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Copyright James Ross and Todd Bates 2001
Duns Scotus on Natural Theology
James
F. Ross
Introduction: Scotus’ natural theology has distinctive claims: (i) that we
can reason demonstratively to the necessary existence and nature of God from
what is actually so; but not from imagined situations, or from
conceivability-to-us; rather, only from the possibility logically required for
what we know actually to be so; (ii) that there is a univocal transcendental
notion of being; (iii) that there are disjunctive transcendental notions that
apply exclusively to everything, like ‘contingent/necessary,’ and such that the
inferior cannot have a case unless the superior does; (iv) that an a priori
demonstration of the existence of God is impossible because there is nothing
explanatorily prior to the divine being, and so, reasoning must be a posteriori,
from the real dependences among things we perceive to the possibility of an
absolutely First Being (The First Principle); (v) that such a being cannot be
possible without existing necessarily; and (vi) that the First Being (God) is
simple, omni-intelligent, free (spontaneous), omnipotent and, positively
infinite;[1] and moreover, (vii) that there is a formal distinction, that is
more than a distinction within our concepts or definitions, among the divine
attributes.
He makes that first point obvious throughout his several
treatments, that one cannot reliably reason from conceptual consistency for us
to the real and formal possibility or necessity of something; one must reason
only to those necessities that are conditions of the possibility of what is
known to be actual. The schema of the reasoning is, in a word, that “only the
existence of God can make an effect even possible”[2]. Thus, it is explicitly
incorrect to classify him along with St Anselm, Descartes and Leibniz, among
those who reason a priori to the being of God[3].
He characteristically and
deftly argues by indirect proof. He supposes the opposite of his intended
conclusion and deduces a contradiction between that supposition and certain
self-evident, or previously proved propositions, thus, getting his own
conclusion by using the principle that whatever entails the denial of what is
already known to be so, is false and its opposite is true,[4] “si negatur
negatio, ponitur affirmatio.”[5] He also uses the argument form, “ if ‘p’ is not
necessary, then ‘not-p’ is possible”. And he uses the general rule, “if possibly
P, and not contingently P, then necessarily P”, as well as the rule that
whatever is possible is necessarily possible.[6]
Although he is bold, direct
and logically explicit about demonstrating the existence of God, he retrenches
on some claims in natural theology that others had thought demonstrable: he says
the power of God to produce whatever is possible is demonstrable, but not the
divine power to do so immediately, without any secondary causes; and he says the
immortality of the human soul cannot be demonstrated. He rejects (DPP. 4.22) the
usual deduction of particular divine perfections, like love or wisdom, from the
fact that God has all pure perfections, alone, saying each requires an
additional experiential basis to assure that the attribute is a pure perfection;
for parallel reasons he rejects St. Anselm’s proof, as well. He thinks only
probable (likely but persuasive) reasons can be given that time will end, that
the world was created “in time” (though demonstrably created ex nihilo[7]), and
that the created cosmos will somehow endure beyond the end of time.
Two other
distinctive positions are: (i) that we name the divine attributes univocally,
i.e., in the same sense, as the pure perfections found in creatures, such as
being, life, intelligence, freedom and love; such perfections, as mentioned, are
not just conceptually distinct from one another in God, but are formally
distinct “on the part of the thing” from one another. And he says, (ii) that
freedom of choice, both divine and human, is marked by spontaneity; it is the
ability to choose that alone explains the election to act one way or another,
not any prior reason or any merit in the objects; and in that lies the
explanation of how there is anything contingent at all. We shall examine the key
parts of the argument for the existence of God, and some aspects of the
discussion of the divine nature, ending with a brief comment about human
immortality.
Duns Scotus’ Conception of Natural Theology
1 Scotus takes up
what we call natural theology within “the science of metaphysics” in accord with
Aristotle’s practice in his Metaphysics: the inquiry into the first principles
of being—hence the title of Scotus’ book.[8] The science of metaphysics
“considers the transcendentals as such,”[9] among which are disjunctive
attributes, such as “necessary-or-possible,”[10] and among those disjunctive
transcendentals is the one that Scotus uses to begin his proof for the existence
of God, by “the more fruitful source of essential order,”[11] among efficient
and final causes and orderings of eminence.
2 The fact that natural theology
falls within metaphysics does not deter Scotus from being guided by what he
already knows by faith –from Scripture and the faith of the Church. He is
explicit about that, even in the restrictively philosophical work, De Primo
Principio, addressing God, as did St Anselm in his Proslogion,at the outset of
that philosophical inquiry. Scotus says,
“You are truly what it means to be,
you are the whole of what it means to exist. This, if it is possible for me, I
should like to know by way of demonstration. Help me then, O Lord, as I
investigate how much our natural ‘ reason can learn about that true being which
you are if we begin with what you have produced of yourself”.[12]
He is
guided by Faith, in what to look for and where: to look for “what he [your
servant] holds with faith most certain, that you are the most eminent, the first
efficient cause, and the last end,”[13] and “where”: among the things that begin
to be. But notice that Scotus is also guided by philosophy in his understanding
of the Scripture and his Faith, as is indicated in the three distinctly
philosophical concepts, eminence, efficiency and finality, of his inquiry and
prayer. Scotus does not premise revelation in his metaphysical arguments; still,
what he knows by faith prompts him toward demonstrating certain conclusions, and
suggests certain questions and conceptions.[14]
3Limitations of Scope Because
Scotus treats natural theology as the part of metaphysics concerned with the
existence and nature of the First Principle of Being, his explicit scope is much
narrower than his words “ how much our natural reason can learn about the nature
of the being you are” will permit. Related topics, like the temporal beginning
of the world, divine providence, governance and foreknowledge, the immortality
of the human soul, whether there can be life after death, human freedom, the
possibility and scope of miracles, the possibility of divine action in history,
the conditions of possibility for various mysteries such as the Trinity and
Incarnation, the problem of evil, and the end of the world, are usually
considered to be within the capacity of unaided reason, and part of the subject
nowadays. And indeed, Scotus treated most of them and did so philosophically,
but in (revealed) theological contexts.
On the Univocal Transcendental
Concept of Being
4 There is a universal, all-encompassing, univocal concept,
‘being’ with which we can think of anything. He considers such a conception a
necessity for a demonstration of God’s existence, and indeed, for a coherent
science of metaphysics. A concept is univocal if it cannot be affirmed and
denied to fit the same thing without a contradiction; and if univocal, it can
function as the middle term of a demonstration without equivocation. A concept
is transcendental just in case it has no superior genus and it applies to
anything, no matter what. In addition to the transcendental terms, “being”,
“one”, “true”, etc., there are also universal, logically exclusive,
contrast-dependent, disjunctions, e.g. “necessary/contingent,” “causable/
uncausable,” “finite/infinite,” ”perfect /imperfect,” etc. that are subject to a
‘law of the disjunctive transcendentals,’ namely: that it is impossible that
there be a case of the inferior without there being a case of the superior. The
proof of that law seems, however, to be cognitively a consequence of a proof of
the existence of a divine being rather than a premise for it.
We can ask,
beginning with what exists contingently, “whether among actual things there is
one that is infinite”. So his conception has to present anything there is to the
understanding[15], regardless of its manner of being. Another way he puts the
idea is that only a transcendental, univocal notion of being allows a person,
uncertain whether a first principle is finite or infinite, to inquire, without
circularity of thinking, whether there is such a thing.
5 For, if some
empirical predicates are not also univocally applied to whatever we are
inquiring about, then “a disconcerting consequence ensues; namely, that from the
proper notion of anything found in creatures nothing at all can be inferred
about God….”. He seems to think that Aquinas could not know that ‘being’ applied
to God by analogy of proper proportionality, where the meaning of the term is
captured by the modus essendi of its referent (see #29, below) unless he first
knew through some neutral notion of being, that God exists. For Scotus also
holds that God exists in a manner ontologically only analogous to contingent
things; but conceptually, we have a univocal notion that embraces the
ontological diversity of intrinsic modes of being, that is, both the infinite
and the finite.
6 The Theoremata, probably a late work (maybe not directly
Scotus,’ and maybe not reliably in the order we have it,[16]or even more than a
collection of drafts), might seem, and was so thought[17], to repudiate his
project in natural theology by affirming opposed positions.[18] But he was not
refuting or retracting his other work—rather, he was dislodging the contrary,
Latin Averroist, position by deducing absurdities that would result if the
notion of ‘being’ were restricted to the domain of Aristotle’s Categories. His
opponents’ assumption that ‘being’ immediately divides into the 10 categories,
rather than into universal, contrast-dependent[19], disjunctions like “infinite/
finite”, “necessary/contingent” leads to contradictions and anomalies. In
Theorem 9, Proposition 5, he writes, “No concept common per se will be the same
between the created and uncreated.” There will be no univocal transcendental
notion of ‘being’ or of anything else. Among the absurd outcomes is that “It
cannot be proved that something numerically the same is or was first among
efficient causes” (Theorem 16, Prop 3,n.2). Basically he is saying, ”look where
saying you are reasoning with a narrowly categorical notion of being will lead
you”.[20]
A: The Proof of the Existence of a First Explanatory Being
7
Scotus offers an original line of argument for the existence of a divine being,
using considerations that originate with Avicenna (c. 1000). For Avicenna made
clear that if its possible that a divine being exists, it must exist, and that
nothing else exists on account of what-it-is. He reasoned, neo-Platonically,
that the divine being emanates, necessarily, all contingent being. Scotus
adapted that reasoning to his a posteriori framework, and refined the notion of
contingency to include not only not-existing-on account-of-what –it-is, but also
that even while exiting, such a thing still might not exist. So Scotus deduces
the possibility of a divine being ( a First Cause and Eminent Being), from the
causation we perceive. His key innovations are (1) to convert the inquiry about
the causation of contingent beings (ones that exist but might not have), into an
explicit[21] discussion of essentially ordered series, and (2) to reach the
intermediate conclusion that it is possible for there to be a First Being, so as
to conclude by deducing that the possibility of such a being requires its
necessary-being. So he does not end with the existence of such a being as a
hypothetical necessity for the contingent effects, but as necessary-being on its
own (ens a-se).
He presents his arguments, at least three times in somewhat
varying versions.[22] They vary as he reached for a transparent expression of
the insights, and one that does notrely on inferences from conceivability-to-us
to formal possibility. As a result, commentators have diverged in explaining and
appraising the arguments, with some inventive suggestions.[23] But overall there
seems to be a consensus that the issue of whether there can be an infinite
regress is pivotal[24]. So we treat that at length.
8 He does not rely upon
St. Anselm’s argument, even after he gives it a “coloration” that he
approves,[25] because without a posteriori arguments, we would not be in a
position of unaided natural certainty, by recognition, that such a conception,
“a being than which a greater cannot be {consistently} conceived,” is
consistent. He sees that consistency-to-a-human is not sufficient for the formal
possibility of the thing[26]. (This is, historically, a very important point
that was missed 17th Century through 20th Century philosophy).So, the
possibility of a First Being has to be demonstrated a posteriori, as one of the
necessary conditions for what is actually so.
9 Some reminders. (1) What is
formally possible[27]is what can be, non-repugnantly to being-as-such.
Everything formally possible is necessarily formally possible, for compatibility
with being-as-such is not made or caused. Nor is that a semantic, conceptual or
other mind-dependent relation. The ‘terms’ of propositions that he has in mind
are realities presented to us conceptually, even where what we think of is a
combination that is impossible. Possibility is not a semantic condition, but is,
as it turns out later in his metaphysics, non-repugnance in esse intelligibile
to being-as-such.(2) Some philosophers may be tempted to understand Scotus
anachronistically, as if he thinks of modalities semantically as is fashionable
nowadays[28]. There is a superficial similarity, because the axioms and
theorems, considered entirely syntactically, are like the system S-5. But his
modalities, even as logical, are propositional operators (adverbials modifying
propositions), not quantifiers. And his propositions cannot be understood
extensionally, or metalinguistically, as having truth-conditions mapped onto
domains of worlds of propositions or sentences, or even of abstracta (cf. the
‘individual essences’ of Plantinga). In fact, his syllogistic logic cannot be
interpreted as first-order quantification at all and still express his
propositions about real natures and active natural principles. (3) For him the
explanatory order is from the real modalities of things to the modalities of
propositions, whereas, recent logicians talk as if necessity were a feature of
sentences, or statements, in relation to arrays of truth-values, and as if we
could analyze real necessity into an array of propositional or sentential truths
“in all possible worlds”. (4) Scotus’ modal principles are derived from the
metaphysical relationships of things considered modally, de re.[29] However,
modalities de re are understood nowadays to be shorthand for sentential
modalities; not so for Scotus. ‘Being necessarily human’ is a real condition of
Socrates, that his humanity is essential to him. That cannot be reductively
analysed as an arrangement of propositional truths. And God’s necessary being is
a manner of divine being, not a feature of some propositions about God. (5) To
say it is possible that something can make something, is either to say there is
something that is apt or able to make another thing, or to say there can be,
compatibly with being-as-such, such a maker. And there are two senses of the
first sort of assertion, as well: that some particular existing thing is able
(actively or dispositionally) to do something, or, that things of some
particular sort are able to do something, as in “ it is possible for women to
bear children” and “penguins can’t fly but can swim”. In such cases, we are
talking about real possibility, real impossibility, and real necessity, located
in common natures of things that exist. That’s what Scotus is talking about, the
sorts, the natures of things.
10 10 To repeat, conceptual consistency-to-us
(seeming to be consistent), is no assurance of real possibility, or, a fortiori,
of formal possibility. And natural causes are really necessary for the actions
of things (no babies without parents), yet such effects can, in principle, be
produced in other ways as well. And something can be really impossible, say for
lack of an agent able to do it (flying cockroaches, or airplanes, up to a while
ago), yet be formally possible. And something may be formally impossible even
though some persons think it to be really possible, as the Islamic
occasionalists thought God had made the world without natural active principles,
and some philosophers think we might have existed with all our experiences when
no actual physical world existed at all.
11 11 Scotus argues in terms of the
sorts of things (the natures, or natural kinds). Common natures are the relevant
effects in the essential order of causes; and common natures are the relevant
subjects of real necessity and possibility, as well. (Ox.I.d.2 q.1, n.44): “
probatio ..est..de esse quidditive sive de esse possible, non autem de esse
actuale.” And: “If…understood in terms of the natures [rather than individuals],
the quiddity and the possibility, then the conclusions follow from necessary
premises.”(Ox.ibid. n.46). Nevertheless, the real, not the formal, possibility,
say of airplanes, is caused, because the real nature, in esse essentiae, is
caused; it is produced by things of the further natures (humans, metals,
designs, etc.) on which it depends. There did not have to be “things able to
see” any more than there had to be “glowing mice” or “fireflies”. And the ones
there are, depend on further sorts, e.g. “birds able to see” or “mammals able to
see”, and so forth. That’s the kind of production Scotus is concerned with,
production where one sort of thing depends in being and in action, upon the
natural action of another sort of thing. Thus the existence of what we start out
to explain, say a newborn chick, depends on its sort (swallow), and then upon
things of further sorts that have to be all at once. So we get to the question:
whether ‘natures-producing-natures’ spirals up to a first, or not. He reasons
both that it must, and that it ends at a certain sort of thing: something that
exists-by-nature.
12 Note also some of the recently recounted queries about
his arguments: that he needs to show all of nature is essentially ordered; that
there appears to be a supposed and cognitively circular principle of sufficient
reason; that he skips whether there can be uncaused contingent being; that his
reliance on modal logic presupposes the existence of God; that the elimination
of an infinite regress is not really decisive. (Ockham thought the reasoning
would be more obvious in the case of conserving causes[30]).
13 The
Argument
14 12 Scotus asks whether among the things that actually exist there
is one that is infinite in act. Immediately (Ox. I, 2,q.1), he asks a
sub-question, “whether among beings which can produce an effect, there is one
that is simply first”. And he promises that if there is, he can show there is an
infinite being.
He reasons that (i) some things can be produced
(“effectibile”) because some are produced. So, (ii) there can be something
productive (effectiva), that is, something of a sort naturally disposed and able
to produce things, say, swallow’, or fertile female frog. Now, given that there
is such a thing, that there can be such a thing is formally necessary
(absolutely, unconditionally necessary).[31] The same will hold, then for each
further premise and for the conclusion, as well: because each is a necessary
condition for the former.
The productive sort, say, swallow, is either itself
caused to be, and its producing caused to happen, by something of a prior sort
(say, genetically organized carbon molecules), or not. If not by another, but on
account of itself, then we already have what we seek: an unproduced producer.
But suppose that the producing sort, say, swallow, depends on another producing
sort, via things of the sort, not only for its being but for its producing, as
when a pencil makes a mark, because its marking is caused, too, by a moving
person. Does that essentially ordered regress end? Does it all spiral up to a
first productive sort of thing that can depend on nothing? It seems that it
must.
Objector: Suppose that the dependence goes on forever, each sort of
thing being of a different kind (nature) from its effect, but each “inside and
hanging onto” a prior real nature of a different kind, without end. Scotus calls
such a series “infinite,” by which he means “non-terminating”. It would be like
the regression from a chick to ‘being a chicken’, which depends on ‘being
vitally organized carbon molecules’, which together depends on ‘being
particularly organized atoms’, and so on, to further and further conditions, but
without end. And if it were non-terminating, it would be non-terminable.
13
Scotus thinks a non-terminable regress is formally impossible. He deploys two
lines of argument to block that option. First he argues that a non-terminating
regress of essentially ordered causes, where all the causing has to be
continuous right through to the last effect, and each successive effect is of a
different sort from the prior, as in our “pencil marking” example, is
inconsistent. Secondly, a non-terminating regress of that sort is not formally
necessary, because its denial is not inconsistent.[32]
So in the first case,
there cannot be such a thing, and in the second, there need not be such a thing.
And, so in either case, an unproduced producing cause (of a suitable sort) is
known to be really possible. For, if the negation of a proposition is either
impossible or not necessary, the affirmative is possible, (Cf. “si negatur
negatio, ponitur affirmatio” Ox. loc. cit, Wolter,p.39). So the heart of the
reasoning is to reject the non-terminating regress (the “infinite
series”).
14 As to the inconsistency of a non-ending regress. Scotus does not
offer a taxonomy of ordered natural kinds, and so we have to speculate about
examples. Further, he is not committed at the outset to saying that all of
nature belongs to a single such order. Rather, he relies upon some actual cases
only. For if it is impossible that everyregress of essentially ordered causes is
infinite (unending), then a terminating one is possible. But that is possible
only if a certain sort of thing actually exists, a First Being. And the sort of
thing that actually exists will logically prevent there from being any
non-terminating regresses of essentially ordered causes at all, because it will
be the explanation of all contingent being. So the universal order in nature is
a consequence, and outcome of the proof, not a premise of it.
Consider some
cases. For asparin to help a headache, chemical reactions are required, and
those require certain sorts of and arrangements of molecules (molecular natures:
acetylsalicylic acid.) For that, certain molecular structure is required, along
with molecular bonding; and for that, certain atomic organization is required,
and, so, on. All the latter have to be actual and causing, “all at once”, ”all
the way down” for the aspirin to work. The “all at once” can be physical and so,
time-bound by the light constant and the medium, and there can even be quantum
gaps between cause and effect; the nested causes must still be operating all
together. Thus, Ockham’s doubts about whether “simultaneity” of all the causes
is demonstrably satisfied, is obviated.[33]
One who says, “still, maybe such
a line does not twist up to a first,” is committed to a contradiction. For he
has to say that at every stage a sufficient condition is absent and one is never
reached by stepwise regression; so one is always absent. And at the same time,
he has to postulate the final effect, and, so, that there is a sufficient
condition for it. That is explicitly contradictory.
A sentence with an
infinite number of “if,if, if,if…”clauses cannot be made complete by adding
more; so too, with a phrase inside brackets, inside brackets, repeating without
end, never coming to an assertion. So supplying an infinite number of necessary
conditions is not enough, by itself, to supply a sufficient condition[34]. Thus
supposing only the regression, each member necessary but none sufficient,
contradicts the actuality of the effect, for which a sufficient condition is
manifestly present. That is Scotus’ insight.
An objection that such reasoning
is a “fallacy of composition,”[35] is mistaken. One is not attributing some
feature to the series as a whole, solely on the basis of features of the
members, but contrasting something always missing in each and every member of
the series with something present in the final effect, (a sufficient condition
for being). Another illustration: the predicate “unexplained” applies in
regression to every member of the series, whereas its negation is by supposition
present in the granted effect. Where could “explained” come from? It could not,
at all. A logical analogue is that the modal operator of a whole conjunction, no
matter how long, even infinite, is the weakest operator of any
conjunct.
` The objection that Scotus did not establish that an infinite
regress of essentially ordered causes is impossible has been around at least
since Ockham raised it, and it gets repeated in the literature now. Perhaps,
Scotus didn’t articulate his reasoning transparently enough. But the substance
of argument is implicit in the text, needing only examples, as illustrated
above. And the objection is merely conclusional, without any basis in fact.
Besides, Scotus could also point out that if such a non-ending series per
impossibile[36] could happen, it would, nevertheless, be formally causable,
whether caused or not. (And that would contradict the supposition that a
non-terminating regress of essentially ordered causes could be non-terminable).
For conjoining anything at all to the contingent effect, would still give a
contingent conjunction. And the contingent, as such is causable[37]. So, even on
such a supposition, a first uncausable cause would still be possible, and so,
actual, given the reasoning above. As a result, the supposition of a
non-terminating regress of essentially ordered causes is impossible
(inconsistent).
14 15 As to the non-necessity of any unending essentially
ordered regress. Scotus has in mind that there actually are such regresses,
though obvious ones, like pencil marks, terminate at members belonging to a
series of accidentally ordered causes, like people. (But he has a response to
that as well, namely, such additional series are themselves essentially ordered,
through their forms in a series that must terminate). For instance, a mark is
caused by a pencil whose marking is caused, both in act and in ability by a
writer’s gesture, caused by his moving his hand, caused by his acting freely,
which he can do on account of what he is. His being is accidentally dependent on
generation from his parents, but his causation originates from him, as from an
uncaused cause of acting. So there can be a terminating essentially ordered
series of causes. That shows that an essentially ordered series of efficient
causes does not have to be non-terminating. So the universal proposition “every
essentially ordered series of causes is non-terminating” is demonstrably false,
indeed found to be inconsistent a posteriori[38].
15
16 16 The objector
may rejoin, “But I am, talking about the whole cosmos: that may regress
infinitely.” Scotus’ proper reply, that we make for him, is, “that is a petitio,
because there is no other case, and whether that regress is infinite is exactly
what is in dispute”. Besides, we know an essentially ordered series of efficient
natures that terminates in a first uncaused production, is possible. So, because
such a terminating regress, to a cause of all contingent being, is possible (
known a posteriori, too ), a non-terminating regress is impossible
17 Thus,
to make clear that a regress has to end, he supposes first, that it does not
end, and shows that a contradiction follows. Then he supposes that it need not
end, and shows that the possibility of a First Being follows from that, too; but
the possibiloity of A First Being excludes any possibility of a non-terminating
essentially ordered regress.[39] Therefore, a First Efficient Nature is possible
on either supposition; and thus, an unending regress is impossible.
18 He
could have stopped at concluding that there is a First actual producer of all
essentially dependent effects, because there cannot be an infinite regress. That
would be sufficiently obvious, he says, “contingens, sed manifesta”. But he
wants a stronger conclusion: that there has to be a first unproducible producer
of such actual effects: that it is both really necessary[40] and formally
necessary to be. Indeed he wants to establish its necessary-being, as an
intrinsic mode of the being. (see Infinity,#53). That way, he can establish the
causal ground for any contingent being at all.[41] So, he takes two more steps:
that an unproduced first producer is unproducible; and that an unproducible
producer has necessary-being.
His “second conclusion”[42] is that if a thing
can exist unproduced, and have causal power to produce whatever is producible,
it has to be uncausable. (It would be contradictory to say something could cause
itself to be). And his “third conclusion” is: if it is possible, it exists
necessarily. For whatever is really possible is either causable (such that there
can be something that is able to cause it), or exists a-se. But whatever exists
that is uncausable, must then exist necessarily.
19 Does Scotus premise a
principle of sufficient reason? No;[43]he does not premise e ven a weak
principle of explicability. For his reasoning here is that what can exist
necessarily, must do so, whereas, what is causable need not exist, and might not
have at all. Thus the First Being is uncausable. His earlier claim that there is
something producible (effectibile) is made a posteriori from known singulars,
and not from a general principle of explicability. And so, a producible actual
thing is either producible by itself, from nothing or by another, exclusive
options.[44] He eliminates the first two, as incompatible with production and
proceeds to the question of the regress, as discussed above.
20 Still, the
inquiry, as part of metaphysics, does suppose that being is explicable, but that
is by presupposition (entailment as a necessary condition) and not as something
cognitively prerequisite for the steps of the existence argument which starts
from something that is actually caused and is either first or from something
causable. Instead, it is from the actuality of the First Being that we can
deduce that every contingent being is causable.[45]
Suppose an objector says,
“but, maybe something could, formally, come into being without a cause, say a
non-terminating series of ascending causes that does not ‘top out’.” That misses
Scotus’ point; his argument is based on the actual causation we know (say, a
produced chick). His argument is not based on denying the objector’s
speculation; rather it reaches such a denial only after its conclusion is
established. So he can get to his conclusion without asserting such a general
principle of causation.[46]
21 About the ways of finality and eminence: he
says in each case, the reasoning to a First Being parallels that from effective
production (efficient causation). The arguments that there cannot be an infinite
regress are the same as above; and the starting point is the same, the
production of some effect, say, a bird. But the fulcrum for each is different.
In the order of finality, the principle is that a produced thing is aimed at
something else, usually its sort, and sorts are aimed at other sorts, and so,
finibilis, “orderable to another”(as in the food chain, ecosystems, and bodily
organs). But a dependent order of natures, each ordered to another required for
it, all together, has to twist up to a first, not orderable to anything
else,(Ox.I,2,1-2.n 65); and besides, the first efficient being cannot be
orderable to another because it is unproducible (ibid, n. 68).
Similarly,
anything essentially dependent on another sort of thing is less eminent than it.
But a first being, cannot be ordered to something more eminent. So, a first
being is not surpassable in eminence, and hence, is most eminent. That there are
some things ‘more eminent than others’ is evident from the fact that a cause of
causes of a different nature, has to contain the capacity of the latter by
eminence (or virtually) because it is, ex hypothesi, of a different nature than
the latter. Since there are such causes, the decisive question is whether such
an order can be non-terminating. And his answer is that it cannot because that
would be contradictory to other truths, as was shown in the case of efficient
causes.
The Finality and Eminence arguments have the same internal structure.
For being ordered to an end, and being excelled are both alio-relative, and
thus, either order must end in a first that is not ordered to anything else or
the ordering is non-terminating. But then the double argument, that a
non-terminating regress is impossible, applies to the latter supposition; and
so, in either case, a First Being is possible; but if possible, it exists
necessarily. So everything in the three argument lines seems to rest on the
impossibility of an infinite regress of essentially ordered causes.
But we
think we have shown that his reasoning on that point is more formidable that
some of his near contemporaries thought, and tighter than many recent
commentators have supposed. In fact he seems to have displayed that postulating
a non-terminating series of nested causing natures contradicts the supposition
that there is an actually produced contingent thing of such a final
nature.
1922 Embedded argument. Perhaps the arguments are still not
elementary and obvious enough even yet. And perhaps one might wonder how much,
beyond the superficial structure of argument, rests on the then unchallenged
(except for discussions of future contingents) idea that all well-formed
propositions are either true or false (bifurcation), and so, on whether indirect
proof is valid. And even more, maybe too much rests on the principle that
whatever is possible is necessarily possible, which may not follow even from the
supposition of a creating necessary being.[47] Still, too much is usually
expected from medieval demonstrations because of myths about how such arguments
were understood and intended. For such reasoning is by no means
presuppositionless, or intended to be. No one ever pretended that one argument
all by itself will eliminate all possible oppositions to its conclusion, without
any reliance on a larger logical and metaphysical background. Such an
idealization does not have any historical cases at all, not even in Euclidean
geometry. Indeed, Scotus’ demonstration is embedded in a nest of wider
assumptions. And Scotus does not claim otherwise.
2023 However, little of his
realism about common natures and real kinds and possibilities, his
“active-principle” notion of causation, his commitment to real forms (like
programs in things),[48] his understanding of real natures as active
dispositions, his notions of individuation, of the certainty of perceptual
knowledge, and the like, is explicitly mentioned or used, until after the
necessary existence of the First Being, has been concluded. Yet it is obvious
that the proof depends on there being real common natures, known to us, and upon
absolute (formal) possibilities and necessities and various unchallenged
principles of logic, as well as active causal principles in nature.
So,
evaluation of his demonstration has to be against objections coherent with his
back-grounding assumptions, and not put against the wavering demands of
competing philosophies in general, for instance, critical idealist theories
(Kant), or nominalist views of kinds (say, Quine), or purely sentential views of
possibility and necessity, each of which would deny some key element of his
presuppositions. And certainly one cannot read his modal logic as an instance of
any version of quantified modal logic (QML) to be found prominently today; the
resemblance is, as we remarked, only superficial.
21 Scotus’ argument has to
be evaluated nowadays, not as to how effective it is at changing convictions
(for it wasn’t intended for changing convictions about the conclusion even then,
but as to how effective it was at eliminating all other options), but as to how
excellent his craftsmanship is at deriving his conclusions against his general
background. That’s how we appraise arguments generally. Beyond that, for those
who share the broad realism and cognitive confidence of Scotus, the argument may
still, as it were, “put a lock” on the conclusion that there is a divine,
infinite being, or, at the least, be “probative,”[49] that is, highly likely and
persuasive, --which is about the best we get in philosophy for anything beyond a
mere technicality.[50]
22 We think the wonderments at the end of #11, above,
don’t bite; the really interesting difficulties are over (i) whether anything
really is contingent, and (ii) whether we can reduce to contradiction the
speculation that the cosmos as a whole is an unexplained and inexplicable
phenomenon. If he is right that the latter is a contradiction (and it would have
to be if God is possible), and that the former is evident, then making his
reasoning decisive against its background, seems to be a matter of fine tuning.
Disagreements would have to shift to disputes about elements of the background,
that is, to a quite different part of general metaphysics and of natural
philosophy and logic.
24 To summarize, then, tracking Ox I, d.2,,q.1-2,n 43:
something is produced, so something is of a sort that is producible; that sort
itself is either producible or not. If it is, then there is either an
interminable regress of producers (of caused sorts) for it, all of which act
together (like the embedded natural bodily organs, cells, molecular, atomic,
subatomic, etc., energy-particle systems….), or there is a First Producing Sort.
An unending regress is inconsistent with the being of the actual and producible
effect.[51] So a First Being (nature), able to produce others, but itself
unproducible, is possible; therefore, it exists. For, such a thing can’t be
merely possible, because (1) the original effect would not exist and (2) such a
thing wouldn’t be unproducible.[52] But if existing, it is necessarily-existing,
since the supposition that that sort of thing is possible but not existing,
leads to a contradiction.
B: The Nature of the First Principle of
Being
25 Scotus determines the intrinsic attributes of the First Being by
figuring out, a posteriori, what features a thing must have in order to produce
the effects we perceive. He explicitly renounces deduction a priori of the
attributes from the idea that God has all pure perfections, mainly, because of
the uncertainty whether particular predicates are genuinely consistent and
genuinely each “better than any denominative characteristic incompatible with
it”.[53] The “absolute”, non-denominative, divine attributes include, necessity,
uniqueness, simplicity, intelligence and omniscience, freedom, omnipotence,
creation, and infinity. The order of reasoning in each case is structurally the
same, an indirect proof, deriving an inconsistency between the denial of the
attribute in question and something already known to be true[54].
We next
sketch some of his derivations and indicate his distinctive interpretations of
the attributes.
26 Necessity follows from primacy. “Nothing can be
non-existent unless something either positively or privatively incompatible with
it can exist”[55]. And nothing can be positively or privatively incompatible
with a being that exists of itself and is uncaused”[56]. Therefore, it can’t not
exist. A “largest natural number” is positively inconsistent with “there is a
successor by one to every natural number” (positively incompatible), but, of
course, such a thing is not possible; and (ii) “being a human mother” is
privatively incompatible with ‘being a male human” by some preventing cause.[57]
An indirect proof (a destructive dilemma): (i) suppose there could exist
something logically incompatible with the First Being; an absurdity follows:
that “two incompatible entities will coexist, or rather neither will because
each will cancel the other”[58]. Instead, (ii) suppose something could prevent
the First Being from existing. That, too, is inconsistent, because the
uncausable would have to be causable (preventable). As a result, a First
Efficient Cause cannot be a contingent thing. Thus, it must be something that
exists necessarily.
27 Unicity and Uniqueness. The first being in each
explanatory order, ( efficient and final causation, and priority by eminence),
must exist necessarily, by application of the same reasoning to each. But is the
first in each order the same being as that which is first in the others?[59]. He
reasons as follows: If there were several, they would each be necessary by one
common feature, by one nature; so there could not be a plurality of first
beings. For, any feature by which one might be supposed to differ from the
others cannot be a feature an a-se thing has as such, and thus must be either an
additional contingent feature or an additional necessary feature. Again an
indirect proof (a destructive dilemma) is offered. Suppose (i) the difference is
contingent, then the being is a composite and causable—a contradiction with its
being First. Suppose (ii) that differences are necessary to each, then each
lacks some essential feature that some thing, one of the others, has on account
of being necessary, and so, is not necessary: another contradiction with what
has been established. Thus on any relevant supposition, a contradiction results
from denying that the First Beings in the distinct orders are one and the same
being.
23 28 The First Principle has all pure perfections.[60] A pure
perfection requires no limitation on the part of the thing to have it, and
excludes no other positive feature that requires no limitation: e.g., ‘to live’
‘to be’ and ‘to understand.’ As a result, all pure perfections are compatible
with one another; so there can be a thing that has all such perfections on
account of what it is. But if there can be such a thing, there must be. Still,
what can be concluded from that, as to particular attributes, is limited by the
unreliability of our mere conceptions to assure possibility.
26 29
Simplicity. Scotus agreed with other theologians that God’s unconditional
actuality rules out his having parts, composition of act and potency, or any
real distinction as to substance.[61] But he argues that there can still be real
difference without real distinction among God’s attributes.[62] For among things
distinct in conception, there are some that, though inseparably realized in
God’s case, are separately definable and separately realized among finite
things, like the attributes of rationality, goodness and wisdom. Moreover, the
tendencies of the prudent man are distinct from those of the intelligent man,
even when they coincide. So the attributes cannot be only conceptually and
definitionally distinct.
Moreover, the unity of the infinite being is
more than that of mere simplicity (lack of composition); he says, “simplicity is
simply a perfection,” but “it does not follow that every simple creature is more
perfect than those not simple.”[63] In addition, “actuality is simply a
perfection,” and “actuality is simply more perfect than simplicity.”[64] The
infinite being has the unity of “complete actuality”. The degree of a being’s
actuality matters more than its simplicity to its perfection and unity. The
necessarily first, being a-se, maximizes actuality: it is all that it could
be.
30 The Formal Distinction. For this and other purposes in metaphysics and
theology, Scotus reasoned that there is often a difference in reality that is
not great enough to amount to a real distinction, but is greater than a merely
conceptual-definitional distinction; it is, rather, ‘a formal distinction on the
part of the thing’ (distinctio formalis a parte rei). For instance, he thought
there are features that really differ, and are sometimes separately realizable
(like wisdom and justice), even though actual inseparably in the unity of one
being, the way intuitive and the deductive intelligence might belong to a single
person. Such formally distinct items are (i) separately knowable (at least one
without the other, differing in definition where definition is appropriate);
(ii) their difference is real independently of our thought;[65] (iii) none can,
in a given thing “exist on its own” independently of the other(s); (iv) and each
is “perfectly the same” as its related items in the same being, so that even an
omnipotent being cannot remove such co-present items from one another. The
diverse divine attributes are in that way formally distinct, yet really the same
in being. So too, are the human nature and the individuation of Socrates.
31
Scotus thinks a contradiction would result if we regarded the divine perfections
as no more than distinct through our conceptions, because “if infinite wisdom
were infinite goodness, then wisdom in common, formally would be goodness in
common.”[66] They could not, then, occur separately as they do: so, “wisdom in
the thing is not formally goodness in the thing.”[67] Thus, there must be a
distinction in reality, but less than the distinction of separable elements or
elements related as potentiality to act (real distinction). Note that he uses
the argument form: what entails the false, is false.
32 Analogy of Meaning
vs. Univocity. What then of the meanings of the words we use to describe God,
like “wise”, “loving”, “intelligent” and “living”? Do they mean the same things
as when applied to creatures? Thomas Aquinas says “No”: as to the verbal
definitions, the res significata, yes, they are the same; but, as to the modus
significandi , no[68]. For the thing signified, the meaning, follows the
definitions of our words, but the manner of attribution (modus significandi) is
contracted from the modus essendi (the manner of being) of what is referred to
(God, or creature). [69] That is the analogy of proper proportionality, like the
contextual capture when you say “the paper turned red with spilled ink” and “his
face turned red with embarrassment”, and ‘the sky turned red with the dawn;” the
signification, the verbal meaning, “turned red,” is the same, but the manner,
the modus significandi , differs according to the different ways the reddening
happens. So, Aquinas said, it is with God and creatures and thus, there is no
univocation of positive predicates, only analogy (relatedness of
meaning).
Scotus rejects that idea. The mode of being of the referent is not
part of the meaning of the words. Indeed, the intrinsic modes of being of
creatures and God differ (see ‘“infinity”# 53 000 below), but that does not
affect the words; he says, “infinity does not destroy the formal nature of that
to which it is added.”[70] Scotus thinks the differences of mode of
signification that do track the different modes of being of what we are talking
about, are not part of the conceptions (the meanings) of what we predicate, but
are extralinguistic , “modes of referring” as we might call the differences now.
So theirs is a difference in philosophy of language that overflows into natural
theology (though the order of suggestion might be the reverse). For Scotus
sameness of definition is enough for sameness of meaning. Thus, the divine
perfections are univocally predicated of creatures and God.
32 33
Omniscience: Intelligence. The intelligence of the First Being does not derive
from some prior explanatory trait: “Intellectuality is the primary nature of
intelligent being, constituting it in such being, and nothing exists in the
thing essentially prior to that, by which this can be shown of it.”[71] So it
has to be established a posteriori, as a condition of the free agency required
for the production of something contingent by a being that is necessary. The
First Being is “a per se agent.”[72] That is, an agent on account of
itself—nothing else moves it to action. But “every per se cause acts because of
an end.”[73] Yet this agent can’t act for an end naturally determined because
the effect is contingent, while the agent acts necessarily. It must act by
choice. But such an agent does not act “because of an end it naturally chooses,
or wants without cognition.”[74] So it has to be intelligent.
33 34 The
extent of divine knowledge . Scotus accords with theologians generally in saying
God knows whatever can be known: “To be able to know and distinctly each and
every other thing that can be known is something that pertains to the perfection
of knowledge.”[75] But he is more expansive than some (for instance, Aquinas as
we interpret him) about what can be known antecedently to any divine election.
For instance, he holds that the entire realm of possibility is determined by the
divine self-understanding, with no possibility dependent on the divine will, and
including all unrealized possibilities and unelected choices, and uncreated
natures and individuals in all their particularity. So he takes quite literally
Augustine’s claim (De Civ. Dei XV), that God has proper ideas of all that is, or
might have been made.
The basic argumentation for such a realm of divine
omniscience is that it is a necessary condition for the free creation of all
contingent being. As we said, freedom in the cause is required for contingency
in the effects of a necessary being. But knowledge of possibilities is required
for free choice, with the extent of the knowledge being the whole of what is
possible, both the necessary and the contingent. Yet the only way a divine being
could have such knowledge, logically antecedently to creation, is by knowing
itself directly and completely. Thus, Scotus takes without exception that God
“knows everything intelligible actually and distinctly,”[76] by nature and
antecedently to any election.
That differs fundamentally from
Aquinas,[77] who, on our account, thinks the possibilities, particularly the
natural kinds, the regularities of nature, and the individuation of things are
not fully determinate from the divine self-knowledge, but are created along with
the things[78] and the individuals, and there are no empty natures or merely
possible individuals, even in divine conception (in Scotus’ esse intelligibile
of haeceities[79]). So what there might have been, instead of what is, including
how some actual things might have acted, is indeterminate, apart from divine
elections, and unknowable. Scotus disagrees[80]
He thinks God has from
eternity a complete idea (concept) of each creature, say Adam, that includes
everything Adam does, might have done, had happen, etc, but not with the effect
that every feature of the creature is essential to it (as Leibniz later
thought). No. Scotus holds very emphatically that humans, even when they act one
way freely, are still, in the very act, actively able to choose the opposite
(Ox. 39, 1, 3, 2 (d)).(It is like a pianist who, even while striking one key, is
able to strike a different one, (Cf. loc. cit. n.1128)). Yet there is nothing
knowable about creatures that God does not know through himself from eternity.
In brief, the difference we attribute to Scotus and Aquinas, is that Scotus
thinks all possibility, down to the smallest detail, has determinate content
from the divine self-knowledge, logically antecedently to any creation.
35
Multiplicity of Divine Ideas? Aquinas had denied any real multiplicity of divine
ideas by saying the ideas are denominated (counted) by us, from the multiplicity
of the objects created, and are at most virtually (as the less perfect is
contained in the more perfect) distinct in God. Furthermore, for him, there is a
difference between ideas of things that are made, [81] and ideas for things that
might have been made, but never are made.[82] Scotus says there is real
multiplicity among formally distinct divine ideas, and does not make a
distinction between eternal ideas for things that are made and those that are
not, because even individuals are eternally known as possible: “the singular is
per se intelligible as far as it itself goes.”[83]
That discards
Aquinas’s idea that material individuation is consequent on matter with
determinate quantity, and so, individuation is not, as such, anything
intelligible, and not as such, anything before creation. Scotus says that
whatever can be made, “whether in another, or an absolute being, or a relation”
is an object “that can be known distinctly by the divine intellect.”[84] Why?
“Since another intellect can know this being distinctly, and it can be an object
distinctly knowable by a created intellect.”[85] Otherwise, something knowable
would not be known as possible, prior to divine willing, by God. So, “every such
positive being has a distinct idea.” Hence, while, for Aquinas it might be
indeterminate without a divine choice, whether there might have been humans with
plastic intestines, star-sized tomatoes, or electrons that think, for Scotus
that has to be eternally determinate.
36 `Differences about Universals .
Some differences with Aquinas about features of the divine knowledge can be
traced their divergent views about universals and natures. Scotus says the
common nature, say, ‘humanity,’ has true “real being outside the soul; that is,
the common nature has the being proper to it independently of any operation of
an intellect.”[86] He discards Aquinas’s position that the common nature has no
reality of its own, apart from the understanding where it is abstracted from
particulars in which it is wholly individuated. Instead, for Scotus, common
natures are in re explanatorily (naturally) prior to individual being and have
the created status, esse essentiae, as conditions of the real possibility of the
things that come to be; they are knowable as common natures by both humans and
God, abstracted from particulars by humans, and in eternal understanding (esse
intelligibile) by God.
37 37 Instants. To escape confusion about the apparent
multiplicity of stages of divine knowledge, Duns Scotus used the metaphor of
instants, succession without separation or interval , to indicate how the
diverse knowledge of the essences of all creatures, actual and possible, and
divine reflexive awareness of what is known, and divine awareness of the divine
knowing itself, can all exist, at once, though ordered, in one perfect being who
knows by nature only its own being.[87] The divine knowing is something
ontologically simple but logically complex. The “instants” are phases of logical
order, not phases of experience or events. The are like “exploding” drawings of
one machine, “there all at once” but distinct by internal contrast-dependence
and “natural order.” The order of such “instants” is the order of logical
priority, that he calls natural priority.[88]. In some cases, where he uses the
same metaphor, for instance, for the relationship of common nature to
individuation, the order of natural priority is an order of explanatory priority
as well, and in some cases, that order is one of real posteriority, as with
creation .
38 38 Creation is, from the divine standpoint, eternal.[89] Time
is a dimension of the created world; all time is of the world, for all change is
in creatures. Similarly, a (non-autobiographical) novel has its own internal
time, but no real connection to the (temporal) activity of its author. Even more
obviously, musical time is internal to musical compositions and can be
transported with them, and has at most conventional relationships to cosmic
time. (You can play the “Three blind mice” one note per millennium, just as long
as the intervals remain harmonically and rhythmically proportional—there is no
time-relationship of the progressing notes to the being of the composer). Thus
for the First Being to understand its time-bound and contingent creatures is as
much eternal and without succession as is its own being; the condition of being
known is successive in the creatures. (See the discussion of divine freedom
below, # 000).
39 Omnipotence. The power to cause some contingent being
(known a posteriori) has to be the power to cause any contingent being whatever,
since only one being can have such power and all contingent being is causable.
That power is called omnipotence, “that active power or potency whose scope
extends to anything whatever that can be created.”[90]
The First Being, the
ultimate cause of all contingent things, has to be omnipotent, that is, able to
cause whatever is possible and not necessary[91].Furthermore, unlike any other
thing, whatever is consistently conceivable to God is really possible, because
of the perfection ofdivine knowledge. It is the power to bring about whatever is
not repugnant to being-as-such. Scotus says, “it can be concluded naturally that
it [the First Being] is omnipotent.”[92]
Creation requires the ability to make “an immediate effect,”[93]that is,
something that does not require a prior effect. Otherwise, God would be unable
to cause anything, since “if between that caused effect andGod there is another
more immediate effect, and before that another, there will be a progress to
infinity in per se ordered causes, and consequently absolutely nothing would be
able to cause.”[94]But it does not follow from that that God can create just
anything immediately.
40 Scotus distinguishes two senses of “omnipotence.” In one sense, an agent
is omnipotent “which can do anything possible either with mediation or
immediately, and in this way omnipotence is an active power primarily of
efficiency.”[95] This can be derived from the requirement that the divine being
be free (spontaneous, see below, 000 ) in order for there to be any contingent
thing at all, and omnipotent in that such power has to extend to whatever is
possible. And since that requires that the First Being cause something
immediately, it is natural to ask whether the omnipotent being can cause
directly, everything it can cause through secondary causes. He calls that
“omnipotence proper, as Catholics understand the term.”[96] That mode of
almighty power cannot be demonstrated,[97] though it is revealed in the Faith.
There is a reason for this, namely, that in general, “in the order of superior
and inferior causes, this does not follow, since even if the Sun had in itself
causality more eminent than a cow or any other animal has, still it is not
conceded the Sun can immediately generate the cow….”.[98] So the general
principle that ‘the higher cause, acting though secondary causes, can directly
produce its effects without such causes’ is not true. Thus there is no known
premise from which to conclude that the First Being can do immediately whatever
it can do through secondary causes.
41 Now, the impossible is not made to be
so by the divine will, but by the repugnance of things that are possible one by
one, in esse intelligibile, to combine to “make one thing,”[99] like the head of
a man and the body of a lion. Those items do not so combine in the divine
understanding, but only in the human imagination. So if “thinking electrons” are
impossible, granting that each part is possible, the combination harbors an
inconsistency (or a de-facto repugnance) that may not be conceptually accessible
to us, but is to God. So God is not to be considered unable to produce such
things, but such things, although the parts are possible, cannot make a whole
and, so, cannot be. (Aquinas holds the same view, S.T. I,25,3: the impossible is
not a limitation on God’s power but what cannot be at all.). Notice, the
impossible with content is directly a product of human imagination (A figment :
fingere, Ox.I, 43,1, n 1174). Thus, apart from imagining creatures, there are no
impossibilities with content at all.
It cannot be demonstrated either that
the world is in fact created without a beginning in time, or that there is a
beginning in time. For, both are within the power of God. From the fact that
some effect has to be immediate for there to be any contingent being; time is
not required for divine effects. So, it is possible that there is no beginning
of time within creation: “novelty can be in the divine production because of the
novelty in the thing produced, although there is no novelty in the producing
thing.”[100] But God can also produce temporally ordered effects with a temporal
beginning, that has no temporal relation to God at all. So, the Christian belief
that the world had a beginning in time is not in conflict with any demonstrable
truth, but cannot itself be demonstrated.
43 Next, some points have to be
distinguished to avoid contradictions. Obviously an omnipotent being cannot
solely cause something whose very description involves a secondary cause, e.g.,
“an oration by Cicero”. But the same sort of thing, a “ciceronian oration”
described by its qualities and not by its particular causes, can indeed be
produced directly. But what of the actions we ascribe to creatures, that Muslim
Occasionalists think are caused directly and only by God ? Scotus wants to
dislodge that, while leaving open the Christian understanding of divine direct
power. So he distinguishes between direct divine causation that pre-empts the
natural consequence of a creature disposed to cause such effects,--which God can
do by intervening—and what he wants to exclude: divine causation that eliminates
the dispositions, the ability, of creatures to cause such effects. For the
latter is the Muslim Occasionalists’ view: that no creatures do any transitive
actions of their own at all; all events are directly caused by God, but in the
manner that displays what we regard as natural order,[101] so that nothing
naturally produces anything at all; thus, there are no active principles in
nature[102] and, “no being has any natural action of its own... they have no
essences of their own.”[103] Scotus says that is not possible; for the outcome
would contradict the evident fact that there are active secondary causes. The
divine omnipotence not only includes the power to intervene in the created
order, it also includes the power to have acted entirely outside the created
order;. “So I say that God can not only act other than is ordered in particular
cases, but otherwise than the universal order, or even the laws of
justice….”[104]. Thus, things that are impossible and even inaccessible from the
created order, lie within the absolute power of God.
44 The Freedom of the
First Being. Now, one cannot prove by a demonstration from something cognitively
prior that things exist contingently: contingency in things “can be
proved…neither by something more evident, nor a priori….”[105]. But one need not
prove it, either, because it is obvious that things perceived do not exist on
account of what they are, and thus, might not have been at all.[106] From that
beginning, Scotus concludes that the First Being does not by nature, as Avicenna
thought, necessitate other things (by emanation); so it the must cause
contingently, and so, freely[107]. A contradiction would follow from supposing
that the First Being exists necessarily and causes by nature (as Avicenna
proposed), yet what it causes is contingent. For that would cancel the
contingency of things[108] and reduce them to necessities. The contingency of
the effects cannot originate with First Being’s intellect, since “anything it
[the intellect] knows before the act of the will, it knows necessarily and
naturally, so that there is no contingency in relation to opposites here.”[109]
Thus, the First Being has to have a power to operate that is distinct from its
intellect, namely, the power of free will. For, “the first distinction of active
power is according to the different ways of eliciting an operation,” and if the
active power is not “determined ex se,” then “it …can perform this act, or the
opposite act, and so act or not act,”[110]which is freedom.
45 In a word, for
there to be contingent being, there must be a being that exists a-se and acts
freely. [111]There are three focal features of free will for Scotus: (i) the
power to choose is netural to the outcomes which, for God, are absolute
possibilities; (ii) the will remains able to chose the contrary while actually
in the choice of the opposite; and (iii) there is no explanation of the choosing
except the ability, as such, to do so.
(i) Neutrality: the divine
intellect “understands it [any such complex] as neutral”. “ In a neutral sense,
but only as something theoretical. When it is actualized and effected by the
will determined to one component [of options], then it is understood as true
[so], and before it was only present to the will as neutral.[112] The neutrality
is not impeded by the divine immutabillity (unchangeability) because neutrality
and preserved ability to do the opposite do not require an ability to change
what you do. “The divine will can only have one single volition;” but the First
Being’s will “can be related to opposite objects” in the immutable act of its
single volition.[113]. Scotus says, “the divine will, of which its being
operational precedes its being productive, can also will and not-will something,
and…can produce and not-produce something at the same moment of eternity….” “The
potency is not temporally before the act, neither is the potency with the act,
but the potency is prior by nature with regard to the act.”[114] He explains
that “[a] potency is only logical, when the terms are possible in such a way
that they are not repugnant to one another, but can be united, even though there
is no possibility in reality.”[115] For example, it was true that there can be a
world even “before there was a world,” but the possibility of a world before
there was a world was merely logical, since “there was no factual reality which
corresponded to the terms.”[116]
(ii) The will’s remaining able to chose the
opposite at the very moment of choosing as it does is a key idea for Scotus.
About the contingent in general, he says, by ‘contingent’ I do not mean
something that is not necessary or which was not always in existence, but
something whose opposite could have occurred at the time this actually
did.”[117] Just as the occurrence of an event does not render the opposite
impossible, so, the choice of an act does not render the opposite impossible. On
the contrary; it remains possible. So the person, able to do the opposite,
remains able to do the opposite, just as one lifting his arm is still actively
able not to though, of course, not able to do both at once. There is no further
explanation of a free election beyond the ability to make it: “Just as there is
no reason why this being has this mode of being except that it is that sort of
thing, so also there is no reason why this agent has this mode of action (i.e.,
free, though necessary) except that it is this sort of active principle”(QQ.
16.46). And the only explanation of an individual choice is in the ability to
make it.
Now this is very important to his natural theology because the whole
explanatory pattern would collapse if there were some further explanation to be
sought, say, in some reason or understanding, for the divine elections. Scotus’
unique answer is that the explanation of the elections by freedom of will is in
what-the-will-is, just as the explanation of why a thing is a fish is in its
form.
(iii) A free action is spontaneous: it originates entirely from the
ability to do it. He gave as an example of a free election, one’s simply
stopping entertaining the other alternatives.[118] Free election is from the
ability of the agent, undetermined, and from its form, within the range of its
ability, unexplained by any other factor all, whether reason, motive,
justification, or aim. In a free act, the will is the total cause of the action:
“nihil aliud a voluntate est causa totalis volitionis in
voluntate.”[119]
Free action is entirely from the will (voluntas).[120]It
is an ability that, although within the agent’s understanding, is not determined
by what is understood ; it does not have an explanation from outside it. Nor is
free choice a consequence of other features, like absence of obstacles, a
possible object, a sufficient reason for so acting, etc. Freedom is spontaneity
of acting from the ability, alone, to do so. (One can see why he thinks divine
grace confers freedom in the most important sense, as Augustine thought (de
Libero Arbitrio), because it restores to the sinful person the ability “to act
rightly”, or as Anselm called it, “the ability to keep uprightness of the will
for its own sake”). What we call the “spontaneity” element of free will
contrasts markedly with the ‘activity in accord with the predominant understood
good’ (Aristotelian) notion of freedom that seems more prominent in Aquinas, and
leaves his explanatory order of divine action incomplete.
He
distinguishes features in what Aquinas acknowledged as necessity of will by
separating necessity of nature from necessity of inevitability from perfection.
Scotus says there is a necessity of inevitability from the perfection of the
divine willing power,(QQ 16.35) but “there is no necessity of nature involved”
in divine self- love, acting rightly, living, etc. For “necessity of nature” is
definitionally opposed to “acting freely”: “the will per se is never an active
principle that acts naturally”( QQ 16.42); “it can no more be naturally active
than nature, as other than will, can be freely active”. It is not that the
beatified’s loving God is not inevitable or that God’s acting rightly is not
inevitable; in both cases there is the ability to act otherwise, but the willing
is inevitable because of the perfection of the agent and not because of its
natural order that takes away election.[121]
There is no other origin of
freedom than the being itself: ”just as there is no reason why this being has
this mode of being except that it is this sort of thing, so there is no reason
why this agent has this mode of action (i.e. ,free, though necessary) except
that it is this sort of necessary principle.”
46 However, there seems to be a
philosophical “loose end” as to whether it is immediately evident that free will
is ‘spontaneity’ of action explained only by the ability so to act. For that
would leave an irresolvable dispute with an Aristotelian. Scotus says free
action cannot be explained, as an ability, from some prior element of the being,
any more than intelligence is ( 000). Is it self-evident that we, humans, have
that ability? It is obvious, however, that such an ability must be attributed to
God in order to avoid a regress searching looking for “sufficient reasons” to
account for divine free choice. The “loose end’ issue concerns where philosophy
‘bottoms out’ in first principles. Could one, perhaps, reason that such
spontaneity is an analyzable precondition of the empirically obvious suitability
of human action for moral praise and blame, reinforced by the failure of other
theories to explain wrongdoing as a result either of ignorance or weakness? Not
that the latter is cognitively prior, as something which must be known first,
but rather, prior in the order of our cognitive experience by which we are sure
spontaneity is a necessary condition?
47 Infinity. Scotus considers “infinite
being” the most proper (suitable/ fitting) characterization of the divine
being:[122] it stands to ‘being’ as ‘intense whiteness’ stands to ‘white’, not
as a kind but as a mode. He says, “ infinite is not a quasi-attribute or
property of ‘being’ or of that of which it is predicated,” but rather “it
signifies an intrinsic mode of that entity.”[123] For, “if an entity is finite
or infinite, it is not so by reason of something incidental to itself, but
because it has its own intrinsic degree of finite or infinite perfection,
respectively.”[124] “As ‘being’ virtually includes the ‘good’ and the ‘true,’ so
‘infinite being’ includes the ‘infinitely good,’ ‘the infinitely true,’ and all
pure perfections under the aspect of infinity.”[125] The divine infinity is
manifested from intensively infinite creative power. Note we say “manifested,”
not “constituted” for infinity is a mode of being not a sort of power. The First
Being’s power “would be [intensively] infinite, because…it has power enough to
produce an infinite number all at once, and the more one can produce
simultaneously, the greater the power in intensity.”[126] Why? That is because
the higher cause contains, in its being, virtually all that is actual in any
essentially dependent cause. For, “the full causal power that each thing may
have in itself, the First Being possesses even more perfectly than if it were
formally present.”[127] For “where each of the things in question needs some
perfection proper to itself,” the more things that can be produced, the greater
the perfection of the producer.[128] Infinity is not, however, just the extent
of the power but the positive mode of being required for such power. “We,
nevertheless, understand infinity negatively.”[129] And “even where the nature
of the effect was such as to make its simultaneous existence in an infinite
number impossible,” it would still follow that the primary agent is infinite in
power, “provided that, so far as the causal power of the agent is concerned, it
could produce simultaneously an infinite multitude.”[130] Among the five reasons
why God is infinite in being, given in De Primo Principio (4.48-63), he
concludes with: whatever is possibly infinite is actually infinite (4.63). And
he says that although it cannot be proved a priori that ‘being’ and ‘infinity’
are compatible, it is deducible from both omniscience and omnipotence.[131]
Immortality of the soul
48 Scotus holds that we cannot know naturally,
and a fortiori cannot demonstrate, that the human soul is immortal, and even
less that there will be a resurrection of the dead. He acknowledges that
understanding requires activity that cannot be performed by a bodily organ, and
that such activity is naturally human. For, “intellection properly speaking is a
knowledge which transcends all sense knowledge,” since intellection is not
limited to a certain kind of sensible like colored things; but any cognitive act
with an organ would be so limited.[132] We know from experience that we “possess
some knowledge of an object under an aspect it could not have as an object of
sense knowledge,” as for instance when “we experience in ourselves that we know
the actual universal.”[133]
Nevertheless, it does not follow, as Aristotle
apparently thought and Aquinas claimed, from our understanding’s not employing a
bodily organ, as sight does, that the soul, whose power it is, is immortal. In
only follows that the intellect is” incapable of dissolution in the same sense
that an organic power is corruptible.”[134] But, still, the soul may cease to
exist not by separation of organic parts, but simply because, as could occur
with angels, “its existence is succeeded by the opposite of existence.”[135]
Since its operation is “proper to the composite as a whole,” that is, it is the
human as a whole human who understands, and this composite is perishable, then
“its operative principle [the intellectual soul] is also perishable.”[136]
Besides, he is as definite as Aquinas on this: the soul is not the person, it is
the form of a person. The person is the incommunicable suppositum of the
rational nature, and for that is required the haecceity (the final
individuation). So we cannot demonstrate, that persons will survive death. He
does not discuss, nor does Aquinas, whether by natural faith in the order of
nature we could be rationally certain of personal survival.
A fortiori, it
follows that we cannot naturally know that there will be, or even can be, a
resurrection of the dead. For, “the soul, so far as its own being is concerned,
is equally perfect whether it is separated from or joined to a body.”[137] So
there is no natural necessity for the soul to be embodied, once it has come to
be. It may have a disposition to be the proper form of a body, yet even if that
disposition were “forever suspended,” “nothing unnatural” would be implied,
since no imperfection in its existence would be implied.[138] Since the First
Being contingently and freely elects to create, we cannot demonstrate that God
will resurrect human beings, or that he will not create individuated human souls
for the entire course of their existence without bodies at all.
Parting
Thoughts on Scotus’ Natural Theology
If one is realistic, not simplistic,
about what a demonstration amounts to, and what a medieval Aristotelian
intended, namely, a deduction from surely known premises, that for Scotus are
also necessary, to equally certain conclusions, one recognizes there are no
demonstrations without background presuppositions. Scotus’ include logical
commitments (e.g. to bifurcation, iterative modalities[139]), metaphysical ones
(to forms, real common natures, active causal principles), and epistemological
ones (as to the role of self-evidence and demonstration, probable reasoning, and
the like). Given that, Scotus does as well showing the existence of a First
Explanatory Being as any philosopher has ever done on any substantive point. He
also displays masterly craftsmanship on many aspects of the divine nature,
particularly, in his originality about what divine freedom involves and how it
terminates the explanatory inquiry without begging any question.
We
emphasized the a posteriori character of Scotus’ reasoning because his constant
talk of possibility and necessity might lead our contemporaries to regard him as
an a priorist about God’s existence. It may confuse things to regard Scotus as
one advocating “modal arguments” for the existence of God, as such arguments
were understood in late 20th Century; for those, like Plantinga’s and Malcolm’s,
are a priori arguments, that is, arguments that do not depend on premises from
experience.[140] Scotus’ argumentation, about both the existence and the nature
of God, is grounded in our experiences of the production, function, and eminence
of things that might not have been at all. Moreover, his notions of modality are
not semantic ones, but root in the capacities of being, and do not rest on a
quantificational logic that is extensional in the way First Order Quantification
is nowadays.
Nevertheless, there seem to be two central points that need
further support than he provides: (1) that there are active causal principles in
nature, like forms and efficient causes, as well as some things essentially
ordered by finality and by eminence; and (2) that anything at all exists
contingently--the very point on which he departs from Avicenna. He regards both
as indemonstrable because there is nothing explanatorily prior to either. So
they may have to be argued by refutation internally of the opponents. (He did
that sort of thing in Theoremata.)But there may also be features that, from
general experience, can be used to dislodge error about those points.
The
first, that there are active principles in nature, is outright denied by many
major philosophers since the 17th Century, as we pointed out; but that, of
course is no reason to doubt Scotus, especially since their reasons are flimsy
and conflict with the accomplishments of the very physical sciences they revere.
Still, refutation of common opinion on such points does not have to be
deductive; it can be by better explanations natural science than the others can
offer, and in that respect his argumentation should be supplemented for our
time.
And the second principle, that there are contingent things, is pretty
much enthusiastically affirmed by recent philosophers, (though notably not by
David Lewis), but on the even flimsier ground that everything might have
happened by chance or for no reason at all. Scotus was quite impatient with
silliness[141]. But it is such an important metaphysical matter, involving the
key rejection of Avicenna in favor of a central Christian commitment to
creation, (that perceived things might not have existed at all), that it needs
some philosophical justification. Even allowing Scotus’ claim that there is
nothing explanatorily prior from which to deduce contingency, it can be
supported by explanations that “emanation,” and the like, is internally
incoherent. Aquinas proposed to refute Avicenna by showing that his doctrine of
the relationship of being and essence in creatures was incoherent. Perhaps there
is reasoning elsewhere by Scotus that will do that, as well. In any case, such a
premise, that some things really are contingent (but that everything could not
be), needs some special support in light of its conflict with Avicenna and later
with Spinoza.[142]
The final remarks about immortality of the soul are
illustrate his originality again and indicate the variety of other topics in
natural theology that Scotus treated, including future contingents, divine
foreknowledge, and the end of the world, and other points not included
here.
James Ross and Todd Bates, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia,Pa, 10/3/2001
13,665 wds without the
notes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] That is the order of the main philosophical work, De Primo Principio.
That work itself is a compilation, more than half of it word for word, of parts
of other things, but from the hand of Duns Scotus. See Wolter, Introduction,
p.xi, to his edition and translation of that book. In the other three
treatments, Opus Oxoniense, Reportatio, and Lectura , all three mainly
theological, the order of derivation of divine attributes is from primacy of
being to infinity and then to necessity.
[2] Wolter,op.cit.p.xviii.
[3] A
recent a priori argument can be found inAlvin Plantinga’s, The Nature of
Necessity (.1974).
[4] He accepts “bifurcation”: that every well-formed
proposition is either true or false, so that, if “not-p” entails a
contradiction, then “p” is true. See note 6.
[5] De Primo Principio,
3.8.
[6] His key reasoning is threatened by a proof that bifurcation does not
hold universally, for then, indirect proof is not valid. (Cf. M. Dummett ,The
Logical Basis of Metaphysics, 1991. However, his arguments can be reinstated
with an additional supposition that the relevant subclass of propositions is
bivalent.
[7] Rep.Par.I,II.d.1,q.3,n.9.
[8] “On the First Principle”. The
standard usage of “principle” in the 13th Century is “that from which anything
proceeds in any way whatever”. The First Principle (God) is the explanatory
origin of all else by free causation and eminence, and of all being, as such, by
its actual infinity. See Fr. Wolter’s “Introduction” to De Primo Principio,
Xiii.
[9] Quaest. Meta. Prol., n. 5, tr. Wolter (1993), p. 2.
[10] Ox.I, d
8, q. 3., Wolter (1993), p. 3.
[11] De Primo Prin. 1.2, tr. Wolter (1966), p.
2.
[12] De Primo Principio, 1. 5, tr. Wolter (1966).
[13] Ibid.
4.2.
[14] Gilson seems unduly troubled that the conception of God might have
a religious origin, Jean Duns Scot: Introduction a Ses Positions Fondamentales ,
Paris, Vrin, 1952.p. 187. The description Scotus uses in his philosophy is
framed entirely in terms of metaphysical conceptions: causes and eminence,
possibility and necessity. Even his prayer is full of philosophical terminology
(see above).
[15] We use the phrase “present to the understanding” to convey that a
concept is like a lens through which the understanding can think of things; it
is an ability of a thinker, rather than a label on things. A univocal concept is
like a fixed lens; an analogous one is like self-focusing binoculars that adjust
to bring the different objects into focus.
[16] See Wolter,
op.cit.Introduction. p. xv.
[17] See discussion reported in Gilson, op. cit.
supra .p .673, and his report of even an Ockamist interpretation of this work,
p.674.
[18] Gilson, op. cit., p.673 says the Theoremata is the “apple of discord” among Scotus interpreters. A lot of effort was spent on trying to give interpretations concordant with his general doctrines, and some we offered that really did consider that he might have changed his mind on his central points.(Cf. Wolter, op.cit.)
Todd Bates, an author here, originated the idea that this work defendsScotus’ position on the univocity of being, also treated in Collationes Parisienses, see Gilson, op. cit. p .674. This work fits with a line of anti-Averroist works from Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Giles of Rome, and four works by Raymond Lull that Copleston cites, History of Philosophy, Vol. II. p.441,( Doubleday, Image Books, NY 1985), all rejecting key Latin Averroist positions that are anti-Christian. Some of the earlier theorems suggest there may be other objectives as well. That accords with the hostilityof his reference to “that accursed Averroes” in Ox.(Wolter,p147).
[19] Such terms are definitionally interdependent, but not mere negations of one another; each has a positive element as does “negative integer” vs. “positive integer”. Scotus says infinity is a positive mode of being that we, however, comprehend negatively, “nos autem, intelligimus infinitatem negative,…..” from Doctor subtilis de cognitione Dei: ms. Published in Harris, Duns Scotus, Oxford, Clarendon, 1927, as cited by E. Gilson, op. cit. p.192.
[20] That accords with the section of Collationes Parisienses, on whether
there is a univocal concept of being.See Gilson.op.cit.,p.674,n.4.
[21] Other
writers like Aquinas had thought of such series implicitly, having distinguished
accidentally ordered causes, as well.
[22] Wolter 1954,p.95.
[23]See Felix
Alluntis,”Demonstrability and Demonstration of the Existence of God”, Studies in
Philosophy, ,1966; and Rega Wood,” Scotus’s Argument for the Existence of God”,
257-277,Franciscan Studies, Vol. 47, 1987.
[24]See Ignatius Brady , “Comment
on Dr. Wolter’s Paper”, Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association for 1954.” pp. 122-130, commenting on the responses of 14th Century
commentators: ”All recognize the premise of the processus of causes in infinitum
is vital to the proof” (p.134).
[25]Acoloration was an amendment to another’s
argument to deflect an obvious objection (Gaunilo’s perfect island), but not, by
itself, an endorsement.Alluntis thinks Scotus regarded the colorized versionas a
probable argument (.loc.cit. 166). We think he regards it as conclusive for a
believer, but conjectural for a philosopher.
[26] DPP.4.22; Ox I, d.8, q.1,
n.22-25. For him the terms of a proposition ( a thought content capable of truth
or falsity) present realities, as--conceived, to judgment; as a result, what is
presented in a consistent conception may in fact harbor an inconsistency. Cf
Alluntis, loc. cit. 167.
[27] It is mistaken to compare formal possibility,
that he sometimes calls logical and rational, as if it has anything to do with
what is fashionable today. Formal possibility does not guarantee conceptual
consistency-for-us (for some people can conceive of the possible, e.g.
transubstantiation, as impossible); and we can regard as consistent, as
possible, (e.g. Descartes’ option of human minds without any external world at
all; or “uncaused cosmos”) what is really and formally impossible. See other
supporting comments in text and notes. So judgments of consistency are not
reliable as to formal possibility.
[28] Philosophers of Religion sometimes adapt the line of reasoning to a new
context, or try to refine what they take to be “the real strength or force” of
what Scotus is doing. Cf. Loux, “A Scotistic Argument for the Existence of a
First Cause”, American Philosophical Quarterly,(1984), 157-165, also, J.Ross,
Philosophical Theology (1968). But it is different matter when one is saying
what Scotus said.
[29] He does not let “the satanic notation whisper the
ontology”, cf. J. Ross, ”The Crash of Modal Metaphysics”, Rev. Met. p.271 (Dec.
1989). He acknowledges no domain of” all possible worlds”, or of world-relative
actuality. (D. Lewis), or “states of affairs”.
[30]Cf. Brady, loc. cit.
supra.
[31] ‘Formally possible” is superficially like “logically possible”
for us in that it is iteratively necessary. But for him it is non-repugnance to
being-as-such, not just a semantic array over domains of propositions (possible
worlds). Scotus has no such ontology.
[32] Is this a case of concluding to
real possibility from consistency-to-us? It would be if he did not, as he does,
have particular a posteriori examples to show such a series can end; but he does
(as we supplied). But, then, is this cognitively circular, because one would
first have to know ‘there is a first uncaused cause” is formally possible, and
that might be what the proof throws into issue? We will see that “no”.
[33]
Cf. Brady, loc. cit. supra.
[34] That’s why Scotus says, on several occasions
the cause must lie outside the regress of contingent things.
[35]See M. Loux
,cit,supra. . Scotus might be thought to make that mistake when he says ““[the]
totality of effects itself must have a cause which is not part of the whole.” Q.
Q., tr. Wolter/Alluntis, n 7.76, p.181. But there Scotus is summarizing
Aristotle’s argument (Metaph. Bk II, c.2, 994a. 20.) and though he approves it,
it is part of a discussion of divine power, not part of this
proof.
[36] That’s another form of indirect proof he favors,
to assume the very thing he thinks is impossible and show that it still entails
what is false: cf. also the organization of Theoremata. He restricts such
arguments with impossible suppositions to syntactical and semantic
transformations from the “essentials” of the supposition to avoid paradoxes and
trivialities—see the C. Narmour, Chapter on modalities, this volume
000.
[37]If a thing does not exist on account of what-it-is, there can be no
inconsistency in “something causes it. Can it be demonstrated that it is
contradictory that there is something is possible, non-existent and uncausable?
Yes, because Scotus thinks, as do his contemporaries, that “something comes to
be that has no cause” is inconsistent. Presumably an objector would have a clear
example of an uncausable eventin mind?
[38]Remember, the status of a
conclusion or reasoning as a posteriori depends on the order of the knowledge
from experience, and not on whether the propositions of the conclusion or the
reasoning are contingent or necessary.
The mistake that a necessary truth
cannot be known a posteriori was only widespread after I. Kant and till the mid
20th century. Now everyone knows two things that Scotus knew:that a necessary
truth is implied by everything; and that what is true no matter what, is
entailed and often can be known from what is true contingently; and also, some
necessary truths are known from some things that are contingently false (though
that is rarely mentioned).
[39]So, the first conclusion also follows from the second. He offers a
confirming line of thought: “to produce something does not imply any
imperfection, it follows that this ability can exist in something without
imperfection….but, if every cause depends on some prior cause, then efficiency
is never to be found without imperfection….Therefore such an efficient power is
possible,” But that is a conceptual argument, and so clearly subject to his
limitations on the ‘conceivable-to-us’ as to be no more than a
confirmation.
[40] You can’t have the final mark without the marking pen,
the moving pen, the moving hand, the acting person, the free willing, all
together. Those are really necessary and essentially ordered. None is formally
(absolutely necessary); yet they are really necessary in the order of
nature.
[41] Fr. Wolter calls that demonstrating “the source of all
possibility”, A treatise on God as First Principle, p.xxi (1966).
[42]
Ibid.”seconda conclusio de primo effectivo….est incausibile.”.
[43] Rega
Wood, M., Loux, and others, see citations above, seem to think he does need
that. At one point he uses the idea that what begins to be might need a cause;
but that seems the same as the ‘nothing comes from nothing” idea.
[44] “Aut
ergo a se, aut a nihilo, vel ab aliquo alio” and “nullius est causa … illud quod
nihil est”. Ox.I.d,2,,1.q.1-2,n.43
[45]It needs to be true that every
contingent being is causable (as a cognitive consequence of the Triple Primacy,
and omnipotence, of the First Being), but he does not have to premise that as
something already known, in order to establish the existence of the First
Being.
[46] There is also an implied sub-argument that “everything that
exists is contingent” implies a contradiction, because it implies “there might
have been nothing at all”. Had there been nothing at all, nothing would have
been possible. But something exists and so, necessarily, something is possible.
Therefore, there is something that exists necessarily. That seems to be
Aquinas’s “Third Way” as well.
[47] See Ross” Aquinas’s Exemplarism, Aquinas’s Voluntarism”,loc.cit.
[48]
Medieval Aristotelians would consider an analysis of cause/effect in terms of an
antecedent event followed by a later event that succeed one another according to
natural law (“At/then/at, according to law”) as laughable. For them causation is
production, with substantive power in nature. Contemporary causal theorists,
e.g. Mackie, Armstrong, and the like, would seem as wrong to Scotus as the
Arabic occasionalists who denied there are real essences in things. For Scotus,
the match burns the hand by doing it, not just by a flame’s leading a parade of
events whose last is a suppurating wound, where the order of the parade of
phenomena is set by ‘laws of nature’ (whose status is unexplained, or treated as
a general association of ideas, or assome logical relation of
ideas).
[49]Brady, loc.cit, supra, p.128 ,quotes Ockham as saying “ ratio
probans primitatem efficientis est sufficiens et est ratio omnium philosophorum”
(Sent I,d.2,q.10), but it is not the “more” evident way of conservation. See
also his report that Ockham commented that aprobatio, but not a demonstration,
can be offered for divine infinity. Brady also reports that William Rubio (after
1321)says the existence of the First Efficient Being is demonstrable, butin the
looser sense, that it isnot so obvious “quin adversarius posset ipsam evadere
aliqualiter cum colore…quia negaret adversaries praedictam assumptum”,
(p.126).
[50] Another function of well crafted arguments is to alter the
cognitive balance of our convictions, so that, for example, in light of Scotus’
argument and Aquinas’ Third Way, a person who thinks things really do exist
contingently, may become intellectually certain, without serious doubt, that
there is a divine being.
[51] The reasons he gives in Ox,I.d,2. q.1-2, n.53,
are not the best ones he has, though the first is important: that no matter how
many, it must depend on something not in it. That, like the passage
fromQ.Quod.,7.72.p.181 , cited above,does invite the “fallacy of composition”
charge: but it must be remembered that such a fallacy is an informal one and not
caused just by attributing to a series what belongs to every member:
somethinmgs, as in this case, that is exactly correct: the modality of the
weakest conjunct belongs to the whole conjunction; so does dependence, just as
he says. The need for explanation is not eliminated by delaying or extending it,
and ex hypothesi, there is none; but there is the effect: so: a
contradiction.
[52] Fr. Wolter, loc.cit., summarizes the last step: “whatever
is possible is either actual or causable; something possible is not causable;
therefore it is actual.”[52]
[53] De Primo Principio, 4.22, and Rep Par. I,
d.35, q.1, n.14.
[54] Aquinas (S.T. I, 2 et sqq.), uses the same technique
to derive the divine attributes, deriving conflicts between denials of the
attributes and the lack of act-potency distinction in God.
[55] Ibid,
p.50
[56] Ibid.
[57] One might wonder at this phrasing. But for something
not to exist, it has either to be impossible, or preventable. It isn’t that
there has to be a reason for the non-being of what does not exist, but that
there can be. But there cannot, consistently, be a reason why a First Being does
not exist.
[58] Ibid.
[59] See the argument at De Primo Principio, 4.88
--4.90, to ”You are one in nature, you are one in number…you alone are by nature
God.”
[60]De Primo Principio, 4.3,pp 78-82.
[61] God is free of any
distinction in his essence on the traditional view. But that does not exclude
the real distinction, by opposition of relations, among the Persons of the
Trinity. Thus there is real distinction of Personsin God, but not any
realdistinction in God’s essence, among essential divine features; for there is
only one such feature, which is inaccessible to us because incomprehensible by
us. Now Scotus employs that in theology, but distinguishes real distinction from
“formal distinction a parte rei.”That is, he distinguishes “really distinct” as
a relation, from ”distinct in reality” as a difference, and says the divine
perfections differ in reality, just as the same perfections differ in creatures,
even when one has both, say wisdom and goodness.
[62]Scotus, breaks from Aquinas’ view that divine simplicity denies any
distinction more than conceptual-for-us among the divine attributes.
[63] Op.
Oxon. I, d. 8, q. 1, n. 6. Scotus hasin mind that the individuation principles
of material things (haecceities) are completely simple and knowable to God, but
are not perfect unities of being because they require a nature to
contract.
[64] ibid.
[65] Op. Oxon., I, d. 2, pt. 2, (390) “I understand ‘really’ in this way,
what is in no way through the act of an intellect, such that such an entity
would be there even if no intellect were contemplating it.”
[66]
Ibid.
[67] Ibid.
[68] S.T.I,q.13.
[69] S.T.I, q. 13.
[70] Ox. I, d.
8, q. 4, n. 17. We haven’t derived infinity yet in this presentation which
follows the order of the De Primo Principio. In the Opus Oxoniense Scotus
follows the order from simplicity, to infinity, to necessity; here the order is
from necessity, to simplicity, to infinity.
[71] Rep. Par. I d. 35, q. 1, n.
14
[72] Rep. Par. I d. 35, q. 1, n. 5
[73] Ibid
[74] Ibid
[75] D.P.P
4.8.
[76] Op. Oxon., tr. Wolter (1993), p. 61.
[77]For a reading of
Aquinas that makes him in substantial agreement with Scotus on God’s knowledge
of possibles and of the natures of created things, see John Wippel, Metaphysical
Themes in Thomas Aquinas, Catholic University of America Press, (1984), and The
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, (CUA Press, 2000).
[78] Cf. Aquinas,
Q.D.De Potentia Dei, 3,5,ad 2;and 3,14. See J.Ross, “Aquinas’s Exemplarism;
Aquinas’s Voluntarism”, ACPQ, pp176-197. Scotus thinks natures are created in
esse essentiae along with individuals, but also exist eternally in divine
knowledge.
[79] Questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, vii,
q.13.
[80]It should also be noted that the more common interpretation of
Aquinas is that same as what we attribute to Scotus here.
[81] cf Q.D.De
Potentia Dei, and Summa Theologica.
[82] See Q.D.De Potentia Dei,1,5,ad 11; and De Veritate,3,6.,
[83]
Ordinatio, II, d. 3, pt. 1, q. 6, tr. Spade (1994), p. 108. See T. Noone’s
Chapter on Universals and Individuation, this volume.
[84] Rep. Par. I, d.
36, q. 3, n. 20.
[85] Ibid.Scotus hold there is direct intuitive knowledge of
the existence of perceived singulars.
[86] Ord. II, d. 3, pt. 1, q. 1, tr.
Spade (1994), p. 64.
[87] Scotus uses the same notion in his discussion of
freedom, and when he speaks of an ordering of “instants of nature” within an
instant of time. He also uses it in explaining the order of the created nature
to the individual thing: there is a natural priority of instants but no real
succession.
[88]Ibid. He says we can postulate four “instants” in divine
knowing: the first, absolute self knowledge, the second, say, of ‘stone’ (a
possibility) in ‘intelligible being’ (esse intelligibile), “such that that idea
is an intelligible divinely understood, but without any further element”; and a
third instant in which a merely rational relation, of ‘being divinely
understood’ obtains between God and ’stone’ ; and a fourth in which the rational
relation, ‘understanding stone’ is itself understood. Nothing happens; this is
just what is logically involved. He is using a metaphor to make clear that there
is logical but not entitative complexity to the divine knowing, and no real
relation of God to finite possibilities or actualities.
[89]
Ox.I,d.45,q.1a.n.5“voluntas divina potest in aeternitate sua esse principium
volendi quodcumque volibile”.Lectura ,I,d.45, q.1a.n.3.
[90] Quod. Quaest.
VII, n. 8. The phrase here is used somewhat out of context: Scotus is not
circular in his description of omnipotence as power that extends to whatever is
possible and not necessary.(See Lectura definition).
[91] See Lectura
definition of omnipotence, 000
[92] Op. Oxon. I, d. 43, n. 2.
[93] Rep.
Par. II d. 1, q. 3, n. 8
[94] Ibid
[95] Op. oxon. I, d. 43, n. 2.
[96]
DPP 4.71.
[97] He says he reserves that for a projected Treatise on Things
Believed. DPP4.
[98] Ibid.
[99] Lectura. I. d.43,q. 1a. n.15..
[100]
Ox,II,d.2,q.2,n.5.
[101] That position was developed again by Malebranche
(c.1685) to provide the production missing among physical events in Descartes’
account. Hume adopted the same general idea, but eliminated God and necessity
from the idea of causation, saying, causation is a certain kind of regularity
instead. And the Humean starting point has dominated since, but with a constant
drift toward a-priori connections of one sort or another, to explain the
regularities in nature.
[102] That idea became an essential element of 17th
Century mechanics,, so that Malebranche retreated to occasionalism of his own,
and it reappears throughout current philosophy in what is called “At-At
causation”, (happenings at a place, at a time, successively), so that even force
is analyzed through its logical shadows, as points on a curve, without any
active natural principle. Cf. Wesley Salmon, 000. To the contrary, Avicenna said
the nature of a thing is the essence considered as the principle of its
operations; see Aquinas, De Ente et Essentia. The absurdity proposed by the
Arabic occasionalists is made even more absurd in contemporary philosophy by the
simultaneous denial of any divine causation and the claim that all causation is
no more than regular succession, usually with some element of logical necessity
to ground the regularity, as well, e.g. among properties, or propositions—see
Mackie, Armstrong, Lewis, and many others. Causation is thus reduced to a
semantic relation in parallel with spatio-temporal succession.
[103]
Q.Q..7.65 2nd paragraph.
[104] Ox.I,d.44,q.1a. n 5-12. He distinguished the
ordained power of God from the absolute power of God, that exceeds any created
order. The same in Lectura, I,d.44,q,1a.n.5.
[105]Lect. I d. 39, n. 39. In
Ox. 1, 39 1,n1117, he says that the disjunction of ‘being’ into
”necessary/contingent (possible )” is immediate; there is nothing prior to reply
upon.
[106] Here he departs as Christian belief requires, but without a
crucial argument, from Avicenna who held, also, that perceived things do not
exist on account of what they are, but on account of their causes, which
however, are necessitated by the divine being. Other Muslim philosophers held
that the secondary causes are only apparently causes because God alone is a real
cause or everything immediately (and by emanation). Scotus seems to need an
argument as to why the fact that perceived things do not exist on account of
what they are entails that they might really not have existed at all, but he
insists that he does not (see note above).
[107]Scotus does not argue that it
could not cause by chance, because, like Aristotle, he thinks chance is the
intersection of causes “with other ends in view”, and thus, supposes causation
rather than replacing it.
[108] That highlights a matter, mentioned above,
about which Avicenna would not yet be satisfied: as to what settles that there
really are things that might not have existed at all. It appears that Scotus has
not yet eliminated Avicenna’sSpinozistic option that everything is one substance
and necessary.
[109]Lect. I d. 39, n. 43.
[110]i
47 [111] It seems that
the logical necessity that there be contingent truth, given that there is
contingent being, is a sufficient cognitive base for our knowing that a First
Causing Being that acts freely by nature, really exists!. For if it is possible
that there is some contingent truth, then it is necessarily possible. But if
nothing comes from nothing, then it is possible that there is a cause of
contingent truth, in fact, it is necessarily possible. But that can only be so
if some free cause of contingent truth exists no matter what: God. Is that
another successful existential argument?
[112] Ibid, n. 62
[113]Lect. I d.
39, n. 53
[114] Ibid, n. 60. Note priority of nature is ‘rational’ in these
contexts, not causal or entitative.
[115] Ibid, n. 49
[116] Ibid. That way
of talking, as Aquinas does too, seems awkward. It would be better to say
“before” is vantaged in our temporal order, and ‘before the world was’ is
imaginary, as Aquinas does say. Scotus seems to think that logically (only)
there could have been a ‘before’, by a conceptual projection from the actual
beginning.
[117] Wolter (1993), p. 59
[118]Collationes III,4; Op.Ox. 1,
II. d.42. q.4 n.11.
[119] Op.Ox.1,II,d.25,q.1,n.20.
[120] Op-.Ox.1,I,
d.17,q.3 n.5.Voluntary action, in general, is action from and in accord with the
will, but it can be determined by desire or other apprehended good. However,
free action is entirely from the will.
[121]Quaes.Quodlib. 16.1-50. Also,
Ox,1, 10,n 6-9 and 30-58. Q.Q. 16.44 says “not every necessity destroys freedom”
.
[122]See Chapter by William E. Mann, ” Duns Scotus on Natural and
Supernatural knowledge of God,” this volume 000.
[123] Ibid, p. 27. Also,
Quaest. Quod 5.10.
[124] Ox, I,d,3,q.1, tr. Wolter (1993), p. 75
[125]
ibid.Wolter (1993), p. 27
[126]Op. Ox. I, d. 2, q. 1, tr. Wolter (1987), pp.
64-5.
[127] Ibid, p. 65
[128] Ibid, p. 64.
[129]Gilson,op.cit. p.192,
is definite that infinity is an intrinsic, positive mode of being, but conceived
“negatively” or “privatively” in contrast to the finite things we know.
[130]
Wolter (1993), p. 64.
[131] Ibid,p. 68-70.
[132] Wolter (1993), p.
148
[133] Ibid, pp. 150-1
[134] Ibid, p. 158
[135] Ibid, p.
163
[136] Ibid. Even though the soul is really distinct from the body, we
cannot for that reason say the inference to the possibility that the soul may
pass out of existence is false without begging the question.
[137] Ibid, p.
164
[138] Ibid
[139]Scotus relies upon two iterative modal principles: (i)
possibilities and necessities are themselves formally necessary; and (ii) the
weakest modal(propositional) operator of any conjunct is the strongest modal
operator of any conjunction:thus any conjunction with a contingent member is
itself contingent (e. g,, the regression of causes), and, of course, any
conjunction with an impossible conjunct is as a whole impossible. Those, plus
the principle of bifurcation (that every non-tensed proposition is either true
or false) form the structure of his indirect proofs and of his arguments from “
what entails the false is false”.
[140] We are not suggesting that such
arguments cannotbe incorporated into a Scotistic framework, say by deducing a
general principle of explicability from the production of contingent things (Cf.
J. Ross, Philosophical Theology, Bobbs Merrill, 1968). But without the root in
experience, in the actual production of things, the argumentation floats in the
dubious realm of speculation based only on our conceptions as far as they go:
not what Scotus intended at all.
[141] Ox,p.151 (Wolter).
[142] It is a
matter of wonder that so many technically skilled recent philosophers are
untroubled by stopping at the idea that everything is without explanation, or is
somehow, without further rationale, necessary; but consider the idea of a
Creator somehow irrelevant.