In considering our ontology, I think that a distinct category we should include as being a part of it are what are commonly called 'events'. What is an event? Common examples include things like a bird flying, a man yelling, or a ball falling. Note that these examples, and virtually any other one might think of, contain present participles. And, even if they are gerunds, they still typically denote temporal states of affairs (Note: One may make an exception to this in considering certain gerunds or what one may call 'eternally-present participles', such as 'God has been eternally thinking'. But this is not an issue, as I am only trying to demonstrate that events tend to be associated with temporal states of affairs).
So then, what should we think of events? I think we should regard them as a certain kind of states of affairs. But what kind? What marks them out as distinct, say, from states of affairs like 'the car being red'? Given what I noted above concerning the temporal language usually associated with what we call 'events', I think we should regard them as states of affairs which are temporally located. We may put it formally as follows:
1a. For some state of affairs S, S is an event if and only if S obtains at some time t-n and ceases to obtain at some time t-x.
The question obviously arises as to whether we should consider certain timeless states of affairs as events. I think, though, that any examples of such states of affairs may be regarded properly, and reasonably, as 'states of affairs simpliciter'. And, consequently, states of affairs which temporally obtain in the sense defined in (1a) may be regarded as events. Also, keep in mind that (given actualism) states of affairs which are events don't need to exist temporally, they need only obtain temporally.
But wait. Isn't this still incomplete? Aren't there plenty of states of affairs which obtain temporally, but which are obviously not what we call events? For example, the aforementioned state of affairs 'the car being red'? A car being red, i.e. exemplifying redness, obtains temporally but isn't an event, it's just a temporally obtaining state of affairs. Consider the fact that the idea of a car being red remains coherent when rendered a timeless state of affairs ('the car has been exemplifying redness from eternity'). So then, we should ammend (1a), which is vague, to something more concise, like the following:
1b. For some state of affairs S, S is an event if and only if S necessarily obtains temporally.
Now we have made the claim stronger, and I think it an adequate account of events. Consider things like, 'kicking a ball', 'flying a kite', or 'eating a sandwich'. They all have a necessarily temporal nature. The idea of kicking a ball, flying a kite, or eating a sandwich timelessly seems incoherent. I think we can recognize why without exploring this further, but let's do so just for fun.
I think the reason things like 'kicking a ball', 'flying a kite', and etc. are necessarily temporal states of affairs is because they seem to refer to a certain kind of collection of states of affairs. Consider the example of kicking a ball. We may say it is the collection of the following states of affairs:
2a. Rearing one's leg back.
2b. One's foot making contact with the ball.
2c. The ball being located at spatial points x,...,y.
Individually, each of these states of affairs could exist timelessly (with the exception of 2b, which included various spatial points in sequence for convenience' sake, but you get the point). But, for 2a-2c to be considered as just one state of affairs, it seems that they must stand in some sort of causal relation to one another. But causal relations can only exist in time (using the term 'causal' in it's everyday sense, not in it's aristotelian 'explanatory' sense). And so, we may with even more conciseness say that events are collections of states of affairs which bear a causal relation to one another (2a bears an existing prior to relation to 2b, 2c bears an existing after relation to 2c, and so on and so forth).
Note: The difference between (2a) and (2b) is subtle, and I think it worth to clarify in modal terms. (2a) could be taken as "necessarily, it is possible that p be a q", as opposed to (2b) which can only be taken as "it is necessary that p be a q".
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Aristotelian Ethics and Morally Valuable States of Affairs
Take states of affairs to be sets of concrete particulars, necessary abstracta, or whatever you'd like. It seems to be that with respect to certain states of affairs, humans share the following basic intuition: That there are some states of affairs which are themselves morally valuable. An aristotelian, or neo-aristotelian, metaethic tends to define good as "the end for which something exists". That is, some entity x's good is the end for which x exists (think of this as "the Good" being equivalent to the proper functioning of a thing). If this is true, then what are we to make of the aforementioned intuition? Take the following state of affairs as paradigmatic:
S1: A child and his parents enjoying time together on Christmas Eve.
On the aristotelian metaethic, what sort of moral properties, if any, are we to assign to S1? The aristotelian might say something like the following: S1 is a morally valuable state of affairs in virtue of its constituent parts exemplifying proper function (their good). But the leap seems unwarranted. Just because the parts are morally valuable doesn't mean the state of affairs of which they are part is (just because 2 is an even number doesn't necessarily mean that the set it belongs to is the set of even numbers. It could be the set of, say, all Natural numbers). The state of affairs itself has no good, it's just a state of affairs (and, again, this seems to remain the same regardless of your view of states of affairs, whether nominalistic or whatever). Yet, it does seem intuitively obvious in this case, and in many others, there is such a thing as states of affairs, such as S1, exemplifying the property of moral goodness (or being an instance of that trope). Afterall, wouldn't the average neo-aristotelian want to claim something like the following (taking possible worlds to be collections of states of affairs)...
P1. Given two possible worlds, w¹ and w², w¹ is more morally great than w² if and only if w¹ contains more creatures fulfilling their end, and therefore their good.
But, this is inconsistent if the aristotelian wants to continue defining good in such a minimalistic way. That is, the conjunction of an aristotelian metaethic, a belief in S1, and the assertion of P1 is inconsistent. So then, is there a way out? I think only if the aristotelian will accept that goodness is a property which extends beyond the realm of proper function (e.g. to individual states of affairs, or possible worlds). But in this case, they must change one of the main assertions, of not the main one, of their metaethic.
S1: A child and his parents enjoying time together on Christmas Eve.
On the aristotelian metaethic, what sort of moral properties, if any, are we to assign to S1? The aristotelian might say something like the following: S1 is a morally valuable state of affairs in virtue of its constituent parts exemplifying proper function (their good). But the leap seems unwarranted. Just because the parts are morally valuable doesn't mean the state of affairs of which they are part is (just because 2 is an even number doesn't necessarily mean that the set it belongs to is the set of even numbers. It could be the set of, say, all Natural numbers). The state of affairs itself has no good, it's just a state of affairs (and, again, this seems to remain the same regardless of your view of states of affairs, whether nominalistic or whatever). Yet, it does seem intuitively obvious in this case, and in many others, there is such a thing as states of affairs, such as S1, exemplifying the property of moral goodness (or being an instance of that trope). Afterall, wouldn't the average neo-aristotelian want to claim something like the following (taking possible worlds to be collections of states of affairs)...
P1. Given two possible worlds, w¹ and w², w¹ is more morally great than w² if and only if w¹ contains more creatures fulfilling their end, and therefore their good.
But, this is inconsistent if the aristotelian wants to continue defining good in such a minimalistic way. That is, the conjunction of an aristotelian metaethic, a belief in S1, and the assertion of P1 is inconsistent. So then, is there a way out? I think only if the aristotelian will accept that goodness is a property which extends beyond the realm of proper function (e.g. to individual states of affairs, or possible worlds). But in this case, they must change one of the main assertions, of not the main one, of their metaethic.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Van Inwagen and the Secular Academy
So I found this passage from Peter Van Inwagen's spiritual autobiographical essay Quam Dilecta extremely interesting, and extremely truthful:
"In 1980 or thereabouts, I began to experience a sort of pressure to become a Christian: a vast discontent with not being a Christian, a pressure to do something. Presumably this pressure was of the same sort that had led me to pray for faith on that one occasion ten years earlier, but this was sustained. This went on and on. My mind at the time is not readily accessible to me in memory. I wish I had kept a journal. I know that sneers directed at God and the Church, which--I hope I am not giving away any secret here--are very common in the academy, were becoming intolerable to me. (What was especially intolerable was the implied invitation to join in, the absolutely unexamined assumption that, because I was a member of the academic community, I would, of course, regard sneering at God and the Church as meet, right, and even my bounden duty.) I perhaps did not have anything like a desire to turn to Christ as my Savior, or a desire to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life, but I did have a strong desire t o belong to a Christian community of discourse, a community in which it was open to people to talk to each other in words like the ones that Lewis addresses to his correspondent in Letters to an American Lady. I envied people who could talk to one another in those terms. I know that I was becoming more and more repelled by the "great secular consensus" that comprises the world-view of just about everyone connected with the universities, journalism, the literary and artistic intelligentsia, and the enterta inment industry. I knew that, confused as I might be about many things, I was quite clear about one thing: I could not bear the thought of being a part of that consensus. What made it so repulsive to me can be summed up in a schoolyard cri de coeur: "They think they're so smart!" I was simply revolted by the malevolent, self-satisfied stupidity of the attacks on Christianity that proceeded from the consensus."
"In 1980 or thereabouts, I began to experience a sort of pressure to become a Christian: a vast discontent with not being a Christian, a pressure to do something. Presumably this pressure was of the same sort that had led me to pray for faith on that one occasion ten years earlier, but this was sustained. This went on and on. My mind at the time is not readily accessible to me in memory. I wish I had kept a journal. I know that sneers directed at God and the Church, which--I hope I am not giving away any secret here--are very common in the academy, were becoming intolerable to me. (What was especially intolerable was the implied invitation to join in, the absolutely unexamined assumption that, because I was a member of the academic community, I would, of course, regard sneering at God and the Church as meet, right, and even my bounden duty.) I perhaps did not have anything like a desire to turn to Christ as my Savior, or a desire to lead a godly, righteous, and sober life, but I did have a strong desire t o belong to a Christian community of discourse, a community in which it was open to people to talk to each other in words like the ones that Lewis addresses to his correspondent in Letters to an American Lady. I envied people who could talk to one another in those terms. I know that I was becoming more and more repelled by the "great secular consensus" that comprises the world-view of just about everyone connected with the universities, journalism, the literary and artistic intelligentsia, and the enterta inment industry. I knew that, confused as I might be about many things, I was quite clear about one thing: I could not bear the thought of being a part of that consensus. What made it so repulsive to me can be summed up in a schoolyard cri de coeur: "They think they're so smart!" I was simply revolted by the malevolent, self-satisfied stupidity of the attacks on Christianity that proceeded from the consensus."
Monday, September 14, 2009
Weekly Scripture
“There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” -Romans 3:11-12 (NKJV)
Sunday, September 13, 2009
A God-Centered Theodicy
A common attempt at reconciling the existence of evil with the existence of an all-good God has been to say something like the following: God allows various kinds of evils because they are necessary conditions for various sorts of goods. More concisely, for every evil x God intends to bring about a good y which could not exist otherwise, and is therefore justified in allowing x. The examples of what sorts of goods these might be have been many, but I intend to point one out which seems to sum the others up, and which comes from a distinctly Reformed perspective.
Let us first examine a proposition which could be said to be the foundational one for these sorts of theodicies:
P1- For every evil x, x is justified iff x is necessary for bringing about a good y which outweighs the evil of x.
What constitutes the idea of "outweighing" in this premise is, admittedly, quite vague. But it could possibly mean something like this: A good y outweighs an evil x iff y results in effects more morally great than x is morally evil. This is still vague, but I don't think it's vagueness is that much of an issue, since we intuitively recognize when a good outweighs, or is greater, than a particular evil, even if we don't recognize exactly what constitutes this "outweighing'. So let us content ourselves with moral intuition on this point.
Now take another, widely accepted, theological premise:
p2- The greatest possible creaturely good is to magnify the glory of God (who is the paradigm of goodness).
Given these to premises, we can formulize the following argument (assuming God's existence for reductio):
1. Any evil x is justified iff it is necessary for bringing about a good y, and y is sufficiently greater than x.
2. The good of magnifying God's glory is always sufficiently greater than any evil x.
3. There are evils which are necessary conditions for bringing about a magnification of God's glory g.
3. God's providence insures that every evil x brings about a g.
4. Therefore, any evil x is justified.
This argument implies that individually, and collectively, all the evils that exist in the world are serving to magnify God's glory, the greatest possible creaturely good. The reason I say "individually and collectively" is because it may be hard to see how one particular, small, evil serves to magnify God's glory in any significant way. But, in a collective sense, it may serve to achieve that goal. For instance, a child hitting his or her sibling may not appear to magnify God's glory in a very apparent, or exemplary, way. But that one evil, under the Christian story, is a contributing factor to Christ's eventual (if this happened before 33 A.D.) death on the cross. Jesus' death on the cross is an exemplary display of God's glory in His mercy for sinners, and therefore all that contributes to it is justified. Similarly, there are some goods which individually, regardless of their collective significance, magnify God's glory. For example, say a soldier gets shot in battle. As he dies he cries out to God for mercy and salvation, and finally sees the beauty of God's power and etc. This good is greater than the evil of the man getting shot because he acknowledges the great glory of God, and is then ushered into His eternal kingdom. So this would seem to be justified apart from God's plans overall for exemplifying His glory at the end of the age, or whatnot.
One weakness of this argument is that it will primarily appeal to those who already believe in Christianity, but to few who don't. This is because the premise that exemplifying God's glory is the greatest possible creaturely good seems utterly incoherent to those outside the faith (and, sadly, many within). Goods like caring for someone with cancer, getting honor in battle, and other standard examples that come from this theodicy make more sense to the unbeliever. So I suppose this argument should function more as a comfort to the believer who is struggling with why God allows evil in the world. I think that he or she would find that this answer is Scriptural, coherent, and is a great comfort for the Christian (since God works all things for their good, as Paul says). Put in a better way, all the evils which occur in the life of the Christian serve to magnify God's glory in love and mercy, as opposed to wrath and judgement.
Soli Deo Gloria
-Ben C.
Let us first examine a proposition which could be said to be the foundational one for these sorts of theodicies:
P1- For every evil x, x is justified iff x is necessary for bringing about a good y which outweighs the evil of x.
What constitutes the idea of "outweighing" in this premise is, admittedly, quite vague. But it could possibly mean something like this: A good y outweighs an evil x iff y results in effects more morally great than x is morally evil. This is still vague, but I don't think it's vagueness is that much of an issue, since we intuitively recognize when a good outweighs, or is greater, than a particular evil, even if we don't recognize exactly what constitutes this "outweighing'. So let us content ourselves with moral intuition on this point.
Now take another, widely accepted, theological premise:
p2- The greatest possible creaturely good is to magnify the glory of God (who is the paradigm of goodness).
Given these to premises, we can formulize the following argument (assuming God's existence for reductio):
1. Any evil x is justified iff it is necessary for bringing about a good y, and y is sufficiently greater than x.
2. The good of magnifying God's glory is always sufficiently greater than any evil x.
3. There are evils which are necessary conditions for bringing about a magnification of God's glory g.
3. God's providence insures that every evil x brings about a g.
4. Therefore, any evil x is justified.
This argument implies that individually, and collectively, all the evils that exist in the world are serving to magnify God's glory, the greatest possible creaturely good. The reason I say "individually and collectively" is because it may be hard to see how one particular, small, evil serves to magnify God's glory in any significant way. But, in a collective sense, it may serve to achieve that goal. For instance, a child hitting his or her sibling may not appear to magnify God's glory in a very apparent, or exemplary, way. But that one evil, under the Christian story, is a contributing factor to Christ's eventual (if this happened before 33 A.D.) death on the cross. Jesus' death on the cross is an exemplary display of God's glory in His mercy for sinners, and therefore all that contributes to it is justified. Similarly, there are some goods which individually, regardless of their collective significance, magnify God's glory. For example, say a soldier gets shot in battle. As he dies he cries out to God for mercy and salvation, and finally sees the beauty of God's power and etc. This good is greater than the evil of the man getting shot because he acknowledges the great glory of God, and is then ushered into His eternal kingdom. So this would seem to be justified apart from God's plans overall for exemplifying His glory at the end of the age, or whatnot.
One weakness of this argument is that it will primarily appeal to those who already believe in Christianity, but to few who don't. This is because the premise that exemplifying God's glory is the greatest possible creaturely good seems utterly incoherent to those outside the faith (and, sadly, many within). Goods like caring for someone with cancer, getting honor in battle, and other standard examples that come from this theodicy make more sense to the unbeliever. So I suppose this argument should function more as a comfort to the believer who is struggling with why God allows evil in the world. I think that he or she would find that this answer is Scriptural, coherent, and is a great comfort for the Christian (since God works all things for their good, as Paul says). Put in a better way, all the evils which occur in the life of the Christian serve to magnify God's glory in love and mercy, as opposed to wrath and judgement.
Soli Deo Gloria
-Ben C.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Analytic Philosophy and Calvinism
Here's an interesting blog post I found by the philosopher Jeremy Pierce (you may have seen him on the popular philosophy of religion blog "Prosblogion"): http://parablemania.ektopos.com/archives/2007/02/calvinism_philosophers.html
Weekly Scripture
"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." - Colossians 2:15 (NIV)
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