromise his sovereignty, his aseity. God then is not the source of all being, the creator of all that is other than himself. Rather, he is just one more necessary being among countless others, all subsisting independent of the divine will, and beyond the reach of the divine power. On the other hand, if he does create them necessarily, then this raises a problem for divine freedom: God had no choice but to create subsisting possibilia, a consequence at once undesirable and unintuitive. It is no doubt possible to live with these difficulties. But they are uncomfortable at best; we are certainly warranted in casting about for feasible actualist alternative”
I think both horns of the dilemma are ultimately blunt against this model, and I think Menzel agrees as seen later on, but regardless:
For the first horn: If we do accept that Possibilia play the conceptual role of Divine Ideas, or perhaps Singular Divine Concepts, or perhaps that of Divine Thoughts, then they simply aren’t the type of things which can be created. They essentially come along with God’s nature or Knowledge. Once we admit that God knows all of these singular and non-singular possibilities by nature, then we have to also accept their place as subsisting in the Divine Mind by nature too. Asking if God creates them on this model is sort of akin to asking if God creates any of his properties, it’s really just unintelligible (Although, Leftow does argue that God can manufacture singular concepts pre-creation, which could act as possibilia. This is just yet another solution to Menzel’s dilemma though). What’s important to note is that we actually have a clear dependency relation - perhaps not a counterfactual one - between God and these Possibilia, even if they aren’t “created”m Possibilia belong to the Divine Mind, and are sort of “entailed” and hence dependent on God’s act of knowledge (or perhaps that of grasping all of these possibilities). So, God’s aseity is still not violated. Everything, existent or in this case, even non-existent things, still depend on him. It’s important to note that current work on the topic of God and Abstract Objects have shown that we can develop non-vacuous counterpossible (counterfactuals with impossible antecedents) semantics/models (some even strictly theistic) in order to explain how other necessary stuff can depend on God even counterfactually (or counterpossibly, in this case). So, if that’s the type of dependence Menzel is looking for, we can give him that too.
Consider the second horn now: If God has to necessarily “create” these possibilia, then we are diminishing God’s freedom. It’s obvious to see the response here given the background we’ve laid out in response to the first horn. Again, if they’re simply entailed by God’s act of Knowledge, and God’s knowledge is necessary per his nature, then there’s no issue here. There’s nothing “Undesirable” or “Unintuitive” about this at all. I think anyone can see how this horn is really just empty if were to adopt this model.
Three Notes:
Al-Farabi’s (sadly neoplatonist) Metaphysics also give us a solution to this issue. We see this in his conception of Ayan al-thabita, or as I will call them, “Immutable Archetypes”.
These archetypes are non-existent in themselves but are supposed to “filter” (Think of Al-Farabi’s divine light) or “determine'' what is created in our actual world. And these archetypes are sort of dependent on God’s attributes. Think of this way: There are an infinite amount of ways his attributes can be manifested. These ways are manifest as these Divine Archetypes - empty until filled with God’s “Light”. Hence, I take it that these sort of Archetypes, which act as Possibilia, could very well act as archetypes for singular individuals as well. In order to make sense of this, one needs to adopt Farabi’s broader metaphysics regarding God as the Divine Light and Wahdatul-Wujud (The One and Only which Exists). Essentially, we will paraphrase these foreknowledge claims of non-actual with something like: For any proposition P which invovles some non-actual individual X, and P is a true proposition about the future which God foreknows, then God knows P by knowing that some unexemplified or “empty” archetype X will be exemplified in the future and do what it’s foreknown to do. Basically no one would adopt this view, but I still think it’s interesting enough to bring up.
There seems to be a problem with Al-Qunawi’s account which every account of Divine Ideas has to answer. Where do these Divine Ideas/Possibilia come from? Obviously not outside of God, as that would threaten his Aseity, but where Inside God are we supposed to find them? There are a few solutions to this problem, and I think view can certainly be neutral as opposed to which is correct. For an overview of these solutions, check out “Divine Ideas” by Ward.
Another note, some readings of Scotus imply that he was in-fact a possibilist (and one of the OG ones). So any Scotist in my eyes has a clear solution to this problem if they want to modify their theory slightly.
Necessitism
Sadly, Menzel published this paper before the Necessitist position was really popularized and well-defended (however, it still certainly existed). Necessitism is the claim that “Necessarily, everything exists necessarily”. Or simply that “Every object in every possible world exists in every possible world”. Necessitists however, attempt to maintain common folk intuitions by distinguishing between being concrete and “existing”. Objects exist in every possible world, but that’s not to say they are “concrete”, or atleast exist in space-time, in every possible world.
Necessitism seems to solve the Foreknowledge issue prima facie: the Individuals which all these Singular Possibilities are about do in-fact exist, necessarily so. Therefore, it seems we have something which could act as the object of God’s knowledge and desires in the context of these possibilities. Hence, we have solved the Foreknowledge issue.
However, I think I have already outlined why traditional conceptions of Theism are wholly incompatible with Necessitism in my previous post going by that name. While I do not think Theism simpliciter is incompatible with Necessitism, I think any commonly accepted version of Theism is. Even worse, all of the theological difficulties of Possibilism apply mutatis mutandis to Necessitism. And arguably far more pressing. If you go through Menzel’s dilemma, and just imagine the Possibilia being replaced with necessarily existing individuals, I think you can see why Necessitism is just shitting on our religions all-around.
On top of that, Possibilists can not only side-step these objections and has equally good argumentation behind it, but Possibilism can also preserve Contingentism - the common sense position and the negation of Necessitism. Yagisawa lays out how in his review of “Modal Logic as Metaphysics”. He is of course speaking about the modern conceptions of Possibilism, but all of his arguments can easily be taken and modified by a classical possibilist. In-conclusion, not only is Necessitism theologically unacceptable, but Possibilism is a far better option in general.
Exemplars
Menzel now goes on to criticize Aquinas’ theory of exemplars, one which is extremely similar to the model given above. So to my disappointment, it seems like we’re in a position to defend Aquinas now. But thankfully, only one of his objections would apply here - mutatis mutandis.
To be clear, there are helpful distinctions between the theory we have and Aquinas’. Aquinas doesn’t think that there are “ unexemplified possibilia” in God’s head, but rather exemplars which play this conceptual role. I take it that the arguments laid for Al-Qunawi’s theory are heavily neutral over if they entail Exemplarism, Haecceitistic Conceptual Realism (we will get to this later), or the Possibilist view I’ve outlined. On the current assumption, there are actually “are” unexemplified Possibilia which do actually subsist in God’s mind as opposed to being ontologically independent of God. This important distinction will make us prepared to address Menzel’s objections to Sheikh Aquinas Ibn Al-2IQ.
But before even that, we need to outline an important distinction which will be commonly used from now on: Qualitative and Non-Qualitative Properties.
A property P is qualitative iff it does not include reference to any individual or depends on some particular object being instantiated. For example, the property “being Red”, or “Being 6-Feet”, does not require some particular entity existing in order to make sense. Qualitative properties are also usually taken to be general properties and multiply-exemplifable.
Non-qualitative properties are the opposite. Non-Qualitative properties are simply those which include reference to some particular object
After giving a good review on all of the advantages this theory has, he moves on to the first criticism:
“There still seems to be a problem, though. The perfections as discussed by Thomas all seem to be universals. Thus, thought of as clusters of perfections, likenesses turn out to be clusters of universals. But if so, it is dubious whether any collection of them can be essentially individuating; that is, if likenesses are composed of universals, then it seems that for any given likeness L, necessarily, if x exemplifies L, then it is at least possible that there be something y distinct from x that exemplifies L. And if that is so, then likenesses don't seem to do the work of possibilia in grounding God's singular knowledge of the future.17 Rather, if they are not essentially individuating, then God didn't know prior to creation that Reagan was to exist in virtue of the likeness that Reagan was in fact to exemplify; he knew only that there was to be such a person as Reagan, someone with the general character that Reagan in fact instantiated, albeit down to the last qualitative detail.
“
The first thing we can clearly take away is that Menzel takes it that Identity boils down to something non-qualitative, as opposed to qualitative. Menzel himself recognizes this and anticipates this and brings up that the Thomist could appeal to a strong version of Leibniz's Law/the PII, which states: for any two objects, these two objects are identical IFF they are qualitatively identical (or vice versa). I think this principle, while not really appealing, is defensible on some level. But I think this itself won’t solve the foreknowledge issue.
I am now going to bring up a view which is relevant right now but will also be relevant in discussion of Haecceitism. If one were to adopt this solution, they might actually have a solution to the entire issue! One could adopt a sort of Leibnizian Qualitative Haecceitism LQH states that each individual has an associated individual concept. Or in other words, each object has a qualitative “essence” associated to it. A set of necessary and sufficient qualitative properties which make it up - which are most importantly, unique to their bearer. So when God foreknows that some individual X will do that P, he doesn’t know “Fred will do P” if Fred is non-actual, rather, that he’s going to know that some specific set of properties will be exemplified at some later time t, and whatever bears those properties will do some action X at t. This shifts God’s knowledge of “singular” possibilities from about individuals to sets of properties - or qualitative essences, which ultimately are just those individuals. This view also rules out the possibility of Indiscernibles, which we will talk about later. So what are the issues with this view?
I think the issues are clear. It simply seems self-evident that individuals have accidental properties alongside their essential properties - Individuals are not simply sets of essential properties. It seems absurd to say that all of my properties are essential to me. One could think of this temporally if they want. There are other issues, for example, it seems like the restriction to purely qualitative property would rule out more promising versions of Essentialism, such as Origin Essentialism, which seem to be non-qualitative properties as they include reference to specific Gametes. Nearly all the candidates of essential properties seem to be non-qualitative. On top of that, there’s the further issue of knowing what those qualitative properties even are. If we don’t have an answer to that, then how are we ruling out non-qualitative essential properties? The view also seems to entail a form of essentialism where taking away any of an individual’s properties entail a change or even “erasure” of Identity. The view also has difficulties with Identity Over Time issues, like nearly any view on identity which operates on Leibnizian principles. Perhaps some of these issues can be solved with a form of Nuclear Bundle Theory, although this sort of move doesn’t seem promising.
Now back to the main point, how could our view respond to Menzel’s criticisms? I don’t see a move a Thomist can make, but none of us are Thomists in 2021 (hopefully), so that’s not an issue. I see two moves the Theist can make:
- Modify the model above by replacing unexemplified Possibilia with unexemplified Haecceities. A more detailed explanation of this view can be found in my previous posts. Menzel criticizes this view later but I don’t think his criticisms are remotely convincing.
- Claim that these possibilia actually “are” us. So before I existed, there was some unexemplified possibilia which “belongs” to me, or really just is me. So before I existed, I had “being” in the Divine Mind as subsisting Possibilia. This Possibilia is non-qualitatively identical to me, whatever that turns out to mean in Menzel's view given his rejection of Haecceitism later on. Or really, it just is me. This might run into some theological difficulties, and might be unintuitive if not undesirable. But it still remains an option. Christians should be fine with this given the scriptural evidence in Jeremiah 1:5, Ephesians 1:4 and 1 Peter 1:20 which lend credence to this view. So maybe it’s not ultimately that bad when it comes to it’s theological difficulties. There’s a question as to what individuates these possibilia, but I’m not sure we should even expect a good answer to that, let alone surely have one.
Thankfully, this is the only criticism which actually applies to our Model, mutatis mutandis. Menzel spends the rest of this chapter criticizing the Thomistic conception strictly and what sort of responses Aquinas himself could provide given his broader metaphysics. This doesn’t concern us, of course. But feel free to read the paper itself and see him eviscerate the thomistic position.
I’d also like to bring up Thomas Ward’s criticism of the Exemplar Theory in the book “Divine Ideas” published by Cambridge, 2020. This simply makes the Exemplar theory even more unappealing - although none of Ward’s objections could apply to our model, either.
Haecceitism
Menzel now abandons the Thomistic approach and moves to a more contemporary solution to the problem, namely, Haecceitism. I give a brief overview of Haecceitism in my previous post, and the model which I’ll soon be using is also elaborated on and defended in that post as well. So I’d highly recommend reading it.
Menzel’s first draws a distinction between qualitative and non-qualitative properties. After drawing the distinction, he deems non-qualitative properties to be impure, a term he defines in the paper. I’m not going to get into these distinctions too much, as I take it that they’re irrelevant for my response to his objection.
Menzel then proceeds to lay out a sort of dilemma:
Either haecceities are logically complex or logically simple properties. If the former, then plausibly, they involve some metaphysical complexity. But if “being X” is a metaphysical constituent of X’s haecceity, then it seems like the haecceity could not exist without X. So, haecceities are as contingent as their individuals. Contradicting haecceitism.
1. Necessarily, if the proposition that Socrates does not exist exists, then Socrates exists. (Existentialism)
Menzel then goes on to critique the logically simple view of Haecceities. If Haecceities are logically simple properties, such as “Hykuity” or “Quineity”. Menzel’s complaint if one takes this view is that then there isn’t much to distinguish between this haecceitist actualism and possibilism.
Honestly, Menzel’s point just doesn’t make sense here. How is this view not far away from Possibilism? We do not introduce any sort of distinction between being and existence, a central thesis of Possibilism - We instead stipulate necessarily existing individual essences as a substitute. Plantinga specifically wanted these individual essences to remove any sort of role for “possibilia” to play in his picture, given his extremely firm actualist commitments. Haecceitists can maintain the actualist power easily. I don’t think it’s hard to see the sharp difference between “unexemplfiied essences” and “non-existent things which still have being”. This point seriously needs to be elaborated, and I’m curious as to why Menzel doesn’t give this view that much discussion.
He then brings up the issue regarding how Haecceities could be “about” their exemplifications if whatever they are supposed to belong to doesn’t exist. I.e how could Socraeity be about Socrates if Socrates doesn’t exist? But once we take Haecceities as Divine Ideas, we could simply look into the more general debate about the Intentionality of Divine Ideas and borrow one of many accounts of their Intentionality, and simply apply it to Haecceities. Or perhaps we should not understand intentionality as a real relation, as others have suggested we shouldn't - though this provides a more general response to the problem at the get-go.
There is a far more common criticism given by the likes of Kit Fine and Robert M. Adams. The objection goes as such:
"Haecceities are understood as relational properties which are just "identity with" the entity the haecceity relates to/is for. If this is true, then it's not really clear that Haecceities could exist separately from their instantiations/exemplifications. If this is true, then worst case scenario, Haecceities simply don't exist, as they're by definition necessary and it's clear that I exist contingently. Best-case scenario, they no longer work as proxies for worlds in which I don't exist, and hence, Plantinga's motivation for stipulating them is unfounded - or they are simply stripped away from any theoretical utility they could give us.``
Plantinga's response, in On Existentialism:
"I don't think this point is pressing, or even Intuitive. Consider my brother - surely, if I were to cease existing, then he'd stop being my brother. In that sense, "my brother" no longer exists. However, my brother would obviously still exist even if I no longer existed - he would simply not be my, or possibly anyone's brother. Why is this not true for Haecceities? It's not really clear what to make of this. So even if I don't exist, a haecceity would still exist, but simply an unexemplified one."
A problem with Plantinga’s response: "In that case, if the haecceity is simply free-floating with nothing it bears a relation to, then how is it supposed to operate as a transworld proxy for other possible individuals? Plantinga's account is again demotivated, as these Haecceities can no longer act as proxies since there’s nothing which our discourse can map onto now. When we talk about worlds in which I don’t exist, if we are no longer talking about “my” haecceity, but rather “a” haecceity, how is this helpful? as these haecceities simply could not tell us which individual they belong to given the absence of any relation which Plantinga has just conceded. Therefore, Plantinga’s response fails.”
How Plantinga could respond: We can still know which Individuals each Haecceity belongs to even if the Individuals don't exist by speaking of their modal properties instead. Each haecceity has a specific modal property which is essential to it and could not be shared to any other haecceity. For example, consider the actual world. My haecceity would then have the property of "being exemplified by Plantinga", but we can go further and world-index this. It specifically has the property of: "Being exemplified by Plantinga in @." Now, take any world in which I don't exist but my Haecceity still does. It shouldn't be surprising that, given it's transworld necessity, that it still has the property of being exemplified by Plantinga in @ - which no other haecceity could possibly have besides mine. We could of course do the same with any "possible" individual by simply replacing @. " I don’t even think we need to world-index it. It’s still “my” haecceity insofar as only I and no one else could exemplify it. That’s how it represents me in worlds in which I don’t exist - which is not to make them Logically Complex.
One could also adopt Rosenkrantz's view in his essay "Haecceity: an essay in ontology", in which Haecceities bear absolutely no relation to the Individuals they represent. This sort of account seems preferable metaphysically, specially for exemplar-type views on Divine Ideas, as they avoid Scotist criticisms regarding the Imitability relation.
Menzel then gives a criticism of qualitative Haecceitism by essentially just appealing to the problem of Indiscernibles. It should be noted that this is essentially just the Leibnzian Qualiative view outlined above, and I think his objection is roughly right. However, since reading Zagzebski’s “Individual Essences and Creation” paper, I've grown to be a bit skeptical of such arguments. Menzel does bring up the paper in the footnotes and claims that while the arguments are good, they fail to establish their conclusion, which I'll take his word for. I think even if qualitative haecceitism fails - non-qualitative haecceitism still seems like a lively option for the Theist. Especially, or I would say only the divine conceptualist account would satisfy us here.
Menzel’s Solution
I cannot say much about Menzel’s solution. It’s main motivation is that all these other accounts fail or are atleast far more unpreferable, so we should adopt his account instead since it doesn’t run afoul of any metaphysical commitments. I take it that I have diffused atleast some of the force behind his objections, so there’s not really much appeal to this.
Menzel’s solution is to simply reject that there are any sort of “singular” possibilities for God to know about - given the Generality of the Possible. The view ultimately gives us the undesirable conclusion that God simply doesn't have any sort of "singular" knowledge about de re possibilities, by accepting a view on which all Possibilities are de dicto. I'd like to note that, it seems as if more and more people are leaning away from this view, and for good reasons. Obviously, this solution virtually abandons God's singular foreknowledge pre-creation, but this would definitely be considered a heretical view (literally) for most people, and It's not really hard to find examples (Aquinas, Augustine,Anselm, Al-Ghazali who goes as far as calling those who reject this claim Apostates, Al-Razi, It's necessary to make sense of Ash'arism doctrine, and a dozen other examples in all the major Monotheistic religions). So, if you're not looking to burn in hell and eat from the tree of zaqqum, It would probably be preferable to avoid this view.
Generalism
Ultimately, there’s one more way to frame this problem which is problematic for virtually every theist I’m aware of.
To quote Karol Lenart: Generalism is the view that all fundamental facts are purely qualitative. There is no need to postulate individualistic facts (facts which involve individuals). Generalists also claim that there is just “One big qualitative fact” which grounds everything else (typically associated with Ersatz Worlds). Generalism enjoys the status as the most promising Anti-haecceitstic modal metaphysics. Firstly, it seems to work very well with ersatzist theory of worlds (and common developments such as counterpart actualist models in this theory). It also remains neutral on the PII and various forms of Essentialism (because it denies there are individuals, so it doesn’t care if individuals have essential properties or all their properties are accidental). On top of that, it avoids issue regarding indiscernibles which Menzel himself faces given that he accepts both the possibility of Indiscernibles. To be clear, Menzel has a different view opposed to the type of Generalism espoused now. One denies there are facts about non-actual but possible “individuals”, the other rejects the existence of individuals as a whole. While this seems fairly unintuitive, Generalism does seem like a somewhat promising modal metaphysics on some of our better accounts of Modality.
But Generalism is obviously against the standard conception of Foreknowledge. Here are two quick arguments:
(i) The standard conception of Foreknowledge includes knowledge about singular possibilities.
(ii) There are no singular possibilities. (True on both types of Generalism)
(ii) So, the standard conception is false.
Or
(i) The standard conception of God's Knowledge includes knowledge about individualistic facts.
(iI) There are no individualistic facts.
(ii) Therefore, the standard conception is false.
Another argument can be borrowed from Cover and O’leary Hawthorne’s paper on Leibnizian Haecceitism and Anti-Haecceitism, in which they write:
Suppose that all the truths about any possible world could be captured by such general propositions [that is, by those not involving nonqualitative thisnesses/haecceity]. In supposing this, it may help to imagine a being - an omniscient being, say - that surveys all logically possible states of affairs and conceives of each possible world in terms of a book or list of general propositions of quantificational form [for instance, 'There is an individual having suchnesses F and G and .. .'l And suppose now that one were to ask this being: is there anything that exists, or that could exist, which is essentially red, that is, red at each possible world where it exists? It seems clear enough that our imagined being would not only be unable to answer this question, but moreover would be unable to make much sense of it. Nothing within any list nor any comparison among them can serve to ground the truth or falsehood of the statement 'There is something that is essentially red.' For if the full truth at all worlds is general, there will be no determinate fact of the matter whether the thing that is F and G and H ... in world W is, or isn't, the thing that is F and G and H ... in world W*. In short, purely general propositions look to contain no resources for tracking a particular object across lists or worlds: the concept of trans world identity, and with it the traditional de re modal notions of essence and accident, have been lost. The lesson to be learned is that in order to make sense of trans world identity claims, one needs to make room for singular propositions.”
So ultimately, it seems like Generalism is obviously at odds with the standard conception too. This Generalist argument is clearly far weaker than the original problem at hand, but I still think it has “”some””” force to it.
In-conclusion, I think Menzel’s criticisms of some of the views are unwarranted. The Theist has a few ways to respond to the issue at hand, but it seems like we’re stuck with a loaded ontology - but perhaps not one dispensable by Occam’s Razor. The problem is far from solved, and we should still prefer any solution which preserves the standard conception without committing us to such a metaphysics. Sadly, it does not seem like such a solution is even possible. Though I’d be glad to see any.
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