Descartes on Possibility [4]

2025-1 Descartes

 

1. David Lewis defends the view that in addition to actualities, there are possibilities. What is his argument for this view? What does Lewis take a possibility to be? What is on potential problem for Lewis's view?

David Lewis argues that we make true claims about possibilities – for example, it is true that it could be raining right now even if it is not; it is true that it is possible that I might raise my hand right now even if I do not; it is true that it is possible that Iowa will win the Big Ten NCAAAW Basketball Tournament. (And indeed they lost to Ohio State on Friday, after a missed foul call by the referees; but they will go far in the national tournament.)

Lewis then supposes that what it means to say that a claim is true is that it corresponds to reality. For example, if it is a true claim that EPB 214 has 32 chairs, that means that in reality there are 32 chairs in EPB. True possibility claims also correspond to reality in some way. There are possibility claims that are not true – like that it is possible that a triangle has six sides – but many possibility claims are true.

Lewis notes that a true possibility claim does not correspond to what is the case in the actual world. But it is true and hence it corresponds to some reality, and more specifically it corresponds to the state of affairs that is captured in the claim. So if we consider the claim that is it possible that it is raining right now, that claim corresponds to a state of affairs in which it is raining, but not in the actual world. Lewis then posits the existence of alternative possible worlds. If our possibility claims are true, they conform to reality, but not to reality in the actual world. There are a lot of possible worlds – as many as are needed to house the states of affairs that are reflected in the true possibility claims that we are able to construct. We do not create these worlds by imagining alternative states of affairs, but instead our claims are describing worlds that are already there.

There are a lot of problem that arise for Lewis’s “modal realism.” One is that our possibility claims are supposed to be about our actual world – for example, about the Iowa Women’s basketball team, or about the chance of rain in Iowa City.  But Lewis has to say that in fact our possibility claims do not track anything about our world, but about alternative possible worlds that are quite remote from us.

Second, for Lewis the claim that it is possible that Iowa might win the Big Ten NCAAW tournament is a true claim about a team that is just like the Iowa team – for example, it consists of human beings who look and play like the Iowa players – except that it does win the tournament (in its alternative world). The distinction between the actual world and a possible world is accordingly very thin, for Lewis. But in that case a worry arises that the language of possibility is no longer doing any work. Possibility claims are not about ways that things could be in our world but about how they actually are in some other world. Lewis would say that the language of possibility is still helpful, because it enables us to make a distinction between necessary truths – or claims that are true in all possible worlds, like that two and two add to four – and truths that are not. But that is not even close to what we wanted the language of possibility to do in the first place

A third problem for the Lewis view is that it posits that we have an odd kind of epistemic access to worlds to which we would appear to have no connection. We intuit that it is possible that it is raining in Iowa City, and we thereby know something about an alternative world to which we would appear to be wholly unconnected.

To be sure, there are other accounts of possibility that have been offered in the history of philosophy. On an ersatz view, a possibility is an abstract object that exists in a realm of abstract entities. Strictly speaking a possibility is not an actuality, but it is something, and in the same way that some philosophers posit the existence of abstract entities like numbers, we might posit that possibilities are abstract entities. Meinong is an example of a philosopher who does this – he argues that there are entities that are “between being and non-being” and that possibilities (along with numbers, the meanings of words, and other entities) are among them. But a problem that the ersatz view and the Lewis view bring to the fore is that as soon as we try to give an account of possibility – and treat it as a thing that has some reality to it and that merits an account – we end up giving it a kind of actuality. And we give it a kind of actuality that keeps it from playing the role of a possibility. For example, on Lewis’s view, the possibility that it is raining is not about Iowa City but about a different place altogether. On an ersatz view, the possibility that it is raining is not about Iowa City but about an abstract entity that exists in a nonspatial realm.

 

2. Descartes subscribes to the view that the universe is in a particular configuration at each moment and that whatever happens at the next moment has to happen exactly as it does. We often make the assessment that things could happen differently than they do, but that assessment is just based on incomplete information. Explain Descartes's view. How could he still allow that the universe might have been different than it is?

The view is that a possibility is just a fiction that human minds imagine based on incomplete information. We sometimes say things like that it is possible that it will rain, but we just do not know all of the information about the clouds and the atmosphere, etc. If we did have all of the information, we might say that in actuality it is not possible that it will rain. If we take this view to an extreme and apply it to all possibility claims, then we would be in the position of saying that there are no other possible ways that things could be other than how they are in fact, and possibility claims are just a reflection of our ignorance.

 

3. On the anti-possibilist interpretation, Descartes holds that everything has to happen exactly as it does, and there is no possible way that things could be otherwise. Explain this interpretation and how it has Descartes arriving at the conclusion that everything is necessitated. Discuss one possible problem that arises for Descartes if he concludes that everything is necessiated.

There is a way that things actually are. But presumably there are ways that things could be different. That is to say – in addition to actual reality, there presumably exist unactualized possibilities. There is a lot of controversy in the literature about whether or not Descartes makes room for unactualized possibility in his philosophical system. For Descartes, a possibility is an idea in the mind of God that God can actualize.  Descartes holds that God is wholly immutable, and so God cannot switch from merely thinking about a thing to actualizing it. Descartes alsp argues that whatever God thinks God actualizes.

On the anti-possibilist interpretation, Descartes is suspicious that there is anything other than actual/formal reality.

There are numerous passages in which Descartes says that God is immutable and eternal and that God wills all of creaturely reality by a single eternal and unchanging volition. If so, there is no sense in which God might have exercised a different volition prior to that eternal and unchanging volition. In another passage, Descartes says that whatever God wills, God is necessitated to will, and it is not possible for God to will otherwise. In another passage, Descartes says that potential being is nothing and that the only kind of reality is actual reality.

Descartes also holds that because God is omnipotent, there is nothing that is not decided by God’s power. But that means that God even decides that two and three add to five. On the first interpretation, that does not mean that God could have made two and three add to something other than five. Descartes is clear in other passages that 2+3=5 is a necessary truth. God wills immutably and for eternity that 2+3=5. God is free in willing that 2+3=5, but Descartes says that divine freedom is just independence from external influences. So God wills that 2+3=5 immutably and for all eternity, and it is a necessary truth. But God does not will that 2+3=5 because there is an independent fact or rule that 2+3=5. God is not constrained by any definitions or rules. Any definition or rule is the product of God’s will or else it does not exist.

On the first interpretation Descartes would still insist that God is omnipotent. To be omnipotent is to have the power to do anything that is possible, and God has the power to do anything that is possible. That is because no possibilities – or rules or definitions or things – exist unless God creates them, but God does not create possible reality. God just creates the entities that are the product of God’s eternal and immutable will.

The problem of this interpretation is that it’s difficult to see how human beings have any ability to ever decide differently than they do. If there is nothing that is not decided by God’s will, and everything that happens is necessitated, and also if God knows for all eternity everything that is going to happen, then it is hard to see how our decisions or other mental states could ever be different than they are at any given moment.

There might also be a worry that if Descartes is a necessitarian, his conception of God is quite heretical. But there are passages in which he says that scripture is written for human consumption and is not to be taken literally, and there is a passage in which he speaks of the infinitude of creatures that (a bountiful creator like) God has likely created on other planets, and he says that there is no reason to believe that human beings are God’s favored creature.

In a number of passages Descartes articulates the view that in God will, intellect, and creative activity are identical. Whatever idea is the object of God’s thought, God also wills and actualizes the idea. Perhaps Descartes should have used some different language in laying out this view. In normal discourse we use the word ‘will’ to describe a mental state that actualizes, but the word ‘intellect’ is used to describe an activity of merely contemplating an idea or grasping it. A more accurate picture – without using the terms ‘will’ or ‘intellect’ – is perhaps to say that God is a mind that has ideas and that all of these ideas are simultaneously actualized outside of God. But we might also ask why Descartes subscribes to the view that whatever God thinks is actualized. He might have in mind the Third Meditation claim that there is absolutely no potentiality in God, and so there can be nothing in God that is a merely potential existing entity. Descartes might also have in the background the traditional assumption that if God has an idea of something, then it is a possible existent – because God can actualize anything of which God has an idea. But Descartes is clear in some passages that everything happens by necessity and hence that there is no other possible way that things can be other than how they are. If so, he would conclude that if God thinks of X it exists. If God had an idea of an X that does not exist, it would be an unactualized possible, but if everything happens by necessity there are no unactualized possibles.

Arguments for Anti-Possibilist Reading

1. If anything exists or has reality, it exists because God willed it.
2. The will of God is eternal and wholly immutable.
3. If the will of God is immutable, then the will of God does not ever change. God acts by a single unchanging volition.
4. God acts by a single unchanging volition for all eternity, and there does not exist the possibility that that volition be other than it is.
5. There do not exist any possible ways that things could be other than how they are in fact.
C: There is no merely possible reality; there is only actual reality. Possible reality would exist if God created it, but God did not create it.

 

Supporting Passages

1) God knows for all eternity what will be, and God cannot be mistaken. 
2) Descartes says that all of God’s decrees are necessary and cannot be separated from God.
3) Descartes speaks of “potential being” as “strictly speaking nothing” and says that only actual being is real. 
4) Descartes says that possible reality does not exist automatically; it only exists if God authors it. 
5) Descartes says that in God intellect and will are identical, so it would seem that whatever God thinks God wills.

Problems

1) God does not have the power to do anything other than what God does in fact. God is omnipotent, but omnipotence is just the ability to do whatever is possible, and God does everything that is possible in the sense that there exists only one possibility, and God actualizes it. 
2) God is free, but only in the sense that there is nothing outside of God that puts constraints on God’s activity. 
3) Descartes says that God was free to make the radii of a circle unequal. 
4) Descartes says that God’s power cannot have any limits and that therefore God could have made different laws of logic. [For example: if A=B and B=C, then A≠C.]

 

4. On the possibilist interpretation, Descartes holds that there are different possible ways that things might be. Explain thsi interpretation and how it has Descartes arriving at the conclusion that there exist possibilities in addition to actualities. Discuss one problem that arises for Descartes if he posits unactualized possibilities. 

There is a way that things actually are. But presumably there are ways that things could be different. That is to say – in addition to actual reality, there presumably exist unactualized possibilities. There is a lot of controversy in the literature about whether or not Descartes makes room for unactualized possibility in his philosophical system. For Descartes, a possibility is an idea in the mind of God that God can actualize.  Descartes holds that God is wholly immutable, and so God cannot switch from merely thinking about a thing to actualizing it. Descartes also argues that whatever God thinks God actualizes.

On the possibilist interpretation, Descartes holds that God is free and omnipotent in the sense that God can do absolutely anything, which is to say that the number of possibilities that exist is basically unlimited.

In the defense of the second interpretation, there is a passage in which Descartes says that God is free to not make the radii of a circle to be equal; there is also a passage in which Descartes says that the power of God is unlimited and therefore God could have made it possible that contradictories are true together (or basically that the laws of logic could have been opposite what they are in fact). But a few sentences after the latter passage he says that we should not put any such thoughts before our mind because in God there is a single eternal and immutable activity.

If the second interpretation is right, God is omnipotent in a much more traditional sense – God can do things other than the things that God actually does. God is also free in the sense of being able to change course and do all kinds of things that are possible. But the second interpretation also does not allow Descartes to say that God is wholly immutable; and it does not square with the passage in which Descartes says that divine freedom is just independence from external influences. Defenders of the second interpretation make a clever move here. They grant that Descartes says that it is utterly evident to human minds that God is wholly immutable, and they also grant that Descartes says that it is utterly evident that 2+2=4 is a necessary truth – even though in fact God could have made 2+2=5. The clever move is to say that in such cases Descartes is just reflecting that from the point of-view of human reason, it is utterly evident that God is immutable, and that 2+2=5. But in fact God is not immutable – because God is omnipotent and can change course and do anything – and 2+2=4 is not a necessary truth. The main problem with this move is that if Descartes has to say that it is only from the point-of-view of human reason that God is immutable and that 2+2-4 is a necessary truth, etc., then he has to say that it is only from the point-of-view of human reason that God is omnipotent in the sense of being able to do anything. We cannot say that it is a truth that God is omnipotent in the sense of being able to do anything. 

Arguments for Anti-Possibilist Reading

1. If anything exists or has reality, it exists because God willed it.
2. God is omnipotent and free.
3. If God is omnipotent and free, then God could have made things different than they are, and so there exist alternate possible ways that things could be.
4. Possible reality only exists if God authors it.
C: God has authored possible reality in addition to actual reality. There not only exist actualities, but possibilities – a whole lot of them

Supporting Passages

(1) Descartes says that God was free to make the radii of a circle unequal.
(2) Descartes says that God’s power cannot have any limits and that therefore God could have made different laws of logic. [For example: if A=B and B=C, then A≠C.]
(3) God is omnipotent in the sense that there are things that God can do in addition to what God does in fact.

Problems

(1) Descartes has to say that God is not wholly immutable. God deliberates and changes from a state of creating possibilities, then thinking about which to actualize, and then actualizing some but not others.
(2) Descartes has to say that the truths of logic are not necessary truths; they could have been otherwise. Finite minds cannot help but think of the truths of logic as necessary truths, but that is just a fact about how we are made. 
(3) Descartes says that God is free in the sense that there is nothing outside of God that puts constraints on God’s activity.
(4) After Descartes says that God could have made different laws of logic, he takes it back and says that God acts by an unchanging will for all eternity.

No matter which interpretation is correct, Descartes is clearly positing the existence of a God that is unlike God in any traditional sense. On the first interpretation, God is a power that cannot be other than it is, and it actualizes whatever it thinks. It brings about a universe of creatures and truths that cannot be otherwise. On the second interpretation, it is a wholly arbitrary power. The laws of logic could have been different, and it could have been true that it is good to torture innocent puppies for fun.