Is the Idea of Immanent (i.e., spatio-temporally located) Universals Incoherent?: A Response to An Objection Against Immanent Realism

            Immanent Realism is the view that there are such entities as Universal properties and that these Universal properties are multiply instantiated in various (qualitatively identical) concrete instances or tokens of a specific Universal. It's natural contrast (perhaps) is the view that, while there are Universals, they are not tied to concrete entities or instances for their existence but exist as abstract objects in a mode of existence distinct from the way in which concrete objects exist -- a view also known as Platonism.

            One objection to Immanent Realism is as follows. We have an everyday conception of a property or an attribute as an entity that a thing can gain or lose with the passage of time. But Immanent Realism makes the existence of a property dependent on its having concrete instances. And this does not seem right. For example, take the following illustration: 

One might imagine that a primitive craftsman, Tab, is making the world's first table. Tab says, "I want to make a thing that will have a reasonably flat surface, parallel to and about three feet from the floor of the cave. But I want most of the volume underneath the surface to be open, so we can pull chairs up close and sit down without smashing our knees against something ... So I'm going to hew a fairly thin slab out of this huge dead tree trunk, and I'm going to put three or four narrow struts or "legs" of equal length near the edges, spaced equally apart, and perpendicular to the place of the slab.[1]

Call the concept of the thing that Tab has described the concept of a table. Once Tab succeeds and brings the first table into existence, so, too, it seems, does the property 'being a table' come into existence. Now, so the objection goes, it seems that there are a few things to note about the state(s) of affairs in which both the table and the property 'being a table' come into existence.         

          According to Immanent Realism, the property of 'being a table' did not exist when Tab first announced that he was planning to make the first table. Now, imagine that there is a second craftsman, Fab, who decides to imitate Tab and also create a table. To those who ask what he's doing, Fab responds, "I'm making a table," and follows this with a description like the one I cited above. Now, also according to Immanent Realism, the property of 'being a table' did exist when Fab made his utterance about making a table. But Fab was able to give a description of a table in the same way that Tab did to people who did not understand it. The question now is this: does the "word" table, as it occurs in Fab's utterance, express the property of 'being a table' or not? If it does not, then it seems odd that Tab and Fab could explain their utterances in precisely the same way that they did. If it does, then it's hard to see what the Immanent Realist needs properties for in the first place. For Tab didn't need the property 'being a table' to make a table. Nor did he need it in order to make sense of sentences containing the word "table."

            My response to this objection is that it confuses the concept of a table with the property 'being a table.' The property of 'being a table' is a property that something has, I say, if and only if the thing in question actually exists and it also adequately matches the concept 'table.' To show that the two are different, first note that there is obviously either some entity that is the concept of a table or the Nominalist equivalent of the concept of a table that itself is not an entity. (Since for the moment I'm simply assuming that Realism is true, I will politely nudge aside the Nominalist alternatives.) Now, if the concept of a table is itself something with the property 'being a table,' then the concept of a table is itself a table. But clearly it is not -- a concept, in the sense of a Universal entity or a Nominalistic equivalent, is not possibly something that is a table. Nor is anything that is a subjective mental concept a table: very clearly, my concept of a table is not itself a table. 
            But perhaps the objector has nothing too serious riding on the expression of the property 'being a table' as "being a table." Perhaps the relevant property in question could be better expressed -- or at least just as effectively -- through the signification "having tableness," this property being that in virtue of which a table is a table. If understood in this sense, the objector can once more press the worry from earlier: a thing is a table only if it has the property 'having tableness.' But something has tableness only if it actually exists. So, if there are no actually existing tables, there is no property of 'having tableness.' And therefore if there are no tables that exist, there is no property of 'having tableness.' However, the argument so far is incomplete in the sense of being invalid. In order to be valid, it would require an extension of the premise <but something has 'having tableness' only if it exists> to <but something has 'having tableness' only if it both exists and is a table>. 
            However, taken in this way, the premise is not obviously true. If not further clarified, it would imply that the universal property of which all tables are concrete instances is itself a table, which seems obviously wrong. Rather, one would want to say that the universal itself just is the property 'having tableness.' But, then, I think, one can simply point out that the argument fails for an unrelated but more serious reason.  For if one argues that a thing is a table only if it has the property 'having tableness,' one cannot also consistently argue that something has the property 'having tableness' only if the thing actually exists and is a table. For, then, the argument is patently circular. And if all this I have said is right, I conclude that it's false that one requires the property 'being a table'  either to make meaningful statements about tables or to produce tables. 

            This still leaves important questions as to (i) how one can form subjective personal concepts of a table that correspond in varying degrees to the concept of a table and (ii) what sort of ontological status the concept of a table is said to have, but I will mostly leave these questions for another time. I will say, however, that I think it's unproblematic to ground the concepts of possibly existing objects in actually existing ones. For example, nothing that went into Tab's forming a (personal) concept of a table required Tab's forming a (personal) concept of things or ideas that aren't derived from the actual world. 
          In this case, one might further pursue the following strategies: (1) argue that the concept of table exists in virtue of the existence of the varying constituents of that concept or (2) argue that the concept of table is an artificial concept. That is, it is something that humans in some sense create based on either (a) things that actually exist or (b) the various powers that some actually existing things have for bringing about effects that are not active features of those things) (e.g., a piece of flint has the power for bringing about fire, even though it is not actually on fire) or (c) a combination of (a) and (b).

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[1] Michael Jubien, Contemporary Metaphysics: An Introduction. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997), 49.

What Does Aquinas Mean that God's Essence is Identical to His Existence?: A Response to Kenny and A Short Exposition of Aquinas's Interpretation of Divine Simplicity

            In one of his many books on Aquinas, Anthony Kenny offers a critical examination of Aquinas's doctrine that God's essence is identical to his existence. Following several attempts to try to make sense of Aquinas's doctrine, Kenny tentatively concludes in one section of his inquiry that the kind of being Aquinas has in mind is being in the sense of 'common being.' That is, the kind of being that Kenny seems to have in mind is being in the very general sense of "anything that is anything."[1] Or, in other words:

'Esse,' so understood, seems to be either a predicate variable (to say that x is, in this sense, is to say that for some F, x is F, i.e., that there is some predicate true of F) or else a disjunction of predicates (to say that x is, in this sense, is to say that x is either F or G or H ... and so on through the list of predicates).[2]

If understood in this sense, Aquinas's doctrine seems to be in trouble. For, as Kenny rightly points out: "...being, so understood, would be too thin and universal an attribute to be the essence of anything."[3]

            Kenny argues, however, that Aquinas offers a different view of God's being or esse in the Summa Theologiae, claiming that Aquinas here interprets being in the sense of 'esse without distinction.' In this new sense, Kenny claims that Aquinas means 'being' in the sense of either 'esse which specifies nothing further' or 'esse which permits no further specification.' 'Esse which specifies nothing other,' he continues, is just esse in the sense of common being, in the sense of meaning previously discussed. 'Esse which permits no further specification,' however, is the unique being or esse that belongs to God.

            Having located Aquinas's identification of God's esse in this sense, Kenny proceeds to criticize it on the grounds that:

... if the esse which denotes God's essence is like the esse which is predicable of everything, except that it does not permit the addition of further predicates, then it is a predicate that is totally unintelligible.[4]

The "if" in the antecedent of Kenny's conditional seems to me especially important in trying to clarify what exactly Aquinas means. One reason not to think that by 'esse which permits no further specification' Aquinas simply means "esse which is predicable of everything, except that it does not permit the addition of further predicates," is because the distinction would seem arbitrary and thus question-begging, having no other substantive difference between it and the alternative distinction by which to ground or to justify the distinction. And, as perhaps a general rule, if a philosopher of Aquinas's stature seems to say something absurd to this degree, one might consider rechecking one's work.

            But a more substantive reason for regarding 'esse which permits no further specification' in Kenny's sense as a mistaken reading is that it also ignores the fact that, in addition to identifying God's being as identical with his essence, Aquinas also, through his adherence to Divine Simplicity, identifies God's essence as identical with his power, his wisdom, etc. And in no obvious sense is 'power' the same thing as 'common being' in the sense Kenny has identified. Thus, in what follows, I will try to offer an alternative reading of 'esse which permits no further specification' which makes better sense of the term than Kenny thinks it has.

            In the process, I will also offer a general discussion of Aquinas's understanding of Divine Simplicity, and tie it together with the sense of 'esse without further specification' that I take Aquinas to have in mind. In this last respect, I believe one way in which one might arrive at some understanding of Aquinas's doctrine of God's existence being identical with his essence is to begin from where his first 'proof' for the existence of God ends: the First Way. My intuition here is that the correlative notions of act and potency can shed light on what Aquinas has in mind. My starting point is Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, and though there are differences in Aquinas's presentation of the material from that found in his Summa Theologiae, I do not believe the differences will have a significant impact on my discussion. I choose it merely because Aquinas seems to offer more explicit detail and argument for the views he advances than those that appear in the ST.       

1.2 From Prime Mover and Beyond

                One consequence of Aquinas's First Way, that is, from his argument that God is Prime Mover, if successful, is that in God there is no potency whatsoever. For "the being whose substance has an admixture of potency is liable not to be by as much as it has potency; for that which can be, can 'not' be."[5] What Aquinas means to say in this passage I think is that insofar as a thing has potency in some respect, it is possible for that thing, with respect to that with which it has potency, to be corrupted. One consideration that makes this reading likely is that the passage in question is located immediately following Aquinas's argument that God is eternal (in the sense of being everlasting, or such that he is never corrupted), based, in turn, on the view he takes himself to have established that God is immovable.

            Indeed, following the line I have just quoted, he argues that:

But God, being everlasting, in his substance cannot not-be.

And if something is everlasting, he continues to argue, it is thereby immutable because (a) what is everlasting is not in time, and (b) what is not in time cannot possibly change. And if something cannot possibly change, moreover, it is by definition immutable. Now change, for Aquinas, is simply the reduction of something from a state of potency with respect to F to a state of actuality with respect to F.

            But God is not in potency with respect to anything F, because God is perfectly actual with respect to any perfection F* and not in potency with respect to anything that is not a perfection (e.g., God is not potentially orange). Hence, in God there is absolutely no potency whatsoever. From this, he also concludes that God has no matter, because anything with matter, he argues, is necessarily in potency with respect to something.[6] He also believes his arguments concerning act and potency with respect to God show that there is no composition in God. For, he argues, several things that come together to form the parts of one thing are united if and only if the things are potentially united with respect to that union.[7] But God has no potency at all, or so Aquinas has argued; therefore, God cannot be composite.

            Having attempted to establish this last conclusion, Aquinas moves on to  argue that if something has no composition, it is necessarily identical with its own essence. His argument here is as follows:

Since everything possesses its own essence, if there was nothing in a thing outside its essence all the thing is would be its essence. But, if something were not its essence, there should be something in it outside its essence. Thus, there must be composition in it.[8]

Aquinas's argument seems to be this: necessarily, everything that is has an essence, i.e., that in virtue of what it is. But if something is composed or has composition, it has something that is not its essence in addition to its having its essence. Now it is not the case that God has any composition. Therefore, God has nothing but his essence. And if God has nothing but his essence, it follows that God just is his essence or is identical with his essence.

1.3 God's Essence is Identical with His Existence

            The last portion of Aquinas's argument I think is the most difficult to follow, and is the part that most directly concerns what I want to say in response to Kenny's objection. From the conclusion that God just is his essence, Aquinas concludes that God's existence is identical to his essence. In the Summa Contra Gentiles, Aquinas offers several arguments for this last point, but the one that seems to shed the most light on what he has in mind is the following:

Being, furthermore, is the name of an act, for a thing is not said to be because it is in potency but because it is in act. Everything, however, that has an act diverse from it is related to that act as potency to act; for potency and act are said relatively to one another.[9]

Taking in mind what Aquinas has said with respect to God's being purely actual such as to have no potency with respect to any perfection F, his reasoning in light of the last passage seems to be this. If something is such as to be only potentially F* such that F* designates existence, it follows that it lacks existence. For, obviously, something exists only inasmuch as it is actually F*. But if something's act of F* is distinct from that thing's essence, it follows that this thing has composition insofar as there is something added to its essence, namely, its act of existence or its act of F*. Necessarily, however, God lacks any composition. So, Aquinas concludes, there is no distinction between God's essence and God's act of existence.

            Another way of illustrating what Aquinas has in mind can be got at by examining the way in which he thinks that anything except God must possess F*. If a creature, say, an angel, possesses F*, it possesses F* if and only if it receives F* from God. God, in other words, brings the angel from being only potentially F* to being actually F*. That is, God conjoins the angel's essence to an individual act of existence, the act of which itself originates from God. But because the angel's individual act of existence is something "external" to its essence, it is a fortiori something accidental or incidental to its essence; it is possible for the angel not to exist. As it is God and God alone who causes the angel's individual act of existence, moreover, it is God and God alone who can take away its individual act of existence.

            Now, it is not the case, Aquinas thinks, that God possesses existence or F* in a merely incidental way like the angel possesses it. Rather, he thinks God possesses F* such that God necessarily possesses it. But, then, F* cannot be something external to God's essence, in the way that it is external to the angel's essence. Therefore, he argues, it must be included in God's essence. But Aquinas has also already argued that there can be no composition in God's essence; hence, he concludes, because there cannot be composition in God's essence, there cannot be anything in God's essence. So, therefore, God's existence is the same as his essence.

            Yet another way of trying to make sense of what Aquinas is trying to suggest, perhaps, is found in another argument he gives for the conclusion that God's essence is the same as his existence:

Every thing, furthermore, exists because it has being. A thing whose essence is not its being, consequently, [exists] not through its essence but by participation in something, namely, being itself. But that which is through participation in something cannot be the first being, because prior to it is the being in which it participates in order to be.[10]

The point I believe Aquinas is trying to make here is simpler than his (admittedly complex) language seems to suggest: either God exists through himself or he exists through something else. Now, if he exists through something else, he is not the First Being. But, Aquinas clearly believes, this is false. So, he concludes, God exists through himself. The basic idea behind his reasoning on this point, therefore, might not be as convoluted as it seems. But, admittedly, it is still not clear what Aquinas means in saying that God exists through himself.

           

1.4 Further Clarification

            So, Aquinas's reasoning that God must exist through himself might be clearer than previously, but this still does not give clarity to what God's existing through himself means. One first step towards an attempt to elucidate Aquinas's meaning here might go as follows. By the law of excluded middle, it is necessarily true that either it is the case that there is something that exists or it is not the case that there is something that exists. Now, clearly, the former is true. On one end of the scale of things that exist, it is safe to conclude that there is at least one thing that exists. On the other extreme, grouping together every 'thing' that exists, one may designate the totality of 'things' that exist as "the universe." However, Aquinas believes, on the basis of his arguments for God's existence, that the universe is brought into existence by something else, namely, God. And, clearly, if this is true, God cannot be part of the universe, because God cannot be the cause for his own existence. So, in addition to the universe, there is that in virtue of which the universe exists -- God.

            For the sake of convenience, then, one can divide all things that exist into one of two sides of a dividing line: God on one side; and the universe on the other side, the relationship between the two being, among other things, that of cause to effect. However, this means, in Aquinas's terms, that every 'thing' but God has the cause of its existence in God, i.e., it participates in existence inasmuch as it participates in God's existence. But God does not, Aquinas insists, participate in anything in virtue of which he receives his being.[11] Nor is there any 'thing' such as existence or being, whatever this would mean, that exists without God or which has its existence prior to or apart from God. So God, he concludes, exists through himself. More than this, God just is his existence.

            Nor, Aquinas thinks, is being or existence somehow incidental to what God is insofar as God is pure act, this conclusion having been proved, Aquinas believes, from the First Way. For, in arguing that in God there are found no accidental qualities, Aquinas argues that:

For being cannot participate in anything that is not its essence, although that which is can participate in something. The reason is that nothing is more formal or more simple than being itself, which participates in nothing. But the divine substance is being itself, and therefore has nothing that is not of its substance.[12]

For Aquinas, simplicity,[13] it seems, is a perfection insofar as simplicity indicates a lack of potency. But something lacks potency only inasmuch as it is in actuality or act. And if something lacks potency with respect to something F, then it follows that it is actually F. Moreover, if it lacks potency full stop, it is fully or purely in act. So God is simple, then, for Aquinas, because God is purely actual or pure act. But, as Aquinas also argues in this passage, God is simple because he is being, i.e., because he is his own being. Now, is it possible that God's being simple in these two senses is merely a coincidence? It intuitively does not seem very likely. And if this reading is right, it allows one to elucidate, at least in part, Aquinas's claim that God is his own being or his own existence, which, admittedly, is not at all an easy claim to understand, in terms of his claim that God is pure act, which is perhaps somewhat easier to understand. In particular, it offers a way to try to make sense of Aquinas's claim that God exists through himself.

            Moreover, it seems plausible to try to interpret Aquinas's claim that God cannot have any accidents in light of the idea that this would necessarily lead to the actualization of some potency in the divine substance. And this, in fact, is what one should expect Aquinas to say if my reading of him up to this point is correct. And indeed this is the very point Aquinas argues in the passage following the one I recently quoted, and this makes sense especially if one parses actualization in this context as something's giving being to the divine substance.

            That this method I have proposed for elucidating Aquinas's notion of existence or being as it pertains to God's essence is appropriate can perhaps be made more evident from a lengthy passage from Aquinas's disputed questions On the Power of God:

What I call being, esse, is the most perfect of all: and this is apparent because the act is always more perfect than the potency. For a certain form is not understood to be in act unless it is said to be. For humanity or fieriness can be considered either as latent in the potentiality of matter or in the power of an agent, or even just in the mind; but by having esse, it actually comes to exist. From which it is clear that what I call esse is the actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections. And to what I call esse nothing can be added that is more formal, which determines it, in the way that the act determines the potency: for esse, taken in this manner, differs essentially from something to which an addition can be made by way of determining.[14]

Within the first sentence, Aquinas explicitly links being and act through God's possessing act in the sense of possessing a perfection; in fact, he claims that it is "the most perfect of all." And he follows this a few lines later with the claim that esse is "the actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections." Esse, then, in the sense in which God is his own esse, is the fullest and most perfect expression of act, and it is in this sense that Aquinas wants to identify God as perfectly in act.

            That is to say, there is absolutely no potency in God, because no 'thing' could act upon God such as to determine God in some way or another, as this would be to determine God's 'being' in one way or another: "for esse, taken in this manner, differs essentially from something to which an addition can be made by way of determining." And no addition can be made to God because God possesses being in the fullest sense possible. One way God's fullness of being is made apparent, moreover, is his lack of potency with respect to the various perfections that characterize God. God does not have power; God simply is his power. God does not have wisdom; God just is his wisdom.

            Thus, in response to Kenny's questions concerning Aquinas's doctrine that God's existence is his essence, one can safely respond that Aquinas does not mean esse without further specification as general esse (the kind that everything has) plus an arbitrary restriction against further specifying the God's esse. Rather, what he means is something like being or esse in the sense of being without restrictions or limits that something has in virtue of its having been specified as one particular sort of being, which, by its nature, is necessarily restricted on the limits of its power, knowledge, goodness, and even its being. As Te Velde expresses the point:

The 'esse' of God is not received in a distinct essence, but is fully determined through itself. In God the esse is, so to speak, completely 'essentialized' according to the full potential of its perfection so that God contains in his simple 'esse' all the perfections of things.[15]

God, then, possesses the fullness of being in a way which creatures necessarily lack. Having arrived at some idea of God via the knowledge that he is pure act, Aquinas proceeds to eliminate any and all imperfections that restrict the fullness of God's 'esse.'

            And in a sense, the perhaps clearest way of getting a clear idea of what God must be, for Aquinas, is to conceive of God's esse as such that it necessarily lacks any potency whatsoever. As Te Velde again expresses the point better than I can:

Let us take as an example the notion of divine infinity. As such, in-finity means the negation of being finite, or being limited ... The other kind of infinite -- the negative infinite -- has the character of perfection: it consists in the negation of the limitation a particular form undergoes by being received into something indeterminate and potential.[16]

Understood in this sense, I contend that Kenny's complaint does not succeed against Aquinas because it misconceives what he means by 'esse which permits no further specification.'

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[1] Anthony Kenny, Aquinas. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 57.

[2] Kenny, 57.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Kenny, 58.

[5] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, translated, with an introduction, and notes by Anton C. Pegis, F.R.S.C. (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 100. 

[6] Aquinas, 101-102.

[7] Aquinas, 103.

[8] Aquinas, 116.

[9] Aquinas, 120.

[10] Aquinas, 120-121.

[11] As Te Velde notes, there is the concept of esse formale in Aquinas, or the common principle of being which is shared by all beings. But, as Te Velde also notes, this is not the sense of being that Aquinas is trying to communicate when he claims that God is his own being. (Rudi Te Velde, Aquinas on God: The Divine Science of the Summa Theologiae. [Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006], 87.)

[12] Aquinas, 120.

[13] Simplicity in the sense of a lack of composition.

[14] The translation and my first coming to learn of the passage itself are from Te Velde, 87.

[15] Te Velde, 85.

[16] Te Velde, 82.

Philosophy of Religion: An Old Topic or A New One?

"Anyone going to a major university library and searching for books on "philosophy of religion" would think that this area of philosophy was quite new. By all appearances, it would seem that the philosophy of religion emerged sometime in the middle of the twentieth century and then blossomed rapidly over the period between then and now. Yet this appearance would be deceiving. Philosophical reflection on religious themes has been a central part of philosophy from the time of its origin to the present. In the Western philosophical tradition, this is due at least in part to the fact that most philosophers in the West either have been theists themselves or have written in intellectual climates dominated by theistic presuppositions. Yet while philosophy of religion is not itself new, what is new is the attempt to tease out some of the questions that philosophers raise when discussing religion and to treat them together under a single heading" (Michael J. Murray and Michael Rea, 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,' Preface).

Murray and Rea make a good point I think, viz., the near perennial treatment of religious questions in connection with Western philosophy, at least up until fairly recently (relative to the scope of Western philosophy as a whole). But I don't know if I agree with them on the last point they raise concerning the grouping together of all of the common themes associated with religious questions and treating these questions as a systematic whole. For, arguably, certain theistic traditions were doing this long before the advent of the twentieth century, under the broad label of 'theology.' Though, of course, the degree of philosophical attention that theologians typically gave to religious topics would vary from one period to another, depending on the intellectual inclinations and interests of the theologians in question.

Then again, this potential disagreement is not, I think, all that substantive -- just something of a quibble of mine. And if there is a serious dispute concerning nomenclature, what irks me is not the name per se, but the perhaps implicit suggestion, provided by the name, that philosophy is somehow only incidental to theology. That is, as if theologians could, in fact, do serious theology without the proper philosophical tools in place. (In this case, the name 'philosophical theology' fares hardly much better.) It might be true that philosophy is only the handmaiden, but, as one recent philosophical theologian quipped, the Queen herself historically did not even get out of bed without the handmaiden's assistance.

Classical Natural Law Theory, A New Argument, and the Perverted Function Argument: Discussion, Criticism, and Some Suggestions

            The following gives a reconstruction of a new argument in support of classical natural law theory (CNLT) based on some remarks from a friend, followed by a discussion of that argument. CNLT, one might provisionally say, is an attempt to provide an ethics based on a specific metaphysical account of human nature, namely, that offered by St. Thomas Aquinas. Such an ethics would be especially appealing to theists based on its attempt to provide a reasoned account of morality that is largely consistent with ethical views that many theists tend to accept. (As for the friend in question, I have not asked for his permission to publish his name, so I will not do so without further notice.)

            This context in mind, the point of the new argument (I think) is to try to sidestep a recent dialectical impasse (among some friends) with respect to what one might call the perverted function argument (PFA). Roughly, the PFA holds that an action that involves one of one's bodily organs or functions is wrong only if one's action actively frustrates that organ or function. For example, the proper function of one's sexual organs, one might say, is procreation. So anything that deviates from this function is sufficient for perverting that function, i.e., making it morally wrong. The argument, however, has not been overly persuasive to many; hence, the rationale for trying to establish CNLT on independent grounds from the PFA.

            Following my presentation of the new argument, I give a walkthrough of the argument that tries to be as charitable as possible. Following this, I point out a difficulty in the argument that proponents of CNLT will want to meet. The word difficulty, here, moreover, might be a bit of a misnomer. A better word would be 'challenge': I don't think any of the reflections I offer here are crippling or damning to CNLT. But they do point out an area in which the theory possibly needs further development.

            That said, one can lay out the argument as this: 

(1) Assume that someone S has a nature N (assumption).

(2) If S has a nature N, then (in the absence of natural or intentional obstructions of that nature) S will have features (x) in virtue of N (premise).

(3) If S has (in the absence of natural or intentional obstructions of that nature) some features (x) in virtue of N, then S ought to have N (premise).

(4) S ought to have (x) (1-2, 3 MP).

(5) If S ought to have (x) and S can freely choose to have (x), then S ought to will to have (x) (premise).

(6) S can freely choose to have (x) (assumption).

(7) S ought to will to have (x) (4&6, 5 MP).

Premises (1) through (3) depend on a specific understanding of what it means for some individual 'thing' to have a nature; 'nature' in this context meaning a thing's essence. It's not a bad idea, then, I think, to cover this in a little more detail. A widely accepted view of essences that many contemporary philosophers accept is that an essence is simply the collection or set of properties that some individual 'thing' has such that this thing could not exist without its possessing every single property in this collection. So, for example, Barrack Obama could exist without the property 'being President of the United States,' since, for one, Barrack Obama did in fact, once exist without being the President of the United States. Thus, Barrack Obama has the property 'being the President of the United States' non-essentially or contingently.

            He does not, however, possess the property 'being a human being' in the same way that he possesses the property 'being the President of the United States.' For, it seems very plausible to hold, Barrack Obama could not exist without having the property 'being a human being,' whereas he could, in fact, exist without his being the President of the United States. In contrast, then, to his having the property 'being the President of the United States,' Barrack Obama has the property 'being a human being' essentially or non-contingently. And the assortment of all the properties that Barrack Obama possesses in this way are what make up Barrack Obama's essence in the sense of his individual essence.

            A more metaphysically perspicuous and elegant way of describing someone's possessing an essence in this sense is to advance the claim that an individual person S's essence consists in the properties that S possesses in all the possible worlds in which S exists. Typically, in fact, contemporary defenders of essences in this sense will make recourse to the conceptual machinery of possible worlds for expressing and arguing for this view. But, for my purposes here, one can safely leave talk about possible worlds in the background.

            Returning to the view of essences in question, then, what it means for Barrack Obama to have an essence, on the account I'm currently discussing, is for Barrack Obama to have a collection of properties such that in the absence of even one of these properties, Barrack Obama does not exist. That is, Barrack Obama's having these properties are necessary for his existence. And, therefore, if Barrack Obama ceases to have one of these properties, he thereby ceases to exist.

            It is still an open question, however, whether the possession of these properties are sufficient for Barrack Obama's existence. For, even accounting for the existence of all the properties that are a part of Barrack Obama's individual essence, it is still an open question as to what it is that has these properties. Presumably, it is Barrack Obama himself. And this, in turn, presupposes a subject that is the bearer of these properties, i.e., the subject who is Barrack Obama. A further question on this note is: what exactly is the relationship of a subject to its properties?

            There are a number of options by which one can try to answer to this question, but one important idea that seems plausible and such that one should try to include it in one's answer to the question is that a subject is ontologically prior to its properties. And it is this putative desideratum that motivates the concept of nature or essence that premises (1) through (3) rely on. (Another reason for advancing an account of essence in this second sense is that it seems wrong to identify an individual thing with its essence. Barrack Obama has an essence; he is not identical to his essence.)

            In this second way of thinking about essences, a subject's essence is not a collection or set of properties. Rather, a subject's essence is that in virtue of which an individual subject is one kind or sort of thing as opposed to another kind of thing. And, one would want to say, the concept of a kind is itself not further subject to metaphysical dissection or analysis.

            On this second interpretation of essence, then, there is a fundamental distinction between a property and a kind. Using the language of universals to give a clearer idea of what I have in mind, one might say that any individual instance of a kind is a subject that has that specific kind as its essence. It is a kind (in the sense of the universal of that kind) of which individual instances of that kind are subjects. In contrast, instances of attributes (in the sense of the universal of that attribute) exist only if they exist in a subject. A subject may necessarily (in the sense of metaphysical necessity) have a number of properties or attributes such that the subject does not and cannot exist without these attributes, but these attributes are nonetheless not part of its essence in the second sense of an essence I have described.

            This, of course, is not to say that an individual thing's kind has no important connection to its properties. It is only to say that it is not the individual thing's properties that determine its essence, but the other way around. Instead, an individual thing's essence determines the its properties in two senses. In one sense (a), an individual thing's essence determines its properties in the sense of determining the possible range of properties it possesses. A human being, for example, is not the sort of thing that is possibly flat, but it is the kind of thing that is possibly tan. It is this feature of a kind or an essence in this second sense, moreover, that is represented by premise (2). In another sense (b), an essence or a kind also necessitates, one might say, what features a thing possibly has. Thus, a thing's kind also determines what features it actually has. An essence or a kind, one should say, necessitates what features a subject has. (The sense of necessity here, of course, is not that of metaphysical necessity -- more on this in a moment.)

            Or, to be more precise, a subject has those features that follow from its kind or essence only if there is not anything that intentionally or naturally obstructs those properties from being a part of that subject. That is, as long as there is not anything that prevents that subject from acquiring the properties that it would otherwise necessarily have in virtue of its having a specific essence or kind. It is this sense, then, that an advocate of the argument wants to insist that a subject ought to have those features that follow from its nature. For example, a human being who is not (naturally or intentionally) obstructed from attaining adulthood and the full powers of human reason that are a part of that nature will necessarily reach adulthood and acquire those powers. And, therefore, in this sense, such a human being ought to reach adulthood and acquire the full powers of human reason.

            One final thing to note with respect to this second sense of 'essence' is the importance in distinguishing between two senses of 'necessity' regarding an individual subject's essence. In one sense, a thing has the essence it has necessarily in the sense of metaphysical necessity; it is not possible for this very subject to exist without having this essence (in the sense of its having its specific kind or nature). It is true, of course, that the individual in question could also not exist if it lacked certain properties that the thing has in virtue of its essence. For example, a cow could not exist without the property 'having four stomachs.'

            But this sense of 'essential' is distinct -- and, I think, clearly so -- from the other sense of essence I have in mind: that in virtue of which an individual subject is the kind of individual subject that it is. And even here there is a strong sense in which a thing's nature or essence has a deeper claim than its properties to being essential to it in the first sense. For, at least on the view of essences in question, a subject's attributes are ontologically posterior to their subject in the sense that they depend ontologically on that subject. Before any attributes can exist, that is, there must first be a subject that is the bearer of these attributes or that in which these attributes exist.

            In a second sense of necessity, on the other hand, a thing's essence makes it necessary that, in virtue of that individual thing's essence, the individual thing will have certain features and lack others. The sense of necessity in this second sense should, I think, be understood as natural necessity. For, clearly, in the stronger sense of broadly logical necessity (otherwise known as metaphysical necessity), there is nothing about a subject's essence that logically implies that it will have (or lack) such and such features. (However, if a thing's essence fails to naturally produce certain features in its subject, the thing will, at some near future time or at the present, cease to exist -- in this sense, then, one might say that certain metaphysically necessary features follow from the thing's essence.) Thus, taking necessity in this sense, a human being will necessarily develop certain powers of reason and a cow will necessarily grow four stomachs in virtue of their respective natures, unless there is something that obstructs their development of these features.

            Now, my purpose in drawing out the meaning of 'nature' in this second sense is twofold. First, it provides a way in which to interpret the term 'essence' as it is used in premises (1) through (3). Second, it helps to forestall a likely objection that one might raise, namely, that the sub-argument in premises (1) through (4) is circular. The apparent rationale behind this claim is that it seems that the sense in which one ought to have features (x) (i.e., properties) associated with one's essence is not any different from that in which one possesses any features of one's essence -- that is, essentially.[1] Or so this is a likely way in which one might read the argument if one has something like the first interpretation of essence I discussed in mind.  

            'Those essential features associated with one's essence are those features anyone with that essence ought to have' is blatantly circular. For that which is to be explained -- one's essential features -- is the very thing one uses to explain those features that one ought to have. What is worse, the account, on this reading at least, is also tautological. 'What one ought to have are essential features' becomes something like 'the essential features one ought to have are essential features.' 'Essential features,' however, in the sense of features that follow or "flow" naturally from one's essence in the second sense I discussed, is both non-circular and seemingly informative, in the sense of not being a tautology.

            Now, as for the argument itself, accepting 'nature' in this sense, one has perhaps good reason for accepting premises (1) through (3). And having made this acceptance, (4) follows without further ado. The remaining question, then, is what one should think about the remaining three premises. There are some good reasons one might have for not accepting (6). For one, it does not seem very plausible to think that for any feature of the kind or sort human being, one can freely choose to have that feature. At the very least, one will need to spell out in greater detail what features follow naturally from the essence in question. But for now, I will waive these concerns.

            Premise (5) may seem, at first, more difficult to assess due to the obvious equivocation between one sense of 'ought' found in the antecedent and another located in the consequent. But it should be fairly apparent that, though indeed 'ought' is used equivocally in (5), (5) does not seem to depend on this equivocation for its being true. That is, even though (5) may contain an equivocation, the equivocation is not needed to tie the first half of the conjunction in the antecedent of (5) with (4), and the second half of the conjunction ties in with (6) without any use of ought in either sense.

            Moreover, for the antecedent of (5) to be true, one needs the claim that 'someone with a nature N ought to have x in virtue of their having N' to be true. They also need the further claim that 'someone who ought to have x (in the ontological sense) has it in their power to choose to have x' to be true. And if these two claims are granted, the consequent, of course, necessarily follows, along with the associated claim that someone who ought (ontological sense) to have x ought (moral sense) to will to have x. So, again, it seems that the only really controversial claim, so far discussed, in the sub-argument (5) through (7) is premise (6).

            But (6) is not likely to be the only potential difficulty facing the account on which this argument is based -- i.e. CNLT. One such additional problem is the generality of (x) with respect to further claims the adherent of CNLT might want to make. For example, if one motivation for accepting the argument is to give a presentation of CNLT that does not depend on the PFA for its criticism of certain moral behaviors, say, same-sex sexual relations, this may be harder to accomplish than the proponent of CNLT realizes.

            For if (x) is supposed to exclude such relations, there must be something in virtue of one of these features of N that entails that such relations are incompatible with N. In this sense, there must be some feature x* of N -- or something else that is considered "a part of" N -- that entails that something y is not possibly a (natural) feature of N. Nor is there anything presented in the argument so far that would suggest that y is not possibly a feature of N. And, moreover, it is not enough merely for one to say that y is just not something that is necessarily (in the sense of natural necessity) brought about by N; for there are many possible features (in the sense of either properties or behaviors) some subject of a nature N can have that are not incompatible with N. For example, collecting stamps or having a low-pitched voice.

            In order to fill this lacuna in CNLT, then, one must provide an account of the feature x* that rules out the compatibility of y and N. Whether one relies on the PFA to fill this lacuna is, of course, up to the proponent of CNLT. For perhaps the proponent of CNLT will rely on some other argument or justification of his view in place of PFA. One might even conjoin PFA with some further principle or amendment and argue that, although the proper use of one's reproductive organs is not sufficient for avoiding immoral behavior, it is necessary for it. But if the point of relying on the present argument (the one under discussion in this post) I have presented is to avoid having recourse to the PFA, I conclude that it cannot be regarded as a success. This, once again, is not to say that CNLT is either false or incoherent. It is merely to say that its proponents need some further tie if they are going to argue persuasively that y is incompatible with N.  

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[1] My thanks to Czar Bernstein for alerting me to this.