Friday, March 9, 2018

Intrinsic attribution

  1. If heavyweight Platonism is true, all attribution of attributes to a subject is grounded in facts relating the subject to abstracta.

  2. Intrinsic attribution is never grounded in facts relating a subject to something distinct from itself.

  3. There are cases of intrinsic attribution with a non-abstract subject.

  4. If heavyweight Platonism is true, each case of intrinsic attribution to a non-abstract subject is grounded in facts relating that object to something other than itself. (By 1 and 2)

  5. So, if heavyweight Platonism is true, there are no cases of intrinsic attribution to a non-abstract subject. (2 and 4)

  6. So, heavyweight Platonism is not true. (By 2 and 5)

Here, however, is a problem with 3. All cases of attribution to a creature are grounded in the creature’s participation in God. Hence, no creature is a subject of intrinsic attribution. And God’s attributes are grounded in a relation between God and the Godhead. But by divine simplicity, God is the Godhead. Since the Godhead is abstract, God is abstract (as well as being concrete) and hence God does not provide an example of intrinsic attribution with a non-abstract subject.

I still feel that there is something to the above argument. Maybe the sense in which a creature’s attributes are grounded in the creature’s participation in God is different from the sense of grounding in 2.

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