The sequel to From Existence to God, this text offers a portrait of God that contrasts sharply with that provided by perfect-being theology. It exposes the absurdity of this view and shows how radically God differs from even the most exalted of his creatures.

ARTHUR PRIOR once wrote that "philosophical discussion of the notion of existence, or being, has centred on two main problems...." One of them was the problem of what to say about the existence of fictitious objects, and the other the problem of what to say about abstract objects. Historically, however, this claim is hardly correct; for the existence of individuals that are real rather than fictitious, and concrete rather than abstract, has been at least as central a topic as those (...) mentioned by Prior. It is with the existence of such individuals that I shall be concerned in this paper. (shrink)

According to a fairly standard view, there are several reasons for denying that existence is a real property of individuals. One is that 'exists' cannot be predicated of individuals, and another is that first-level properties are parasitic on individuals for their actuality, which is something that existence could never be. A third is that existence adds nothing to individuals. Moreover, even if existence were to survive all three counter-indications, it would be merely the most vacuous of properties. _The Fullness of (...) Being_, however, argues that this view of existence is seriously awry. In this brilliant book, Barry Miller argues that existence is not merely a real property of individuals, but by far the richest of their properties. The commonly accepted view of existence is testimony, contends Miller, to what happens when wrong questions are asked, false assumptions are made, and the possibility of a new paradigm for existence is dismissed without consideration. They bear witness to the substantial flaws underlying the familiar claim 'existence is not a predicate' and the Frege-Russell-Quine view not only of 'exists' as exclusively a second-level predicate, but of existence as no more than a Cambridge property of individuals. By way of contrast, _The Fullness of Being_ is an account of what happens when different questions are asked, when false assumptions are eschewed, and when the possibility of a radically different paradigm for existence is actively explored rather than completely ignored. What began for Miller as an exercise in philosophical logic to determine whether 'exists' is predicable of individuals, ends in an argument with groundbreaking consequences for ontology. "_The Fullness of Being_ is a brilliant and original account of existence. It will be required reading for those philosophers interested in the topic." —_Peter Forrest, professor of philosophy, University of New England, Australia_. (shrink)

I have two criticisms of Vallicella's "Divine Simplicity: A New Defense." One is that its argument for property self-exemplification fails because it ignores the distinction between "what" clauses employing first-level quanti-fication and those employing second-level quantification. The second criti-cism is that his rejection of logically simple propositions stems from a failure to see that the argument for those propositions is based on a logical premiss, not a grammatical one.

The actualist position rests on the mistaken assumption that individuals can be referred to before they exist; the existentialist makes no such assumption. Plantinga's criticisms of existentialism founder on his claim that for a proposition the only possibility is possible truth. In fact, there is another kind of possibility, viz. possible predication. Hence, 'Socrates does not exist' is a possible predication, even though not possibly true. Plantinga's other putative counter examples are flawed in the same way.

ARTHUR PRIOR BEQUEATHED US the perceptive advice that "it is always a useful exercise, when told that something was possible, that is, could have happened, to ask 'When was it possible?' 'When could it have happened?'" Illustrating his point by considering whether it was possible for God to have "launched Julius Caesar into being, or arranged his coming into being, at a different time and under different circumstances," Prior's reply was "I doubt it." What God certainly could have done was (...) to launch into being some man with precisely those properties that Caesar did subsequently have; but what He could not have done, says Prior, was to "launch Caesar" or "create Caesar" in any sense "in which, He having said 'Let there be a man, with properties X to Z,' and there then starting to be a man with those properties, one could intelligibly ask 'But was this the man you wanted?' or intelligibly say 'This--and no other--was the man God intended.'". (shrink)

The most basic requirement of any theory of concrete individuals is that it do justice to the fact that, unlike universals, individuals are non-instantiable. The bundle theories of Russell and Goodman, the Guise Theory of Castaneda and the Trope Theory of D.C.Williams each breach this requirement by implicity allowing an individual to be instantiable either after it has ceased to exist or both before and after it has ceased to exist. Underlying this flaw in all four theories is the tacit (...) assumption that individuals are ontologically prior to their constituents. That is to say, an individual's constituents do not individuate it, but are individuated by it somewhat after the manner of the non-substantial particulars of Aristotle or the individualized forms of Aquinas. (shrink)

The question is whether a proper name (e.G., "tom") may be used in a way that parallels that of "man" in "man is a species". "tom is an individual" is the answer proposed, With "individual" functioning as a second order term. A number of difficulties are resolved by showing that "tom is an individual" may be rendered as "a man is (in english) called 'tom' and is so constituted that only he may without ambiguity be called 'tom'. This shows that (...) "tom" in "tom is an individual" is neither purely a first order nor purely a second order term. (shrink)

If the 1960’s did not see a resurgence of belief in God, they at least witnessed a renewed interest in him, stimulated by die writings of Harvey Cox, John Robinson and the so-called death-of-God theologians. These were concerned with the phenomenon of the ‘absence of God’, so called because, for all the difference he seemed to make in the day-to-day business of nations and cultures, God might just as well not exist. Whatever knowledge gaps may previously have existed have already (...) been plugged either in fact or in principle, and this without any explanation involving a God. The universe no longer seems to point beyond itself, but seems, on the contrary, pretty clearly self-sufficient. In such circumstances the ground has been cut from under anyone wanting to say that God exists. And if the claim continues to be made, it is from a philosophical viewpoint quite gratuitous. (shrink)

Brian Medlin has excluded the possibility of something being self-explanatory in anything but a logical sense. Hence any non-logical necessity has always to be in terms of something other than the explicand. In this context, the principle of sufficient reason cannot escape contraction to a form so patently useless that no proponent of the contingency argument would want to employ it. Many of the objections in Section 4 have point, however, only against an argument which uses such an unacceptable form (...) of the principle.The objections in Section 5 are directed against an argument framed in the only other way allowable under Medlin’s dichotomy, but which is of no use to the theist, for the simple-reason that its conclusion is not existential in the required (present actuality) sense. Objections against such an argument would concern the theist only if their validity were so wide as to embrace a truly existential argument as well. As we have-seen it is in just that case that they break down.In neither Section 4 nor 5, therefore, does the article come to grips with the contingency argument. The objections leave it untouched, because neither of Medlin’s notions of contingency and necessity corresponds to that which is operative in the argument. (shrink)

A COMMON reaction to "Why ever should any existing individual exist?" has been simply to ask, "Why not?", an answer that has remained impervious to such suggestions as rely upon the principles of sufficient reason, or intelligibility, or causality, or some supposed sense of contingency. I think that the "Why not?" response has been thoroughly justified, as also has been the refusal to modify it in response to the suggestions just mentioned. If the question of why any existing individual should (...) exist is to be treated seriously, it has first to be shown to deserve an answer, i.e., to have some logical warrant. This article, therefore, is an attempt not only to supply that warrant, but to show what the answer to the question should be. (shrink)