necessaryExistenceReview PDF
necessaryExistenceReview PDF
Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. viii+223. Hard Cover $61.00, ISBN: 978-0-19-
admit that abstract objects like numbers had to exist no matter what. After all, if there had
been no physical things then zero would have been the number of physical things, and
hence the number zero would have existed. The thesis that there had to be a necessary
concrete thing, on the other hand, is generally regarded as a substantive, perhaps even
extravagant, metaphysical commitment, while the denial that there is such a being is a bit
The present book shows that this attitude is mistaken. Defining ‘concrete’ to mean
‘capable of causation’, the authors present a plethora of arguments for the existence of a
necessary concrete thing. While (as the authors forthrightly admit throughout the book)
philosophical moves can be made to evade each argument, these moves in each case
incur substantive philosophical commitments. The end result is that the denial that there
is a necessary concrete thing turns out to be not so modest after all, but rather a
epistemology, modal logic, and the theory of explanation. On the other hand, the authors
argue, philosophers willing to accept the existence of a necessary concrete thing can
accept intuitive and straightforward positions in all of these areas. They commend to us
uses technical apparatus, including symbolic logic, where this is helpful and avoids
conclusion while avoiding the temptation to go beyond what its arguments warrant.
While some parts of the book are rather demanding, undergraduate students who have
completed a semester of symbolic logic should be able to follow most of the arguments.
philosophy of religion.
That is, some propositions (like the claim that there is water without hydrogen) are
metaphysically impossible although they are not logically contradictory. Further, nearly
every argument in the book requires for its validity that the correct logic of metaphysical
modality be given by the axiom system S5. (More precisely: the arguments rely on the
principle ◊□p→p, which is equivalent to the Brouwer axiom.) These assumptions would
generally be regarded as standard among analytic metaphysicians. However, they are not
wholly uncontroversial. Accordingly, after introducing the general project (chapter one)
the authors explain and defend this approach to the logic and metaphysics of modality
(chapter two). Although the positions are fairly standard, the authors offer some novel
Incompleteness Theorem for the claim that necessity cannot be identified with provability
in a formal system.
When the authors turn to their main project of defending the existence of a
necessary concrete thing, they begin from the best-known argument for that conclusion,
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the classical cosmological argument from contingency (chapter three) and progress
Chapter four examines the modal cosmological argument. Whereas the classical
argument from contingency proceeds from a claim about things having explanations, the
modal cosmological argument proceeds from a claim about things possibly having
explanations.
similar to those that exist in previous literature, the authors proceed, in chapter five, to
develop a new version of that argument that relies on a weaker, and therefore less easily
In chapter six, the authors show how a principle of modal uniformity can be used
to support the possibility premises of several of their arguments. The basic idea is that
very similar propositions should be assumed to have the same modal status until proven
possible that there be exactly 999 or exactly 1001. This type of principle can be employed
to defend the claim that possibly there is an explanation of why there is at least one
concrete contingent thing, a principle that can in turn be employed in arguments for a
In chapter seven, the authors present an argument from the existence of necessary
abstracta (e.g., numbers) for the existence of a necessary concrete thing. Though based on
Leibniz’s argument from necessary truths, much of the argumentation in this chapter is
quite novel.
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called because it is based on some unpublished notes by the mathematician Kurt Gödel.
While the original Gödel notes, and most subsequent treatments of the argument, require
an intimidating technical apparatus, the authors here manage to present the argument in a
way that should be accessible to anyone with a good grasp of sentential logic. This, in
itself, is quite an achievement. In addition to their lucid presentation of the argument, the
In chapter nine, the authors rebut a series of common objections to the existence
of a necessary concrete thing. Here their general strategy is to show that the principles of
logic, metaphysics, and epistemology that are commonly used against the existence of a
necessary concrete thing can also be employed in arguments for a necessary concrete
thing. This is simplest in the case of conceivability. It seems to many philosophers that
they can conceive of there being no concrete things at all, so if conceivability is a guide
to possibility then it is possible that there are no concrete things at all, and so there is not
a necessary concrete thing. However, on the other side, it seems to many philosophers
possibility then a necessary concrete thing is possible and therefore actual. The authors
show that the same kinds of parallel arguments can be constructed for several other
opponents want to show that we should favor the negative argument over the positive
one.
As indicated above, the book’s authors acknowledge that philosophical moves are
available for evading each of their individual arguments. However, the arguments rely on
approach to defusing each argument would, by the end of the book, find herself burdened
would be better served if she could discover a single strategy for undermining most or all
of the arguments. The arguments are sufficiently diverse that this is no easy task. I can
see three possibilities: the rejection of S5 (more precisely, the Brouwer axiom);
rejection of the assumption that any explanation of why there are any contingent concrete
Since the authors provide an extensive defense of S5 in chapter two, I pass this by
The authors argue for a necessary concrete thing, and most of their arguments
take as premises the existence of contingent concrete things. Those arguments that do not
employ this premise employ other premises about concreteness, such as “Necessarily, if
there is an abstract object, there is a concrete object” (p. 126) or that being concrete is a
positive property (p. 151). A concrete object, recall, is defined as one that possibly causes
something. As a result, a philosopher who rejected the notion of causation entirely would
were an ad hoc move designed simply to avoid the existence of a necessary concrete
being, this would seem even more desperate than the rejection of S5. However, some
The authors usually appear to assume a realist ontology of causal powers, though
they occasionally suggest that their arguments are compatible with reductionist views of
causation such as David Lewis’s counterfactual account (e.g., pp. 190–191). How the
arguments would fare on more radical anti-realist views of causation, such as those that
make the truth of causal claims dependent on our explanatory practices, is a question
worthy of further investigation. It may be that rather than undermining the arguments
such views trivialize the results: on such views it might be that everything—even the null
set and the number two—are concrete in Pruss and Rasmussen’s sense, since it is
possible for these things to figure into human explanatory practices in such a way as to
count as causes.
Finally, many (though not all) of the arguments depend on the claim that if there
is an explanation of why there are any concrete contingent beings at all, then there is a
necessary concrete (i.e., causally capable) being. This appears to be based on the
assumption that an explanation of the existence of contingent concrete things would have
to be a non-circular causal explanation. The authors several times make explicit their
assumption that the explanation must be non-circular, but the assumption that it must be
causal remains implicit. Alternatives have been proposed. For instance, I have proposed
that contingent reality could have a grounding explanation (“Foundational Grounding and
the Argument from Contingency,” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, 2017) and
Derek Parfit has suggested that contingent reality could have a kind of nomological
This?”, part 2, London Review of Books, 5 February 1998). These views would
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undermine many of the arguments of this book. Note, though, that these again involve
I conclude, then, that this book does what it sets out to do: it shows that a wide
concrete thing, and that avoiding this conclusion requires taking on substantive
philosophical commitments. The book provides a survey of existing arguments for this
conclusion, but also many new arguments of its own. Finally, in what is perhaps the most
committed opponents of its thesis will find the effort to refute its arguments both
challenging and illuminating. We can look forward to seeing such attempted refutations
KENNETH L. PEARCE