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    God is not just another necessary being among necessary b... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    God is not just another necessary being among necessary beings; he is uniquely necessary as the source and ground of everything distinct from himself.

    Divine Attributes
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.The possible worlds representation does not distinguish the necessity of God from that of an abstract object such as the set of even primes.
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    • 2.God is the source and ground of everything distinct from himself, including all non-divine necessary beings.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.On Platonist accounts defended by Gödel and Frege, abstract necessary beings are self-subsistent and depend on nothing external for their existence.
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    • 2.If abstract objects are genuinely self-subsistent, God cannot be their source without collapsing into a form of ontotheological voluntarism that contradicts mathematical necessity.
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    • 3.Aquinas's own grounding move requires real distinctions within God's causation that the doctrine of divine simplicity explicitly prohibits.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Necessary existence admits of no intrinsic gradations: if God and numbers both exist in all possible worlds, no modal fact distinguishes their necessity.
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    • 2.The claim that God 'grounds' abstract objects presupposes a priority relation that modal logic itself cannot express, making the distinction metaphysically idle without independent justification.
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    Divine Attributes

    Related

    Aquinas's own grounding move requires real distinctions within God's causation t...God is the source and ground of everything distinct from himself, including all ...If abstract objects are genuinely self-subsistent, God cannot be their source wi...Necessary existence admits of no intrinsic gradations: if God and numbers both e...
    +3 moreShow less
    On Platonist accounts defended by Gödel and Frege, abstract necessary beings are...The claim that God 'grounds' abstract objects presupposes a priority relation th...The possible worlds representation does not distinguish the necessity of God fro...

    Similar

    God's necessity, unlike that of other necessary beings, is grounded in...87%God is the source and ground of everything distinct from himself, incl...86%There exists a being that is necessary in itself85%God has his necessity from himself and not from another.85%

    Source

    AI-extracted2/3 agreementValid
    SEP: divine-simplicity
    View source passageHide passage
    One can also arrive at the simplicity doctrine via the divine necessity. As maximally perfect, as that than which no greater can be conceived, God must be a metaphysically necessary being, one that cannot not exist. A necessary being is one whose possibility entails its existence, and whose nonexistence entails its impossibility. But what could be the ground of this necessity of existence if not the identity in God of essence and existence, possibility and actuality? Saying that God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds does not provide a ground, but merely a graphic Leibnizian represen...
    Extraction notes

    Validity: The passage explicitly states both premises and draws the conclusion that God is uniquely necessary precisely because he is the source and ground of everything distinct from himself, contrasting this with the inadequacy of the possible worlds framework to capture this unique status.

    Confidence: Clearly stated.

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit