ABSTRACT: One of the most imposing problems facing the modern theist philosopher is the ‘problem of Hell,’ or the problem of how to make the Bible’s depiction of Hell as a place of eternal punishment logically consistent with the generally held theist idea that God is perfectly loving. This issue has been dealt with by a number of philosophers; some have attempted to re-imagine Hell into something less severe than eternal punishment, and some have attempted to give justifications for the traditional version of Hell. An overview of these various views and attempts will conclude that universalism—the idea that all souls must eventually be saved—is the view most compatible with a loving God. However, this paper will go on to argue that universalism’s inconsistency with the Biblical portrayal of Hell still creates a problem for the theist philosopher; as the Bible is the primary authority for the idea of Hell, any inconsistency between the Bible and our logical conclusions must make us doubt the Bible’s authority on the matter of Hell. And, as doubting the Bible in one aspect frees us to question its veracity in others, it will be argued that the problem of Hell ultimately allows us to wholly reject the Bible’s authority.

Even for those who whole-heartedly accept the idea of a loving and perfect Christian God, the thought of that God sending sinners and unbelievers to burn forever in Hell can be highly unnerving. Many believers find that the concept of Hell puts them in a bit of a bind; on the one hand, Hell is clearly a well-established idea within Christianity, and on the other, it seems almost unthinkable that a truly loving God could ever allow his creations to suffer infinitely for sins committed in a finite life. Some philosophers, such as Lewis, have used this apparent contradiction as grounds to reject Christianity and support atheism. Theist philosophers have responded by putting forward several possible solutions to the problem. For example, some attack the idea of ‘eternal’ punishment, and argue that all souls will eventually be saved (or annihilated) so that Hell will one day stand empty. Others allow for eternal punishment, but suggest that Hell is not literally a fiery lake of torture. Still others accept the fiery lake but argue that some people freely choose Hell, or that infinite punishment is somehow justified. Out of these various solutions, the idea that all souls will eventually be saved seems to follow most logically from the concept of a perfectly loving deity. Many philosophers who agree with this position, universalism, drop the issue here. However, it is highly arbitrary to pluck the idea of Hell from the Christian Bible and then fail to accept all the characteristics that the Bible attributes to Hell; the Bible is, as it turns out, alarmingly consistent in its portrayal of Hell as a place of eternal, consciously endured pain. This being the case, I must conclude that there is a contradiction between the Biblical idea of Hell and the Christian idea that God is perfectly loving; as both cannot be true, I believe it is the Biblical idea of Hell that must be rejected, and that such a rejection strongly supports a total rejection of Biblical authority.

For the purpose of later comparison, we can begin with a brief overview of the Biblical concepts of ‘Hell’ and ‘God’, the Bible being used here exclusively because it is the source that has most informed our modern understanding of both God and Hell. The Biblical facts about Hell, as Christians themselves are often quick to point out, are that everyone “will exist eternally either in heaven or hell,” (that is, heaven and hell are the only two options), that Hell is “conscious torment,” and that Hell is “eternal and irreversible” (Litke). As Lewis reminds us, such a view of Hell is actually somewhat necessary in Christianity because the whole point is that “Jesus was born to save us from something. The condition from which we have been redeemed must be truly horrible. What can be horrible enough except for eternal punishment?” (Lewis, p. 476).

Standing in contrast to this terrible, eternal Hell is the Biblical concept of God. Christians believe in a God that is omnipresent (for example, see Psalm 139:7-12), omnipotent (Genesis 18:14), unchanging (Psalm 102:25-27), omniscient (Psalm 139:2-6), and eternal (Jeremiah 10:10). God is thus incredibly powerful, but God is also merciful (see Daniel 9:9) and perfectly just (Deuteronomy 32:4); by ‘just,’ it seems to be meant that God will neither allow righteous and/or innocent people to suffer nor evildoers to have any sort of impunity. (This does seem to leave open the possibility for mercy, for it can be assumed that someone who asks God’s forgiveness is experiencing spiritual pain which may count as sufficient punishment for sins.) Perhaps the most significant Christian concept of God, though, is the idea that God is perfectly loving because God is love itself. This is made plain in 1 John 4:8, which says that anyone “who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” With this idea of God at its core, Christianity apparently sets itself up as a love-centered religion, and most believers firmly hold that their god is a god of perfect justice and perfect love.

The philosopher’s concept of God is very similar to the believer’s (or at least to the believer’s as just given), and the theist philosopher in particular usually assumes with the believer that God is morally perfect, perfectly just, and perfectly loving. We can thus turn to the various ways in which theist philosophers have tried to reconcile this idea of a perfect God with the idea of Hell. In all of the following attempts, Hell is assumed to be a reality in at least some form or other; this is maintained partly because Hell comes up so frequently as a concept in scripture, but also because several philosophers believe that God’s ‘perfect justice’ does indeed demand some sort of painful punishment for evildoers that goes beyond making them feel sorrow for what they have done. The two ‘facts’ of a perfect God and an existent Hell being assumed, the nature of Hell is then decided in each argument by what the philosopher deems logically compatible with God’s perfection. It should be noted that some philosophers’ definitions of Hell will be seen to differ drastically from the Bible’s, but this can usually be attributed to the treatment of belief in a perfect God as more basic than the belief in a strictly doctrinal Hell; as we will find, most theist philosophers who find the idea of a perfect God and the Biblical Hell incompatible choose to alter their idea of Hell rather than give up their idea of a perfect God. Again, then, the philosopher’s goal in each case is simply to find the most reasonable resolution of the main issue: under what circumstances could God allow Hell?

Addressing first the most radical alteration of ideas about Hell, we start with the theory of universalism, supported by philosophers such as Thomas Talbott and Kerry Walters. Universalism holds that a loving God must eventually save everyone, and that while there is something we could call ‘Hell,’ it is by no means a place of eternal torment. Rather, ‘Hell’ in the universalist definition is essentially purgatory, endured only for so long as people choose to be there. In other words, people may be punished in ‘Hell,’ but it is punishment inflicted with the aim of reforming sinners, and this reformation eventually comes about for everyone. As Talbott says, anything less would imply that either the sinner somehow deserved eternal punishment (which universalists reject as even possible for humans who live finite lives), or that sinners are allowed to keep sinning and thus to keep choosing separation from God in Hell (which also strikes the universalist as rather absurd). The theories that punishment is deserved and that sin does continue in Hell will be addressed shortly, but the universalist’s main objection to a traditional Hell seems to be that it would constitute a logically impossible victory of the human sinner over almighty God; in Talbott’s words, “Why should creating beings with free will (of the standard libertarian kind) include even the possibility of God’s justice (or his love) suffering an eternal defeat?” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 432). Or, to put it another way, a God who creates human beings and who, being omniscient, supposedly knows each individual completely should be able to ‘outsmart’ even the most freely resistant souls and bring them into a position to be saved. God should, according to the universalist, be seen as a “grand master in chess who permits a novice to move freely…and still manages to checkmate the novice in the end” (Talbott, “Freedom,” pp. 432-33).

The primary objections to universalism are that it limits free will and/or undermines justice, but both of these objections fail to really harm the argument. As for free will, the idea is supposed to be that if we know that we will all eventually succumb to God, it is no longer really a choice—but this doesn’t make a great deal of sense. Firstly, Walters correctly points out that even though “it is logically possible for an individual to refuse grace, it is not necessary that she do so” (Walters, p. 178). True free will must therefore include the possibility that all individuals will freely choose salvation, and, to bring us to the second point, why should they not? If the choice we face has only two options, that of either God (love and salvation) or Hell (the torment of separation from that love and salvation), “it seems perfectly reasonable to suppose that it is not the external coercion of God which ultimately wears away our original (and freely chosen) attitudinal obstinancy. It is rather the pain and misery…which we’ve brought on ourselves that erodes our resistance” (Walters, p. 181). Or, in the words of Talbott, “how could anyone, rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent, choose an eternity of horror over an eternity of bliss…?” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 429).

The other objection to universalism—that God’s perfect justice will be unsatisfied if the ‘bad’ people are initially punished but are ultimately taken to Heaven and treated just like the ‘good’—holds no more weight than the free will argument. There is, for example, an obvious difficulty in saying that a finite human being could have done something so terrible that it justly deserves infinite punishment (again, the defense of this idea will be given further on). Another problem with this objection is that it can be reasonably met by the universalist’s contention that there will be “a proportionality between the degree of obstinate wickedness and the degree of purgative suffering necessary to enable the sinner to freely choose an attitudinal change”—that is to say, the natural rewards of evil will punish the evildoers until such time as they are persuaded to repent (Walters, p. 183). A further way to meet the objection lies in Talbot’s assertion that God’s justice is not at all opposed to His mercy, for God’s “mercy demands everything his justice demands, and his justice permits everything his mercy permits…‘mercy’ and ‘justice’ are but two different names for God’s one and only moral attribute, namely his love” (Talbott, “Punishment,” p. 153). This seems like a plausible idea, and it is made especially attractive by the unity it attributes to God’s character; rather than being driven sometimes by the need to bring souls to happiness in Heaven and sometimes by the need to punish evildoers so as to afford justice to the victims of evil, God is driven only by love for all souls. As it stands, then, it would seem that despite contradicting the Biblical version of Hell, universalism presents a reasonable picture about what could be expected of a loving God.

Other ideas about re-imagining Hell into something less dire don’t strike me as equally plausible. For instance, an alternative theory dealing with the problem of ‘eternal’ punishment is annihilationism, the view that God will simply erase intractable wrongdoers from existence. This theory looks at Hell as “a metaphorical description of non-being”; it is meant to assure us that God doesn’t punish sinners any longer than justice demands, and perhaps doesn’t punish them at all before annihilating them (Kvanvig, p. 60). However, this still seems nonsensical. In the case that sinners are punished first, we have what is arguably the moral repugnance of punishment that is non-reformative; there may be some who are in favor of this, but it seems to me utterly unnecessary, cruel, and inconsistent with God’s supposedly loving nature. (This is by no means a conclusive objection, but I cannot presently take on a fuller exploration of ideas about justice.) In the case that sinners are not punished but are simply annihilated, we are left with the question of why God would have created such people in the first place; if we answer, say, that they were instrumental in bringing others to God, this still fails to seem satisfactory. Could God’s resourcefulness not have found other ways to bring certain people to belief? Does he not care for the souls used as conversion tools? In any case, can we really just discard entirely the idea that Hell is put to use, seeing as it is such a persistently present concept in Christianity? There may be some way to smooth over all these difficulties, but I do not know it, and on the whole universalism still seems more compatible with the Christian idea of God as a being of perfect love.

The third and final alternative to universalism is the idea that Hell is painful separation from God, but is not really ‘torture’ (or is at the very least bearable), and is thus a rational choice that someone could make. As Yandell argues, it may be possible that a Hell that is “a punishment, known to be a punishment, involves no fellowship with God, is bleak on any sensible standards…might still be the longish end of a life that one could rationally prefer to not existing at all” (Yandell, p. 90). There might simply be some people who are so determined not to come to God that they prefer to spend eternity apart, not facing the horror of oblivion but neither accepting the supposed horror of subordination to a will other than their own. The immediate problem here is an issue that Talbott raised earlier; how could an agent rational enough to be called ‘free’ ever prefer their own misery to the joy of being with a perfectly loving deity? In the short term it is perhaps understandable, and even over years, but across infinity? A loving God would not keep someone in Hell if they freely turned to Him (and would not punish them unless such a turn was still possible), so any change of heart must bring them to God. Wouldn’t this change be bound to happen eventually, as in universalism?

Of the ‘softer’ versions of Hell, universalism thus remains the most likely—but what of the justifications for traditional models of Hell? What of, for instance, the idea that eternal torment in Hell is justified by libertarian free will? In the words of Van Holten, “I am not sure whether God’s love entails that he may not create persons with libertarian free will, all the while knowing they will not be saved. If his infallible foreknowledge is compatible with the creature’s freely choosing damnation, then presumably, God is not to blame for it,” just as God is not to blame for any evil actions a person may have chosen to take during their lifetime (Van Holten, p. 51). As I see it, part of the problem with this criticism (aside from questions about the intelligibility of libertarian free will) is the idea that anyone forced to a decision between God and Hell could ‘freely choose damnation’; if we continue to assume that God is perfectly loving and that Hell is a place of torment, such a choice is in no way rational, and it seems highly doubtful that it could ever be made in full consciousness by a rational agent. And if it is not a rational choice, then is a person’s mere uncertainty about God during their finite lifetime really to be punished with infinite pain? Furthermore, it seems incorrect to compare evil action, allowed on Earth so as to bring about other goods, with the choice not to believe in God, which simply leads to an eternity in Hell. Perpetual, punishment, if it really does go on for infinity, can’t bring about any positive results; it’s whipping a dead horse, so to speak, to know that the person in Hell will never get better but to continue to torture them anyway. It quickly begins to seem cruel and unfair to punish the sins and bad choices of a finite life with the infinite suffering of non-reformative punishment, and again, such cruelty would seem incompatible with a loving God.

What if, though, we move to the second argument contradicting universalism, and expand the libertarian free will argument to say that the sin continues once in Hell; that is, we could say that a sinner retains their free will, continues to choose Hell over God, and thus solve the difficulty of eternal punishment for finite sins. As Seymour puts it, “Any individual human sin, it is true, is finite in seriousness; but an everlasting series of sins is infinite in seriousness and so deserves infinite punishment. By preserving freedom in the afterlife we can suppose it possible that the damned commit such a series of sins” (Seymour, p. 83). However, we again run into problems; for example, we are once more confronted with the absurdity that any could, in full freedom, choose Hell. The universalist Talbott objects that “only someone mired in illusion or deception of some kind would be free, given the standard libertarian analysis, to choose evil…the way in which clarity of vision and knowing the truth compels obedience is very different from the way in which the medieval practice of pressing might compel a plea of guilty or not guilty” (Talbott, “Freedom,” p. 428). I agree that it seems unbelievable that anyone should, for eternity, keep choosing to suffer Hell if they knew the true nature of Hell and God, and likewise incredible that a loving God would leave someone in the dark for eternity so that they could never make the rational choice of happiness with God.

Nevertheless, there persists the idea that some sinners must be in Hell for eternity, and one argument claims that this is because there simply is no possible world in which we are all saved. Craig argues that “it is possible that some persons out of self-will or perversity would freely reject God no matter what the circumstances He placed them in,” and that the complexity inherent in a world actually makes it unsurprising “that there should be no feasible worlds available to God in which all persons are freely saved (unless, perhaps, those worlds are radically deficient in other respects, say, by having only a handful of people in them)” (Craig, p. 308, p. 300). In other words, Craig argues that the world is such a complicated mechanism that the billions of little pieces (that is, souls) can never work together in complete harmony; there will always be some pieces that fall off or become damaged, and likewise there will always be some souls who face damnation. Craig further argues that since the blessed in Heaven will suffer if they know of the suffering in Hell, God will simply shield the blessed from this knowledge; the “tragic fact that every world feasible for God is one involving persons who are lost would not force Him to refrain from creation or to annul creaturely freedom lest the blessedness of the saved be undermined, for it is possible that the reality of lost persons is a fact the pain of which He alone shall endure for eternity” (Craig, p. 308).

This argument for the inevitability of Hell would be fine if we imagined God as a mere supernatural ‘organizer,’ a being who is given billions of fixed personalities and must sort them into certain circumstances so that the greatest number of souls end up in Heaven. However, I find this argument far less reasonable when God is also considered as our creator. After all, God not only makes the conditions, he makes the people, and that means heavily influencing the genetic and psychological factors that will guide each person’s choices. This being the case, I find it difficult to imagine that there is no possible world at all in which all individuals choose God. Craig argues that universalism does not prove the logical necessity of universal salvation, but it is precisely here that he seems to miss the point; after all, universalism just says that there is at least one possible world in which everyone is saved and that this is the world God would have chosen to create. It is, in fact, Craig who fails to prove logical necessity, for he gives no reason to believe that damnation is a logically necessary consequence of free will. And I have further problems with this argument; in what way, for instance, is a world with fewer people ‘deficient,’ if all of these people eventually get the ultimate joy of eternity with God? And how could God be justified in deceiving the blessed about the condition of the damned?

I am thus unimpressed by all the arguments that Hell must be (or even logically could be) a place of infinite suffering, and I maintain the position that universalism is the best available philosophical option. Universalism seems to be not only the idea of Hell most compatible with a loving God, but also seems to make the most intuitive sense. It is also worth pointing out that the vast majority of objections to universalism are grounded in the fact that it disagrees with the Bible; in other words, the objections are not philosophical or rational in nature, but are rather based on scripture. And must a philosopher really take scripture into account?
Well, yes, for in this case it would seem shortsighted to do otherwise. As demonstrated earlier, the philosophical concept of God is at the very least heavily inspired by the Bible, and ultimately rests on Biblical authority for justification. The concept of Hell likewise relies on Biblical authority, but if this is the case, then it seems completely illogical to ask what kind of Hell we could rationally expect from God without checking our conclusion against the Bible itself. And, as also demonstrated earlier, what the Bible says is clear, consistent, and decidedly opposed to the views of the anti-Hell philosopher. As Litke points out, it is flatly contradictory with scripture to accept the “second chance view” (the view that one can escape or be redeemed from Hell), “Universalism,” or “Annihilationism.” What, then, are we to do with the philosophical conclusion of universalism, the Bible’s depiction of Hell, and the idea of a loving God that is held by theist philosophers and by Christians in general?

Faced with the contradiction between the Biblical assertion of an eternal Hell and the logically superior universalist view, our options can be summarized as follows:

1. Finite sin can deserve infinite, non-corrective punishment.
2. God is not perfect, or has standards of morality that differ from ours: the Bible is wrong in saying that God is morally perfect, or we are wrong in thinking that our ideas of morality accord with God’s.
3. Hell does not exist (or is never used), and the Bible is misleading about Hell.
4. Hell does not exist (or is never used), and the Bible itself is simply wrong and unreliable.

The first option has no arguments in its favor that I find convincing, and is irreconcilable with any God deserving of worship and love. The second option simply states that God isn’t deserving of worship and love, so Hell could exist as a place of torment, but then any individual worshipper would be morally culpable in praising a God capable of such “divine evil” (Lewis, p. 480). This does not seem to solve anything, for it is completely incompatible with everything the Christian asserts about a perfect God and especially contradicts the common theist belief that God is morally perfect. The third option could be a way out for the Christian, but it also seems ridiculously arbitrary; why trust the Bible about so many aspects of faith, but not Hell? One could claim that Hell-talk is some sort of metaphor, but aside from the fact that Hell is talked about in a consistent and blisteringly straightforward manner, it is also insisted on repeatedly by Christ himself (as in Mark 9:47-48). What reason could there be, then, to reject traditional notions of Hell without also rejecting the authority of Christ? It would thus seem that we are left with nothing but the fourth option; as the existence of both a loving, perfect God and a Hell of eternal punishment are incompatible, the Bible that says that both of these things exist should be concluded to be wrong. Of course, both God and Hell being such vital components of Christianity, and the Bible being its primary voice of authority, the foundations of the religion itself become very dubious at this point.

Again, I am inclined to accept universalism as the only outcome that a perfect, just, and loving God would find acceptable. However, I also agree with Lewis when he says that universalism is essentially “a fantasy”; it is divorced from all characteristics of Hell as given in the Bible, and without taking scripture at its word, what is the basis for any talk about Hell at all (Lewis, p. 481)? And for that matter, if there is no way to logically salvage an important Christian tenet like Hell without ignoring everything that Christians appear obliged to believe about Hell, then doesn’t the depth of the contradiction make rejection of the Christian Bible seem a more rational route? What’s more, as Lewis points out, theists may even be guilty of wrongdoing if they do not make such a rejection; modern Christians often “dodge the consequence [of Hell] by keeping it all in soft focus,” but if one worships and loves a God who creates the Biblical Hell, a place with “billions of damned souls writhing in eternal agony,” what does that say about one’s morality (Lewis, p. 480)? For Christians who wish to be rational in their theism, it would thus seem that the problem of Hell calls for a hard second look at belief.

Works Cited

Craig, William. “Talbott’s Universalism.” Religious Studies 27.3 (1991): 297-308. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Holy Bible: New Living Translation. Wheaton: Tyndale, 2004.
Kvanvig, Jonathan. “Review: [untitled].” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 36.1 (1994): 59-61. JSTOR database. 2 February 2011 .
Lewis, David. “Divine Evil.” Arguing About Religion. Ed. Kevin Timpe. New York: Routledge, 2009. 472-481.
Litke, Sid. “What the Bible Says About Hell.” Bible.org. 1998. 18 Jan. 2011 .
Seymour, Charles. “Hell, Justice, and Freedom.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43.2 (1998): 69-86. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Talbott, Thomas. “Freedom, Damnation, and the Power to Sin with Impunity.” Religious Studies 37.4 (2001): 417-434. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Talbott, Thomas. “Punishment, Forgiveness, and Divine Justice.” Religious Studies 29.2 (1993): 151-168. JSTOR database. 17 Jan. 2011 .
Van Holten, Wilco. “Hell and the Goodness of God.” Religious Studies 35.1 (1999): 37-55. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .
Walters, Kerry. “Hell, This Isn’t Necessary after All.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 29.3 (1991): 175-186. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .
Yandell, Keith. “The Doctrine of Hell and Moral Philosophy.” Religious Studies 28.1 (1992): 75-90. JSTOR database. 10 Jan. 2011 .

Erin McDonnell (’13) is a Philosophy and Studio-Art Double-Major at Cornell University

Abstract: In this paper, I examine David Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness as a problem of “semantic indecision” and conclude that this position on vagueness is inconsistent with the metaphysics of his theory of modal realism, with specific regard for counterparthood and the counterpart relation. To reach this conclusion, I employ a thought experiment in which an exact counterpart of Lewis is subjected to a series of possible worlds treatments designed to satisfy Lewisʼ criteria for counterparthood, as well as to test the limits of semantic treatments of higher-order vagueness. In doing this, I find that Lewisʼ suggestions for dealing with vagueness fails to pick out counterparts at several points in this series, even when given a satisfactorily precisified set of criteria for the qua relation. Rather than a clear candidate for counterparthood, one encounters instead a problem of infinite regression that could destabilize the whole project of Lewisian de re modal realism. I conclude by noting that accepting metaphysical vagueness into the Lewisian theory of modal realism changes nothing in the overall theory, and may in fact be the only way to save the theory from its problem of infinite regression.

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I. Background

The sentence “All bachelors are unmarried.” and the sentence “The author of this paper is typing on a computer.” are both true. However, these two sentences are not true in the same way. To understand how they are different, let us examine how each sentence can be considered true. In the first example, truth appears to be a function of the meaning of the word “bachelor” in relation to the rest of the sentence. This is because the first example states a specific and important property of the concept of being a bachelor. It is almost a kind of definition, and its truth is derived from the relationship between its form (what kind of sentence it is) and its semantic content (what the sentence means). The first example sentence demonstrates that the relationship between the form and the content of a sentence is one way to measure the truth of a sentence. The second example presents an exception to this rule. The form of the second example sentence does not follow the pattern of the first, yet (much to the authorʼs chagrin as I watch the clock) it is still true.

So what does it mean to say that the two sentences are true in different ways? In this case, it means that they arrive at being true by taking two different routes. The first example must always be true; the word “bachelor” carries somewhere in its meaning the idea of being unmarried, and the property of being unmarried is a definitive property of the word “bachelor”. The second example need not be, but by all respects still is, true. Truths that must be true, like the first example, are called necessary truths. This means that there is some quality of the words of the sentence or the things being discussed by the words in that sentence which requires the sentence to be true. The second example illustrates what is called a contingent truth. Contingent truths are not true in virtue of structure or meaning per se, but rather are true with regard to a given situation. Another way to put this is to say that there is no quality about me that would require, as a matter of necessity, that I be sitting at my desk writing this paper. I could just as easily be sleeping, or going for a walk, or touring the country with my world famous band instead.

Hypothetical statements like the one above, which gives some examples of ways in which my life might have been different, are called “counterfactuals”. Counterfactuals are just what they sound like: statements that consider cases in which the facts are contrary to the way things actually are. Often stated in the form of conditionals (“If X then Y”), counterfactuals are aimed at examining the ways in which the world could (and could not) be different by positing alternate situations for conceptual analyses. Take the statement “If I werenʼt writing this paper, I would be asleep right now” as an example. The purpose is to assert that under specific circumstances that are contrary to the actual ones (“If I werenʼt writing this paper,”), a different set of statements about the world would turn out to be true, and I would be in bed.

What counterfactuals illustrate is called “modality”, or the measure of necessary or contingency. It would seem that in order to be able to evaluate modality correctly, and in doing so evaluate the truth-value of the sentence in question, there must be some properties, or kinds of properties, of the thing being discussed that remain true about that thing across all counterfactual statements. Here, I must bring up another distinction, one concerning interpretations of things about which the modalilty is in question. With regard to modality, there are two ways to gloss a given sentence. One such way is called a de re reading (from the Latin for ʻof the thingʼ). The other reading is a de dicto reading (meaning ʻof the wordʼ). De re readings of sentences are concerned with the modality of the actual physical thing(s) referred to by the terms of a sentence. De dicto readings are concerned with the modality of the words of the examined sentence itself. This differentiation is relevant to the ways by which the truth-value of a given sentence can be evaluated as necessary or contingent. To illustrate the difference between a de re and a de dicto reading, examine the sentence “The President of the United States could be a woman.” Under a de dicto reading, this sentence means that it is possible for a woman to become the President of the United States. Under a de re reading, this sentence means that the legal status of Barack Obamaʼs marriage is in serious jeopardy under current law.

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the truth-values regarding the modal properties of a sentence are often evaluated in terms of “possible worlds”. Though there is significant disagreement about the nature of these worlds, such as when it is appropriate to assign de re or de dicto readings to statements made about them, it must be the case that possible worlds are at minimum conceptual spaces in which one can run thought experiments to determine the necessity of a truth-value of a sentence. The classic examples used to illustrate this are “Aristotle is Aristotle” and “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander”. Under a de re reading, it is simple to see that the first statement must always be true, because if there is an “Aristotle” about whom this statement can be made, then that Aristotle must be self-identical. However, there is no quality about such an Aristotle that necessitates that he be “the teacher of Alexander”. Rather, this is something that happened to be the case only as a matter of course and not as a matter
of the things involved those circumstances.

Note the inherent import here of a robust idea of identity. When employing possible worlds as a measure of modal properties, especially under a de re reading, identity is assumed as a most basic property. Generally, identity can be understood with the following two premises: (1) All things are self-identical and (2) no two things are identical to each other in all ways. Identity is a philosophical issue unto itself, however due to the limited scope of this paper it must suffice to say that identity is the metaphysical property of self-sameness. As such, an issue like metaphysical vagueness would appear to be an important area to explore when discussing de re modality, if only because in any dialogue that takes as its subject the modal properties of things must start first with an understanding of the thing about which modal properties are to be discussed. If one is to understand how a thing could have been different, as well as how it could not have been different, then one must first encounter that thingʼs identity. In this paper, I will contrast David Lewisʼ treatment of de re modality (Lewisian modal realism) against that of another philosopher, Saul Kripke. I argue that modal realism necessarily admits of metaphysical vagueness, and until that theory is modified to accept this fact, modal realism is not a feasible theory of modality.

II. De Re and Vagueness

Saul Kripke explores de re interpretations in his work Naming and Necessity. In this lecture series, Kripke abandons the skepticism of his predecessors such as Quine about de re readings. He argues that rigid designators, which are terms that pick out the same thing across all possible worlds (where that thing exists), are the appropriate means of evaluating claims de re. Examples of rigid designators are names, numbers, and natural kind terms such as “water” or “gold”. Under this treatment, possible worlds need be nothing more than hypothetical scenarios run in oneʼs mind. For Kripke, to exist is to be the extension of a term.

The Kripkean treatment of de re modality is what is called “ersatz” modality (ersatz meaning substitution) and is semantic in nature. This is to say that Kripkean possible worlds are constructs of meaning located in the mind, and are intended to exemplify counterfactual possibilities about actually extant things. Kripke does not assert that using possible worlds to evaluate modal claims has any ontological implications. As such, a Kripkean treatment de re allows for the existence of “transworld identity” which means that the singular identity of a thing being discussed can be distributed over all possible worlds. Another way to put this is to say that for Kripke, the “Aristotle” in any of the worlds in which Aristotle was not the teacher of Alexander is self-identical to the Aristotle in this world.

David Lewis accepted the premise of possible worlds re-introduced to analytic philosophy by Kripke. The function of possible worlds for Lewis is almost exactly the same as for Kripke; they measure the necessity of a claim. However, according to Lewis, possible worlds are real physical places—as real as our own world—in which real things exist. This is Lewisian modal realism. As Lewis discusses at great length in On The Plurality of Worlds, there are innumerable such real worlds, and the inhabitants of these worlds are the subjects of the counterfactual conditionals that possible world scenarios evaluate. Among other things, Lewis asserts that counterfactuals are evaluated by means of a relation of counterparts in possible worlds to things in the actual world. This means that when we say something could have been different in any way from the way it actually is (for example, to say that I might have been a concert violinist instead of a philosopher) is to say that there is some possible world in which the counterpart of that thing actually is that way (my counterpart is a concert violinist in some possible world).

In §4 of his book, Lewis argues that possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. He also argues that spatiotemporal location is a necessary property of identity, and that the criteria of identity can only be sufficiently met by sharing exactly all the same qualities, including spatiotemporal location. From these two premises arise the need for the counterpart relation to take the place of transworld identity, because identity can only be granted to objects that are at least spatiotemporally identical, and also because in Lewisʼ theory individuals in different possible worlds are separated and thus anything in one world is spatiotemporally isolated from anything in another. What will eventually run Lewis aground here remains unproblematic for Kripke because Kripkeʼs specific theory of possible worlds has no ontological implications and all he needs to grant identity is that a termʼs extension be the same across all possible worlds. However, for Lewis it is clear that it is not possible to grant identities across possible worlds because their referents differ in spatiotemporal location, so he must create some new theory to take its place.

The counterpart relation is the theory that Lewis proposes for this purpose. It is the basis for being able to assess counterfactuals in Lewisʼ account. The counterpart relation is one of “relevant similarity”, or comparative similarity of desired properties between token-specific candidates for counterparts across possible worlds. That which makes an individual in another world a counterpart of an individual in the actual world is an overall comparison of similarity among all possible candidates in any given possible world. Counterparts are only counterparts to each other in virtue of a given “qua relation.” For example, if a counterfactual involving having a certain number of hairs on oneʼs head is being discussed, the proper way to assign counterparthood would be to say that person X in World 1 (W1) is a counterpart of person Y in W2 qua Xʼs and Yʼs number of head-hairs. Thus, one person can be a viable candidate for the counterpart of another person if and only if those two people, as Lewis states, “closely resemble [each other] in important aspects.”

There is no room in Kripkeʼs ersatz treatment of possible worlds for vagueness to arise as an issue. In virtue of the fact that there are no ontological assertions made by ersatz possible worlds, there can be no ontological vagueness. Furthermore, because rigid designators grant identity across possible worlds and the fact that to have an extension, as far as Kripke is concerned, is to exist, there can only be semantic vagueness in the evaluations of modal claims.

This is not the case for Lewisʼ theory of modal realism, though. Modal realism is a large and complex theory that leaves much room in which the problems of vagueness might take hold. Notably, however, Lewis famously decries the whole project of metaphysical vagueness:

The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it’s vague where the outback begins is not that there’s this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word `outback.’ Vagueness is semantic indecision. (Lewis 1986, 212)

Many such quotes fill the pages of On The Plurality of Worlds. The idea is always the same: the world is not vague, but rather it is our representations of the world, our words, that are. That David Lewis, the famous metaphysician, is so vehemently opposed to metaphysical vagueness is a bit shocking at first. Why should someone so deeply involved in metaphysics, especially someone whose project is specifically a refutation of a larger semantic theory, seek the solution to the problem of vagueness in a semantictheory? If nothing else, this is strikingly counterintuitive.

Much like others who found vagueness to be a problem of language and not of the world, Lewis seeks to eliminate vagueness by precisifying problematic language:

If a sentence is true over an entire range, true no matter how we draw the line, surely we are entitled to treat it as simply true. But also we treat a sentence more or less as simply true, if it is true over a large enough part of the range of delineations of its vagueness. (For short: if it is true enough). (Lewis 1983, 244)

Here Lewisʼ position on how to deal with problems of vagueness is clear. Because vagueness is “semantic indecision,” the proper manner by which it should be dealt with is to look at the way sentences admit of vagueness and re-evaluate how they are interpreted. Vague sentences are “true enough” to be considered true when they are true over some sufficient range (the “large enough part of the range”) of precisifications. Lewis avoids dealing with the question of what counts as “true enough” by calling this itself a vague matter. This is for Lewis, however, not an important enough issue to pursue, as is evidenced in the next paragraph of the text:

When is a sentence “true enough”? Which are the large parts of the delineations of its vagueness? This itself is a vague matter. More important for our purposes, it is something that depends on context. What is true enough on one occasion is not true enough on another. The standards of precisions in force are different from one conversation to another. (Lewis 1983, 244-245)

One should assume, at risk of otherwise creating a straw man argument, that Lewis expects his own semantic prescription for handling vagueness should be sufficient to explain away the vagueness he himself admits is inherent in how he tells us to handle such problems. However, in at least one case, Lewisʼ account is not a sufficient method of explaining away vagueness as semantic indecision.

Consider the following scenario: there is a series of possible worlds in which at one end there is one and only one possible counterpart of Lewis, and he is a spitting image of Lewis in every single possible relevant manner. At the other end of the series, there is a world populated entirely by just one single rooster. This set-up is consistent with how Lewis assumes possible worlds work. Now, assign to this series, in the search for counterparts, the highly precisified set of criteria for counterparthood that is exactly and only the breadth of wingspan and the volume of caw. Lewis would acknowledge that his spitting image meets all the relevant criteria to be his counterpart. He would agree as well that he is not a counterpart of the rooster at the far end of this sequence, being that he meets no relevant criteria for being its counterpart and thus is not, in any way, a viable candidate of counterparthood.

If one observes the series of worlds that starts in the world of the lonely rooster and ends in the world in which there is an exact duplicate of Lewis illustrates a possible worlds sequence of a Lewis/rooster chimera that runs in reverse. Actual-world Lewis would admit that there is one world in this series in which the counterpart relation ceases to be sufficient enough under the relevant criteria for the thing in that world to count as a counterpart of the rooster. By extension, in virtue of the nature of the relevant criteria of this sequence, it is logically true (assuming that counterparthood is cardinal) that there is also some point in this sequence at which the Lewis/rooster chimera ceases to meet any relevant criteria for Lewis-counterparthood.

The problem that Lewis is forced to acknowledge, by his own justification of the counterpart relation, is that there remain penumbral cases of counterparthood in this series. Specifically, there are at least some worlds in which it is indeterminate whether or not the most Lewis-like thing in that world can be rightly called a counterpart of Lewis qua the relevant criteria, but are still, definitely, the counterparts of other non-Lewis counterparts in the series qua those same criteria. Every case in this series in which the chimera is more like a non- counterpart of Lewis, but is still a Lewis/rooster chimera, yields an indeterminate counterpart relation for Lewis. Each further attempt to create more precise semantic boundaries for vague predicates such as “is a counterpart of Lewis” serves only to shift the problem up by one degree of order; there is no way in Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness for there to be enough precisification to eliminate vagueness as a problem of semantics alone.

III. Saving Modal Realism

The basic premises Lewis works from are as follows:

1. The world is made of material things
2. Modal realism is true
3. All possible worlds are spatiotemporally and causally isolated
4. Spatiotemporal location is a necessary quality of identity
5. Counterpart theory is the means of measuring counterfactuals across spatiotemporally isolated worlds
6. Vagueness is semantic in nature

My thought-experiment shows that modal realism is philosophically unsound if Lewis accepts a theory that uses counterpart theory and eschews metaphysical vagueness, because his prescribed semantic treatment of vagueness results in an infinite regression. However, the counterpart relation is essential to Lewisʼ modal realism, and thus cannot be given up without losing the larger theory. It is the only way he can account for being able to assess counterfactuals. In the above example, I have shown that even under Lewisʼ strict semantic treatment of vagueness, there no precise cut off point at which a thing in the example series is still be enough like Lewis that, were there no other Lewis-like things in its world, it could be determined whether or not that thing would still be Lewisʼ counterpart.

Meeting all of Lewisʼ criteria for hyper-precisification of the relevant criteria fails to eliminate vagueness of the counterpart relation in the above example. I submit that this is the case because the notion of counterparthood and the counterpart relation are based in comparative overall similarity. The problem with such evaluations is that the terms of these evaluations are themselves vague predicates. Thus, we enter an infinitely reiterating argument that fails to address the issue at hand (that being the location of vagueness as being in language or the world). It is a necessary consequence of precisely this is that Lewisʼ system does not function to evaluate modal properties with any hope of being other than accidentally correct. As such, Lewisʼ theory of modal realism with vagueness as a semantic problem is less than a sufficient account of de re modality.

However, I propose that if Lewis were to add to Premise 6 that vagueness can be semantic and metaphysical, he would no longer face an issue of infinite regression. Lewis argues against metaphysical vagueness because he conceives of identity as a most basic property, which he effectively argues to be unique self-sameness, and his argument against vague objects is based on the fact that he assumes there is a finite answer to the question “how many objects are in the world?” Lewis is correct to state that if vagueness is metaphysical, then it would be a fact of the world that there is no finite number of objects in the world. However, why should it be assumed that there is a finite number of objects in the world? I can think of no compelling reason to assume this to be the case, and Lewis certainly fails to give a sufficient account supporting his personal predilection for there being a finite number of things in the world. At every opportunity, he fails to address the issue as he turns questions of metaphysical vagueness into questions of semantic vagueness.

For Lewis to accept vague objects, he is not required to give up any other part of modal realism. Revising Premise 6 as I have prescribed has no impact on the previous five premises. However, the real issue at hand here is that extending Premise 6 to acknowledge the existence of vague objects might be the only way for Lewisʼ modal realism to survive. Rather than supporting modal realism, his position on vagueness as a problem only of semantics actually undermines his project of modal realism. There is no sufficient argument provided as of yet that can semantically explain away problems of vagueness. The problem of infinite regression that Lewisʼ solution entails makes it unjustified and therefore philosophically unsatisfactory. The existence of vague objects is not only simply the more logical solution, but may possibly be the only way he can salvage modal realism from its problem of infinite regression.

Works Cited

1. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1972, 1980
2. Lewis, David. On The Plurality of Worlds. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1986.
3. Lewis, David. “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies.” The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 68 (1971). 203-221.

Jaime Harrell (’10) is a Philosophy major at University of Maryland College Park.

Art courtesy of gromyko.

Abstract: This paper discusses the central argument of A World of States of Affairs by David Armstrong, which is intended to posit states of affairs as fundamental ontological entities. This ‘truth-maker’ argument is intended to conclude that states of affairs are what make propositions true; I explore this position and the response by David Lewis, which is a tentative rejection of Armstrong’s position in favour of a supremely permissive combinatorialism.

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The sentence “the sun is bright” expresses a true proposition. What, if anything, makes it true? The tentative answer by D.M. Armstrong, which may be found in his fine A World of States of Affairs is that some state of affairs (a technical term which will be defined), some constituent of a state of affairs, or some combination of these makes such propositions true (assuming that brightness is a property which does not depend on a relation between two or more things). This hypothesis and a response to it by David Lewis will be considered.

Armstrong considers those propositions which have been thought about or stated. Truth attaches to some of these propositions (he does not elaborate this attachment.) It is these truths which states of affairs and their constituents correspond to in the ‘truth-making’¹ process. For clarity, truth-makers will be spoken of as corresponding to propositions rather than truths.

Armstrong’s general hypothesis is that states of affairs and their constituents are ontologically exhaustive-there is nothing else. The constituents of states of affairs are particulars (individual things with their properties mentally abstracted from them, as far as this is possible), properties, external relations, and, in the case of higher-order states of affairs, lower-order states of affairs.

‘Constituent’ is used here rather abstractly. For example, properties and relations are types of states of affairs, or universals. The nature of universals will be discussed when we contrast them with particular properties, or tropes. External relations are distinguished from internal relations: those things which are externally related do not necessitate their relationship. ‘The Morning Star’ having the same referent as ‘the Evening Star’ is an external relation; the Morning Star’s identity to the Evening Star is an internal relation.

The necessary and sufficient condition for a state of affairs can now be given: either a particular has a property or, alternatively, there is an external relation between particulars. Every state of affairs and constituent thereof is an actual and contingent part of this world. This is to say that none are merely possible, yet the existence of any is not necessary.

Armstrong seems to assume that truths require something which makes them true. The proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” is not true simpliciter. It will be seen that a state of affairs-the sun’s being bright-is the most probable candidate for making it so. Why does Armstrong perceive this connection between the proposition and this state of affairs? It must be kept in mind that he is, in A World of States of Affairs, influenced by philosophers such as Wittgenstein (in his earlier philosophy) and John Anderson. They held that reality has a propositional structure.

Some propositions require truth-makers; some constituents of states of affairs require an ‘instantiation’:

We are making the venture that the world contains both particulars and universals. It would certainly seem that if this is so, then something is needed to weld them together (Armstrong 114-115)

In the present example, the particular is the sun and the universal which is ‘welded’ to it-which it instantiates-is the property of brightness. This state of affairs does not make the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” true by a causal process; it is a process unlike making a light turn on by flipping a switch.

The truth-making relation is internal. The necessity of the relation is evident from the proposition “a truth-maker makes its corresponding proposition true.” This proposition is analytic: it cannot be false due to the meaning of its words. Armstrong makes the point in terms of possible worlds. If there is a particular truth-maker for a proposition, then there is no possible world in which the truth-maker exists but the proposition is false.

Armstrong arrives at his hypothesis of states of affairs as truth-makers by evaluating and rejecting less viable candidates. Corresponding to his scheme, we will consider the sun, the pair of the sun and brightness, and a version of trope theory as potential truth-makers of the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright.”

First of all, it is plainly absurd for the sun without any of its properties to be the ontological ground for the sun’s having a property. Secondly, the sun and the property of brightness are not necessarily tied together on Armstrong’s view. There is some possible world in which the pair exists but the sun does not instantiate brightness. Because of this world, it is not necessary-it is not the case in all possible worlds-that the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” to be made true by the pair of the sun and brightness.

Armstrong is less dismissive of the trope view. Properties and relations have so far been treated as universals. Theories which hold that universals are real may acknowledge their abstract nature in some sense. The sun, a powered light bulb, and any other bright thing have brightness, so we can conceptually abstract this property from these things. But as a universal, brightness exists au)to_n e)n th~ au(tou~ xw&ra as a type of state of affairs. Universals-properties and relations-are entirely present in anything which instantiates them. Furthermore, the brightness of some particular thing is identical to the brightness of something else. The sense of identity which I use is no less strict than self-identity.

The reality of universals can reasonably be denied by a trope theorist. A trope is an instance of a property or relation-the particular brightness of a lamp or the distance between the sun and me at some instant.² The brightness of a lamp is not identical to the brightness of the sun; they are two different properties.

There are many variants of trope theory. If a pair consisting of a particular and a universal cannot be a truth-maker, can a pair consisting of a particular and an instance of a property? Armstrong immediately rejects those theories which hold that things have tropes contingently. If lamp L₁ has brightness B₁ contingently, there is a possible world in which they exist independently. The proposition expressed by “L₁ has B₁” cannot, then, hold an internal relation with the pair L₁ and B₁.

Trope theories which posit a necessary tie between particulars and their tropes are somewhat reluctantly rejected. Armstrong dislikes the amount of necessity in the world which follows from these theories. If every instance of a property (and, perhaps, every instance of a relation) exists necessarily where it does, we have a world view quite different from Armstrong’s thoroughly contingent-though tentative-ontology.

Armstrong also rejects those trope theories which deny the existence of particulars. Such theories are known as ‘bundle’ theories because particulars are postulated as mere bundles of tropes. The principal problem Armstrong has with such theories is that states of affairs are not purported to be any ontological addition to bundles of tropes. He even considers tropes to be constituents of states of affairs in such circumstances.

States of affairs and their constituents are thus the most likely truth-makers for contingently true propositions. Furthermore, necessarily true propositions-propositions of mathematics and logic, for example-have no truth-makers beyond these entities. A proposition may possess truth from many truth-makers. Consider the proposition expressed by “at least one person exists.” This proposition is made true by each state of affairs wherein a person has those properties which define her as a person. Somebody being rational and somebody being an animal are examples of such states of affairs. Since either of these states of affairs also makes the proposition expressed by “either at least one person exists or the moon is made of cheese” true, there may be many true propositions for a single truth-maker.

David Lewis is disconcerted by an element of necessity in this theory. Consider some particular star and the property of brightness. These constituents are distinct entities. The state of affairs wherein that star is bright is a third distinct entity. Yet if the particular star we have selected has the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily exists; if the sun lacks the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily does not exist.

Lewis considers these conditions strange for an independent entity. If the state of affairs is an independent entity, it should be able to exist or to not exist, regardless of the particular star, the property of brightness, or any other distinct entity.

This flows from the ontology which Lewis holds, wherein any combination of possibilia is permitted. Possibilia are “wholes and parts admitted by the most permissive sort of mereology” (Lewis, 2004, p. 250). They can actually exist or be merely possible; spatiotemporal regions, force fields, gods, and spooks are all included.

There is thus a tension between states of affairs and the extreme ‘combinatorialism’ which Lewis endorses. Lewis responds by cautioning against using terms of the form ‘the state of affairs wherein A has B’ interchangeably with ‘A has B’ without seriously considering whether the former is distinct from the latter. He never, however, explicitly states that the two have equivalent referents.

Armstrong’s argument for states of affairs is based on the requirement for a truth-maker; Lewis therefore considers this need. He agrees that some part of the world should, seemingly, be a truth-maker for every contingent truth. Whether or not one believes in the reality of universals-and Lewis does not-this intuition is, perhaps, common. It is certainly easy to agree with Lewis that Armstrong’s coherent metaphysic provides a simple and effective solution to a complex problem.

Works Cited

Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Lewis, David. “The Truthmakers.” Times Literary Supplement 13 Feb. 1998: 30.

Lewis, David. “New Work for a Theory of Universals.” Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Ed. Tim Crane and Katalin Farkas. 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 249-261.

Footnotes