I've argued that no divine personal agent that's wholly distinct from the natural world of concrete objects has the capacity to serve as the ultimate ground of abstract objects, concrete objects, final causes, or objective moral duties. Now suppose I'm right about that. Then either some of these things (e.g., final causes and objective moral duties) derive from more fundamental entities, or they don't. If they do, then as we've seen, no divine personal agent that's wholly distinct from the natural world of concrete objects serves as their ultimate ground. If they don't, then the world is chock full of eternal, uncreated entities of the sort listed above -- abstract objects, concrete objects, final causes, and objective moral values, in which case no divine personal agent that's wholly distinct from the natural world serves as their ultimate ground. Either disjunct leaves many interesting candidates within the space of epistemic possibilities -- e.g. pantheism, panentheism, polytheism, Spinozism, demiurgism, etc. However, one historically important candidate has been ruled out, viz., the god of classical theism.
No comments:
Post a Comment