Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:23:54.026Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Classical theism and modal realism are incompatible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

CHAD VANCE
CHAD VANCE*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23185, USA
*
e-mail: cvance@wm.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The classical conception of God is that of a necessary being. On a possible worlds semantics, this entails that God exists at every possible world. According to the modal realist account of David Lewis, possible worlds are understood to be real, concrete worlds – no different in kind from the actual world. But, modal realism is equipped to accommodate the existence of a necessary being in only one of three ways: (1) By way of counterpart theory, or (2) by way of a special case of trans-world identity for causally inert necessary beings (e.g. pure sets), or else (3) causally potent ones which lack accidental intrinsic properties. I argue that each of these three options entails unacceptable consequences – (1) and (2) are incompatible with theism, and (3) is incompatible with modal realism. I conclude that (at least) one of these views is false.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 561 - 572
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Augustine of Hippo (417) ‘Letter 187 [to Dardanus]: on the presence of god’, in Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings, Clark, Mary T. (tr.) (Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 1984), 403–426.Google Scholar
Augustine of Hippo (426) Saint Augustine: The City of God, Books VIII–XVI, Walsh, Gerald G. & Monahan, Grace (tr.) (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, Inc., 2008).Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas (1274) Summa Theologica, pt. I, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, I , Pegis, Anton C. (ed.) (Cambridge MA: Hackett, 1997).Google Scholar
Cameron, Ross P. (2009) ‘God exists at every (modal realist) world: response to Sheehy’, Religious Studies, 45, 95–100.Google Scholar
Divers, John (1999) ‘A genuine realist theory of advanced modalizing’, Mind, 108, 217–240.Google Scholar
Jubien, Michael (2009) Possibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1979) ‘Counterpart theory and quantified modal logic’, in Loux, Michael J. (ed.) The Possible and the Actual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 110–128.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1983) ‘Postscripts to “counterpart theory and quantified modal logic”’, in Philosophical Papers, Volume I (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 40–46.Google Scholar
Lewis, David (1986) On The Plurality of Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing).Google Scholar
Lewis, Stephanie R. (2015) ‘Where (in logical space) is god?’, in Loewer, Barry & Schaffer, Jonathan (eds) A Companion to David Lewis (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), 206–219.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1974) God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (1985) ‘Self-profile’, in Tomberlin, James E. & van Inwagen, Peter (eds) Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company), 3–100.Google Scholar
Rosen, Gideon (2012) ‘Abstract objects’, in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 edition), <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/abstract-objects/>.Google Scholar
Sheehy, Paul (2006) ‘Theism and modal realism’, Religious Studies, 42, 315–328.Google Scholar
Sheehy, Paul (2009) ‘Reply to Cameron’, Religious Studies, 45, 101–104.Google Scholar