Contingency, Necessary Truths, Existence, Non-Existence And Ens Per Se
May 21, 2010
David Bentley Hart
In a response to a David Bentley Hart piece in FirstThings, a reader quotes Dr. Hart first:
The scientists fare almost as poorly. Among these, Victor Stenger is the most recklessly self-confident, but his inability to differentiate the physical distinction between something and nothing (in the sense of “not anything as such”) from the logical distinction between existence and nonexistence renders his argument empty.
And then writes:
I must admit, I don’t know the difference between “the physical distinction between something and nothing (in the sense of “not anything as such”) from the logical distinction between existence and nonexistence” either….
Still, I’d be grateful if someone could explain to me the difference between “the physical distinction between something and nothing (in the sense of “not anything as such”) from the logical distinction between existence and nonexistence”.
A reply was forthcoming, which I have elaborated on here and there:
The physical distinction between something and nothing (in the sense of “not anything as such”) differs from the metaphysical distinction between existence and nonexistence in the following, familiar way. It is only Hart’s erudition, otherwise so lovely, that obscures a point which everyone, except apparently the New Atheists, already implictly understands.
If I open up the refrigerator door and exclaim, “Hey, there’s no beer in the fridge!” I am making the purely physical claim that there is not anything such as beer in the refrigerator. The statement can be understood entirely in physical terms, as can other statements like “There is not anything such as tarragon in my omelette,” “There is not anything such as an elephant in my garage,” and so on. Examples could be multiplied endlessly. These statements seem to imply the modal claim that there “could” be an elephant in my garage, etc. Nothing we know about the world precludes the possibility; I am just making the matter-of-fact observation that, as it so happens, there is not.
The New Atheists are making a category mistake when they hold the statement “there is not anything such as God in the Universe” to be understood in the same sense as the examples given above, viz. a physical object (God) in a physical location (the Universe). We’ll get back to that in minute; but first let’s examine the metaphysical distinction between existence and nonexistence.
There is quite a lot of fine-grained philosophy that could be articulated here, but roughly speaking, to say in the metaphysical mood that “something exists” is just to say that that something is an “ens per se” (a being through itself), a necessary truth. The existence of these necessary truths is entailed by the fact of existence itself (which nobody can dispute). The technical sense of the term “being through itself” was intended to capture the fact that human beings do not require any other creature but only God’s concurrence to exist. Accordingly, a being through itself, or ens per se, is a substance. Since all physical beings are contingent, necessary truths can never be physical beings. So there is no sense in which any particular physical state of affairs implies anything about the existence or nonexistence of God.
In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of propositions that are neither true under every possible valuation (i.e. tautologies) nor false under every possible valuation (i.e. contradictions). A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false. Propositions that are contingent may be so because they contain logical connectives which, along with the truth value of any of its atomic parts, determine the truth value of the proposition. This is to say that the truth value of the proposition is contingent upon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it. Contingent propositions depend on the facts, whereas analytic propositions are true without regard to any facts about which they speak.
When a New Atheist conceives of God as a physical being occupying the physical universe, and then goes on to declare that since there is “not any such thing” (physical mood) as this God, then “God does not exist” (metaphysical mood), he is simply making a catagory mistake that no philosopher with even a modicum of respectability is entitled to make. This is just plain sophistry, as Hart rightly points out.
I think I can say, very slowly and carefully, that I may have learned something here.
A short video introduction to Dr Hart here.
You can speak as slowly and carefully as you like. I empathise with the way theists have had to retreat from the “magic man in the sky” concept in the Bible with its obviously physical characteristics. Us naturalists can only respond to the particular concepts that supernaturalists make up. But the intellectual dishonesty of theists who slip deceitfully between the physical and the supernatural when it suits is atrocious. (In Christianity, think Jesus – but then the Tanakh is enough to emblazon the hypocrisy of negating the physical.)
Regarding the existence of a magic man in the sky, you could just as well aks about evidence for any supernatural being that people have come up with. They all face the same problem. The evidence base is as absent for one as the other.
Other than just asserting that a god is necessary, what have you got? If something really is necessary, how does that “something” become an intelligence? And how can it be the answer anyway? After all, intelligence is complex, and that’s what we’re trying to explain – complexity. So you’ve got a bit of a problem. But of course you can just say that supernatural intelligence is simple – no evidence required, just an assertion. Furthermore, you’ve thrown the magic man out of the physical universe, but it’s meant (as do other supernatural beings) to act in the physical universe. Hence another problem for you – but of course it magically becomes no problem because you can gods can do that too. You, of course don’t need evidence at all, which unfortunately sinks your whole position – anything is true under those rules.
Maybe, if you think slowly and carefully, just maybe, you’ll start to realize that, as with fairies, you can’t get away with just making things up.
Atheists and philosophers are on very rational grounds saying that gods and fairies can’t be analytical propositions – how are they true simply by virtue of their meaning? An appeal to complexity sinks an intelligent first cause.
No philosophers, or anyone for that matter, with a modicum of respectability (and intellectual integrity) is entitled to say a god is an analytical proposition or assert that it’s a first cause (if one actually is necessary). It’s about time some fact was produced that even begins to lift gods, like fairies, above make-believe.
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