Abstract
This chapter provides Peter van Inwagen’s replies to each of the contributions in this volume.
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Notes
- 1.
The conclusion of the revised argument then becomes: The following two propositions are inconsistent,
-
(i)
S believes that p; E is the totality of the evidence that S has that is relevant to the question of the truth-value of p; S has sufficient evidence for p.
-
(ii)
R believes that not-p; E is the totality of the evidence that R has that is relevant to the question of the truth-value of p; R has sufficient evidence for not-p.
-
(i)
- 2.
As Captain Barbossa puts it in Pirates of the Caribbean: “The code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”
- 3.
But see note 8 in Sect. 12.2.2 of this Reply for a hint about how I would answer this question.
- 4.
- 5.
Here is my perhaps tendentious paraphrase of Gellner’s confession: “I shamelessly say things that logically imply the existence of abstract objects and deny the existence abstract objects! I do not feel in the least bound to accept the logical consequences of the things I say.”
- 6.
I wish my conversation with Norma had got to the point at which she presented that explanation. I’d very much like to know what it was.
- 7.
I deny that explanatory theories have any place in metaphysics – a point I shall presently take up in the text. But not all theories are explanations. I have written a paper called “A Theory of Properties” (van Inwagen 2004), but the “theory” presented in that paper does not purport to explain anything – that is, it does not purport to explain how something-or-other can be the case. It does not, for example, purport to explain how it can be that two objects that are not identical in number are nevertheless identical in some respect – identical in color, identical in shape, and so on.
- 8.
Disputants in the Ontology Room may find themselves disputing about the existence, of, say, chairs – but only as ‘representatives’ of some much more inclusive category. A dispute about the existence of chairs that could not as easily have been a dispute about the existence of tables would not be of any ontological interest.
- 9.
Of course, she might resign: she might, as a consequence of attending to Alfred’s arguments for the conclusion that certain of her beliefs are inconsistent with anti-Fism, cease to be an anti-First. I will assume that this is not the course she chooses: she is not convinced by Alfred’s arguments and undertakes to answer them.
- 10.
Some metaphysicians – Trenton Merricks, for example – will deny that when the businessman says, “Chairs exit” in the circumstances I have imagined he says something true. But these metaphysicians and I differ about the proposition he expresses when he speaks that sentence. They say it expresses a certain proposition p and I say it expresses a certain proposition q (where p entails q, but not vice versa). They and I agree that p is false. They and I agree that q is true.
- 11.
“Something exists” might be a ‘successful’ ontological theory. But if that is a ‘theory’ at all, it is certainly not a substantive one.
- 12.
An extreme pedant might want to add an environmental qualification – something like “unless the temperature everywhere in the cosmos is greater than 2 × 1012 degrees K” – to both these statements.
- 13.
For the meaning of “the xs are arranged protonically” consult the Standard Theory. Its textbook formulations will not, of course, contain that phrase, but they will precisely describe the mutual causal relations that I mean the phrase to express.
- 14.
See Sect. 12.2 for the meaning of “the Ontology Room”.
- 15.
Plus the mass equivalent of their binding energy – which is enormous.
- 16.
Both outside and inside the surface of Jupiter. If it were possible to drill a hole through Jupiter from pole to pole, and if you dropped, say, an iron cannonball into that hole, the gravitational force acting on the ball as it fell, passed the center of Jupiter, and rose toward the opposite pole, would at every moment be the sum of the gravitational force each of the 1050 particles was then exerting on it.
- 17.
I neglect the effects on Jupiter’s shape of its rotation about its polar axis.
- 18.
For more on this topic, see Chapter 7 (“Is There Scientific Evidence for Composition?”) of Brenner 2016.
- 19.
I think this is correct – but perhaps the “no-extension” clause that figures in the criterion of physical composition (Sect. 4.6) implies that I + the space suit and the space-suit + the hammer do not exist. Whether these fusions exist, however, is not relevant to my argument. I will assume the existence of I + the space-suit in the sequel (for ease of exposition), but this assumption could, if necessary, be eliminated by paraphrase.
- 20.
At any given point in space, the gravitational potential energy of me + the space-suit with respect to the star is less than that of me + the space-suit + the hammer (since the mass of former is less than the mass of the latter). But the decrease in potential energy depends only on the mass of the hammer, whereas the decrease in kinetic energy depends both on the mass of the hammer and the velocity with which it is thrown. If it is thrown fast enough, the decrease in kinetic energy can greatly exceed the decrease in potential energy.
- 21.
“Gödel and Gettier may have done it.” (Lewis 1983, p. x)
- 22.
My metaphysic of material objects is therefore not what Sir Peter Strawson called a revisionary metaphysic. (Is it therefore a descriptive metaphysic? I would not call it that, either. I consider Strawson’s taxonomy of metaphysical positions to be incomplete.)
- 23.
See also van Inwagen 2014a.
- 24.
Note that this thesis contradicts constraint (6).
- 25.
By “houses” in the present discussion I mean houses that are normal artifacts. I have read at least one science-fiction story in which people inhabit houses that are living organisms. (Of course “houses” here stands in for any sort of normal artifact.)
- 26.
It would be nice to be able to avoid the problem of distinguishing between a thing’s essential and its accidental properties. But that is not a persuasive argument for adopting Spinozism, the doctrine that everything has all its properties essentially.
- 27.
In which, I am sorry to say, the word ‘sidereally’ is misspelled – or would be if there were such a word.
- 28.
The mass of Jupiter is a causal power, but it does not have causal powers. Compare: 10 cubic meters is a volume; it does not have a volume. Only spatially extended objects (and perhaps regions of space) have volumes, and 10 cubic meters is not a spatially extended object or a region of space.
- 29.
What is this mistake? Unless it was the authors’ intention to come down very hard on the words “someone who”, I do not know. I certainly affirm that Mrs. Gamp is something that has properties like “being a character in a novel.”
- 30.
Van Inwagen 1977, 307. The quotation is partly from the text and (starting with “That is […]”) partly from note 8. See also note 7.
- 31.
But in one place I slipped and described them explicitly as abstract objects.
- 32.
“Relations” include propositions (0-term relations), properties or attributes (unary relations), proper relations (binary, ternary, … relations), and multigrade relations (“teach at the same university”, “are members of the CDU”, ….).
- 33.
Naturally, it is incumbent upon me to explain how we can ‘do without’ sets. But, assuming that I can do that, I need not reply to the argument, “But if anything can be created, then sets are abstract objects that can be created – for to bring x and y into existence is to bring {x, y} into existence.”
- 34.
See the discussion of fictional names in the Reply to Jung and Pellet’s essay.
- 35.
Or perhaps not precisely those three propositions but certainly propositions intimately related to them. Here’s an analogy—an analogy based on the following well-known anecdote. A haughty French royalist said to an English visitor, “Your House of Lords is unworthy of the name. No English nobleman (so-called) of the present day would be permitted to ride in the same coach as a king of France.” The Englishman replied, “There is no king of France.” Question: What is the relation between the proposition the Englishman asserted and the proposition that either no male now reigns over France or more than one male now reigns over France? It is plausible to suppose that it this relation is not strict identity, but the two propositions are nevertheless certainly very intimately related.
- 36.
See, e.g., van Inwagen 2003, n. 14.
- 37.
The “Cartesian” analogy was a mere incidental remark.
- 38.
Holmes, the Riemann curvature tensor, and I each have all the properties in the second column of the second list.
- 39.
And here is a third reason: It is possible for a fictional character to hold inconsistent properties; and, of course, nothing can have inconsistent properties.
- 40.
Kripke’s ontology of fiction and mine are identical – although their genesis is independent; cf. van Inwagen 2014b.
- 41.
Or at any rate, the property “being a rational being”. Tolkien’s elves and Dr Frankenstein’s creature and E.T. are fictional characters, I suppose.
- 42.
That is to say: the dot was placed on the toy control board by its manufacturers with the intention that children playing with the toy can pretend that the dot is a button.
- 43.
For references and a summary of Wolterstorff’s theory, see van Inwagen 2003, 150–153.
- 44.
For an analysis – a characteristically brilliant analysis – of the concept “truth in a fiction”, see Lewis 1978, 37–46.
- 45.
The agent’s causally relevant environment comprises those aspects of the agent’s environment that might have some sort of ‘causal input’ into the decision the agent reaches. If, for example, the agent is being interrogated by the police, and one of the interrogators says, “If you lie, you will be severely punished”, that would certainly be a part of the agent’s causally relevant environment. An argument between two people in an aircraft flying overhead at that moment would not be a part of the agent’s causally relevant environment – or not unless the agent could somehow hear it (by radio, perhaps).
- 46.
“It is determined at t that at some moment thereafter A will decide to do X” is defined as “In every possible world in which (i) the agent and the agent’s causally relevant environment are in precisely the same states at t as those they are in in the actual world at t, and (ii) the laws of nature are the same as those of the actual world, the agent will at some moment after t decide to do X.”
- 47.
This is precisely the reason for the distinction between the outcome of an agent’s deliberations being “undetermined” and being “uniformly undetermined”. For suppose that it is now undetermined which answer Alice will give, but it is also the case that if she promised to answer Yes, that promise would have the effect of rendering it determinate that she would answer Yes. (In that case, if she is in fact going to promise to answer Yes, whether she will answer Yes is not uniformly undetermined: it is undetermined now but it will become determined when she makes the promise.) If Alice knew that promising to answer Yes would render it determined that she would answer Yes, she would be in a position to promise to answer Yes, despite the fact that it is undetermined (merely undetermined) whether she will answer Yes. I am indebted to Michael Bratman for this important point.
- 48.
Let us understand what a person’s “not being in a position” to make a certain promise means – or, rather, what it does not mean. It does not mean that that person is unable to make the promise. We may imagine a confidence trickster who says to you: “I will send you a check for €10,000 tomorrow.” In speaking these words, she promised to send you a check for €10,000 tomorrow – and she was therefore able to promise to send you a check for €10,000 tomorrow. But, we may further imagine, she was not in a position to make that promise, owing to the fact that she did not have even a tenth that sum at her disposal and knew it.
- 49.
Perhaps I should add here the clause “and if that is a reasonable belief for that person to have”. If that qualification is indeed necessary, it will make no difference to my argument.
- 50.
In our ‘official’ vocabulary: “I am deliberating about whether to answer Yes or to answer No, and the outcome of my deliberations is uniformly undetermined.”
- 51.
I made use of it myself in this very Reply – in the “confidence trickster” example in note 48 (Sect. 12.7.1).
- 52.
Suppose that at noon Alice decided to answer Yes. We should note that even if my reply to the Interlocutor contains a mistake, and—because she did answer Yes—Alice was able to answer Yes, it does not follow that she was able to answer No; that is, it does not follow that she was doubly able.
- 53.
This is not quite Zeno’s arrow argument as Aristotle states it in Physics, 239b 30–33. Indulge me.
- 54.
Loc. cit.
- 55.
“Probably”: if we observe repeated tossings of a fair coin, we shall probably observe that the ratio of the number of “heads” to the number of “tails” converges to 1/1 or 1 as the number of tosses increases. But if the coin is tossed 10,000 times, it might fall “heads” every time – or every time but once, or every time but twice … But of course such outcomes are vastly improbable.
- 56.
Note that if “There is an exact probability distribution” is a logical consequence of “The outcome of Alice’s deliberations is undetermined”, it must also be a logical consequence of “The outcome of Alice’s deliberations is undetermined and Alice has free will”: if q is a logical consequence of p, it is a logical consequence of the conjunction of p and any other proposition.
- 57.
Consider a simple universe that consists of an “eternal” ball that is at every moment either red or blue. The ball changes color indeterministically at one-second intervals with an equal probability of its next color being red or being blue: if the ball turns red, then, one second later, it will either remain red (probability 0.5) or change to blue (probability 0.5). A “possible future” for this universe at any moment is thus an infinite sequence that starts in some such way as this: RRBRRBRBBBRBR … If probabilities are real numbers, then the probability of each of these infinite possible futures is 0 – owing to the fact that any real number greater than 0 is too large to be that probability: for any real number k greater than 0, there is a positive integer n such that every n-term sequence of R’s and B’s has a probability lower than k (the probability of every n-term sequence is (½)n – and for any number k greater than 0, there is an n such that (½)n is smaller than k), and, obviously, the probability of any infinite sequence must be lower than the probability of every finite sequence. What holds for this simple imaginary universe, holds a fortiori for the enormously complex real universe.
- 58.
The number of favorable outcomes is 210 (10!/(4!(10–4)!)). Hence, the proportion of futures in which the coin falls “heads” four times is about 0.205 – and the probability that the coin will fall heads four times is 0.205.
- 59.
Think of these measures this way. Dame Fortune throws a dart at a dartboard, each point of which represents a possible future. If two regions on the surface of the board of equal area, the dart is equally likely to hit either of them. The measure of a set of futures (a region on the surface of the board) is the proportion of the whole surface of the board occupied by that region: any set of points whose area is one-third the area of the board has a measure of 1/3.
- 60.
These probabilities are objective probabilities, not subjective probabilities or credences. The relation between objective and subjective probabilities is, of course, a central problem in the philosophy of probability.
- 61.
The idealization permits us to ignore futures in which, e.g., Alice dies of a heart attack before her deliberations result in a decision.
- 62.
Holbach ([1780] 1781, Système de la nature I xi, 161): “Notre vie est une ligne que la nature nous ordonne décrire sur la surface de la terre sans jamais pouvoir nous en écarter pour un instant.”
- 63.
The final paragraph of this Reply summarizes an argument presented not in chapter V but in chapter VI of An Essay on Free Will (van Inwagen 1983).
- 64.
Perhaps it is not only Henry’s fault. Perhaps it is not true that Henry alone is to blame for Wilfrid’s death. No doubt the perjured witness whom Henry bribed shares in the blame. Perhaps the actual murderer shares in the blame as well. Let this sort of qualification be understood in what follows.
- 65.
“In the story”, Henry agrees with these judgments. The authors rightly point out that it does not follow from this that he is right to agree with them (see their n. 3, in Sect. 10.2), but his self-judgment is certainly worth noting.
- 66.
This example is not intended to convince the reader that Henry is morally obliged to pay Wilma $100,000. There can be all sorts of reasons why a person who has promised to do a certain thing is under no moral obligation to keep that promise. What I intend the example to establish is only this: Henry – if he knows the facts of the case – cannot say to Wilma, “I did not promise to pay you $100,000 if you kept silent.”
- 67.
Imagine this case. A thief breaks into Walter’s house and steals his computer. Eventually, after several re-sales, the computer winds up in the hands of Desmond, who justifiably believes that he has purchased it legally. Through some operatic sequence of improbabilities, events having nothing to do with the files Walter downloaded, the authorities acquire the Gettier-style justified true belief that some of the files on Desmond’s new computer contain child pornography. A court order allows the police to impound the computer, one of their experts is able to open the protected files, and Desmond is charged with possession of child pornography. He is eventually found guilty of this charge, and an innocent man is sent to prison. The innocent Desmond’s imprisonment, I would judge, is not Walter B.’s fault: its causal connection with his purchase of child pornography is too remote. In the remainder of this Reply, when I speak of someone’s being to blame for the consequences of his or her acts, the qualification “reasonably immediate” is to be understood.
- 68.
No doubt he’s not the only one who is to blame for it. No doubt the people who produced and sold the video the boy viewed also share in the blame. Cf. n. 64 in Sect. 12.9.1.
- 69.
As we praise Galadriel (from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings), who was tempted – severely tempted – by the powers of a ring and refused them: “I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.”
- 70.
The authors point out in their note 9 (Sect. 10.3.4) that in the chapter on free will in Metaphysics (a textbook for undergraduates), I said in an aside (in this context: I was discussing various things that might be said against the thesis that human beings lack free will): If the lack of free will] “rules out blame, it may well rule out praise on the same grounds.” I made that incidental remark only because “Lack of free will rules out praise” is a position that some philosophers have taken. (In this note, I understand “free will” in what one might call its classical sense: as the ability to act otherwise than one does.) I made no use of that thesis in the sequel and, indeed, said nothing further about praise. I would also point out that if the pope tells us that Jesus cannot be praised for being without sin because he was unable to sin and then goes on to state that Mary – who was able to sin, although she never did – is deserving of the highest praise for being without sin, he would not have affirmed two contradictory propositions. The first of these imaginary papal pronouncements is a consequence of the position that lack of free will rules out praise. That position has no relevance whatever to the question whether Mary – who did not lack free will in the matter of sinning – deserves praise for being without sin. And the cases of deserved moral praise the authors’ arguments appeal to are all cases in which someone was able to do wrong but did not.
- 71.
A qualification is needed. We may indeed blame people for their characters, their lack of ability, or their appearances – but only if we regard these items as consequences of their actions. But we may praise people for their characters (etc.) even if we believe that they are “unearned”, sheer gifts of fortune that are unconnected with anything their recipients have done.
- 72.
They are also mistaken about the meaning I give to the words “original sin”. In my use, at least, original sin is so-called because it is a part or aspect of all post-Fall human beings (or almost all: every Christian insists on one exception, and Roman Catholics on two) from and because of their origins – it was a part of them from the first moment of their existence, and it was conferred upon them by the very process that brought them into existence. “Original sin” does not refer to a certain pre-historical event – the event that brought about the Fall, the event that is described in mythical form in the bible in the story of the disobedience of Adam and Eve.
- 73.
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25)
- 74.
I use the term “morally responsible” because the authors have used it. Readers who consult “The Problem of Free Will Revisited” (Chap. 1 in this volume) will see that I have no use for this term, which has, in my view, become encrusted with conceptual confusions, which cling to it like barnacles on the hull of a decaying ship.
- 75.
When I saw this notice, I was reminded of another notice, this one (in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew) in the Herodian Temple: “No Gentile may enter beyond the dividing wall into the court around the Holy Place. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his subsequent death.”
- 76.
Why would our paradisal ancestors have ignored an absolutely clear warning of the consequences of rebellion by a being they knew to be omniscient? For some interesting speculations, see the C. S. Lewis’s theological romance Perelandra.
- 77.
The text cited in the authors’ note 12 (Sect. 11.3.1) is not relevant to EFW. That text has to do with the following purely theological problem. According to Christian theology, God has promised that some people will be saved. But if there is a certain probability – very, very low, perhaps, but not 0 – that no one will be saved how can God be in a position to make such a promise? If my solution to this problem is incorrect, if indeed the problem has no solution, then all that follows is that God, having put “the plan” into effect, should not have promised that his putting the plan into effect would lead to some persons being saved. (He should at most have promised that almost certainly everyone will be saved.) It does not follow that there is anything wrong with his putting the plan into effect. Consider our sea captain. Putting her plan into effect is obviously the right thing for her to do. But – at least this thesis seems very plausible to me – given that there is a probability of 0.01 that the result of putting the plan into effect will be that no one will be rescued, she should not promise that someone will be rescued.
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van Inwagen, P. (2018). Replies. In: Jansen, L., Näger, P. (eds) Peter van Inwagen. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70052-6_12
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