Theistic Conceptualism, Divine Simplicity, and Platonism | (MoR No. 71)

Does Feser's Augustinian proof succeed? Is Theistic Conceptualism compatible with Divine Simplicity? And should we prefer Theistic Conceptualism to Platonism? I explore these questions and more in an epic discussion with @Parker's Pensées.

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(1) The original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rflji...

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

At one point in the discussion I say, roughly, that "Anderson says something like 'God's thoughts aren't about anything'". But I would like to make an important clarification about this.

Here's what I was thinking. At minute 53 in his discussion with Malpass, Anderson says that “divine thoughts don’t have propositional content”.

I take this to imply that divine thoughts aren’t about propositions. So, God’s thought that ‘Paris is the capital of France’ is not about Paris’ being the capital of France, ie, the meaning expressed by the aforequoted sentence. What, then, is it about? It can’t be about itself, since Anderson had—just prior to the time stamp above—denounced the self-reflexivity that engenders infinite regress. But if God’s thought that ‘Paris is the capital of France’ is not about Paris’ being the capital of France, and if it’s also not about itself, I took this to imply that God’s thought here isn’t about anything. (What’s any other plausible candidate for what it’s about? Cheeseburgers?)

In essence, I understood Anderson’s claim to imply, by clear and innocuous inferences, the claim that God’s thoughts aren’t about anything.

Now, in retrospect, I should have been more cautious in what I said. I should have said that Anderson said God’s thoughts have no propositional content, and that this pretty clearly (read: clear to my mind) entails that they aren’t about anything. And so I apologize for not being as clear as I should have and thereby suggesting something Anderson did not explicitly say.