Divine Simplicity and the Theory of Action

TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 9 (1) (2024)
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Abstract

The modal collapse argument states that the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity entails that God necessarily creates whatever he creates and also that all creatures necessarily perform whatever actions they perform. In response to these objections, many authors argue that God’s willing to create this precise world and God’s knowing everything about individual creatures are at least partially extrinsic or Cambridge properties (i.e., the truthmaker of the respective propositions is, in part, a fact about something contingent other than God). This paper argues for a general view of action, in which such properties can turn out to be at least partially extrinsic. Section 1 explains why responding to the modal collapse argument requires that part of the truthmaker relating God to contingent facts be extrinsic to God, and that it is only in this part that contingency lies. Section 2 argues that this can be generally so in certain class of causal relations, where the agent remains intrinsically the same no matter the precise effect produced. Section 3 shows that free volition is at some level one of those relations, and section 4 offers some brief remarks about the difficulties that still remain in the case of knowledge.

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References found in this work

Simplicity and aseity.Jeffrey E. Brower - 2008 - In Thomas P. Flint & Michael Rea (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophical theology. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 105-28.
Modal Collapse and Modal Fallacies: No Easy Defense of Simplicity.John William Waldrop - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2):161-179.
On Two Problems of Divine Simplicity.Alexander Pruss - 2008 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 1:150-167.
Depicting Deity: A Metatheological Approach.Jonathan L. Kvanvig - 2021 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
The Flexibility of Divine Simplicity.Mark K. Spencer - 2017 - International Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2):123-139.

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