Speaker 2
So I just want to give, whether what divine ideas or thoughts constitute on your modern divine conceptualist's, like wealthy, can I make you so? Either they're kind of somehow parts of God, but that seems like a strange thing to say. If you don't think they're parts of God, then it looks like there's something outside of God which is kind of presumably, eternally, depending on them. But if a divine conceptualist was okay with that, presumably they could also be okay with some further entities super-leaning on these not-mselves divine ideas. And so I'm wondering if you could, a divine conceptualist, being comfortable with having things which are co-eternal with God, could just have kind of the properly abstract, the time I could get super-leaning on divine thoughts in such a way that a lot of problems about exemplification and the other things you're bringing out that weren't too bad. Yes,
Speaker 1
that is, I think, well-spoken from an absolute creationist point of view. That might be exactly what the absolute creationists would say to the conceptualist. And I do think that there is, you've pulled a thread here that threatens to undo the conceptualist fabric, and that is, are these thoughts, actual objects? Are they actual things that exist? Well, if so, God is not identical to his thoughts because God is not a thought, right? So have you really safeguard a divinusality on conceptualism, or have you proliferated an infinite number of objects that are not God, that are non-identical with God, and yet they exist necessarily, turn, lean, so forth? Well, the conceptualists would say, but since these are thoughts in God's mind, they are dependent upon God. The thoughts are dependent upon a thinker, and I think that's quite correct. And so you have that ontological dependence, but then the absolute creationist will come back and say, but I'm postulating exactly the same sort of ontological dependence upon God of these abstract entities. And the difference would be that these abstract entities, and this is very hard to express verbally, these abstract objects somehow exist apart from God. They're not imminent in God, whereas God's thoughts are imminent in a way that abstract objects are. And I think whether or not you think conceptualism is compatible with divinusality is going to depend on whether or not you think that imminent things within God can be eternal, necessary, and all the rest, so long as they're not things that are, quote unquote, outside God or apart from God. And I share that intuition, I think. It does seem to me there's a huge difference between saying that there are aspects of God or thoughts of God or other things that are imminent to God himself, so that it would make sense to think of God existing alone, all by himself, and then there would be these imminent aspects and thoughts and other things in his being. That seems to me to be very different from thinking there are these abstract entities that are apart from God, quote unquote, outside God that are eternal, uncreated, and necessary. So I can share that conceptualist intuition, but it does motivate me further toward an anti-realist point of view and say, well, our thoughts really objects. Are they really things? I'm inclined to question that and say, no, what you have is a thinker, and he is thinking, but it's a hypostatization or a reification to make them into things when you have a thinker who is thinking, and then you reify what he's thinking into a quote unquote thought and make that a thing. I am inclined that that kind of nominalization is illicit, and again, you can see my anti-realist slip showing in what I'm expressing to you right now. Good question, though. It might be a totally confused question.