Thomas draws on a key insight from Plotinus: an uncausable entity must not just be simple—the fact of its existence must also be simple. Any compounding of elements in this fact creates the potentiality for causation. For something to be uncausable in the relevant sense, there must be a metaphysical explanation for its lack ofContinue reading “In Search of the Uncausable”
Category Archives: Possibilism
Six Accounts of Actuality: Taking Stock
In earlier posts I have set out a range of solutions to the problem of accounting for the nature of actual existence: possibilism, actualism, and theories of predication. In this post, I would like to take stock. We have a total of six viable solutions to the problem of actuality, compatible with a broadly AristotelianContinue reading “Six Accounts of Actuality: Taking Stock”
Five Theories of Predication
How can possibilists account for actuality as an absolute feature of some possible entities and not others? As we saw, we cannot treat actual existence as another accident or accident-like entity, since such entities would have to be included in all possible worlds, whether actual or not. Instead, the factor that explains something’s actuality willContinue reading “Five Theories of Predication”
Two Problems with Actualism
Given the problems with Possibilism, it might seem that we should abandon possibilism and embrace actualism. Actualism certainly captures the right kind of inequality. Actual things are real, and there simply are no non-actual things. Absolutely everything is actual! At the same time, there could have been things that do not exist. Perhaps there couldContinue reading “Two Problems with Actualism”
Divine Simplicity: Possibilism
In article 4 of Summa Theologiae I, Question 3, Thomas reaches the crux of the matter: his claim that God’s essence is identical to His act of existence. This article provides Thomas with the crucial bridge from the Five Ways to the standard list of divine attributes (infinity, perfection, and so on), as well asContinue reading “Divine Simplicity: Possibilism”
A Three-Valued B Theory for Aristotelians?
Let’s turn our attention now to the B Theory, in particular, to what I’ve called the Mixed B Theory. We can suppose that all actual substances and accidents, past, present, and future, are combined eternally with acts of existence, distinguishing them from merely possible substances and accidents. Is such a model compatible with Aristotelianism? SeeContinue reading “A Three-Valued B Theory for Aristotelians?”
Time and Modality: Mapping the Territory
Are actuality and presentness perfectly analogous? David Lewis would say Yes, since both are the by-products of the linguistic phenomenon of indexicality. Non-actual and non-present things and events are as much part of the reality as the actual present. We’ll just call this view ‘Lewisian’. There’s two kinds of A Theorists who could agree withContinue reading “Time and Modality: Mapping the Territory”
The Analytic Thomist 