Theistic Conceptual Realism, Absolute Creationism, and Plotinus

I often think and write about epistemology. Recently, though, I have been trying to focus more on metaphysics. As a point of departure, I've been reading about God and abstract objects (link), and one position on the relationship between the two (assuming there is one) is that of Greg Welty and James Anderson, a position alternatively labeled as Theistic Conceptual Realism or Divine Conceptualism (link, link, link, link).

There are some objections or areas of critical engagement with this position (link, link) that seem to imply it is (at least) in need of some refinement, but my remarks in this post will have more to say about how strikingly similar the position seems to be, in some respects, to that of Plotinus. Consider the following statement by Anderson (emphases his): 

But here’s the key point: none of this requires that divine thoughts have content distinct from those thoughts. The considerations that drive us to distinguish human thoughts from their propositional content simply do not apply to God’s thoughts (although presumably they would apply to other creaturely thoughts, e.g., angelic thoughts). Indeed, in the case of God’s thoughts, we deny that there is any such distinction, because we argue for identity between propositions and divine thoughts. In other words, the propositions that serve as the content of human thoughts (such as the proposition that 2+2=4) just are divine thoughts, precisely because only divine thoughts would have the kind of features (objectivity, necessity, intrinsic intentionality, and so forth) that propositions must have in order to play the roles that we take them to play. (link)

Compare this to a summary of Plotinus' philosophy by Gordon Clark (emphases mine):

The potential never becomes actual by chance; there must always precede an effective principle to induce actualization. Therefore, above soul one must posit the Divine Mind or, what is the same thing, the world of Ideas. To appreciate the identification of the mind and the objects of thought is difficult for the untutored in any age; to those who are tutored in modern idealism it may be confusing. One should particularly guard against using one’s own mind as an illustration of the Divine Mind and a sense object as an illustration of an object of thought. In Neo-Platonism the objects of mind are not sense objects but concepts, and since the essence of mind is thought, since the Divine Mind is always actual, there cannot be, as in the case of a human mind and a sense object, any separation of the mind from the objects which completely characterize it. Or conversely, suppose that the mind and its objects were not the same, and that the essence of the mind were separable from its thought. On such a supposition the mind would be only potentially intellectual, while in itself it would be unintellectual. Therefore the Divine Mind and its objects, the Ideas, are inseparable. In modern idealism the mind alone is ultimate and its ideas are its creations. But Plotinus writes, “Not by its thinking movement does movement arise. Hence it is an error to call the Ideas intellections in the sense that, upon an intellectual act in this principle one such Idea or another is made to exist.” It is true that the thoughts of the mind are Ideas, but it is untrue that the Ideas exist because the mind thinks them. (Selections from Hellenistic Philosophy, 1940, pg. 228)

A few points: 

1) The part is bold seems to be similarly motivated as Theistic Conceptual Realism... with the ironic twist that looks as though Plotinus has "concepts" as the objects of the divine mind, not Anderson and Welty. Perhaps rebranding the position of the latter would be too little, too late - but labelling their view as Theistic Propositional Realism or Divine Propositionalism would be, I think, more appropriate. 

2) Can one categorize Anderson's and Welty's position "an Anti-Platonist Alternative" as, for example, Craig does (link)? Is agreement with a Neo-Platonist "Anti-Platonic"? In response to this sort of question, one point is that the Theistic Conceptual Realist has resources (assuming the view itself is coherent and otherwise consistent with Christian theism) to defend a particular view of divine aseity that a strict follower of Plato simpliciter does not. Another point would be that it is not as though Anderson and Welty have the same view of the relationship between God and abstract objects as Plotinus does - their views about God are completely different, as the continuation of Clark's exposition of Plotinus proceeded to demonstrate. For instance, Welty and Anderson would not, I think, identify God with His own mind.

3) Finally, I italicized the last several sentences to show that Plotinus not only anticipates Theistic Conceptual Realism; he also anticipates (and then argues against) Absolute Creationism, a position which holds that God creates abstract objects (such as His own thoughts, link). Plotinus' argument is aimed against TCR as well.

It is interesting that just as Plotinus seemingly formulated his views with this opposing position in mind, so too did Welty formulate "Theistic Conceptual Realism" as a response to "Absolute Creationism." Only, I gather that Welty and Anderson stop short of Plotinus' identification of the divine mind and divine thoughts. Either way, one may hope too that this contemporary reprise of historico-philosophical progression gives leads to another, better Augustine.

TAG revisited

A recent paper by James Anderson and Greg Welty (link) on “An Argument for God from Logic” has been made available. It does not purport to be “incontrovertible proof” for the existence of God, though it claims to be deductively valid and superficially sound.

Some of the points made in the article which whose importance could likely be overlooked are very good: “language-independence,” for instance, is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while, and I hope to do so in the near future. At the same time, there were a few things I think, highly qualified as I am to make such recommendations, require clarification:

1. The title of the article is a bit of a misnomer. What I mean is that certain polytheists or non-Christian monotheists could use the arguments: "Strictly speaking, the argument shows that there must be at least one necessarily existent person; it doesn't show that there must be one and only one necessarily existent person."

The purpose of the authors’ transcendental argument is certainly more conservative than Van Til’s attempt to defend Christianity in particular (cf. here), and I would say that even if such a restriction in purpose is not due to recognition of epistemic limitations, it is at least a step in the right direction. I abandoned attempting to defend Christianity with a TAG when I realized that the step from theism – even theism with restrictions to rule out several options – to Christianity is inferential, but I’m more than willing to learn an apagogic argument.

2. The authors referred to a possible world as "a way the world could have been." But if, as some like me tend to think, this is the only possible world God could have effected due to who He is, then the authors' assumption of multiple possible worlds throughout their article is problematic. Perhaps this objection can be largely avoided if they were to switch "imaginable worlds" for "possible worlds" at the appropriate places. I would say an "imaginable world" is just a [fictional] world proceeding from our imaginations. Whatever we imagine, the laws of logic must apply to them, for our imaginings are a subset of our thoughts bound by the laws of logic.

3. They state that "There is no possible world in which... the Law of Non-Contradiction is not true." However, if the law of non-contradiction is mental, this statement begs the question: has there existed or could there have existed a world without minds and, if so, would not such a world demonstrate that the laws of logic are ontologically unnecessary?

Let me unpack this a bit: the authors argue that minds are a metaphysical precondition for the laws of logic. I agree. If the laws of logic exist necessarily, then “God” (i.e. and eternal mind) exists necessarily. I agree with that too. But I had trouble understanding how the authors claimed to know the laws of logic exist necessarily. Such only seems to be the case if minds exist necessarily; but from what I could gather, that is the purported conclusion of their argument – rather than their premise for it – according to which “God’s” existence is thereby posited. This would be circular reasoning, i.e. not a deductively valid argument.

I discussed this with a friend, and he replied that the laws of logic must be invariant in order to avoid a self-defeating position. But I didn’t find a reason given in the paper as why the existence of the laws of logic needs to be necessary in order for their invariance to hold when a contingent mind thinks. It is true that when minds think, they must think according to the laws of logic. But if all minds cease to think (exist), the metaphysical precondition is not met and the laws of logic cease to exist. This doesn’t mean that if such were to occur, true would become false, contradictories could be true, etc.; it would mean that since there would be no minds, there wouldn’t be thinking – there wouldn’t be laws of logic.

So while it’s true that “we cannot imagine the possibility of the Law of Non-Contradiction being false,” if the “we” isn’t a metaphysical necessity, neither are the laws of logic. No one would be thinking propositionally. No one would be thinking the laws of logic. Perhaps a good summary of this line of reasoning would be that a “necessary truth” is a truth without which no one could think, but it’s not a truth which must be thought. If this is possible, then this article’s argument for God’s existence fails.

I think, therefore, the argument of this paper requires a classical apologetic explaining the [pre]conditions under which a world can obtain to rule out these types of counterarguments.