Dom,
As I said, I'll make a thread on the time issue next week. For now, I just want to comment specifically on this:
Aristotle didn't believe in abstract objects, but that doesn't mean what he believed to be real wasn't abstract objects. I can't help Aristotle make sense with his definitions, and that has no bearing at all that I look at it with analytic thought. To simply not do so is intellectually disengaged.
I don't think I understand what you are saying here. It sounds like you are saying that whatever Aristotle meant, the only way to make sense of his words is to understand things like numbers as abstract objects after all. But that can't be it, because don't you think it would be a bit presumptuous to argue that the only way Aristotle makes sense is to reject his philosophy and read him as if he were a Platonist? Don't you think it's more probable that Aristotle (and modern Aristotelians!) understood his definitions according to and within the stream of his own philosophical thought? In this case, that would be all the more true since Aristotle was responding specifically to Plato. Maybe it would help to understand Aristotle basic theory of numbers here? Again, they aren't abstract objects. For Aristotle (and I think he was right here),
there are no such things as abstract objects.
And let me just add that this is actually of some theological importance. It seems impossible to reconcile the doctrines of aseity and sovereignty with their existence. Plantinga in his
Does God Have a Nature? admits as much and when forced to choose between which to reject, he gets rid of "the sovereignty-aseity intuition." So he says:
- If God were distinct from such properties as wisdom, goodness and power but nonetheless had these properties, then he would be dependent on them. He would be dependent on them in a dual way. First, if, as Aquinas thinks, these properties are essential to him, then it is not possible that he should have existed and they not be ‘in’ him. Therefore he would not have existed if they had not. This connection between his existence and theirs, furthermore, is necessary; it is not due to his will and it is not within his power to abrogate it. That it holds is not up to him or within his control. He is obliged simply to put up with it. . . . [The] point is that he would be dependent upon something else for his existence, and dependent in a way outside of his control and beyond his power to alter; this runs counter to his aseity. (32, 33)
Finally, on page 61, he expressly rejects the notion that God exists
a se or is sovereign over
everything outside of himself, since he insists (correctly) that if "the Platonic menagerie" exists, then God would not be sovereign over, but in fact dependent upon, them.
Bergmann and Brower have proven the same thing conclusively, I think, and in fact have generalized it, showing that Platonism of any kind (that is, the belief in abstract objects) entails the necessary rejection of theism as it has been traditionally understood. The paper I'm referring to is
available in preprint online, but I'll reconstruct the essential argument for you here:
- Definitions
AD: (i) God does not depend on anything distinct from himself for his existing and (ii) everything distinct from God depends on God’s creative activity for its existing.
T: Traditional theism (which includes AD) is true.
P: All true predications, or at least all true predications of the form “a is F”, are to be explained in terms of a subject and an exemplifiable (however exemplifiables are themselves to be conceived).
Assumptions
A1. For any exemplifiable F, if F depends on God’s creative activity for its existing, then God’s creating an exemplifiable is logically prior to F.
A2. For any x and any action A, x’s being able to do A is logically prior to x’s doing A.
A3. For any x, any y, and any exemplifiable F, if x’s exemplifying F is logically prior to y, then F is logically prior to y.
A4. x’s being able to create an F = x’s exemplifying being able to create an F.
A5. For any x and any y, if x is logically prior to y, then y is not logically prior to x.
Argument
1. T&P [assume for reductio]
2. All exemplifiables depend on God’s creative activity for their existing. [from T]
3. For any exemplifiable F, God’s creating an exemplifiable is logically prior to F. [from 2 and A1]
4. C1: God’s creating an exemplifiable is logically prior to the exemplifiable being able to create an exemplifiable.[from 3]
5. God’s being able to create an exemplifiable is logically prior to God’s creating an exemplifiable. [from A2]
6. God’s exemplifying being able to create an exemplifiable is logically prior to God’s creating an exemplifiable. [from 5 and A4]
7. C2: The exemplifiable being able to createan exemplifiable is logically prior to God’s creating an exemplifiable. [from 6 and A3]
8. ~(4&7). [from A5]
9. ~(T&P) [from 1-8 by reductio]
They go on to point out that one can attempt to salvage some form of traditional theism by modifying the aseity-dependence doctrine as defined in AD as follows:
- AD*: (i) God does not depend on anything distinct from himself for his existing and (ii) everything distinct from God depends on God (though not, in every case, on God’s creative activity) for its existing.
This weaker version could allow one to argue that traditional theism can be understood as follows:
- T*: Traditional theism (which includes AD*) is true.
By this, one can ignore Bergmann's argument because while it shows that T and P are incompatible, it does not show that T* and P are incompatible. Yet they go on to show that even this conception fails as follows:
- Modified assumptions
A1*. For any x, if x depends on God for its existing, then God’s being who he is is logically prior to x.
A3*. For any x and any exemplifiable F, F is logically prior to x’s exemplifying F.
A4*. God’s being who he is = God’s exemplifying his nature.
Modified argument
1. T*&P [assume for reductio]
2. All exemplifiables depend on God for their existing. [from T*]
3. For any exemplifiable F, God’s being who he is is logically prior to F. [from 2 and A1*]
4. God’s being who he is is logically prior to the exemplifiable God’s nature. [from 3]
5. C1*: God’s exemplifying his nature is logically prior to the exemplifiable God’s nature. [from 4 and A4*]
6. C2*: The exemplifiable God’s nature is logically prior to God’s exemplifying his nature. [from A3*]
7. ~(5&6). [from A5]
8. ~(T*&P) [from 1-7 by reductio]
Again, I'd recommend reading the preprint, but it is evident to me that anyway you cut it, Platonism stands in direct contrast to traditional theism. You don't have to be a traditional theist, of course. Everyone from Anselm to Aquinas could have been wrong. But I suspect you don't want to go
that far (though maybe you do). Yet I can attest--with extensive documentation to support my claim if necessary--that the acceptance of Platonism underlying modern analytic thought
has led to a rejection of traditional theism, and with that, an introduction of a very wide range of problems we wouldn't have had otherwise (e.g., open theism, God's self-knowledge, the mind-body problem, etc.).
And on a final note, this is all something that Craig and Moreland themselves freely admit. If you have a copy of
Philosophical Foundations sitting around, go read their comments on pages 504-507, after which it is concluded on page 515: "the doctrine of aseity confronts a serious challenge from Platonism, which holds that there exist separate realms of abstract objects. Platonism entails a metaphysical pluralism that is incompatible with the unique aseity of God."
But if unique aseity goes, then the question of logical necessity becomes questionable, and if the latter is affirmed necessarily but the former rejected, the the very question of the coherence of the doctrine of God comes into question.
So this is all rather serious, dom. Anyway, all of this is only distantly related to the time question and we can't deal with it there. I only point it out because your assumption of Platonism--indeed, your apparent insistence on reading Aristotle in light of Plato--has very serious ramifications elsewhere that I'm not sure you have thought through yet.