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filter_107: The Nature of Realitysearchmore_vert

Philosophy: A Christian Introduction

7The Nature of Reality

Metaphysics  is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature and structure of reality. Questions metaphysicians ask and try to answer include the following: What exists? How do the different kinds of things that exist relate to one another? What aspects of reality are fundamental and derivative? These questions, and many more like them, have been asked as long as human beings have sought to provide a rational account of the world.

These questions are not trivial. Metaphysics matters. The beliefs we hold about the world shape our experience of the world and our behavior in the world. Even our eternal destinies are at stake, as C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) powerfully illustrates through a series of fictitious letters between a senior devil and a junior/apprentice devil named Wormwood. In the first of these imaginary letters, the senior devil instructs Wormwood as follows:

Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him [that is, the patient whom they are trying to keep from becoming a Christian] from the Church. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. . . . The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy’s [God’s] own ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real.” [1]

The book, of course, was Lewis’s classic The Screwtape Letters. He painted for us, in a wonderfully delightful way, a picture of the battle taking place between the forces of good and the forces of evil over humans’ beliefs regarding the nature of reality.

This battle over the nature of reality has been going on for some time. [2]  In the Sophist, Plato describes “something like a battle of gods and giants,” an interminable “dispute” over the nature of reality. In one camp, the giants “drag everything down to earth from the heavenly region of the invisible,” arguing that true reality is found only in the world of our sensible experience. In the other camp, the gods maintain that “true being is certain nonbodily [i.e., immaterial] forms.” [3]  In our own day, the battle over the nature of reality continues to rage. For example, in a well-known series of lectures delivered in 1960 at the University of Pittsburgh, the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars distinguishes between the “manifest image” of the world—our ordinary perception of the world as rational, beautiful, and mysterious—and the “scientific image” of the world, a disenchanted world of mathematical formulas, particles in motion, and blind forces. [4]  Sellars argues that the two perspectives of the world are incommensurate and that our manifest image—the world of “appearance”—is not the world in reality; in reality, the world is the complex physical system of the “scientific image.”

In this chapter we shall consider, in broad outline, three prominent views about ultimate reality, highlighting their merits and drawbacks, as we seek to answer our fundamental questions about the nature and structure of reality. [5]  We begin with perhaps the dominant views of our day, the view of Plato’s giants and Sellars’s “scientific image.”

Materialism

According to  materialism , everything that exists is material. The material cosmos is “one gigantic spatio-temporal whole,” composed of (in ascending order) particles, molecules, medium-sized objects, planets, stars, and galaxies. [6]  Materialism is a kind of  monism . There is just one kind of thing that exists: the material thing.

Closely associated with this theory of reality is a theory of knowledge called empiricism. Roughly, empiricism is the idea that all knowledge is of the sense-perceptible kind. It is currently more fashionable to speak of “the scientific” instead of “the sense perceptible,” and thus many in our culture who adopt a materialistic metaphysics also adopt a theory of knowledge called scientism. [7]  According to a particularly strong version of scientism, all knowledge comes from the deliverances of science. If you want knowledge, you must turn to the scientist.

For the materialist, notice the tight connection between epistemology and metaphysics, as articulated by the philosopher Alex Rosenberg: “If we’re going to be scientistic, then we have to attain our view of reality from what physics tells us about it. Actually, we’ll have to do more than that: we’ll have to embrace physics as the whole truth about reality.” [8]  Science today, as Rosenberg’s comment shows, is exalted as the paradigm of rationality. If you want to be reasonable (and who doesn’t?), then you must be scientistic, and if you are going to be scientistic, then you must embrace that all of reality is captured by physics. Rosenberg continues: “Why buy the reality that physics paints? Well, it’s simple, really. We trust science as the only way to acquire knowledge.” [9]  This is a bold statement, especially since it is self-defeating! [10]  But let that pass. We want to notice one implication of scientism as a theory of knowledge and materialism as a theory of reality:  naturalism , the view that there is no super natural aspect to reality. As Rosenberg concludes, since physics tells us everything about reality, “that is why we are so confident about atheism.” [11]  Thus if  materialism  is true, then so is  naturalism : there is no God, no immaterial soul, and no abstract reality (more on this below).

The materialistic view of reality has a lot going for it. As already noted, it is widely thought to be the view of reality backed by the scientific enterprise. Given the fact that science is often equated with reason, there are strong sociologicalfactors for thinking  materialism  to be true. No one, after all, wants to be labeled asantiscience. Moreover, philosophically,  materialism  is a simple theory, positing one kind of thing only, the material; since simplicity is a theoretical virtue (and hence truth indicative), we have a reason to think that  materialism  is rationally preferable to its competitors.

Materialism is not without problems, however. One theoretical virtue, such as ontological simplicity, must be weighed against other theoretical virtues, including explanatory power and scope. Many argue that materialism fails miserably in its ability to adequately explain many of the phenomena of the “manifest image”—in particular, facts about human persons and their mental lives. [12]

Two features of our mental lives that seem to be at odds with a materialist metaphysics are the  first-person perspective  and intentionality. When I (Paul) say I am hungry, I am in pain, I am here, and the like, I am reporting something about which I cannot be mistaken. I have privileged access to these mental states. They are mine. I am a self-conscious agent who can refer to myself using  indexicals  such as “I” and “here” and “now.” However, as Thomas Nagel has pointed out, there is no place for indexicals in science: a complete scientific description of the world, identifying all particles and forces and their locations in space and time (from a third-person perspective) would leave something out: me. [13]  As Roger Scruton states, “Science cannot tell me who I am, let alone where, when or how.” [14]

Intentionality  is the “aboutness” or “ofness” of my mental life. I have a thought of my wife, a belief about London, a hope for the afterlife. This aboutness that characterizes our mental life is, again, very difficult to account for on a purely materialistic metaphysics. Materialists typically try to reduce intentionality to physical causal relations of input and output. [15]  My thought of London is reduced to certain inputs (I see a picture of Big Ben), which in turn produce an output, a certain behavior, such as my claiming that London is a grand city. John Searle, however, has advanced the famous Chinese Room Argument, showing how attempts to explain intentionality in terms of physical causal inputs and outputs fails. [16]  What is left out, according to Searle, is genuine understanding: physical inputs and outputs can mimic understanding, but they do not possess it, and thus they do not adequately account for the phenomenon of intentionality. Moreover, intentionality possesses qualities that physical states do not (e.g., intentionality can be about nonexistent entities; physical causal relations hold only between existent entities), and this provides reason to think that intentionality cannot be reduced to the purely material. [17]

A deeper problem for materialism concerns its intelligibility. As Lewis puts it, “Thus a strict materialism refutes itself for the reason given long ago by Professor Haldane: ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’” [18]

Lewis is noticing a deep conflict between materialism and the reliability of our cognitive faculties. More recently, Alvin Plantinga has advanced a more rigorous argument highlighting the self-defeating nature of materialism. [19]  The basic idea is this: The conjunction of materialism and evolution means that our cognitive faculties select beliefs for their survival value rather than truth. But then, if my beliefs are selected for their survival value and not truth, I have no good reason to think my beliefs are true. But then, if I have no good reason to think my beliefs are true, I have no good reason to think  materialism  is true. Therefore if  materialism  is true, I have no good reason to believe  materialism  is true.  Materialism  is self-defeating.

While much more could be said, we offer one final thought. If Christian theism is true, then  materialism  is a nonstarter. If God, an immaterial self-conscious substance, exists, then  materialism  is false. Moreover, if theism is true, advances in science are just discoveries of the world that God has created, not evidence for  materialism .

Dualism

Metaphysical dualism  is the view that two kinds of things exist in the world. One prominent form of metaphysical dualism is called  Platonism , roughly the view that in addition to the material cosmos, there exists an abstract realm of nonmaterial objects.  Platonism , as the name implies, has its roots in the thought of Plato (427–347 BC), who argued that reality is constituted by a visible world, which is temporal, changing, and contingent, and by an invisible world of the Intelligible Forms, which is eternal, unchanging, and the source of all in the visible realm.

Another prominent form of metaphysical dualism, advocated in the seventeenth century by René Descartes (1596–1650), is called  substance dualism . According to  substance dualism , each human is composed of two basic kinds of substances, an immaterial soul and a material body. Descartes argued that the body operates according to mechanical laws of nature and is extended through and located in space. The soul, however, has no spatial location or extension; is that which thinks, feels, and wills; can survive the death of the body; and causally interacts with the body through the pineal gland (located in the brain).

Finally, Christian theism is another important kind of metaphysical dualism. As noted above, according to Christian theism there exists, in addition to the material cosmos, an immaterial divine substance. Since the viability of  substance dualism  and God’s existence are discussed in detail in chapters 11, 12, and 15, in the remainder of this section we shall focus on  Platonism  and the claim that, in addition to the spatiotemporal universe, there exists an abstract realm of reality populated by entities such as properties, relations, propositions, sets, numbers, states of affairs, possible worlds, and the like.

It will be helpful to first understand just what an abstract object is and how it differs from a concrete object. While the issue is debated, there is somewhat of a consensus among philosophers as to the following: An abstract object is a nonspatial, nontemporal, necessarily existing, [20]  causally impotent entity. A concrete object—a table, chair, rock, electron, or star—is defined, in contrast, as that which is not abstract. [21]

Why think that abstract objects exist? Two important arguments for Platonism are the One over Many  Argument , to be discussed in chapter 8, and the Indispensability  Argument , which we shall explore here. The Indispensability  Argument  can be formulated as follows:

1. If a simple sentence is literally true, then the objects its singular terms denote exist.

2. There are literally true simple sentences containing singular terms that refer to things that could be only abstract objects.

3. Therefore, abstract objects exist. [22]

Consider familiar sentences of the form “a is F” such as “The apple is red” or “Socrates is wise.” In these sentences, the subject terms—the apple and Socrates—are the singular terms, and if these singular terms are part of a true sentence, then it is reasonable to think that the objects referred to by way of these singular terms really exist. If it is true that “the apple is red,” then the object denoted by the singular term—the apple—really exists and is red. (In chap. 8 we’ll discuss the question of what to do ontologically with the predicate “is red.”) If it is true that Socrates is wise, then the object denoted by the singular term—Socrates—really exists and is wise. Premise 1 rests on a criterion of ontological commitment, in a tradition that broadly follows the work of Willard V. O. Quine, such that we are ontologically committed to singular terms and existential expressions (we focus here only on singular terms) of literally true simple sentences. [23]

Regarding premise 2, consider the sentences “Two is prime” and “Courage is a virtue.” Assuming both are true, the singular terms refer, according to the criterion of ontological commitment, to the objects denoted by the singular terms. But in this case, the objects denoted by the singular terms are not concrete objects: they are abstract objects—the number two and the property courage, or being courageous. Thus if the criterion of ontological commitment is true and there are true atomic sentences in which the singular term can be understood only as an abstract object, it follows that abstract objects exist (and  Platonism  is true).

Since the Indispensability Argument is valid, the nominalist, who denies the existence of abstract objects, must deny either premise 1 or premise 2. William Lane Craig, for example, rejects premise 1 and the criterion of ontological commitment that undergirds it. Craig finds it astonishing that so many philosophers take existential expressions (“There is/are”) and singular terms to be ontologically committing. When considering singular terms, Craig argues, “Far too many philosophers, I think, are still in the thrall of a sort of picture theory of language according to which successfully referring terms have corresponding objects in the world.” [24]  To support this claim, Craig lists example sentences, such as “Wednesday falls between Tuesday and Thursday” or “He did it for my sake and the children’s,” arguing that it would be absurd to think that there really are Wednesdays or sakes in the real world. Craig thinks singular terms that refer to real-world objects are probably the exception rather than the norm. [25]

We are in deep waters here. Questions about how to establish whether something exists, what “ontological commitment” means, and the relationship between language and the world are perennial topics of philosophical dispute. By way of reply to Craig, it won’t do simply to assert the unbelievability of a thesis. The fact that Craig finds such recondite objects as Wednesdays or sakes as absurd is beside the point. What is needed are philosophical reasons for thinking that the criterion of ontological commitment is defective. One advantage of the Quinean approach to ontological commitment is that it offers a clean and straightforward way to determine what exists: “to be is to be the value of a bound variable” (for existential claims), or “the function of a singular term is to refer to existent objects.” [26]  For certain kinds of Meinongians, who think existential expressions and singular terms are not ontologically committing in any sense, the question becomes, How, given your view, do we establish that something exists? [27]  Whatever answer is given to this question may prove more troubling than the Quinean approach. [28]

Two prominent attempts to reject premise 2 are (a) the paraphrase strategy, which accepts the truth of the sentences in question yet finds a nominalist-friendly paraphrase that gets rid of the purported abstract object; and (b) the fictionalist strategy, which holds that the sentences in question are literally false and thus do not denote abstract objects. [29]  According to paraphrase nominalism, sentences such as “Two is prime” and “Courage is a virtue” can be paraphrased without loss of meaning as, for example, “If there were numbers, two would be prime” and “Courageous persons are virtuous persons.” [30]  As long as the paraphrase removes the troubling entity (the number two, the property being courageous) without a corresponding loss of meaning, we have found a nominalistically acceptable sentence. The problem, however, is that the proposed paraphrases, and many others, seem to fail. As Balaguer observes, the proposed paraphrases do not seem to capture the ordinary meaning of such simple sentences. “Two is prime” is about the number two, whereas the proposed paraphrase is about what would be the case if there were numbers. [31]  With respect to the sentence “Courage is a virtue,” the proposed paraphrase doesn’t even share the same truth value (and thus, again, does not share the same meaning). While “Courage is a virtue” is a necessary truth, the truth value for the sentence “Courageous persons are virtuous persons” is contingent: it could turn out that a courageous person is in fact not virtuous, given moral or intellectual vices in other areas. [32]

The fictionalist isn’t worried about translating sentences into proper nominalistic form. Rather, all sentences that appear to commit us to the existence of abstract objects are false. The sentences “Two is prime” and “Courage is a virtue” should be treated the same way as the sentence “Oliver Twist is an orphan.” Oliver Twist doesn’t exist, yet we can still coherently make reference to him as long as we understand that we are talking about a fictional character in a story written by Charles Dickens. In the same way, argues the fictionalist, we are to construe talk about numbers, properties, and the like as make-believe. The fictionalist proposal strikes many as implausible. It seems too easy: if you don’t like the ontological implications of certain sentences, then just deny that the sentence is true. However, it seems obvious that “Two is prime” or “Courage is a virtue” are true, and necessarily so. For these reasons, while there are sophisticated proposals on offer, many are unwilling to follow the fictionalist down the antirealist path. [33]

Idealism

The final view of ultimate reality we shall consider is  idealism . While there are many versions of idealism, we shall focus on a particularly influential one developed by the British empiricist George Berkeley (1685–1753). The only kind of things that exist, according to Berkeleyan idealism, are mental things: minds and ideas. Tobe is to be perceived or to be a perceiver. [34]  While the denial of material objects seems to go against common sense, idealism is important to consider for at least two reasons. First, the arguments in favor of idealism are a good bit stronger than one might initially suppose and thus warrant further investigation. Second, there is renewed interest in Berkeleyan idealism today, particularly among Christian theologians and philosophers, and thus it is important to understand why Christians in particular find this theory of reality attractive and superior to its competitors. [35]

The starting point on the path toward idealism is the modern era’s debate over the nature of perception. A commonsensical theory of perception, called  direct realism , holds that what one is directly aware of in perceptual experience is a mind-independent reality. For example, in perceiving the table, I am directly aware of the table itself. The problem with  direct realism  is that it does not seem to adequately account for special cases, such as illusion. Consider a straight stick that appears bent when placed in water. If the object of perceptual experience is the stick itself, then according to  direct realism  there should be no difference between appearance and reality.

In order to handle the problem of illusion, early modern philosophers such as Descartes and John Locke (1632–1704) advocated a theory of perception called  representative realism . According to  representative realism , in perception we are directly aware of a mental item—our sensory ideas—and indirectly aware of a mind-independent reality. We perceive physical objects—tables, rocks, trees—by way of our sensory ideas. By making a distinction between direct and indirect awareness, the representative realist can account for why, in the case of illusions, reality and appearance are distinct. For example, in the case of the straight stick, in normal circumstances the only medium between the stick and our sensory idea of the stick is the air. In the illusory case, however, the additional medium of water causes the light from the bottom part of the stick to refract, generating a difference between our sensory idea of the stick and the stick as it is in reality.

Berkeley agreed with the representative realist that the objects of our direct awareness are sensory ideas. He disagreed, however, that the objects of our sensory experience point beyond themselves to some mind-independent reality. This is because in the end, argued Berkeley, representative realism leads to skepticism. How, he asked, could we ever know that our sensory idea of a table is caused by a mind-independent table instead of a mad scientist or an evil demon? By arguing that there is only the mind-dependent reality of sensory ideas, the threat of skepticism is removed once and for all. It is important to emphasize: Berkeley is not denying that tables, rocks, and trees exist. He is simply denying their mind-independence. Physical objects are collections of ideas. Whose ideas? For Berkeley there could be only one answer: God’s ideas. Thus there are, according to Berkeleyan  idealism , two kinds of minds, divine and nondivine, and two kinds of ideas, sensory and imaginary (sensory ideas are “given”; we are passive recipients of them, whereas imaginary ideas are ideas that we “dream up” or produce through the activity of thinking).

Berkeleyan idealism, with its focus on the primacy of the mental, has a lot working in its favor, particularly for the Christian theist. For example, as a version of substance monism (only immaterial substances exist), it is simpler than pluralistic ontologies, such as metaphysical dualism; all things being equal (i.e., assuming the two types of ontologies are explanatorily on par), simplicity counts in its favor. Moreover, the idealist theory of perception is argued to be more consistent with the findings of quantum mechanics and is immune to skepticism since what we are directly aware of in perception is the mind-dependent physical reality. [36]  Finally, if, as its adherents claim, it is consistent with Christian orthodoxy, then, contrary to initial reactions,  idealism  is a viable option for many theists.

However, Berkeleyan idealism is not without problems. On reflection, it is not obviously simpler than its dualist competitors. For example, idealists argue that the problem of causal interaction between immaterial and material substances dissolves under idealism, since all causal interactions are between mental objects only. [37]  Unfortunately, the causal interaction problem is not solved: it is relocated. [38]  Consider the age-old mind-body problem. The question becomes, How does my mind enjoy two-way causal interaction with the collection of divine ideas that is my body? If, as those following Berkeley think, occasionalism is true, then the interaction problem dissolves again (since God is the only causal agent in the universe), but the explanatory benefits accrued to the idealist are negated (for many philosophers) by an unattractive theory of causation. Moreover, in the end it is not clear that Berkeleyan idealism is consistent with Christian orthodoxy. Consider this: if divine ideas are part of God (and how could they not be?) and physical objects are collections of divine ideas, then physical objects are part of God. But then creation is part of God, panentheism is true, and Christian orthodoxy is called into question. [39]  Finally, it could be argued that there are more sophisticated versions of direct realism that handle the problem of illusion (and other related issues) adequately. If so, then a chief motivation for idealism is significantly undercut. [40]

Conclusion

In this chapter we’ve explored three prominent views of reality: materialism, dualism, and idealism. Each view has something going for it as well as certain costs or problems that need to be overcome. Given Christian theism, we think that materialism is a nonstarter. We’re not particularly attracted to idealism either but think it should be given its due. For our part, we can learn from the materialist to value the physical world—in its beauty, diversity, and abundance—as part of the giftedness of creation. We can also learn from the idealist to remember the primacy of the spiritual or immaterial. Mind is before matter in a very important sense because God—an immaterial Mind—is the source of all concrete finite reality. Moreover, there is more to life than the constant stream of sensual and physical experience. There are immaterial and spiritual goods too, including, most importantly, communion with God through the union of our finite spirit with the infinite Spirit. Much more, of course, can be said about each of these views and more besides. What should be clear is that the interminable battle over the nature of reality shows no signs of waning anytime soon. [41]

1  C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Westwood, NJ: Barbour Books, 1990), 11–12.

2  Given Christian theism, it could be argued that this battle over reality has been going on since at least the fall of Adam and Eve.

3  Plato, Sophist 246a–c, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 267–68.

4  These lectures were later published in Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception, and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 1–40.

5  While discussing materialism, dualism, and idealism, in rough outline we follow Steven B. Cowan and James S. Spiegel’s discussion of ultimate reality in The Love of Wisdom (Nashville: B&H, 2009), 152–72.

6  Reinhardt Grossmann, The Existence of the World: An Introduction to Ontology (New York: Routledge, 1992), 8.

7  Dallas Willard, “Knowledge and Naturalism,”  Naturalism : A Critical Analysis, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (New York: Routledge, 2000), 25.

8  Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (New York: Norton, 2011), 20 (emphasis in original).

9  Rosenberg, Atheist’s Guide to Reality, 20.

10  Notice that the claim “Science is the only way to acquire knowledge” is itself a piece of knowledge. But importantly, this piece of knowledge is not a deliverance from science. Rather, it is a philosophical statement about the nature of knowledge. But then, if scientism is true, it is false. It is self-defeating. So there is, contrary to Rosenberg’s claim, at least one piece of knowledge that does not come from science. If there is one piece of knowledge, it is reasonable to think there may be other pieces of knowledge from nonscientistic sources.

11  Rosenberg, Atheist’s Guide to Reality, 20.

12  Other phenomena that are difficult to explain in a materialistic metaphysic include free will (see chap. 10); morality (see chap. 16); knowledge (see chaps. 2 and 3); meaning (see chap. 17); the unity amid the diversity in the world (see chaps. 8 and 9); and the origin of the universe itself (see chap. 12).

13  Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Cited in Roger Scruton, The Soul of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 31.

14  Scruton, Soul of the World, 31.

15  For more, see J. P. Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei : Human Persons and the Failure of  Naturalism  (Norwich, UK: SCM, 2009), 92–95.

16  John Searle, “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980): 417–57.

17  For a discussion of six differences between intentionality and physical states, see Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, 91–92. For another argument from the reality of conscious intentional states to the falsity of materialism, see Laurence BonJour, “Against Materialism,” in The Waning of  Materialism , ed. Robert C. Koons and George Bealer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 15–21. For a sustained argument that the reality of consciousness cannot be accounted for by a materialist metaphysic of human persons, see the collection of essays included in Waning of  Materialism . As the editors state in the introduction, “It is . . . surprising [given the supposed dominance of a materialist metaphysics regarding human persons] that an examination of the major philosophers active in [philosophy of mind over the last sixty years] reveals that a majority, or something approaching a majority, either reject materialism or had serious and specific doubts about its ultimate viability.” Waning of  Materialism , ix.

18  C. S. Lewis,  Miracles  (New York: Touchstone, 1975), 24.

19  See, e.g., Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 10.

20  This sets aside sets with contingent members, which are traditionally considered abstract but nonnecessary.

21  See, e.g., J. P. Moreland,  Universals  (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 17–18; Grossmann, Existence of the World, 7; and E. J. Lowe, The Possibility of  Metaphysics :  Substance , Identity, and Time (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 212–13.

22  This formulation of the Indispensability Argument is from Mark Balaguer, who calls this “The Singular Term Argument” in “Platonism in Metaphysics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, last modified March 9, 2016, §4, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism. The Indispensability Argument is historically associated with Willard V. O. Quine and Hilary Putnam and was originally formulated as an argument for the reality of abstract objects within mathematics. For other formulations of the Indispensability Argument, see Mark Colyvan, The Indispensability of Mathematics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

23  See Willard V. O. Quine, “On What There Is?,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 1–19. Quine thought we are committed ontologically only by existential expressions and not singular terms, but as Balaguer notes, most philosophers today consider both singular terms and existential quantifiers to be ontologically committing when considering a broadly Quinean criterion of ontological commitment. See Balaguer, “Platonism in  Metaphysics ,” §4. In fact, simple sentences with singular terms seem to entail true existential expressions; for example, “The apple is red” logically entails “There is something that is red.”

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Philosophy: A Christian Introduction

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Philosophy: A Christian Introduction

8Properties and Universals

There is unity and distinctiveness in the world. Regarding distinctiveness, notice that things—particulars—have characters. Things in the world are charactered objects. Socrates is wise, snub-nosed, and the teacher of Plato, for example. Regarding unity, consider that there are natural classes of things: red things, human things, sweet things, round things, and the like. Two key questions are these: First, do we need to postulate characters in addition to charactered objects, properties in addition to particulars? Second, how do we explain the similarities among charactered objects? Do we need to postulate shareable properties— universals —or just  particular  properties that exactly resemble? Questions about the existence and nature of properties are traditionally associated with the age-old debate over the problem of  universals .

Willard V. O. Quine put the problem of universals as follows: “Now let us turn to the ontological problem of universals. . . . Speaking of attributes, he [McX] says: ‘There are red houses, red roses, red sunsets; this much is prephilosophical common sense in which we must all agree. These houses, roses, and sunsets, then, have something in common; and this which they have in common is all I mean by the attribute of redness.’” [1]  Quine’s imaginary interlocutor McX thinks there are two facts about the world that are just obvious: (1) there are attributes and (2) similar things share one and the same attribute. McX here is representing the position of the metaphysical realist, the believer in  universals , where a universal is understood as a shareable property that can be possessed by distinct particulars, individual things, at once. Those who deny the existence of  universals  are called nominalists. Some nominalists—trope theorists—think there are properties but deny they are shareable: all properties are particularized properties. Other nominalists go further, denying the existence of properties themselves, believing in charactered objects but not in characteristics. In this chapter we shall explore the debate over the existence and nature of properties. We begin with the question of whether properties exist at all.

Do Properties Exist?

Those who think properties exist are called property realists. Those who deny that properties exist are called extreme nominalists. There are two kinds of extreme  nominalism :  ostrich nominalism , characterized by denial that resemblance facts need to be explained or grounded in any way, and  reductive nominalism , which purports there is a general explanation for resemblance. [2]

The ostrich nominalist thinks that only charactered objects exist. The ostrich nominalists don’t deny that charactered objects are similar in various ways; rather, they deny that this poses any real problem. This is why the realist David Armstrong dubbed them “ostrich nominalists.” [3]  They stick their heads in the sand when it comes to the problem of explaining resemblance. True sentences of the form “a and b are both F” are analyzed as “a is F and b is F.” As long as these qualitative facts can be accounted for in nominalistically friendly ways, so too can the conjunction of these qualitative facts and the various similarities among charactered objects. So, for example, the fact that grass and gummy bears are green is explained in terms of the fact that there is green grass and there are green gummy bears. No ontological commitment to properties, let alone shareable properties, is needed. There are only charactered objects: green things, sweet things, round things, human things, tree things, dog things, and so on. Period. As Michael Devitt puts it, “We have nothing to say about what makes a [to be] F, it just is F; that is a basic and inexplicable fact about the universe.” [4]  Or as Quine responds to McX, “That the houses and roses and sunsets are all of them red may be taken as ultimate and irreducible.” [5]

In reply to the ostrich nominalist, some have argued that resemblance facts cannot be magically waved away by a mere sleight of hand. [6]  The idea is that “a and b are both F” is not explanatorily equivalent with “a is F and b is F” but rather with “a is F and b is F and the F’s of a and b resemble each other.” If so, then resemblance facts remain among the inventory of the world in need of an explanation or ontological ground. It is open to the ostrich to reply, as Quine does above, that resemblance facts, if they are genuine facts at all, are brute too. This is a fair move, but it comes with a cost. Typically it is thought that the more economical a theory, either in terms of its number of undefined predicates (ideological economy) or in terms of the number of entities the theory postulates (ontological economy), the better. For the ostrich, however, the amount of primitive or unexplained facts is quite high, and thus  ostrich nominalism  will be less ideologically parsimonious, and hence worse off, than other theories in terms of ideological economy (such as property realism) that don’t require as many primitive facts.

Suppose that it could be established that ostrich nominalism is explanatorily on par with its property realist competitors. Would this establish the rational preferability of ostrich nominalism, since it postulates fewer entities than theories that rely on properties? Perhaps, surprisingly, it could be argued that ostrich nominalism is ontologically less parsimonious than realism, and this too provides reason to think the view false. [7]  Philosophers distinguish between qualitative and quantitative economy. A theory’s qualitative economy is measured in terms of the number of kinds of fundamental things the theory posits, whereas a theory’s quantitative economy is measured in terms of the number of fundamental things posited. For the property realist, depending on the specifics, there are a handful of fundamental kinds of things. For example, according to the metaphysical realist (to be discussed below), the sentence “Socrates is wise” ontologically commits the speaker to the particular (Socrates), to the universal (wisdom), and to the exemplification relation (tying Socrates and wisdom together): three kinds of fundamental things (particulars, universals, and the exemplification relation). However, the ostrich nominalist is committed to as many fundamental kinds of things as there are charactered objects that are similar along various dimensions. Assuming there are more similarities in the world than three, it follows that  ostrich nominalism  is costlier in terms of qualitative economy than realism. Since, as it is argued, qualitative economy is more important than quantitative economy,  ostrich nominalism  is costlier ontologically than realist theories.

Reductive nominalists deny the existence of properties by offering a reductive analysis of sentences that seem to be about properties, identifying predicates (e.g., “is red”) with nominalistically friendly objects such as words, concepts, classes, or particulars. The main versions of reductive nominalism include predicate nominalism, concept nominalism, mereological nominalism, class nominalism, and  resemblance nominalism .

Predicate nominalism  and  concept nominalism  are similar enough to be considered together. According to predicate nominalism, “a is F” is further analyzed as “a falls under the predicate F”; for concept nominalism, “a is F” is further analyzed as “a falls under the concept F.” A notoriously difficult problem for the predicate and concept nominalist is that if there were no speakers or thinkers, there would be no charactered objects in the world. But a sunset, for example, undoubtedly would still be red even if there were no human speakers or thinkers to enjoy it. Even if there are human speakers and thinkers, however, it seems possible that there are charactered objects such as undiscovered scientific properties for which no predicates or concepts exist now (and perhaps never will exist). [8]  A further problem is that predicates and concepts seem to be types and not merely tokens. The predicate “is red” applies to both the ball and the fire truck. But then predicate (and concept) nominalism substitutes one kind of universal (a property) for another kind of universal (semantic or conceptual). [9]  If it is argued that there are only token predicates or concepts, then it must be held, implausibly, that if our language/thoughts were just a bit different, a red truck would not have been red or an electron would not have been negatively charged. [10]

Another extreme nominalism is  mereological nominalism , according to which “a is F” is further analyzed as “a is a part of the aggregate F thing.” Something is red by virtue of being a part of the aggregate of red things. This aggregate of red things is a particular thing, but it is a rather odd particular thing: a scattered object located everywhere and only where there is something red. A problem with mereological nominalism is that it seems to get the explanatory relationship backward. [11]  It is natural to think that something is a part of an aggregate of red things because it is red, not that something is red by virtue of being a part of an aggregate of red things. Moreover, mereological nominalism requires the acceptance of a counterintuitive view called mereological universalism, the idea that any mereological aggregate of parts is an object, no matter how scattered and disparate the parts. [12]

Two related but better views are  class nominalism , according to which “a is F” is analyzed as “a is a member of the class of F things,” and resemblance nominalism, according to which “a is F” is analyzed as “a is a member of a class of resembling F things.” For class nominalism, properties are classes of things. So, for example, the property of being red is just the class of red things, the property of being round is just the class of round things, and the property of being sweet is just the class of sweet things. For an apple to exemplify redness is just for the apple to be a member of the class of red things. Regarding resemblance facts, two red things resemble just in case they are both members of the same class, the class of red things (which is the property of being red).

Two serious problems for class nominalism are the Companionship Problem and the Naturalness Problem. [13]  The Companionship Problem is this: some pairs of properties are coextensive such that every time one property is possessed by a charactered object, so too is the other. For example, the class of things with a heart is coextensive with the class of things with a kidney, the class of featherless bipeds is coextensive with the class of things having a sense of humor, and the class of triangular things is coextensive with the class of trilateral things. What this means, according to class nominalism, is that the property of being a heart is identical with the property of being a kidney, and so on for each coextensive property. This is because properties are identified with classes, and classes are identical if they have the same members. But then class nominalism postulates an identity where there isn’t one: the property of being a heart is not the same as the property of being a kidney.

The class nominalist can respond to the Companionship Problem by construing properties as classes of actual and possible objects. [14]  It certainly seems possible that there are creatures with hearts but not kidneys. If so, then the property being a heart is not coextensive with the property being a kidney since there are possible worlds, and thus possible creatures, and classes of actual and possible objects, with hearts but not kidneys. This response is problematic, however, even if we set aside that contentious issue of taking possible worlds and possible creatures as equally real with each other and with the actual world, for there are coextensive properties that are necessarily coextensive and thus range over all possible worlds (including the actual world) such as the properties being triangular and being trilateral.

The Naturalness Problem gains traction by noting that class nominalism is an abundant theory of properties. Since properties are just classes of objects, then for any unique class there is a unique property. So consider the class of objects constituted by my left eye, the White House, Alpha Centauri, and my copy of Plato’s Republic. Call this class Jumble and the corresponding property jumble. Next, consider the class of humans and the corresponding property being human. Since according to  class nominalism  no class is metaphysically more fundamental than any other class, it follows that there is no explanation for why the class of humans is pretheoretically natural whereas the class Jumble is nonnatural. The problem of explaining why reality seems to be easily categorized in terms of natural classes of charactered objects is called the Naturalness Problem.

Resemblance nominalism  presents a solution to the Naturalness Problem by offering a way to distinguish between natural and nonnatural classes. Resemblance nominalism privileges natural classes (such as the class of humans) in terms of the notion of resemblance. Resemblance is metaphysically fundamental: it does not need to be explained; it does the explaining. The character of objects is grounded in the metaphysically fundamental resemblance relation between objects in the resemblance class. The similarity between objects is grounded in the fact that they are members of the same resemblance class. As Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra explains it, red things do not resemble one another because they are red; rather, red things are red because they resemble one another; something is red because it resembles other red things. [15]

Object classes that resemble one another in certain respects form resemblance classes, and resemblance classes are the only classes that can serve as natural properties. Thus  resemblance nominalism  offers a way to explain why reality is easily categorized into natural classes of things: there are privileged resemblance classes that explain why certain classes—such as the classes of human things, red things, and sweet things—exhibit a natural unity whereas other classes such as Jumble do not.

Resemblance nominalism is not without problems, however. Some problems that plague class nominalism, such as the Companionship Problem, plague resemblance nominalism too. The same proffered solution of appealing to both actual and possible object classes helps only with properties that are contingently coextensive and requires a commitment to a highly controversial theory of possible worlds. Yet there are other problems unique to resemblance nominalism that appear devastating. One such problem is called the Imperfect Community Problem. [16]  Consider a class of three objects, called Mishmash, of the following kinds: a blue round thing, a metal round thing, and a blue metal thing. Since each of these objects resembles every other to a certain degree (all sharing either color or shape or material), Mishmash is a resemblance class. Yet Mishmash does not have any significant degree of naturalness since the only candidate property that all and only the members of Mishmash share is a “cooked” property, the property mishmash (or alternatively, the nonnatural disjunctive property being the same color or shape or material). So, there are resemblance classes that can’t serve as natural properties, and the Naturalness Problem surfaces again. The most plausible solution to this problem is to abandon resemblance nominalism in favor of  trope nominalism  and to admit that there are, after all, properties (even if they are not shareable).

Are Properties Shareable?

According to  trope nominalism , properties are unshareable tropes. A red ball, for example, is red by virtue of a red trope and round by virtue of a round trope. Thickly charactered objects have multiple tropes, then; each individual trope grounds one dimension of character within a fully characterized object. Similarity among red things or sweet things or round things is grounded in the various degrees of resemblance relations that obtain between the classes of red tropes, sweet tropes, and round tropes, respectively. Since resemblance classes are constituted by tropes—particularized properties—instead of thickly charactered objects,  trope nominalism  avoids the worries raised by the Companionship and Naturalness Problems. Coextensive tropes belong to different resemblance classes, unproblematically referring to different properties, and the color, shape, and material tropes from Jumble form resemblance classes that do pick out natural properties.

Additionally, trope nominalism is thought to be superior to metaphysical realism because tropes are thought to be perfectly respectable objects, whereas universals are not. Tropes, for example, are wholly located where and only where the objects that have them are, can stand in causal relations, and are the objects of perception. Universals, however, misbehave—either being multiply located at nonoverlapping places at once (according to  immanent realism ) or being multiply instantiated without being located at all (according to  Platonic realism ). What is hopefully obvious by now is that the fundamental divide between trope theories and realist theories of properties has to do with the issue of shareability. According to the trope theorist, properties are not shareable, whereas according to the metaphysical realist, some properties are shareable. [17]  A shareable property is a universal: a multiply instantiable property that can be had by distinct particulars at once.

Unfortunately for trope nominalism, there is an ambiguity in how tropes are understood that undermines its viability. [18]  The issue has to do with how tropes ground the character of the thickly charactered objects that have them. Tropes, according to the philosopher Robert Garcia, come in two varieties. Modular tropes are self-exemplifying tropes; modifier tropes are non-self-exemplifying tropes. [19]  Thus, according to modular trope theory, a red ball is red by virtue of its red trope and round by virtue of its round trope, and the tropes are themselves red and round, respectively. According to modifier trope theory, a red ball is red by virtue of its red trope and round by virtue of its round trope, and the tropes themselves are neither red nor round, respectively. Modifier tropes, like realist  universals , confer character on objects without themselves being the character they confer.

While each version of trope theory has advantages over the other, Garcia importantly points out that they are both unstable. Modular trope theory threatens to collapse into ostrich nominalism, and modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into metaphysical realism. [20]  Either way, the viability of trope theory is called into question, or so the  argument  goes.

Modular tropes are singly charactered properties. Thus, according to modular trope theory, a red trope is red and only red. However, some thin particulars plausibly just don’t stay thin. Red things, it seems, must also be shaped things, and shaped things must be extended things. [21]  Thus it seems that our red modular trope is not singly charactered after all. It is multiply charactered. It is red, shaped, and extended. The modular theorist must either deny very plausible “Thickening Principles” [22]  or allow for multiply charactered tropes that ground the character of fully characterized objects. If the modular theorist goes for the second option (allowing for multiply charactered tropes), then the view threatens to collapse into ostrich nominalism. The reason why, as Garcia notes, is that both the modular theorist and the ostrich nominalist now agree that no analysis of multiply charactered objects is necessary. [23]  The character of multiply charactered objects is a primitive fact. It is in this sense that modular trope theory is said to be unstable.

Regarding modifier trope theory, we may ask, What guarantees the unshareability of modifier tropes? Recall that modifier tropes are non-self-exemplifying; they have no intrinsic character of their own beyond purely formal characteristics such as being self-identical, being a  particular , being a trope, and the like. A typical answer offered by trope theorists is that the distinctness of a trope is grounded by its location. [24]  In other words, tropes are individuated by their location, being wholly located wherever the object that has them is located. A trope is a respectable, perfectly behaving particular had by only one thickly charactered object and individuated by being wholly located at the same place as the thickly charactered object of which it is a part. The problem is that being located is incompatible with a plausible Thickening Principle such that “spatially located objects have a definite size and shape.” [25]  Again, the trope theorist, on modifier trope theory, is faced with a dilemma, needing either to give up an extremely plausible thickening principle or to admit that location does not individuate tropes (and thus does not guarantee unshareability).

Going for the second option has its own costs. If it is maintained that being unshareable is part of the formal character of modifier tropes, modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism for at least two reasons. First, tropes are no longer respectable. Since modifier tropes lack an intrinsic nature—round tropes are not themselves round, for example—it seems that they lack shape, size, mass, and so on. But then modifier tropes are not, after all, the immediate objects of sense perception or the sorts of entities that play a direct causal role. Worse, as Garcia argues, it is difficult to see how modifier tropes can be located in space and time. [26]  After all, they lack a definite size and shape. Thus it seems that modifier tropes are nonspatiotemporal, and for this reason they are no longer respectable. Second, modifier tropes ground the character of a located object without being wholly located where that object is located. [27]  Modifier tropes seem to behave more and more like universals (at least according to  Platonic realism ), and in this sense modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism.

In the end, however, even if these worries about misbehaving can be set aside, in stipulating primitively distinct modifier tropes, modifier trope theory is quantitatively less parsimonious than metaphysical realism. [28]  Where realism postulates a distinct universal, redness, had by the class of red things, modifier trope nominalism postulates a distinct property redness1–rednessn for each red thing, and so on for every distinct characteristic had by thickly charactered objects. Moreover, with respect to resemblance facts, trope nominalism (of either variety) is explanatorily inferior to realism. Realism explains why the F’s of a and b resemble (a shared universal), whereas  nominalism  must settle for primitive resemblances among classes of tropes. For at least these reasons, many philosophers are attracted to realism, the view that there are  universals .

Are Universals Transcendent?

The main divide among versions of  metaphysical realism  is over the nature of universals: Are universals spatiotemporal? As already noted, the immanent realist thinks universals are wholly located at distinct places at once. [29]  Universals are concrete shareable properties located in space and time. The Platonic realist, however, thinks universals are multiply instantiated without being located at a place. [30]  According to the Platonic realist, universals are abstract objects that either (1) are nonspatially “in” concrete particulars as metaphysical parts (according to the constituent ontologist) or (2) are possessed by concrete particulars via a sui generis exemplification relation without being metaphysical parts of the objects that have them (according to the relational ontologist). [31]

The debate over immanent and Platonic versions of realism depends on what one thinks regarding what Reinhardt Grossmann calls the “axiom of localization.” The axiom of localization is the principle such that “no entity whatsoever can exist at different places at once or at interrupted time intervals.” [32]  The immanent realist rejects the axiom of localization whereas the Platonic realist accepts it. The Platonic realist argues that if the axiom of localization is rejected, then absurdities follow. The immanent realist, in response, argues that the conjunction of the axiom of localization with realism leads to the abandonment of naturalism, and it is better to reject the axiom of localization than to abandon naturalism. In other words, immanent realism is consistent with naturalism, and  Platonic realism  is not; if one wants to be a naturalist and a realist, then the only viable option is to endorse  immanent realism .

Consider two yellow balls, b1 held in my right hand and b2 held in my left. [33]  According to realism, each individual ball exemplifies the shared universal yellowness or being yellow. On immanent realism, yellowness is wholly located where b1 is located (in my right hand) and where b2 is located (in my left hand). But it is absurd for one and the same thing to be located at two distinct places at once, or so it seems. It gets worse, however. As I move my hands toward each other and then away, yellowness moves both toward itself and then away from itself. This picture, argues the Platonic realist, is absurd and implausible and provides reasons in favor of  Platonic realism .

On the Platonic realist picture, the yellowness exemplified by each ball is not spatially located where the ball is: it is either nonspatially “in” the ball as a metaphysical part or nonspatially tied to the ball relationally via exemplification. Either way, the absurdities of rejecting the axiom of localization are avoided. In reply, the immanent realist retorts that ordinary objects, in the hands of Platonic realists, become queer or spooky. [34]  How is it, they wonder, that the ordinary objects of everyday experience, firmly located in space and time, have properties that are nonspatial? Either way, something must be given up, says the immanent realist: either the axiom of localization or commonsense notions about how ordinary concrete objects have properties.

By maintaining a commitment to  naturalism , the immanent realist thinks the gains outweigh any cost associated with rejecting the axiom of localization. The Platonic realist thinks, alternatively, that the costs in rejecting the axiom of localization are too high and the charge of queerness is not particularly troublesome. This is especially so if one is not wed to  naturalism  in general, or physicalism in  particular , since it seems that mental properties (thoughts, beliefs, desires) can be nonspatially in the minds that have them, and thus the concept of being nonspatially “in” something is not entirely implausible.

Conclusion

In this chapter we’ve considered three questions that provided structure to our philosophical investigation of the characteristics of charactered objects: Do properties exist? Are properties shareable? Are universals transcendent? It is easy to wonder after reading a chapter like this why it all matters. What is the “real world” pay-off? We sympathize. We also think the debate over the existence and nature of universals is of utmost importance, as are many debates in philosophy, even if not initially obvious. To tip our hands a bit, we think universals do important work and that some version of realism is not only rationally preferable in its own right but usefully employed in other areas of philosophy (e.g., appeal to universals in the philosophy of language can help secure objective meaning) and theology (e.g., in helping us understand how the incarnate Christ can share a nature with humans). Undoubtedly the debate over the existence and nature of universals will continue. [35]  It is, in many ways, the central issue in the age-old quarrel between the gods and giants over the nature of reality.

1  Willard V. O. Quine, “On What There Is,” in From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953), 9–10.

2  Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance,  Metaphysics : The Fundamentals (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 85–86.

3  David Armstrong,  Universals  and Scientific Realism, vol. 1,  Nominalism  and Realism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 16; and Armstrong, “Against ‘Ostrich’ Nominalism: A Reply to Michael Devitt,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980): 440–49.

4  Michael Devitt, “‘Ostrich Nominalism’ or ‘Mirage Realism’?,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980): 436.

5  Quine, “On What There Is,” 10.

6  See, e.g., Paul M. Gould, “The Problem of Universals, Realism, and God,”Metaphysica 13, no. 2 (2012): 183–94.

7  The argument summarized in this paragraph is from Bryan Pickel and Nicholas Mantegani, “A Quinean Critique of Ostrich Nominalism,” Philosophers’ Imprint 12, no. 6 (2012): 1–21.

8  If God exists, this objection can be averted because there is always a divine mind that thinks and speaks. While this is an option for theists, many extreme nominalists are motivated by a commitment to naturalism and would not be able to avail themselves of this move. For a nice defense of theistic conceptualism, see Greg Welty, “Theistic Conceptual Realism,” in Beyond the Control of God? Six Views on the Problem of God and Abstract Objects, ed. Paul M. Gould (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), chap. 3. For more on extreme nominalism and naturalism, see J. P. Moreland, “Naturalism and the Ontological Status of Properties,” in  Naturalism : A Critical Analysis, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (New York: Routledge, 2000), chap. 4.

9  D. M. Armstrong,  Universals : An Opinionated Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989), 10–11.

10  Robert K. Garcia, “Platonism and the Haunted Universe,” in Loving God with Your Mind: Essays in Honor of J. P. Moreland, ed. Paul M. Gould and Richard Brian Davis (Chicago: Moody, 2014), 39.

11  Francesco Berto and Mateo Plebani, Ontology and Metaontology: A Contemporary Guide (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 224.

12  Berto and Plebani, Ontology and Metaontology, 224.

13  The Companionship Problem was coined by Nelson Goodman: see The Structure of Appearance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 160–61. The Naturalness Problem is developed in David Manley, “Properties and Resemblance Classes,” Nous 36, no. 1 (2002): 75–96.

14  This is what David Lewis does in On the Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 50–69.

15  Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, “Nominalism in Metaphysics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, last modified April 1, 2015, §4.1, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism- metaphysics .

16  Raised and developed by Goodman, Structure of Appearance, 162–64.

17  The metaphysical realist need not think that all properties are shareable, however. Some properties, such as the property being identical with Socrates, are only instantiated by one  substance  if at all.

18  See Robert K. Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1, no. 4 (2015): 635–52.

19  Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” 637.

20  Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” 645–49.

21  See Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 99.

22  Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 99. They borrow the term from Robert Garcia.

23  Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” 649.

24  Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 107.

25  Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 108.

26  Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” 646.

27  Garcia, “Two Ways to Particularize a Property,” 646.

28  Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 108.

29  A prominent defender of immanent realism is David Armstrong; see, e.g., Armstrong,  Universals .

30  A prominent defender of Platonic realism is J. P. Moreland; see, e.g., Moreland,  Universals  (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).

9Particulars

In the last chapter we noted that there are charactered objects and characteristics. We learned that the character of charactered objects is best explained by postulating properties. Rosie the chicken has the properties (or better, the universals) being red and being a chicken. Properties are predicables, things that we predicate or assert of other things. But what about Rosie? What kind of thing, ontologically speaking, is she? The first thing to note about Rosie is that she is not a property. She is not “had” or “possessed” by something else in the same way the property being red is had by chickens and balls. Rosie is not a predicate: she is a subject. Rosie does the “having” and not the other way around. Rosie, this chicken in my backyard, is a concrete particular. Notice too that Rosie is a composite: she is a whole that has parts (her left foot, red feathers, carbon atoms, etc.) and properties (being red, being a chicken) that stand in various relations to one another. Rosie is not the only concrete particular in my backyard. This pile of trash next to Rosie, according to some philosophers, is also a concrete particular. [1]  Like Rosie it has parts (that piece of paper, those dust molecules, that aluminum can, and so forth) and properties (being a pile of trash, beingshaped, etc.) that stand in various relations to one another. This car is also a concrete  particular . It too has parts and properties that stand in various relations to one another.

A key question to be explored in this chapter is how to make sense of familiar concrete objects such as chickens, cars, and piles of trash. It is currently fashionable to think that the familiar concrete objects of everyday experience are “built up” out of more fundamental parts and properties. If so, then the composite whole (Rosie, the trash pile, the car) is metaphysically posterior to its parts and properties. This reductionist picture makes the most sense, we believe, for things like cars (ordered aggregates) and things like piles of trash (heaps). But for things like Rosie (living organisms), this picture is counterintuitive. Rosie, the composite whole, is fundamental, or so it seems.

There is, however, another historically prominent way to think of concrete particulars that does treat some wholes as fundamental sorts of thing. On this view, found notably in Aristotle, Rosie is a substance, a concrete  particular  in which the whole is metaphysically more fundamental than its parts and properties. In this chapter we shall argue for an Aristotelian view of concrete particulars, which distinguishes between ordered aggregates and heaps, on the one hand, and substances, on the other hand. With the former, the parts and properties of the thing are metaphysically prior to the whole. With the latter, the whole is metaphysically prior to its parts and properties. The main area of debate to be settled is whether the idea of whole-priority for composite objects is plausible. In other words, are there good reasons to think that Aristotelian substances exist? To enter into the debate, we begin by canvassing the two most prominent bottom-up approaches for understanding concrete particulars such as humans and chickens.

Bottom-Up Accounts of Concrete Particulars

It is natural to think that Rosie, the composite whole, “has” or possesses her properties. The properties are in some sense “in” Rosie. Yet two questions arise: What, exactly, does the “having”? And how is this “having” relation to be understood? On one prominent story—call it the  substratum theory —if Rosie were placed under a metaphysical microscope, we would find three constituent entities: her properties, a bare substratum, and the exemplification relation joining the two together. The bare substratum is a featureless  particular  (a pincushion) that exemplifies the properties (the pins) had, loosely speaking, by Rosie. The sentence

1. 1. Rosie is a chicken

is understood strictly and philosophically as

1. 2. Rosie’s bare substratum (BSR) exemplifies the property being a chicken.

The literal bearer of a thing’s properties is not the composite whole but a constituent part of the whole, the bare substratum.

Why think that Rosie’s bare substratum, instead of Rosie herself, is the literal bearer of properties? The idea is that the bearer of a thing’s properties must be apprehended or conceived of independently of its properties, but Rosie, the complex whole, is not a thing that is apprehended or conceived of independently of her properties and therefore cannot be the literal bearer of her properties. [2]  The literal bearer of Rosie’s properties, BSR, is “bare” because it stands under or supports Rosie’s properties, like the pincushion to its pins, without itself having properties. It is a propertyless bearer of properties.

In order to highlight a key motivation of substratum theory, we must first set out another prominent bottom-up approach to complex objects:  bundle theory . According to bundle theory, Rosie is a complex object constituted by her properties. Rosie is a bundle of properties, whether properties are understood as tropes or universals. [3]  Sentence 1—“Rosie is a chicken”—is understood by the bundle theorist as

1. 3. Rosie is a bundle of compresent properties (either universals or tropes), including the property being a chicken.

The compresence relation is a kind of building relation that joins together a plurality of properties into a composite whole.

Now that we’ve set out the two most prominent bottom-up theories of concrete particulars, we are able to see a key motivation for substratum theories by raising a problem for bundle theory. Imagine two qualitatively indistinguishable objects: red sphere a and red sphere b. This scenario seems possible. [4]  Each object has qualitative properties such as being red and being a sphere. Assuming metaphysical realism, the properties had by objects a and b are universals—shareable properties. Assuming bundle theory, then objects a and b are bundles of universals. [5]  However, given a plausible principle for identifying complex wholes in virtue of their constituents (i.e., same constituents, same whole), a problem arises. More formally, a  principle of constituent identity  (PCI) can be formulated as follows:

PCI: If object a and object b have all the same constituents standing in all the same relations, then a is numerically identical to b. [6]

The problem, given metaphysical realism, bundle theory, and PCI, is that our imagined scenario is not possible. It is not possible for two qualitatively indistinguishable objects to exist. But the scenario seems possible, and if it is, then either metaphysical realism, bundle theory, or PCI must be rejected. The principle of constituent identity, PCI, is as good a principle as any, “a regulative principle that does nothing more than state a condition on the use of the terms ‘constituent’ and ‘whole’”; [7]  thus there is no good reason to reject it. If one is a metaphysical realist,  bundle theory  must be rejected.

The bundle theorist might not need to concede defeat, however, if it could be maintained, contrary to appearances, that objects a and b are not qualitatively indistinguishable. Perhaps, it could be argued, object a has a relational property not had by object b, and vice versa. Object a has the property (let’s say) being to the left of b, and object b has the property being to the right of a. If so, objects a and b are individuated by their relational properties; they are not numerically identical objects by virtue of each exemplifying a unique relational property. In this way,  bundle theory  can be salvaged, or so it seems, for the metaphysical realist.

Unfortunately, the appeal to relational properties won’t work. Recall that for the bundle theorist, the only constituents of composite objects are properties. For the metaphysical realist, properties are universals, and so universals are the basic building blocks of composite objects. As basic or fundamental objects, properties are metaphysically prior to their wholes. But the relational property being to the left of b (had by object a) presupposes the existence of object a, object b, and a spatial relation between them. In the same way, the relational property being to the right of a (had by object b) presupposes the existence of object a, object b, and the spatial relationship between them. The problem is that objects a and b must already exist as individuals in order to stand in spatial relationships to each other. [8]  But if they already exist, then relational properties cannot individuate the one from the other. Relational properties, if they exist at all, are not fundamental properties. They are not basic building blocks for composite wholes. Each object already exists as an individual metaphysically prior to standing in the spatial relationships that generate these relational properties. If so, then relational properties cannot individuate qualitatively indistinguishable objects. It seems that  bundle theory  (for the metaphysical realist) must go.

We are now able to see a key motivation for substratum theory, for according to the substratum theorists, there is, in addition to a thing’s properties, a bare substratum “in” each composite whole. Thus object a has a constituent (BSa) that object b doesn’t have, and vice versa (object b has a bare substratum BSb). Different constituents form different objects, according to PCI. Thus if one is a metaphysical realist there are good reasons to endorse  substratum theory . We also learn that, in addition to being the literal bearer of a thing’s properties, a bare substratum can be employed to play the individuator role, grounding the numeric diversity of distinct particulars (even if they are qualitatively indistinguishable).

Unfortunately for the substratum theorist, however, there is a potentially devastating problem. Many philosophers think the idea of a bare substratum, a propertyless simple that has properties, is incoherent. It is not hard to see why. We are told that a bare substratum is bare. It has no properties. But we are also told that a bare substratum is literally the bearer of a thing’s properties. If so, then it has properties. So a bare substratum is a thing that both has and doesn’t have properties. This is as clear a case of a contradictory notion as there can be, or so it seems.

There are, however, defenders of bare substrata who think the apparent incoherence is easily sidestepped. For example, J. P. Moreland distinguishes two different senses for how particulars can have properties. [9]  A composite whole (called a substance by Moreland) has properties “rooted within” it, whereas a bare substratum (called a bare  particular  by Moreland) has properties “tied to” it. There is a sense, then, in which bare substrata do have properties: properties are tied to an ontologically simple  particular . Bare substrata are “bare” because they have no properties as constituents; they are ontologically structureless blobs. Still, since properties are tied to them, it is true that they are the literal bearers of properties. While the rooted-in or tied-to distinction does seem to remove the incoherence worry for the metaphysical realist, there are additional problems in the neighborhood.

Defenders of bare substrata usually claim that bare substrata have no essential properties themselves. All the properties tied to bare substrata are contingently tied to them. But it seems that bare substrata do have natures, or essential properties: the property of being bare, the property of being a  particular , the property of being simple, and so on. If so, then it seems that bare substrata are not ontologically simple: they have properties, and those properties need a literal bearer too. It is natural to think, since the bearer of a thing’s properties must be apprehended independently of its properties (as we noted above), that if a bare substratum has essential properties, those properties will be tied to its own lower-level bare substratum, a further constituent of our original substratum. Not only are bare substrata not simple on this picture: worse, it seems we are on the verge of generating an infinite regress of bare substrata with essential properties at descending levels “all the way down.” [10]

Moreland’s reply to this worry is to adopt a sparse theory of properties: some predicates—“is bare,” “is particular,” “is simple,” and so on—do not refer to properties. [11]  In this way it can be maintained that bare substrata have no essential properties or nature. While avoiding the threat of an infinite regress of metaphysical parts with properties for each bare substratum, this move comes at a cost: the denial of an abundant theory of properties. Some predicates, given the suggested adjustment, do not refer to properties. This concession might, it could be argued, undercut some of the original motivation in favor of  metaphysical realism . We do not think this cost must be paid, nor do we think the threat of infinite regress is real, however. Let us explain.

In the discussion thus far, we have been adopting a constituent framework for understanding concrete particulars. Constituent ontologies account for the character of ordinary concrete objects, such as Rosie the chicken, in terms of physical and metaphysical parts had by the whole. On a different approach, the relational approach, ordinary concrete objects such as Rosie do not literally have metaphysicalparts, even if they do have physical parts (carbon atoms, feathers, beaks, etc.). On the relational approach, the concrete particular, Rosie, stands in some external relation to its properties; for example, the properties are “tied to” Rosie via exemplification. [12]  In terms of metaphysical structure, constituent ontologies are “layer cake” ontologies and relational ontologies are “blob” ontologies. [13]  In other words, if you were to look at Rosie under your metaphysical microscope, if in fact the relational approach truly describes the metaphysical structure of things, you would see a structureless blob (an internally simple thing) with properties tied to it (somewhat like a flower connected to its petals). If, however, the constituent way of looking at things were in fact true, you would see various metaphysical parts standing in various relationships and forming a complex whole, like a cake if it were placed under a metaphysical microscope.

With this distinction in hand, it seems that the defender of bare substrata can adopt a hybrid approach such that complex wholes (substances) have properties as constituents whereas simple wholes (bare substrata) have properties in the relational way, and that the bare substrata, along with the properties they exemplified, are nonseparable parts of the whole (the substance) that has them. It could then be maintained that while a bare substratum has no constituents, it does (on an abundant theory of properties) have properties, and some essentially (i.e., the properties that pick out its nature). We think this scenario is possible. The notion of bare substrata is coherent and doesn’t require the rejection of an abundant theory of properties.

Even if bare substrata are perfectly respectable entities in their own right, there is a further question, however, regarding bare substratum theory. There are two reasons to think, as a stand-alone theory, that bare substratum views won’t work. First, even if the bare substratum has a nature, and thus some essential properties that ground its nature, bare substratum theory does not allow for structured wholes—everyday particulars—to have essential properties. All the complex/structured wholes’ properties are exemplified contingently by the bare substratum, even if (as we allow) the bare substratum has some essential properties that ground its nature. None of the complex whole’s attributes are intrinsic to the bare substratum; they are, as Michael Loux states, “always accidental to its bearer.” [14]  For those who think, as we do, that Rosie the chicken, for example, has some essential properties (being a chicken, being a  particular ) in addition to her accidental properties (being red, being five pounds, etc.), bare substratum theories in the end fall short. Second, the rooted-in or tied-to distinction employed to render the concept of bare substrata coherent pushes in the direction of a different theory of ordinary objects, a theory that allows for fundamental wholes that are in some sense metaphysically prior to their constituent parts (otherwise it is hard to make sense of the rooted-in locution). We shall explore this top-down approach to concrete objects below. Before we do so, it will be helpful to see if  bundle theory , in which properties are construed as tropes, might be able to unproblematically accommodate the distinction between essential and accidental properties for ordinary objects. If so, then one of the central motivations in favor of Aristotelian substances (to be discussed shortly) would be undercut.

Consider again our loveable pet chicken, Rosie. According to trope bundle theory, Rosie, the composite object, is a bundle of compresent tropes. The “is” in this last sentence is the “is” of identity: Rosie, the composite whole, is identical to her bundle of compresent tropes. But then, contrary to appearance, all of Rosie’s tropes belong to her essentially. If Rosie were to grow an inch in height, she would lose a trope (being ten inches tall) and gain a new trope (being eleven inches tall). The problem is that the new emerging bundle of compresent tropes is a numerically distinct bundle. Rosie no longer exists. In her place is a new composite object, Rosie*. Thus  bundle theory  cannot accommodate (accidental—i.e., nonessential) change.

In reply, defenders of bundle theory have developed accounts that allow the possibility of change. The so-called nuclear bundle theory distinguishes two kinds of bundling relations: nuclear and peripheral compresence. [15]  On this view, since we are exploring trope theoretic versions of bundle theory, Rosie is identical with the set of nuclear tropes—tropes that pick out her essence. In addition to her nuclear tropes, she has peripheral tropes standing in the peripheral compresence relation. These peripheral tropes can come and go, but Rosie, along with her nucleus, will survive the gaining and losing of peripheral tropes. Nuclear bundle theory is an improvement on so-called classical bundle theory since it allows the commonsense distinction between essential and accidental properties, as well as the possibility of survival through change. The cost, however, is in terms of an additional primitive; there are now two primitive building relations for the bundle theorist: nuclear compresence and peripheral compresence. [16]  While the benefit—compatibility with a robust theory of change—seems worth the cost, it does bring focus to one final problem for the bundle theorist, a problem that affects all versions (i.e., realist and trope nominalist). The problem has to do with the nature of the building relation itself.

According to Robert Garcia, a bundle theorist takes compresence to be an object-making relation. [17]  In the context of bundle theory, compresence is supposed to take something from one category—property—and make or generate (out of a plurality or bundle of properties) something in another category—object. But what is the resultant entity that compresence makes? The resultant entity, according to Garcia, is most plausibly understood to be a state of affairs: the compresence of being a chicken and being red results in the state of affairs chickenhood being compresent with redhood. The problem with this story is that it leaves a critical explanatory gap at the heart of bundle theory. The explanatory gap has to do with how a plurality of properties yields a distinct entity that is characterized by those properties. As Garcia puts it, states of affairs are entities “involving those properties,” but they are not entities “charactered by those properties.” [18]  In other words, consider the state of affairs chickenhood being compresent with redhood. The latter involves the properties being a chicken and being red, but the state of affairs itself is neither red nor a chicken. Since according to Garcia explanatory gap problems affect any version of the object-making relation, then on bundle theory “it is simply axiomatic . . . that properties go together to generate non-properties which are charactered in the ways specified by those properties; . . . object-making is an explanatory black box. . . . [It is] relatively weak with respect to its explanatory power.” [19]  The bundle theorist must take it as a given that properties go together to form objects. The inability to explain how this takes place is an ideological cost for the theory. Given  bundle theory ’s lack of explanatory power, as well as the problems associated with substratum theories, it would be wise to consider top-down approaches to concrete objects like Rosie.

We now turn to consider Aristotelian substances, a top-down approach to some concrete objects that views the whole as a fundamental unity of parts, properties, and powers.

Top-Down Accounts of Some Concrete Particulars

We are considering ordinary concrete objects like Rosie the chicken. One observation about Rosie and other living organisms is that she exhibits a kind of natural unity and fundamentality. Rosie, according to the Aristotelian tradition, is a  substance : a fundamental unity of parts, properties, and powers. As a fundamental unity, a substance “enjoys a certain naturalness or completeness or rounded-offness” [20]  not enjoyed by cars or piles of trash. We shall follow Aristotle in distinguishing between fundamental (natural) unities (substances) and nonfundamental (lesser or artificial) unities such as ordered aggregates or heaps.

In what sense are substances such as Rosie fundamental unities? One way to understand this is in terms of how Rosie, the composite whole, has her physical and metaphysical parts. As a substance, Rosie’s parts are nonseparable parts of Rosie. To say of some part that it is a nonseparable part of some whole is not to be understood as the claim that the part is essential to the whole; rather, it’s the claim that being a part of the whole is essential to the part. [21]  Consider this car’s spark plugs. These spark plugs are separable parts of the car. They are metaphysically prior to the whole they find themselves in. If the spark plugs were removed from the car, they would still be the same spark plugs; their nature and existence is indifferent to the whole of which they are a part. On the contrary, Rosie’s heart, as a part of a fundamental whole, is an inseparable part of Rosie. Rosie’s heart is defined in terms of the functional role it plays as part of the composite whole; take Rosie’s heart out of Rosie, and it is no longer a heart (or so we claim, following Aristotle). The heart, in some sense, survives its removal from Rosie. The thing that formerly was Rosie’s heart, when removed from Rosie, becomes a clump of matter. Yet that clump of matter is no longer Rosie’s heart, strictly speaking.

As fundamental unities of parts, properties, and powers, Aristotelian substances exhibit top-down, whole-to-part priority. Philosophers who endorse this picture reject the bottom-up approach to concrete particulars (of a certain kind) where wholes are built up out of more basic constituents. Rather, the substance, on this account, is a “particularized-nature” [22]  that has (nonseparable) parts, properties, and powers. The claim is not that substances have natures but rather that substances are natures. [23]  The essential properties of a substance flow out of or are determined by the kind of thing the substance is. The kinds of accidental properties a substance can have are also determined by its nature (e.g., a chicken can’t have the property being wise or being an English speaker, but it can have the property being red or being five pounds; the latter are accidental properties that come and go in chickens, guided by the stable patterns grounded in the thing’s nature). In this way, the unity of a substance can be explained in terms of final causation: the particularized nature is the final cause of its parts, properties (essential and accidental), and powers. Thus the natures function teleologically. As Loux explains, on Aristotle’s account of living organisms (i.e., substances), “Natures impose a top-down organization on the members of the relevant kind in the sense that the nature dictates a specific pattern of functional organization in which the various organic parts of a living being get their identity from the role they play in the overall functional economy imposed by the nature. What we have, then, is a single, unified form of being or life that spreads itself over the parts and subordinates them to the whole.” [24]

Thus it is possible, and we think plausible, to distinguish between a thing’s nature and its (essential and accidental) properties: a substance just is a particularized nature—a dog, a chicken, a geranium—that has properties, parts, and powers. [25]

As noted above, Moreland is a contemporary defender of Aristotelian substances. How does Moreland explicate our now-familiar sentence about Rosie? According to Moreland,

1. 1. Rosie is a chicken

can be analyzed as

1. 4. The property being a chicken inheres in Rosie as a constituent

and

1. 2. Rosie’s bare substratum (BSR) exemplifies the property being a chicken.

Following Aristotle, Moreland employs a constituent framework for understanding ordinary concrete objects. [26]  Statements 4 and 2 are understood as follows: The concrete material substance, the particularized nature, Rosie, has as a constituent property (Moreland is a Platonist regarding properties: properties are universals) being a chicken. [27]  Hence the property inheres in or is rooted in Rosie. Moreover, the property being a chicken is tied to or exemplified by a further constituent of Rosie, Rosie’s individuator BSR. [28]  Thus Moreland employs at least two “building relations” to join together a plurality of properties into a composite whole: the exemplification relation (or tie) and the inherence relation. [29]

Endorsing this nonreductive picture, at least for living organisms and perhaps for other concrete (material or immaterial) objects, has certain benefits. For starters, belief in Aristotelian substances accommodates many of our prephilosophical intuitions such as belief that Rosie, for example, is a fundamental thing, a deep unity, and capable of surviving accidental change.

The view is not without worries, however. Two prominent worries are worth noting. First, it is not obvious that living organisms have only nonseparable parts. The trouble for the Aristotelian view begins with things like atoms. [30]  It certainly seems that atoms are separable parts of living organisms. Take one of Rosie’s carbon atoms. It is now a part of her. Next week, after she scratches it off her face (she likes to rub her face on the side of the pen), the carbon atom will no longer be a part of her. Then it will be a part of the ground and will soon be absorbed into that weed. It seems that the carbon atom, contrary to the claim made by the Aristotelian, is a separable part of Rosie. The reply to this worry is simplicity itself. When carbon atoms exist independently of some whole, they are genuine Aristotelian substances. When they are incorporated into some other substance as a part, they cease being a substance in their own right and become virtualor pseudosubstances. [31]

If accepted, this reply surfaces the second prominent worry. It seems that the resultant account of living organisms doesn’t cohere with things we know from science. Science tells us that carbon atoms (among other atoms, molecules, and cells) do work in the organism. But if there are only “carbon-atomish parts,” [32]  how can they do the work science says they do? Patrick Toner offers the following reply: “Everything we want to say about the work that gets done in organisms because of carbon atoms can all still be said. We just can’t endow such claims with too much metaphysical baggage.” [33]  In other words, the scientist can truly and coherently talk about carbon atoms (and other atoms, molecules, and cells) within living organisms. What the scientist can’t say, at least as a scientist, is that those carbon atoms are substances when existing apart from things and are nonsubstances or pseudosubstances when existing as nonseparable parts of things. Those claims are philosophical claims. The upshot is that there is no obvious conflict between the things scientists want to say about living organisms and the kinds of things (Aristotelian) philosophers want to say about living organisms. [34]

Since there are benefits to believing in substances and nothing important needs to be given up along the way, we think it best to admit them into our ontology. [35]  Summarizing then, some particulars (living organisms, atoms, maybe more) exist as fundamental unities, whereas others (ordered aggregates and piles) are constructions out of more basic parts.

The Divine  Substance

Finally, we think the foregoing discussion helps us to better understand the divine substance. God is an immaterial concrete particular. A natural reading of Scripture suggests that God too has properties (e.g., being omnipotent, being omniscient, and being omnibenevolent) and other constituent parts (e.g., ideas, thoughts, volitions, a will, an intellect). One traditionally held view argues that this natural understanding of the divine is problematic. The idea is that if God has parts and properties, then in some sense God depends on those parts and properties for his existence and nature. If so, then God is not ultimate. Thus it is argued that God is simple, completely devoid of any metaphysical parts. This doctrine of  divine simplicity  was held by thinkers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas in order to secure God’s supremacy. [36]  Many today, however, think the doctrine of divine simplicity is itself implausible. [37]  Whether or not the doctrine of divine simplicity can be salvaged, we want to highlight a further benefit to the Aristotelian view. The defender of Aristotelian substance can secure God’s supremacy even if there is complexity within the divine being. If God, as we maintain, is an Aristotelian substance, then he is a fundamental unity, a particularized nature, and thus metaphysically prior to his parts. As creator of all distinct reality, God depends on nothing outside his borders for his existence and nature, and as an Aristotelian  substance , everything within God’s borders ultimately depends on God, the composite whole who is the final cause of his constituent parts and properties. In this way, we submit, Aristotelian substances can do important work not only in philosophy and science but in theology too.

Conclusion

In this chapter we’ve considered how to make sense of the concrete objects, or particulars, of our everyday experience. Some particulars are best thought of from the “bottom-up”: piles of trash and ordered aggregates like cars and computers are best thought of in this way, or so we’ve argued. Other particulars—atoms, organisms, God—are best thought of from the “top-down,” as substances or fundamental unities. In arguing for top-down dependency relations and whole-priority for some particulars, we are pushing back on the now dominant neo-Humean and reductionistic trend that prioritizes the microphysical over the macrophysical and the “scientistic” over the “manifest” image of reality.

1  A so-called universalist about mereology (from meros = parts, thus mereology= the study of parts and wholes) thinks any combination of concrete objects fuses or forms another concrete object, no matter how disparate. So my left toe, the moon, and that nail holding a board together at the White House form an object on this view. We ultimately side with common sense here and deny that such a nonnatural fusion forms a concrete whole. Still, for completeness we include things like piles or perhaps better, heaps of sand, which are at least somewhat naturally understood to be concrete objects even if the border between object and nonobject in those cases is somewhat fuzzy.

2  Michael J. Loux and Thomas M. Crisp,  Metaphysics : A Contemporary Introduction, 4th ed. (New York: Routledge, 2017), 85.

3  Recall from chap. 8 that a trope is a nonshareable property, but a universal is a shareable property.

4  The classic statement of this kind of scenario is found in Max Black, “The Identity of Indiscernibles,” Mind 61 (1952): 153–64.

5  For more on  metaphysical realism —the view that properties exist, many of which are  universals —see chap. 8.

6  For an explication of PCI, see Loux and Crisp,  Metaphysics , 95–96; and Robert C. Koons and Timothy H. Pickavance,  Metaphysics : The Fundamentals (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 110.

7  Loux and Crisp,  Metaphysics , 96.

8  This example assumes the relationalist view of space (roughly, the idea that space is constituted by the relations that obtain between objects). If the substantivalview of space is assumed (roughly, the idea that space is a substance in its own right, existing independently from the objects “in” it), the show is up for the bundle theorist, unfortunately. On the substantival view of space, an object is individuated by something like a bare substratum, a point in space-time that is a particular. Thus since the only constituents of objects according to bundle theory are properties, substantival conceptions of space entail the falsity of bundle theory (assuming  metaphysical realism  and PCI).

9  J. P. Moreland,  Universals  (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 140–57; Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism: A Clarification and Modest Defense,” Axiomathes 23, no. 2 (2013): 247–59.

10  For more on this worry, see Loux and Crisp,  Metaphysics , 103–4.

11  J. P. Moreland and Timothy Pickavance, “Bare Particulars and Individuation: Reply to Mertz,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 1 (2003): 1–13.

12  For a nice overview of the issues and options with respect to relational and constituent ontologies, see Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 104–25.

13  Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism,” 248.

14  Loux and Crisp,  Metaphysics , 108.

15  Peter Simons, “Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54, no. 3 (1994): 553–75.

16  Koons and Pickavance,  Metaphysics , 114.

17  In addition to compresence (also called collocation), Garcia explores other proposals concerning the nature of this relationship includingfusion and interdependence. See Robert K. Garcia, “Bundle Theory’s Black Box: Gap Challenges for the Bundle Theory of Substance,” Philosophia 42, no. 1 (2014): 115–26.

18  Garcia, “Bundle Theory’s Black Box,” 123. This problem also infects substratum theories: the product of properties tied to bare substrata, according to Michael Loux, are states of affairs. If so, the explanatory gap problem infects substratum theories too: the resultant entity that is the complex whole (the state of affairs) involves properties but is not charactered by those properties. See Michael Loux, “Aristotle’s Constituent Ontology,” in Oxford Studies in  Metaphysics , ed. Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 2:216.

19  Garcia, “ Bundle Theory ’s Black Box,” 125 (emphasis in original).

20  Barry Smith, “On Substance, Accidents and Universals: In Defense of Constituent Ontology,” Philosophical Papers 26, no. 1 (1997): 108.

21  Patrick Toner, “On Substance,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84, no. 1 (2010): 27.

22  Ross D. Inman,  Substance  and the Fundamentality of the Familiar: A Neo-Aristotelian Mereology (New York: Routledge, 2018), 20.

23  In the Aristotelian tradition, this nature is sometimes called the thing’s form, and the material parts of the whole are called its matter. On this reading, Aristotelian substances are fundamental unities of form and matter. This view is also called  hylomorphism , a term spliced together from two Greek roots: hylē (matter) and morphē (form). For contemporary articulations and defenses of hylomorphism, see Michael C. Rea, “Hylomorphism Reconditioned,” Philosophical Perspectives 25 (2011): 341–58; and Robert Koons, “Staunch vs. Faint-Hearted Hylomorphism: Toward an Aristotelian Account of Composition,” Res Philosophica 91, no. 2 (2014): 151–77.

24  Loux, “Aristotle’s Constituent Ontology,” 246.

25  For a defense of the distinction between natures and essential (and accidental) properties, see Paul M. Gould and Richard Brian Davis, “Where the Bootstrapping Really Lies: A Neo-Aristotelian Reply to Panchuk,” International Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 415–28.

26  See Moreland,  Universals ; Moreland, “Exemplification and Constituent Realism.”

27  Here is a possible objection: You say substances have nonseparable parts, but if Platonism is true, then properties are separable parts, necessarily existing abstract objects that can (and do) exist apart from the substances that have them. Solution: Strictly speaking, the nonseparable part of the substance is the property-instance, a complex entity with three constituents: the property, the exemplification relation, and the bare substratum. The property-instance is the nonseparable part of Rosie, even if the property/universal can and does exist independently (and is thus metaphysically prior to Rosie). Thus this fix, if one follows Moreland, is to say that substances have no integral separable parts (even if they have separable metaphysical parts) where an integral part is a spatial part of a substance (e.g., atoms, molecules, cells, my left arm, my head, the whiteness of my toe, etc.). For more on the possibility of blending Platonism about properties with Aristotelian substances, see Paul Gould, “How Does an Aristotelian Substance Have Its Platonic Properties? Issues and Options,” Axiomathes 23, no. 2 (2013): 343–64.

28  Not all defenders of Aristotelian substances appeal to bare substrata. Some, such as Loux, argue that substances just come individuated by virtue of being a member of a substantial kind. Others posit different individuators such as thin particulars, matter, regions of space-time, individual essences, or complexes of parts. For more on the problem of individuation for Aristotelian substances, see Loux and Crisp,  Metaphysics , 108–14.

29  For more on the idea of “building relations” that join pluralities of things into unities, see Karen Bennett, “Construction Area (No Hard Hat Required),” Philosophical Studies 154 (2011): 79–104.

30  Both worries discussed here are from Toner, “On  Substance ,” 42–46.

31  Toner, “On Substance,” 44. See also James D. Madden, Mind, Matter, and Nature (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 240–42.

32  Toner, “On  Substance ,” 44.

33  Toner, “On Substance,” 44. As Madden writes, “The elements [i.e., atoms, molecules, cells] are present in the sense that their essential capacities [i.e., their active and passive powers] have been adopted by the substance, what we call virtual presence as distinguished from substantial presence, but they strictly speaking do not exist as discrete parts of the substance.” Mind, Matter, and Nature, 241 (emphasis in original).

34  For a book-length defense of this claim, see William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and Nicholas J. Teh, Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (New York: Routledge, 2017). But see also Howard Robinson, “Modern Hylomorphism and the Reality and Causal Power of Structure: A Skeptical Investigation,” Res Philosophica 91, no. 2 (2014): 203–14.

35  In addition to the benefits cited in this section, Toner argues that the Aristotelian view of substance can solve philosophical problems such as the Problem of Material Constitution, the Problem of the Many, the Problem of Overdetermination, and the Problem of Vagueness. See Patrick Toner, “Emergent Substance,” Philosophical Studies 141 (2008): 281–97. To see how Aristotelian substances have been employed to solve problems regarding God’s relationship to abstract objects, see Gould and Davis, “Where the Bootstrapping Really Lies.”

36  See Augustine, Confessions 7.1.1; Augustine, City of God 11.10; Anselm, Proslogion 18; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

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Philosophy: A Christian Introduction

10Freedom and  Determinism

It is a datum of human experience that our actions seem to be free. For most, this is good reason to think that we are in fact free. Moreover, we tend to think this to be a good thing. We think it a good thing to be self-determiners of our actions, our character, and the story of our lives. This freedom grounds our moral ascriptions of praise and blame with respect to the actions, character, and life story of others and ourselves. “Free will” is what we call this ability or power to choose our actions, character, and life story. [1]  But there is a problem lurking below the surface with respect to free will. Consider the following dilemma:

1. If  determinism  is true, free will is an illusion.

2. If  determinism  is not true, free will is arbitrary.

Determinism —roughly, the idea that the future is fixed—is either true or not. Either way, free will seems to be impossible. The tension between claims 1 and 2 highlights what is often called the problem of free will. In this chapter we shall explore the problem of free will. We will be particularly interested in whether there are strategies that can be plausibly employed in order to avoid one or both horns of the dilemma highlighted by claims 1 and 2. We begin by considering  determinism .

Determinism

There are basically three versions of determinism: logical, theological, and physical (see fig. 10.1). In all versions of  determinism , the future is fixed by some determining factor. With logical determinism, the determining factor is the fact that propositions about the future are already true or false. Consider the act of reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on your twelfth birthday. One hundred years prior to your twelfth birthday, the proposition P, “You will read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on your twelfth birthday,” was either true or false. Assume that the proposition P was true. If P was true, then necessarily, on your twelfth birthday, you would read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. But if you had no choice regarding the truth of P one hundred years ago (and how could you?), then you have no choice about reading Harry Potter on your birthday either. By the time of your twelfth birthday, it was too late: you couldn’t prevent P from being true a hundred years earlier, and it is also too late to prevent what necessarily follows from the truth of P (namely, your reading the book on your twelfth birthday). While many remain unmoved by the threat of logical determinism, the task of deciding what exactly is wrong with the above line of reasoning has proved difficult, quickly moving into areas of fundamental metaphysics regarding the nature of truth, time, dependence, and explanation. [2]

Theological determinism moves not from prior truths about what you do but from either prior divine decrees or divine beliefs about what you do. [3]  An example of theological determinism grounded in the decrees of God is Calvinism, which endorses the claim that God is the sufficient cause of everything that happens in the world, including the good and evil actions of humans. [4]  In a later section we will consider an example of theological  determinism  grounded in divine beliefs about future contingent acts of humans. For the remainder of this section, we’ll consider physical  determinism .

Consider the event of my hand raising at time t1. According to physical determinism, the event of my hand raising at t1 is a consequence of the past history of the universe (prior to time t1) and the laws of nature. The past history of the universe and the laws of nature are the determining factors of the event of my hand raising. In other words, given the past and the laws of nature, I could not have done otherwise than raise my hand at time t1. At any time before t1, the future was fixed for me: it was determined that I would raise my hand at time t1. If my choices and actions are inevitable, given the past and the laws of nature, then I am not free. Thus the  argument  goes: if  determinism  is true, free will is an illusion (i.e., claim 1 of our dilemma is true).

At this point the defender of free will has two options. Such a person can deny the first part of claim 1 and argue that determinism is false or deny the second part of claim 1 and argue that freedom is compatible with determinism. Let’s consider the first part of claim 1. Is physical determinism true? Most philosophers think the answer to this question is an empirical matter, investigated by discovering the nature of the world. [5]  It certainly seems as if the world operates according to fixed laws of nature. Each day is followed by night, each spring is followed by summer, acorns fall to the ground when released by oak trees, and so on. The world seems to be a grand machine operating according to the exceptionless laws of classical (Newtonian) physics. Indeed, many philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thought classical science entailed physical determinism. [6]  However, this picture of the world is no longer taken for granted due to the advent of contemporary quantum mechanics and the possibility of probabilistic laws of nature.

If the world of elementary particles (the microworld governed by quantum mechanics) is in fact indeterministic, then physical determinism is false. While the issue is by no means settled, there seems to be somewhat of a consensus that the quantum world is indeterministic. [7]  Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that the quantum world is indeterministic. Does the indeterminancy of the quantum world ground the possibility of genuine freedom? It is not clear that it does. While quantum indeterminancy is relevant to elementary particles and their behavior, it is not obviously relevant to larger-scale physical objects such as the human brain and body (presumably the seat of our deliberations and actions). If somehow indeterministic microevents were “amplified” so that they could produce large-scale effects within the human brain and body, such effects, like their microbase, would also happen by chance. [8]  These large-scale effects, which result from indeterministic “quantum jumps,” are unpredictable and uncontrollable—more like a sudden twitch of the face or a random thought traversing through the mind than a responsible and hence free action. [9]  But then we’ve avoided, in this first attempt, the rocky heights of claim 1, only to be shattered on the crags of claim 2. It is time to consider the second option for the defender of free will with respect to claim 1: the idea that freedom is compatible with  determinism  and therefore not an illusion. We begin by considering the nature of freedom.

Freedom

What are the necessary conditions for genuine freedom? Intuitively, an action or choice is free if it is one of a number of alternative possibilities. So on this way of thinking, for example, I am free with regard to my choice to wear the blue shirt if it is the case that I could also choose the red, black, or green shirt instead. This intuition undergirds claim 1 of our dilemma. If the future is not “open” in any genuine sense, if there is no power to do otherwise, then there is no freedom. Many philosophers think this is the sine qua non—the essential condition—of freedom; without it, an action or choice is simply not free. In addition, many think freedom requires that each  agent  is ultimately responsible for their own actions and choices. The  agent  must be the ultimate source or origin of the action or choice and not merely a passive conduit of external causes that are outside the  agent ’s control (such as the past, the laws of nature, or the decree of God). If alternative possibilities (AP) and ultimate responsibility (UR) are necessary conditions for freedom, it is not difficult to see how  determinism  poses a threat to the possibility of freedom.

Not all, however, think freedom is incompatible with determinism. Some philosophers argue that there is no conflict between freedom and determinism. This view, known as  compatibilism , argues that claim 1 of our dilemma is false. A compatibilist who also thinks that we do have free will is called a soft determinist. In fact, the soft determinist often thinks freedom requires determinism. This is because, as claim 2 states, if determinism is false our actions and choices seem arbitrary, either uncaused, in which case the agent is not ultimately responsible, or caused (by reasons or desires) but not necessitated, in which case the agent acts or chooses irrationally or randomly. All that is required for freedom, says the compatibilist, is the “agent’s unhindered ability to do [or choose] what he wants.” [10]  As long as the  agent  does or chooses what this  agent  wants to do or choose, and does so without coercion, the act or choice is free even if determined.

But what about AP and UR? Does the compatibilist reject our intuitively plausible conditions for genuine freedom? With respect to AP, the compatibilist (ironically!) has options. One can either provide a Conditional Analysis of AP or deny that AP is a necessary condition for freedom. The compatibilist who thinks AP is true can offer a Conditional Analysis of “what I could have done otherwise” that is consistent with being determined. To say “I could have become an accountant instead of a philosopher” is analyzed by the compatibilist as “I would have become an accountant instead of a philosopher, if I had wanted to.” There is a sense, then, says the compatibilist, in which I could have done otherwise, even though my actions and choices are determined. And if the conditional analysis of “could have done otherwise” is acceptable, then it seems the compatibilist can also affirm an important condition of what it means to be free.

Unfortunately, many philosophers think the Conditional Analysis fails. If what I want is determined, then it doesn’t seem, after all, that I really have any alternative possibilities. Recall my act of hand raising at time t1. If at t1I want to raise my hand and nothing prevents me from doing what I want with respect to my hand raising at t1, then my act is done freely, according to the compatibilist. But at t1 there are no genuine alternative possibilities before me. Given my want, a want over which I have no control, I could act in only one way. What are needed, argues the incompatibilist, are genuine alternative possibilities at the time of the action or choice. But given determinism, there is only one alternative at the time of the action or choice, so the conditional analysis gives the wrong results. [11]

The second option, to deny that AP is a necessary condition for freedom, seems more promising for the compatibilist. As it turns out, there are powerful reasons provided by compatibilists for thinking the principle of alternative possibilities is false. In 1969, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt published an influential paper that ignited the debate over the truth of AP. [12]  Frankfurt gives various examples designed to show that someone could be responsible, and hence free, even if there was no ability to do otherwise. If these “Frankfurt-style counterexamples,” as they have come to be called, are successful, then AP is false; alternative possibilities are not required for moral responsibility or freedom. A typical Frankfurt-style counterexample is this: Suppose that Black wants Jones to kill Smith. If Jones kills Smith on his own, then Black will not intervene. If when the moment comes, however, it appears that Jones will not kill Smith (Black is an expert at reading people), then Black, who has secretly planted a chip in Jones’s brain, will press a button, manipulating Jones’s brain so that he will kill Smith. Suppose Jones wants to kill Smith and does so. Black remains in the background, and the chip in Jones’s brain is dormant. Did Jones act responsibly, and hence freely, in killing Smith? It seems that he did. We blame Jones because he killed Smith on his own and wanted to. But he could not have done otherwise. Black was ready to intervene if needed. Therefore, we have a counterexample to the claim that freedom requires AP.

There is considerable debate over whether Frankfurt-style counterexamples are successful. The defender of AP might argue that there are in fact genuine alternative possibilities in these cases. For example, while Jones does not have the alternatives of “kill Smith” or “not kill Smith,” he does have the alternative of “kill Smith on my own” or “kill Smith as a result of Black’s manipulation.” [13]  The defender of Frankfurt-style counterexamples in turn retorts that this “flicker of freedom . . . is too thin a reed on which to rest moral responsibility.” [14]  Alternatively, the defender of AP might argue that Frankfurt-style counterexamples presuppose the truth of determinism and thus beg the question against  indeterminism . [15]  If freedom requires indeterminism, then the only way Black can ensure that Jones will kill Smith is to act in advance to bring it about that Jones kills Smith (after all, Black cannot ensure that he reliably predicts Jones’s actions given indeterminism). But if it is necessary that Black actually needs to intervene to ensure that Jones kills Smith, then while it is true that Jones could not have done otherwise, it is also the case that Jones is not responsible. Thus moral responsibility (and freedom) does require AP if  indeterminism  is true. At this point, there seems to be somewhat of a stalemate between the compatibilist and the incompatibilist. It is not clear whether AP is required for freedom.

What is clear is that if compatibilism is true, we must give up UR as a necessary condition for freedom. [16]  Given compatibilism, an agent contributes to action—for example, I contribute to the action of raising my hand at time t1 by choosing to do so and moving my body in order to bring about the event of my hand raising—but the agent still is not the ultimate source of action. To be the ultimate source of action, nothing outside the agent guarantees the action. But, given physical determinism, the past and the laws of nature do guarantee the action. Thus the compatibilist requires that we give up on at least one, and maybe both, of the parts of our prephilosophical intuition regarding freedom. [17]

Incompatibilism

The incompatibilist argues that determinism is incompatible with freedom. That is, claim 1 of our dilemma is true. A powerful argument called the Consequence Argument has been advanced to show the incompatibility of determinism and freedom. [18]  Informally stated, the argument is as follows: Assume determinism is true. If determinism is true, my act of hand raising at time t1 is the necessary consequence of the past and the laws of nature. There is nothing I can do to change the past and the laws of nature; they are beyond my control. But if my hand raising at t1 is a necessary consequence of the past and the laws of nature, and the past and the laws of nature are beyond my control, then my hand raising at t1 is also beyond my control. Generalized, since all my actions are determined, it follows that all my actions are beyond my control. That is, if  determinism  is true, there is no freedom.

The key inference of the Consequence Argument is the Principle Beta: “If there is nothing agent S can do about X, and Y is a necessary consequence of X, then there is nothing agent S can do about Y either.” Principle Beta seems intuitively true. The compatibilist, of course, rejects the Consequence Argument and focuses attention on the viability of Principle Beta. One strategy, as we have already seen, is to offer a Conditional Analysis of the word “can” found within Principle Beta and the premises of the Consequence Argument: “You can do action A” means “You would do action A if you wanted to.” But as we have seen, many think the Conditional Analysis fails. This does not mean incompatibilism wins; there are other compatibilist counterexamples to Principle Beta on offer. Still, it is safe to say that the burden of proof is on the compatibilist to provide a viable account of “can” and “could have done otherwise” that either undercuts Principle Beta or refutes other premises of the Consequence Argument. [19]

Assume the Consequence Argument is sound, and thus determinism is incompatible with freedom. It does not follow that there is freedom in the world. There are three kinds of  incompatibilism :  hard determinism ,  hard incompatibilism , and  libertarianism  (see fig. 10.2). The hard deterministthinks incompatibilism and  determinism  are true and denies the reality of genuine freedom. The hard incompatibilist thinks incompatibilism is true and is unsure whether  determinism  is true or false, but either way denies the reality of genuine freedom. The libertarian (about free will, not politics) thinks  incompatibilism  is true and affirms genuine freedom. All accept claim 1 of our dilemma. The defender of libertarian freedom rejects claim 2. It is time to consider whether  indeterminism  is compatible with freedom.

The problem is that the denial of determinism isn’t enough to secure the reality of genuine freedom. J. J. C. Smart succinctly captures the worry. He argues that all events are the result of either deterministic forces (what he calls “unbroken causal continuity”) or chance. But if our actions result from chance, they are not under our control; hence, they are not free actions. [20]  The idea is that there is no “space” for genuine (libertarian) freedom between something being undetermined and its happening as a matter of chance or luck. What is needed is some “extra factor” to ground libertarian freedom. [21]  Many defenders of libertarian freedom have responded to this challenge by postulating agents as the needed “extra factor”: agents are the cause of undetermined yet free actions.

Agent Causation

Consider again the act of my hand raising at time t1. Suppose the children next door are playing backyard football, and a wayward pass results in the football hitting my raised hand at time t2. The event of the football hitting my hand at t2brings about the event of the football coming to rest on the ground at t3. This is an example of  event causation . But what about the act of my hand raising at t1? Is this also an example of eventcausation? Some think another kind of causation is at work in this act of mine, called  agent causation . On this view, I am a substance, a continuant that is the “first cause” of my action. As an agent cause, I am a self-determiner of my actions, character, and life story. Thus I am ultimately responsible (UR) and in many cases (if not all cases, depending on the role of character in influencing choices and actions) able to do otherwise (AP). As Roderick Chisholm puts it, “Each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved. In doing what we do, we cause certain events to happen, and nothing—or no one—causes us to cause those events to happen.” [22]

While agency theory is an attractive “extra factor,” a factor that seems to capture the way we experience our own choices and activity, many find the idea at worst incoherent or at best deeply mysterious. A prominent objection to agent causation is that it does not eliminate randomness: if the free actions of agents are undetermined, then given the exact prior circumstances, an agent could have chosen (say) A or B. But then it seems that the actual choice made by the agent is entirely random and arbitrary. Hence, it is argued, agent causation is incoherent. In response, the agent theorist points out that the reasons and purposes of an agent can play a role, as motivating factors, in the agent’s self-determining choices. Reasons and purposes influence the agent’s choices without causing them. I raised my hand at t1 because I wanted to; I was exercising (let’s say) in order to remain healthy. This reason (“I wanted to”) and purpose (“in order to remain healthy”) influenced my decision to raise my hand at t1. If so, then the choices and actions of agents are not random: they are done for reasons. [23]  Regarding the charge of mystery, while it can be granted that agent causation is to some extent mysterious, it is no more mysterious than the concept of causation itself (which, as Hume and others have taught us, is notoriously difficult to analyze). Moreover, the worry of mystery is mitigated by the fact that we are more familiar with agent causation, via introspection into our own experience, than we are with event causation. It is more basic; our concept of event causation is arguably parasitic on our experience as causal agents. Finally, while agent causation might be difficult to reconcile with naturalism and its preference for event causation, it fits nicely within a broadly theistic view of the world. If God exists and is the first cause of the physical universe, agent causation is one of the most basic facts of reality. [24]  We conclude: there are good reasons to think that agent causation is the necessary “extra factor” for libertarian freedom. [25]

In summary, if there is to be genuine (libertarian) freedom, the following four conditions must be met: (1) incompatibilism is true, (2) the agent is ultimately responsible for his or her choices and actions (UR), (3) agent causation is true, and (4) at least sometimes there are alternative possibilities (AP) (see table 10.1). [26]

Table 10.1. Necessary Conditions for Libertarian Freedom
Incompatibilism	Freedom is not compatible with being determined.
Ultimate Responsibility (UR)	The  agent  is the ultimate source of the self’s choices and actions.
Agent Causation	The  agent  is the “first cause” of one’s own choices and actions.
Alternative Possibilities (AP)	The  agent  “could have done otherwise” with respect to choices or actions (either at the time of the choice or action or at earlier “will-setting moments”).

God and Freedom

The debate over the problem of free will intensifies when the existence and nature of God are factored in. Consider the question of whether human freedom is compatible with divine foreknowledge. The problem is this: God, as traditionally conceived, is omniscient. From eternity past, God knows that I will raise my hand at time t1 (i.e., God foreknows the future). God’s past belief about what I will do at t1 is something over which I have no control. Moreover, since God cannot be mistaken in his beliefs, I will necessarily raise my hand at t1. But if I will necessarily raise my hand at t1, then I am not free.

In order to understand prominent responses to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, consider the following set of jointly inconsistent claims:

1. 3. God has exhaustive foreknowledge of the future.

2. 4. I have no control over God’s past beliefs about the future.

3. 5.  Determinism  is true.

4. 6. There is libertarian freedom.

In order to render this set consistent, one or more of these claims must be rejected. The compatibilist accepts claims 3–5 and rejects claim 6. Human freedom is compatible with being determined. However, many think theistic compatibilism is unacceptable. [27]  While it is difficult with all versions of compatibilism to account for human moral responsibility, theistic compatibilism seems to render God as the ultimate cause of all human actions and thereby the author of sin and evil. Moreover, it is not clear, on theistic compatibilism, that God desires all to be saved (contrary to 1 Tim. 2:4). The damned are consigned to hell by virtue of God’s sovereign decree, a decree issued long before they were born. As a result, it is hard to make sense of the claim that God is wholly good. Given the apparent insuperability of these worries, many theists will be attracted to libertarian accounts of freedom. [28]

The defender of libertarian freedom will, of course, reject claim 5, but in order to do so will also need to reject either claim 3 or claim 4 since, as we have seen, 5 is entailed by 3 and 4. The open theist rejects claim 3: God does not have exhaustive foreknowledge of the future. The future is “open”; God is a “risk taker” who in love willingly exposes himself to the real possibility of failure and disappointment. [29]  While there are important defenders of open theism, it has not garnered wide acceptance among traditional theists. [30]  This is partly because  open theism  seems to undermine the phenomenon of biblical prophecy and calls into question God’s ability to bring his plan for the world to fulfillment.

Others reject claim 4. The Molinist, for example, argues that in addition to foreknowledge, God possesses “middle knowledge”: knowledge of what libertarianly free creatures would do in any particular situation. [31]  Thus, given  Molinism  (named after Luis de Molina [1535–1600]), we do have a kind of power over the past; we have counterfactual power over God’s past beliefs. If I were to act differently at time t1 (e.g., and not raise my hand), God’s middle knowledge would have been different, and he would have foreknown that I will not raise my hand at t1. God’s past beliefs track our future choices, but (given Molinism) they do not determine (or cause) our future choices. [32]   Ockhamism  is another view that rejects claim 4. The Ockhamist solution, first put forth by William of Ockham (1285–1347), makes a distinction between hard facts (facts simply about the past) and soft facts (facts not simply about the past since they depend on something that happens in the future). With this distinction in place, the Ockhamist claims that while it is not in our power to affect hard facts about the past, it is in our power to affect soft facts about the past, and God’s past beliefs about what I will do are all soft facts. [33]  While  Molinism  or  Ockhamism  are not without problems, they represent attractive solutions to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom that account for our prephilosophical intuitions about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility, all the while preserving a high view of divine sovereignty, a robust doctrine of divine omniscience, and belief in the goodness of God.

Conclusion

In this chapter we’ve explored “the problem of free will.” The problem is multifaceted, requiring attention to the question of determinism, the nature of moral responsibility, the possibility of  agent causation , and the role of character in choice and action. Adding God into the mix further complicates things. While we side with the incompatibilist (and the virtue libertarian), we think there is freedom here to maneuver as a Christian and, as with many areas of philosophical and theological investigation, would encourage you to hold your position as thoughtfully as you can with intellectual humility and theological modesty.

1  Meghan Griffith, Free Will: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3.

2  For an excellent overview of the current debate over logical determinism (often called logical fatalism), see the introduction by John Martin Fischer and Patrick Todd to Freedom, Fatalism, and Foreknowledge, ed. Fischer and Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 1–38.

3  Fischer and Todd, Freedom, Fatalism, and Foreknowledge, 22.

4  Robert Kane, A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 148.

5  Kevin Timpe, Free Will in Philosophical Theology (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 8.

6  But for an argument that classical science does not entail physical determinism, see Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 3.

7  For a helpful discussion of the relevant issues in interpreting quantum mechanics, see Tim Maudlin, “Distilling Metaphysics from Quantum Physics,” in The Oxford Handbook of  Metaphysics , ed. Michael J. Loux and Dean W. Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 461–87.

8  Robert C. Bishop considers various routes for amplification such as Chaos Theory and Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics, in “Chaos, Indeterminism, and Free Will,” in The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 119–21.

9  Kane, Introduction to Free Will, 9.

10  Griffith, Free Will, 41. This is the view of the “classic compatibilist” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Hobbes and Hume.

11  Griffith, Free Will, 42.

12  Harry Frankfurt, “Alternative Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829–39. Frankfurt’s principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) focuses on moral responsibility, whereas AP above focuses on freedom. We are treating Frankfurt’s PAP as roughly synonymous with AP, since it is widely held that agents are morally responsible for their own actions or choices only if free.

13  Griffith, Free Will, 45.

14  John Martin Fischer, “Frankfurt-type Examples and Semi-Compatibilism,” in Kane, Oxford Handbook of Free Will, 289. This essay is an excellent overview of the debate about Frankfurt-style counterexamples. Fischer’s own view is that  determinism  probably does rule out alternative possibilities, but moral responsibility and freedom do not require alternative possibilities. This view is called semicompatibilism. Alternatively, some argue that even if AP (alternative possibilities) is false,  determinism  does rule out responsibility and freedom since freedom and responsibility require only UR (ultimate responsibility). This incompatibilist view is called source  incompatibilism .

15  This objection is called “The Indeterminist World Objection” by Kane. See Kane, Introduction to Free Will, 87–88.

16  For what follows in this paragraph, see Griffith, Free Will, 47.

17  For an overview of more sophisticated new compatibilist theories, see Kane, Introduction to Free Will, chaps. 9 and 10; and Griffith, Free Will, chap. 4.

18  The Consequence Argument has been ably defended by, among others, Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983); Carl Ginet, On Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Timothy O’Connor, “Indeterminism and Free Agency: Three Recent Views,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1993): 499–526.

19  For a nice overview of contemporary compatibilist responses to the Consequence Argument, see Tomis Kapitan, “A Master Argument for Incompatibilism?,” in Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, chap. 6. See also Peter van Inwagen, “Free Will Remains a Mystery,” in Kane, The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, chap. 7, for van Inwagen’s discussion of a successful counterexample to one understanding of Principle Beta and his fix. Van Inwagen remains convinced that Principle Beta is valid and the Consequence  Argument  sound.

20  J. J. C. Smart, “Free Will, Praise and Blame,” in Free Will, ed. Gary Watson, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 63.

21  Kane, Introduction to Free Will, 39.

22  Roderick M. Chisholm, “Human Freedom and the Self,” in Watson, Free Will, 34.

23  For a robust defense of agent causation, including reasons and explanations for actions, see Timothy O’Connor, “Agent Causation,” in Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on  Indeterminism  and Free Will, ed. Timothy O’Connor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), chap. 10.

24  For more on the difficulty of squaring agent causation with materialism, see J. A. Cover and John O’Leary-Hawthorne, “Free Agency and Materialism,” in Faith, Freedom, and Rationality, ed. Daniel Howard-Snyder and Jeff Jordan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 47–72. For an argument that libertarian free will is incompatible with naturalism, see Jason Turner, “The Incompatibility of Free Will and Naturalism,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87, no. 4 (2009): 565–87.

25  For a survey of alternative “extra factor” strategies for the defender of libertarian freedom, see Kane, Introduction to Free Will, chap. 5; and Griffith, Free Will, chap. 5.

26  Virtue Libertarianism, a view consistent with the above conditions for freedom, allows that an agent might not have genuine alternative possibilities at the time of an action. Still, the agent did, at some point in the near or distant past, have alternative possibilities and thus is responsible for the self’s character. Thus if we understand AP broadly as alternative possibilities at the time of a decision or action or some time in the causal past (at key “will-setting moments”), we can preserve the connection between alternative possibilities and responsibility and allow a role for character in our account of libertarian freedom. Virtue Libertarianism is a version of Soft Libertarianism, which is the view that alternative possibilities are not always required for genuine freedom (or not always required at the time of the action or choice). For more on Virtue Libertarianism, see Timpe, Free Will in Philosophical Theology.

27  See, e.g., Jerry L. Walls, “Why No Classical Theist, Let Alone Orthodox Christian, Should Ever Be a Compatibilist,” Philosophia Christi 13, no. 1 (2011): 75–104. In reply, see Steven B. Cowan and Greg A. Welty, “Pharaoh’s Magicians Redivivus: A Response to Jerry Walls on Christian Compatibilism,” Philosophia Christi 17, no. 1 (2015): 151–73. But see Jerry Walls, “Pharaoh’s Magicians Foiled Again: Reply to Cowan and Welty,” Philosophia Christi 17, no. 2 (2015): 411–26, and in response Steven B. Cowan and Greg A. Welty, “Won’t Get Foiled Again: A Rejoinder to Jerry Walls,” Philosophia Christi 17, no. 2 (2015): 427–42.

28  Arguably, the biblical position on human freedom is underdetermined. It may be that Scripture is consistent with both compatibilism and libertarianism (yet see the preceding footnote for Walls’s arguments that Scripture demands libertarianism). For an excellent discussion of how to understand the biblical teaching on the nature of human freedom, see Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), chap. 2.

29  William Hasker, “A Philosophical Perspective,” in The Openness of God: A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, by Clark Pinnock et al. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 151.

30  In addition to Hasker and other contributors to The Openness of God, important defenders of Open Theism include Richard Swinburne and Peter van Inwagen. For bibliographical information on key philosophical defenders of Open Theism, see the introduction to Fischer and Todd, Freedom, Fatalism, and Foreknowledge, 26–27.

31  For more on  Molinism , see the discussion in chapter 14.

32  For more, see William Lane Craig, “Middle Knowledge: A Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement?,” in The Grace of God and the Will of Man, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), 141–64.

33  For more, see Alvin Plantinga, “On Ockham’s Way Out,” Faith and Philosophy 3, no. 3 (1986): 235–69.

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Philosophy: A Christian Introduction

11Minds, Bodies, and Human Persons

Philosophers ask questions about all sorts of things. We wonder about the nature of reality, the existence of God, the possibility of gaining knowledge of the world, and the basis of our moral inclinations. But philosophers also ask questions about persons in general and what it means to be a human person in  particular . What exactly is a human being? What makes us unique? And how is it that we manage to continue existing across time? These might sound like bizarre or even unnecessary questions, but a casual reflection on our lives in the world suggests that these questions are highly important. What are we exactly? How are we put together? What is my relationship to my body? And is there more to me than just my body?

Questions like these have been a central topic of debate throughout the history of philosophy, but especially in contemporary philosophy. Generally speaking, substance dualist philosophers—such as Plato in the ancient world and the seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes—made a sharp distinction between bodies and souls (or minds), suggesting that they were two distinct kinds of things. In addition to this, Plato and Descartes argued that persons were to be identified with the soul (or mind) and not the body. This view has been widely held throughout most of philosophical history and continues to have able defenders to this day. [1]  Nevertheless, Plato and Descartes’s view has not been the only one. In the modern period, for example, philosophers like Locke and Hume rejected such substantival views, arguing instead that persons are nothing more than a cluster of psychological dispositions, beliefs, and memories. Still later, a long list of other philosophers from modernity to the present have argued that human persons are material beings through and through.

The purpose of this chapter is not so much to trace the history of these debates, as important as they may be. Rather, the purpose is to sift through the various topics, concepts, and questions that guide philosophers in the current discussion and to help students find their footing in such discussions. To do this, we will first lay out some basic terms and concepts at play in the conversation, highlighting some of the most important questions on the subject along the way. After that, we will offer a quick survey of the most common positions on the questions of human nature and constitution.

Basic Terms and Concepts

In one sense, terms like “mind,” “soul,” “body,” “person,” and “human person” seem to be rather straightforward and understandable. We use them every day with ease, and we know what they mean when people use them in general conversation. But other terms, like “substances,” are less familiar and can cause confusion. Furthermore, even with the more familiar terms like “minds,” “souls,” and “persons,” philosophers tend to use them in unique ways and with layers of nuance and technicality. Hence, given the nuance and technical nature of the philosophical debate around these issues, it is important to begin the discussion with a quick survey of how they are used in philosophical discourse.

Substances

The notion of “substance” is as old as philosophy itself and comes into play within the broader field of  metaphysics . It was first introduced by Aristotle, but similar notions can be found with thinkers before him. According to Aristotle, a  substance  is something that is composed of both matter and form. Consider a cup that you drink from. What is it that makes it a cup? Aristotle would describe the cup as composed of the material stuff of wood or heat-cured clay as well as the form that is imposed on the material to give it the structure of a cup. Only when the two come together do we have the  substance  of a cup.

As we saw in chapter 9, discussions about substances have evolved over time. Contemporary philosophers, for example, tend to think about substances differently than Aristotle conceived of them. In these discussions, philosophers typically focus their attention on the kinds of criteria that must be met in order to identify a thing as a  substance . According to Peter Simons, various factors have been suggested in recent history. Summarizing the discussion of Aristotelian  substance  from chapter 9, four distinct criteria seem to be most common. First, substances are often thought of as the bearers of properties. Consider, once again, Rosie the chicken. Notice how I mentioned that she is a chicken. That is to say, Rosie has the property of being a chicken. As such, she is the bearer of a property. Metaphysicians regularly note that this is a major feature of substances. They bear properties or qualities but are not themselves a property or quality of some other thing.

Second, substances can be conceived as allowing for individuation. In other words, substances allow for things to be individuated and distinct from other things. Consider the two chickens Rosie and Ronnie. They are two distinct chickens, not one. Each individual chicken is a  substance  that is distinct from the other, no matter how similar they appear to be physically. As substances they are individuated from each other.

Third, substances are the kinds of things that can exist on their own. This is not to say that they don’t have to have a cause for their existence. Rather, it is to say that their existence does not ride on some other thing such that if that other thing ceased to exist, then the  substance  would too. Consider the shadow of a tree. If the tree were not there to block the rays of the sun, then surely the shadow would not be there. In this case, the shadow cannot exist on its own. Substances are different since they are the kinds of things that don’t need some other thing to exist. Rosie sits by herself and does not depend on anything else around or beside her.

Finally, substances can be thought of as things that are capable of surviving changes. That is, a substance can sustain a change of some kind and continue to be what it is and continue to be the one that it was. [2]  Again, Rosie is helpful. When Rosie first hatched from her eggshell, she had yellow feathers. But as she grew and developed, she lost her yellow feathers and replaced them with reddish brown feathers. Did Rosie change in some way? Yes, of course. Yet is she still a chicken? Yes, of course. Is she the same chicken she once was? Again, yes, of course! These four criteria are helpful for our purposes in this chapter since much of the debate on the topic of human persons revolves around the validity of  substance dualism .

Minds and Souls

Setting forth the meaning of words like “minds” and “souls” in the current debates is a little more difficult. For starters, these terms can be used interchangeably by theologians and philosophers. This interchange is somewhat understandable since there is indeed much overlap in what is meant by each term. But they do not always mean exactly the same thing. Another difficulty comes from the fact that each term seems to carry a different level of meaning depending on the  particular  view held by the person treating the question. In other words, different theories of mind define minds differently; so also different views of the soul define souls differently. What philosophers and theologians mean by these terms depends at least in part on who is speaking and the view they espouse. Despite these tendencies, however, we shall offer a quick survey of the ways these terms are used.

So what are minds? At minimum, minds are entities that facilitate rational processes and process intelligent functions. But if this is all they are, then there is no reason to say that humans, animals, angels, or divine persons are all that could qualify as having minds. On this view, we could also include computers as minds. For most philosophers, however, this definition is not enough. Most go beyond this to include other important features in their conception of minds. Most views of the mind suggest that minds are thinking things, thus capable of reflection and metacognition. Regardless of what kinds of stuff minds are composed of—physical brains or spiritual substances—most philosophers throughout history have generally agreed that minds are the kinds of things that think, reason, and reflect. But this raises the question of what exactly it is that composes minds, and this takes us into another view of minds. As suggested above, while some believe that physical brains are capable by themselves of facilitating such metacognitive thought, philosophers like Plato, Descartes, and many more have argued that only immaterial substances could ever think. And so, for Plato and Descartes, minds are distinct from physical brains and physical bodies and are instead composed of something nonphysical. [3]  On this view, minds have a spiritual element over and above the brain, even if minds are intimately connected with brains.

With this in view, it is easy to see why terms like “mind” and “soul” are used interchangeably. Those employing the term “soul” typically use that term to refer to immaterial substances that are capable of thought, reflection, desire, intention, direction, and conscious experiences. As we shall see below, this is the view espoused by substance dualists. But once again, this is not the only way the word “soul” is used. For hylomorphists (Greek: hylē= matter; morphē = form), a soul is not actually a spiritual immaterial substance. Rather, it is the substantial form—the organizing principle that gives life and structure to the physical body—of the body that it gives life to. [4]

Persons and Human Persons

Most of us never wonder what it means to be a person. We don’t struggle to recognize and categorize the various beings we encounter into the proper categories in which they belong. When we meet a new dog, for example, we don’t wonder if it is a person. We recognize it as a dog and would likely dispute any suggestion by others that the dog is a person. But if we had to dispute the claim that dogs are persons, how would we do it? What does the dog lack that we possess? This question forces us to ask a broader question: What exactly is a person?

Some initial answers might go as follows. Perhaps persons are beings or entities with minds and therefore capable of thought and reflection as described above. While most philosophers would agree that having a mind is a necessary condition for persons, they would also tend to agree that it is not a sufficient condition for personhood. That is, having a mind may be a minimal criterion but would not by itself make something a person. In short, while animals like dogs clearly and significantly differ from human beings in their mental life, it is also the case that animals think. Perhaps, then, one might say that persons have conscious experiences like tasting sugar or hearing wind blow and that this is what makes us persons. But again, it surely seems as though dogs do the same thing. They clearly like certain kinds of foods and respond to the sound of our voices. It certainly looks as though they have some kind of conscious experience. Or perhaps one may say that the difference between us and dogs that makes it possible to say that humans are persons and dogs are not is that humans are just more intelligent. While this is certainly true, it again doesn’t seem to convey the distinction between animals and persons. It seems like there is something more.

Lynne Rudder Baker’s work is helpful on this point. She argues that persons have two distinct qualities that other nonperson animals don’t: intentional states and first-person perspective. The intentional-states criterion requires that, at minimum, a person has mental states like desiring, intending, and planning. So, for example, persons are the kinds of things that desire to get married, intend to do so, and then develop a plan to go about accomplishing this. But here again, this criterion is clearly not a sufficient condition for personhood since many animals demonstrate these capacities on a regular basis. Baker adds an additional condition that is the most important one for us to consider. According to Baker, a person is some kind of being that has first-person perspective. She says, “To be a person—whether God, an angel, a human person, or a Martian person—one must have the capacity for a first-person perspective.” [5]  She explains this further, saying, “The defining characteristic of person is a first-person perspective.” [6]  But what does this mean? In other words, first-person perspective requires more than me being able to have desires, intentions, and plans: it is a metacognition about myself that requires me to realize that it is I who has such desires, intentions, and plans. It is this first-person awareness of my mental states that seems to be the key for Baker’s account. Baker’s criteria seem to get at something that truly differentiates persons from nonpersons. Even still, we might add at least one additional component to our understanding of persons: moral inclinations. Persons are the kinds of beings that operate and act in moral categories. We have a sense of oughtness and responsibility that drives and shapes us. This is a major difference from animals and nonpersons. Thus we suggest that persons are beings with intentional states,  first-person perspective , and moral inclinations.

Notice that the above discussion is about persons in general. It does not distinguish specific kinds of persons. Because of this, we need to say something more with regard to what it means to be a human person. Nevertheless, what we have said thus far about persons in general will apply to the question of human persons, even if there is more to say about this specific case. In addition to being entities with intentional states, first-person perspective, and moral inclinations, human persons are persons who are related in some way to human bodies. The relationship of person to the human body is a matter of debate between the various positions. For materialist views, that relationship is very strong. On these views, the human person either is identical to the living human body or is at least constituted by the living human body. According to substance dualist views, however, the relationship to the human body is not as strong. On this view, the human person is just the soul/mind, and its relationship to the body is one of possession. In other words, the person is the soul and has a body.

Scores of views might be enumerated here, but three major views have tended to dominate the debates of the past and the present: (1)  substance dualism , (2) materialism and physicalism, and (3) some middle position between the first two that we might call  hylomorphism . We shall see the differences of these views as we go forward.

Substance Dualism

The most widely held view throughout philosophical history is called  substance dualism . This was the view of Plato and, later, Descartes. Plato, Descartes, and others who hold this view typically make two distinct ontological claims regarding human constitution. First,  substance  dualists make what we might call a stuff distinction claim. On this view, there are two distinct kinds of stuff with regard to human persons: physical bodies and nonphysical souls or minds. Bodies and souls are radically different from each other and must be thought of as fundamentally different substances. Being different substances, the body and the soul have different identities, bear different properties, survive different kinds of events, and can exist apart from each other.

Substance dualists, however, make an additional claim, and this is the one that is most essential to understand. The second claim is the person/soul identity claim: while there may be two distinct kinds of stuff, persons are distinct from their bodies and identical to their souls. In this claim, in other words, substance dualists contend that human persons are not their physical bodies. Human persons may have physical bodies, but they are not their bodies. Instead, substance dualists argue that human persons are souls that inhabit or possess their bodies. As J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae suggest in their account, “Human persons are identical to immaterial substances, namely, to souls.” [7]  Or as Stewart Goetz puts it, “One of the things that I, as an ordinary person, believe about myself is that I am a soul that is distinct from my physical (material) body.” [8]

Like other views, substance dualism has its strengths and weaknesses. This view, for example, seems to have a rather easy time accounting for things like conscious experience and personal persistence across time. Consider the experience we have when we taste a soda. In this case there clearly are particular kinds of physical events that take place on a chemical level on the tongue and in the mouth. With these, there are also corresponding brain events in the neural firings of the brain. Interestingly, however, the actual experience of tasting the soda doesn’t appear to be reducible to the physical events of the mouth or the brain event in the neurons. To account for the actual experience of tasting, it looks as though something beyond the physical body and brain is required. John Searle puts it this way: “Materialists have a problem: once you have described the material facts in the world, you still seem to have a lot of mental phenomena left over. Once you have described the facts about my body and my brain, for example, you still seem to have a lot of facts left over about my beliefs, desires, pains, etc.” [9]  Searle goes on to state that this problem has often led materialists to try to simply explain consciousness away or eliminate consciousness. But this is rather problematic since consciousness is so obviously real. Searle observes that getting rid of consciousness “is not an easy thing to do. It sounds too implausible to say right out that pains and beliefs and desires don’t exist, though some philosophers have said that.” [10]   Substance  dualists have no such problem. In their ontology, there is plenty of space for the mental life and conscious experience, and it seems far easier to account for such things with the existence of the soul.

Substance  dualists also appear to have an easier time accounting for the persistence of the person across time. Consider what happens in our experience. Take, for example, Bernie’s development and change throughout his life. Bernie was born in 1976, his body was twenty-one inches long, he weighed six pounds and thirteen ounces, and he had no hair. Of course, his body didn’t stay that way. It grew and changed over time as he ate food and his body metabolized it. By the time he was three years old, he was forty inches tall, weighed thirty-eight pounds, and had curly blond hair. The process of growth and development continued over time until he reached his full growth potential of five feet, eleven inches in height, weighed two hundred pounds, and had thick brown hair that was still a little curly.

Two things are interesting about this growth process. First, to put it roughly, his body experienced significant changes over time and was even composed of different parts along the way as his body metabolized food and discarded old parts that wore out. Second, despite these changes Bernie continued to be exactly the same person he was at the earlier moments of life, when his body was very different. That is, Bernie of 1976 and Bernie of today are exactly the same person. What allowed for Bernie to continue being Bernie even though his body was constantly changing? Substance dualists have a rather straightforward and easy answer to this question: his soul. No matter what one thinks about  substance dualism  in general, and despite what other materialistic answers might be given to the question of personal persistence across time, one has to respect the simplicity and elegance of the  substance  dualist’s answer to this question.

But, as is well noted throughout history,  substance dualism  seems to face a rather perplexing issue known as the mind-body interaction problem. This problem involves a seeming impossibility of immaterial minds interacting with the material body. If, as  substance  dualists say, bodies and souls are radically different substances, one being material and the other being immaterial, how is it that the two interact with each other? As we consider the nature of bodies and souls as described by  substance  dualists, our normal understanding of causation seems to go out the window.

Consider the case of two dominoes that fall in a causal sequence. Why is it that domino B fell? It fell because domino A caused it to fall when it fell and hit domino B. And how exactly did A’s hitting B cause B to fall? It caused it to fall by (1) coming into contact with B and (2) transferring energy from itself into B. Can this understanding of causation work for bodies and souls? It doesn’t seem so, since immaterial souls have no mass and do not take up space. Therefore the body and the soul (1) cannot come into contact with each other and (2) cannot transfer energy to each other. Or at least so it seems. Perplexing questions like these have caused philosophers over the centuries to reject substance dualism. In Descartes’s own time, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia raised this very concern: “I admit that it would be easier for me to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede the capacity to move a body and to be moved by it to an immaterial thing.” [11]  In other words, for Princess Elisabeth, the interaction problem was so significant that she found it easier just to believe that minds/souls were material things than it was to believe that an immaterial thing could interact with material objects. To this day, many philosophers continue to think that this concern is a defeater for  substance dualism . But, of course, defenders of the position disagree. The debate rages on!

Materialism and Physicalism

Generally speaking, in philosophical discussions of human persons the terms “ materialism ” and “physicalism” are synonymous and interchangeable. Some may make certain subtle distinctions between the two, but we shall use them interchangeably in what follows. Materialists take a much different approach to the question of human persons than substance dualists. Specifically, they reject the existence of immaterial substances like souls or minds. While distinct materialistic views share this belief in “material  monism ,” the actual details of distinct views can vary considerably. We won’t have the space to address all of them, but a sampling of some of the most common views can be offered.

Psychological Continuity Model

One notable view, adopted by Descartes’s contemporary John Locke (1632–1704), is called the psychological continuity model of persons. This view rejects the notion of immaterial souls/minds and affirms the idea that the “self” is a bundle or cluster of psychological properties composed of memories, beliefs, and psychological dispositions. Moreover, some  particular  “self,” or we could say more generally “person,” persists across time as long as there is psychological continuity across time. Locke famously says:

For as far as any intelligent being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present action; so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness it has its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to actions past or to come, . . . with . . . the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person, whatever substances contributed to their production. [12]

That is, as long as the psychological bundle of properties—beliefs, desires, dispositions, and so forth—continue to exist, the person continues to exist.

Eliminativism

In recent philosophical history, a more radical materialist ontology known as  eliminativism  has been adopted by some philosophers. This is a radical view because it suggests that the best way to handle mental properties and states is simply to deny them altogether, or at least to deny the vast majority of them. In this model, there are no such things as “beliefs,” “pains,” “desires,” or “feels.” Some advocates of this view would even say that there is no such thing as free will or the self. On this account of minds, there are only brains and brain events. This view is called  eliminativism  because it eliminates minds and mental properties entirely.

Technically speaking, by eliminating the mental, this view says that no one ever feels pain or tastes anything. As one might imagine, this is not a very popular view among materialists, simply because it seems so counterintuitive. Even though they universally reject immaterial substances, materialists generally recognize the reality of our experiences of pain, tastes, hopes, and joys. The eliminativist’s attempt to get rid of such things just doesn’t seem to work.

Reductionism and  Identity Theory

Other materialists offer a slightly less radical account of the mental. Reductionists, for example, do not deny that we feel pain, taste sugar, or have hope. Rather, they simply reduce those things, which are typically thought of as mental events or properties, to brain events or physical properties. That is, those phenomena are just, or are nothing but, physical properties or events in the brain. One very common expression of this is called  identity theory , which claims that minds and brains are identical to each other. To describe a mind is just to describe a brain. Hence our understanding of the mind is nothing more than our understanding of the brain. On the surface, it may seem as though the reductionists and identity theorists are saying exactly the same thing as the eliminativist, but they actually aren’t. Pete Mandik offers a helpful comparison:

The simple form of mind-brain identity theory says that pains are nothing but a certain kind of brain state—c-fibers firing. The simple form of eliminative materialism says that there are no pains—there are only c-fibers firing. Both theories agree that c-fibers firing exist. But do both agree that there are no pains, that pains do not exist? No, they do not, and this is the key difference between them. The mind-brain identity theorist’s statement in terms of “nothing but” may make it seem like the existence of pains is being denied, but this is not so. The “nothing but” claim—the claim that pains are nothing but c-fibers firing—is not telling us that pains are nothing at all. Instead, it is simply saying that pains are nothing additional, they are nothing beyond c-fibers. . . . In contrast, the eliminative materialist is outright denying that pains are identical to c-fibers firing. Pains aren’t identical to anything at all—they don’t even exist according to the eliminative materialist. [13]

As Mandik makes clear, reductionist views like  identity theory  have some similarities to eliminativist accounts of the mind, but  identity theory  is a less radical view that doesn’t reject the commonsense notion that pain and other such experiences are real. It does, however, reduce mental aspects of our lives to the physical events and components of our brains. In the end, it maintains that everything is reducible to, and thus explainable by, the physical.

Nonreductive Physicalism

A much more common materialist view, at least among Christian materialists, contends that the reductive account also goes too far. They may agree with their fellow materialist that immaterial souls do not exist and that only material substances do, but they reject the idea that everything—namely, the mental—is reducible to the physical. That is to say, on their view there may be only one kind of stuff that accounts for human beings on a basic ontological level, but that doesn’t mean that mental stuff is reducible to brain stuff. This  nonreductive physicalism  is a form of physicalism, since it holds that, ontologically, human persons are nothing more than living physical organisms. At the same time, however, it does not reduce the mental to physical objects, events, or states. On this view, the mental is something distinct from the physical. Nancey Murphy, one of nonreductive physicalism’s most able defenders, says that when applied “to the specific area of studies of consciousness, it denies the existence of a nonmaterial entity, the mind (or soul) but does not deny the existence of consciousness (a position in philosophy of mind called eliminative materialism) or the significance of conscious states or other mental (note the adjectival form) phenomena.” [14]  She then adds, “In brief, this is the view that the human nervous system, operating in concert with the rest of the body in its environment, is the seat of consciousness (and also of human spiritual or religious capacities). Consciousness and religious awareness are emergent properties and they have a top-down causal influence on the body.” [15]

Several features of Murphy’s description are worthy of comment. First, notice that this view affirms conscious experiences. It does so without reducing the content of conscious experiences, mental content, or mental properties to physical brain states. As often pointed out, this view holds that while there may not be a dualism of substances, there is a dualism of properties. In other words, this view rejects substance dualism but embraces property dualism. Property dualism claims that mental properties are distinct from physical properties and that mental events are distinct from brain events, even if they occur in conjunction with each other. In the philosophical literature, the kind of mental properties we have in view here are often referred to as qualia, which is the Latin for “qualities.” In our conscious experiences of things, we experience qualities like sweetness, redness, bitterness, or coldness. Thus there is something that it is like, a mental experience, that we possess in these moments. Property dualism affirms that mental properties and qualia are not reducible to physical brain events, but it does so while also maintaining physicalism.

Second, these properties are emergent in that they arise out of the complex neurological system within the brain. Third, once such properties have emerged, they exercise a downward causation on the lower systems of the brain and the rest of the body. This understanding of downward causation, sometimes called top-down causation, is best understood by setting it in contrast to bottom-up causation. As Murphy and Brown explain, bottom-up refers to “the assumption that behavior of an entity is determined by the behavior (or laws governing the behavior) of its parts.” [16]  By contrast, a downward-causation model suggests that “phenomena at some higher level or organization of a complex system had a downward causal influence on the events that were being studied at a lower level.” [17]

Functionalism

Another very popular view among materialist philosophers is known as  functionalism . Though functionalism is technically noncommittal about the number of substances involved in a human person, the overwhelming majority of those who hold this view come from the materialist camp. Generally speaking, functionalists think the “number of substances” question is the wrong question. In their view, the better and more important question is, What is a mind? And as their name implies, functionalists define minds as those entities capable of intelligent function, contending that there are any number of entities—humans, computers, machines, and so forth—that might qualify as minds. A helpful illustration of the functionalist conception of minds is the illustration of a hand and a fist. What exactly is a fist? It is a hand that punches. When the hand is balled up into a fist, no new thing comes into existence. Rather, all that happens is that the hand now takes on the function of punching. The same is the case with a brain. When it thinks, no new thing comes into existence. Rather, the brain simply takes on the function of thinking. As already implied, this view of minds raises questions about machines, robots, computers, and much more. Do computers have minds? Are they able to think? While some philosophers believe this is possible, others continue to resist the notion: it is not at all clear that computer processing comes anywhere close to achieving the same kind of thing humans do when we think, reflect, desire, and deliberate.

Constitutionalism

One final materialist view is worth considering.  Constitutionalism  is the view that human persons are constituted by their physical bodies even if they are not identical to them. Kevin Corcoran offers an illustration to help clarify the point: “For example, statues are often constituted by a piece of marble, copper, or bronze, but statues are not identical with pieces of marble, copper, or bronze that constitute them. Likewise, dollar bills, diplomas, and dust jackets are often constituted by pieces of paper, but none of those things is identical with the piece of paper that constitutes it.” [18]

Like other materialists, constitutionalists reject the idea of there being immaterial substances like souls. On a brute ontological level, there is nothing beyond the physical body that constitutes—or makes up—the person. Yet, interestingly, constitutionalists insist that persons are not the same thing as their bodies. To see this, consider the different ways that a single dollar coin can be instantiated and the kinds of events it can survive. If the coin were thrown into a hot fire and left for a sufficient amount of time, it would eventually melt, and the dollar would be ruined. And as constitutionalists would point out, the metal of the coin would survive in a different form, but the dollar would be lost. The metal that constitutes the dollar is such that it is able to survive the fire, but the dollar constituted by the metal is such that it cannot survive the fire. If the metal and the dollar have different properties—one has the property of being able to survive a fire and the other has the property of not being able to survive the fire—then the metal and the dollar are not the same thing. Similarly, constitutionalists argue against immaterial souls and claim that human persons are constituted by their physical bodies even if they are not the same thing as their bodies.

One additional observation is worth making about constitutionalism: there are two types of constitutionalism, type I and type II. Type-I constitutionalism, maintained by Corcoran, affirms that human persons have to be constituted by the specific bodies that they have. In other words, Dew has a particular body, and he must have the body that he has. Likewise, Gould has a particular body, and he must have the body that he has. On type-I constitutionalism, it would not be possible for Dew and Gould to switch bodies. But on type-II materialism, maintained by Lynne Rudder Baker, it is not necessary that we each have the specific bodies that we have. All that is required is that we each have some body or another. She says, “I find the traditional thought experiments about bodily transfer—for example the Prince and the Cobbler—utterly convincing when considered from a first-person point of view.” [19]  So then, while constitutionalists agree that human persons are constituted by their bodies, even if they are not identical to them, they differ over which body is necessary for a person to be thereby constituted.

So what shall we make of materialism in general? On the positive side, materialists have been helpful in forcing us to see the significance of the body as it relates to human persons. Our brains and bodies have much to do with who we are, what we are like, and what we do. Moreover, philosophers over the past several centuries have generally felt that materialism has a significant advantage over dualism in accounting for mind-body interaction. While dualism struggles to explain how it is that an immaterial mind interacts with material bodies, since they never touch and therefore cannot transfer energy one to another, materialism seems to have no such difficulty. Material seems to enjoy a parsimony and elegance of explanation that gives it a significant advantage over dualism. Yet philosophers have also noticed that materialism is not without problems of its own. In particular, while it might have a better explanation of mind-body interaction than does dualism, it seems to have great difficulty accounting for consciousness in general and qualia in particular. Thomas Nagel puts the problem rather bluntly: “Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to a comprehensive naturalism that relies only on the resources of physical science. The existence of consciousness seems to imply that the physical description of the universe, in spite of its richness and explanatory power, is only part of the truth, and that the natural order is far less austere than it would be if physics and chemistry accounted for everything.” [20]  Dualists are well aware of this difficulty and often make use of consciousness to critique materialism and to make arguments in favor of  substance dualism .

Hylomorphism

In earlier sections of this chapter we discussed the various categories of views that philosophers put forward regarding human persons. Substance dualists tend to make two distinct claims: (1) for “stuff distinction,” the view that there are two radically distinct kinds of things, or two distinct substances, and (2) for “person-soul identity,” the view that the person is a soul who has a body. By contrast, materialists and physicalists reject the immaterial soul and argue that (1) there is only one substance, which is physical, and that (2) human persons are identical to or are at least constituted by their human body. In this last section, we shall briefly describe one final category put forward by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a theory known as  hylomorphism .

Hylomorphism is sometimes regarded as a version of dualism and sometimes as a version of materialism. In contrast to the substance dualists who argue for two distinct substances, hylomorphists argue that there is but one substance: a human person. In contrast to materialists, however, hylomorphists argue that the one substance (human person) has two distinct causes: material and formal. The word “hylomorphism” comes from two Greek words: hylē (matter or, more literally, wood) and morphē (form). In the case of the human person, which is a substance, the person is constituted by the material body and the soul, which is the form (life principle or organizing and structuring  agent ) of the body.

There are at least two important things to notice about this account. First, it understands the concept of substances as it relates to human persons differently than both substance dualists and materialists. For substance dualists, a human body and a human soul are two distinct substances. Hylomorphists reject that notion and instead argue that there is only one substance: just the human person. For materialists there may be only one substance (the human body), and souls do not exist. Hylomorphists agree that there is only one substance but reject the idea that the substance is just the physical body. On this view, the substance of a human person is composed of both body and soul. Second, and flowing out of the first observation, hylomorphists contend for an ontological unity within the person. In other words, hylomorphists reject the substance dualist’s idea of “person-soul identity” described above, which says that persons are their souls and that they have bodies. In his discussion regarding human sensation, for example, Aquinas says, “Since, then, sensation is an operation of man, but not proper to him, it is clear that man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body.” [21]  According to hylomorphism, human persons are both body and soul essentially.

Philosophers and theologians vary on their opinions of hylomorphism. Those who embrace it think that it allows for a unified understanding of human nature while also affirming the biblical categories of body and soul. Critics, however, are more skeptical about the view being helpful, contending that it collapses back down into either materialism or substance dualism. As with dualism and materialism, the debates continue. [22]

Conclusion

In this chapter we have offered a survey of various discussions surrounding the philosophical debates about human nature. It began with an overview of the basic terms and concepts involved in the discussion and then summarized a variety of positions. It has been our aim to offer a survey only, leaving our readers to decide for themselves. We shall see some of these issues again in other chapters, and especially in chapter 15 as we take a look at the possibility of life after death. For now, let us simply note that various Christian thinkers have defended materialism,  substance dualism , and hylomorphism. For our part, we are inclined to think that minds and bodies are distinct kinds of things and that human beings are composed of both. As such, we are inclined to hold some form of either  substance dualism  or  hylomorphism .

1  See, e.g., J. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000); and Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

2  See David Robb, “Substances,” in The Routledge Companion to  Metaphysics , ed. Robin Le Poidevin et al. (New