Being, Beings and God: A Few Thoughts on an Ongoing Debate

Dale Tuggy and William Vallicella have been debating whether God is a "being among beings" in a series of blog posts. Fr. Aiden Kimel has also weighed in. Tuggy posted a timeline of the debate, which appears to include everything except his most recent response.

It's an interesting debate for a number of reasons. It involves some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics and theology. The debate is timely, because it is often said that the new atheist movement falsely supposes that God is a being among beings. It is striking to see someone on the theistic side of the fence defend a flat sort of ontology against the radical ontological distinctions that have been traditionally drawn.

I won't summarize the debate. Interested readers should just read through it chronologically. But perhaps a few comments on Tuggy's most recent response are in order. 

Step 1: The Necessity of an Unconditioned Reality in the Argument for the Existence of God

This is the third post in the ongoing series presenting an argument for the existence of God. In this post we move into the argument itself, taking the first step toward an argument for the existence of God.

In this first step, I will show that at least one unconditioned reality exists. First, we will define what it means to be a conditioned or unconditioned reality. Then we will proceed to demonstrate that the assertion "there is no unconditioned reality" logically entails that there are no realities at all. In other words, the claim that there are no unconditioned realities is logically equivalent to saying that nothing exists.

Definitions: Realities Conditioned and Unconditioned

Thomas M. Cothran now writes at www.thomasmcothran.com. To view the rest of this post, please go to.www.thomasmcothran.com/existence-of-god-step-1/.

Introductory Remarks to An Argument for the Existence of God

It is commonly assumed that there is no compelling argument for the existence of God. However, the argument for the existence of God is more compelling than almost any other argument about the fundamental nature of reality. The existence of God is more easily and convincingly demonstrated than the existence of other minds; the independent or objective existence of objects; or the real existence of subatomic particles.

In order to back up these claims, it is necessary to set out an argument for God’s existence. This is the first in a series of posts setting out an argument for the existence of God. The argument I will present is a form of the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument is hardly new. It dates back to ancient Greece, and its characteristic reasoning was set out in the Medieval period.

The Problematic of Aristotle's Metaphysics

In order to orient the inquiry of the Metaphysics, Aristotle begins with the traditional opinions about the causes of things as a whole, and draws out their inherent difficulties. This, in part, follows from his general dialectical method: he does not begin with first principles and deduce from them a universal philosophy, but begins with the traditional beliefs that he has inherited. In one sense, this method takes into account the "thrownness" of the philosopher; that is, the fact that the philosopher is always historically situated and does not have immediate access to objective truths from which he can begin his philosophy. To start in any other way covertly imports one's inescapable intellectual inheritance into the inquiry, and allows this inheritance to be acknowledged and addressed up front. This gives Aristotle's dialectic an advantage over any deductive metaphysics, in that his starting points need not be incontrovertible.

Aristotle on Phusis

Aristotle does not limit motion to change of place, to growth and decay, to alteration, or the like; for motion, while it encompasses these things, cannot be thought of as one sort of motion that all other sorts of motion can be reduced to (i.e., motion cannot be alteration, while all other forms of motion can be reduced to alteration). Neither can the sorts of motion, added together, tell us what motion itself itself is -- any more than listing different virtues can answer the question of what virtue itself is -- and so Aristotle must give an account of motion that goes beyond listing different sorts of motion, or collapsing different sorts of motion into a single kind of motion; or to put it another way, Aristotle must explain motion as such.

In III:1 of the Physics, Aristotle defines motion as "the being-at-work-staying-itself of whatever is potentially, just as such" (201a10-20) and again as the "being-at-work-staying-itself of what is potentially, whenever, being fully at work, it is at work not as itself but just as movable" (201a15-30). The definition might be formulated in a more paradoxical (and troubling) way: motion is the activity of potentiality; and thus one might conclude Aristotle's definition directly contradicts itself, for actuality and potentiality ought to be opposed to one another--at least on the superficial reading.

Deliberative Imagination in Aristotle's On The Soul

Aristotle's treatment of the deliberative imagination is mentioned only very briefly in the course of his treatment of local motion. “The soul of animals,” says Aristotle, “is characterized by two faculties, the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and the faculty of originating local movement.” Having dealt with the former earlier in De Anima, Aristotle sets out to investigate the latter.

The first problem that presents itself is whether the originator of motion in an animal is a part of the soul or the whole soul. Given his earlier treatment of motion, it is evident that one part must be immovable and the other moved. Therefore the originator of movement is not the whole soul. But if the originator is a part of the soul, a difficulty arises--what are the parts of the soul? Different thinkers divide the soul differently, and different divisions may be made under differing aspects.