Tien-Chun Lo

The modal ontological argument for God's existence faces a symmetry problem: a seemingly equally plausible reverse modal ontological argument can be given for God's nonexistence. Here, we argue that there are significant asymmetries between the modal ontological argument and its reverse that render the latter more compelling than the former. Specifically, the latter requires a weaker logic than the former and, unlike the former, avoids the symmetry problem. We also explore to what extent these observations represent a new pathway to atheism.

In this paper, I will defend a theory of modality on which all (metaphysically) modal truths are explained in terms of God’s essence. Roughly speaking, it says that for every modal truth P, P is true because of or in virtue of God’s essence. After presenting the idea of this account, I will examine the following four objections: (i) the problem of negative grounds, (ii) the problem of dependence, (iii) the problem of iterated modalities, and (iv) the problem of modally loaded essences. I will argue that none of these problems succeed in refuting this theistic essentialist account of modality.

The modal ontological argument for God’s existence faces a symmetry problem: a seemingly equally plausible reverse modal ontological argument can be given for God’s non-existence. Here we argue that there are significant asymmetries between the modal ontological argument and its reverse that render the latter more compelling than the former. Specifically, the latter requires a weaker logic than the former and, unlike the former, avoids the symmetry problem. We also explore to what extent these observations represent a new pathway to atheism.

The purity principle requires that identity truths such as “Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus” are grounded. This argument from purity for the groundedness of identity truths for first-order entities can be naturally generalized to higher-order identities like “to be a vixen is to be a female fox.” In this paper, I will examine various accounts of the grounds of identity truths by taking the cases of higher-order identities into consideration. Drawing on some essentialist insights, I will propose a novel account and argue that it offers an attractive explanation of how identities, including both first-order and higher-order cases, are grounded.

Collin (2022) attempts to break the symmetry between the modal ontological argument for the existence of God and the reverse modal ontological argument against the existence of God by drawing on some Kripkean lessons about a posteriori necessity. He argues that there is an undercutting defeater for taking God’s non-existence to be possible. In this paper, I reply that taking the Kripkean considerations about a posteriori necessity into account does not help break the symmetry. For we can argue in a similar way that there is an undercutting defeater for taking God’s existence to be possible.

Recently, a number of metaphysicians have been working on the issue of the metaphysical grounds of identity facts. In this paper, I will survey a variety of accounts of identity facts through a particular lens. These accounts will be examined in light of the so-called ‘purity’ principle, a principle intriguing many discussions on metaphysical grounding in recent literature. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, I will indicate what sorts of accounts of identity facts the purity principle rules out and what sorts of accounts it allows. Secondly, I will pinpoint some patterns of how the purity principle may interact with first-order metaphysical inquiries in general.

Is it possible that there are extended simples—material objects extended in space or spacetime that have no proper parts? The most commonly cited argument for this possibility is based on a version of the Humean principle: namely (and with some qualifications), any pattern of instantiation of a fundamental relation is possible. In this paper, we make the Humean argument fully explicit, and criticise it from three aspects—the Disjunction problem, the Pluralist problem, and the Accidentality problem. First, the original argument only shows a disjunctive thesis: either extended simples are possible, or unextended complexes are possible. In order to reach the desired conclusion, some additional premise is needed. Yet, even though we agree that the Disjunction problem can be met, we argue that the Humean argument fails to establish the possibility of extended simples, for two reasons: the first comes from compositional pluralism, and the second is about the definition of accidental properties. We contend that the latter two problems put the proponents of the Humean argument in serious difficulty. Thus, metaphysicians who hold that there are extended simples should find better arguments for this view.

This paper will examine a novel argument in favour of entity grounding over fact-only grounding. The idea of this argument, roughly speaking, is that the proponents of fact-only grounding cannot provide a unified account of grounds of identity, whereas the proponents of entity grounding can. In this paper, I will give a response to this argument. Specifically, I will argue that the problem which this argument raises to the proponents of fact-only grounding is also a problem with which the proponents of entity grounding are faced. Therefore, this argument fails to show that entity grounding is superior to fact-only grounding. Moreover, I will suggest that the failure of this argument points to a general lesson about the issue of grounds of identity facts.

In this paper, I will defend a strategy for employing perfect being theology that Jeff Speaks calls “restriction strategy.” In Section I, I will outline what the restriction strategy is and explicate Speaks’s objection to it. In Section II, I will propose a response to Speaks’s objection. In Section III, the response will be refined to avoid objections. My contention will be that this refined version of perfect being theology avoids Speaks’s objection, and therefore can help theists find what divine attributes God has.