Divine Omniscience and Criteria of Intentionality Eric Russert Kraemer Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 45, No. 1. (Sep., 1984), pp. 131-135. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28198409%2945%3A1%3C131%3ADOACOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is currently published by International Phenomenological Society.
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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. XLV, NO. I , September 1984
Divine Omniscience and Criteria of Intentionality ERIC RUSSERT KRAEMER
The University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Intentionality is often urged as a distinctive mark of psychological phenomena. Franz Brentano remarked for instance:' The common feature of everything psychological . . . consists in a relation that we bear to an object. The relation has been called intentional: it is a relation to something which may not be actual but which is presented as an object.
In this discussion I shall present what I take to be an interesting limitation in some recent attempts to characterize intentionality more precisely. Let us begin with a criterion of intentionality recently proposed by Roderick M. Chisholm thar seems to make use of Brentano's suggestion:" Let us refine upon ordinary written English in the following way: instead of wrlting propositional clauses as "thatn-clauses, we will eliminate the initial "that" and put the remainder of the clause in parentheses. Thus, instead of "It is possible that there are angels" and "Socrates believes that all men are mortal," we will have "It is possible (there are angels)" and "Socrates believes (all men are mortal)."et us define a (simple) sentence-prefix as an expression which is such that: ( I )the result of prefixing it to such a sentence in parentheses is another sentence, and ( 2 ) ~tcontains no proper part that is logically equivalent to a sentence or to a sentence-function. We may say that a (simple)prefix M is intentional if, for every sentence p, M ( p ) 1s logically contingent. And we may now say that a sentence is intentional if it implies the result of prefixing some sentence by an intentional prefix.
I shall refer to this criterion as the contingency criterion of intentionality. The problem that I want to raise for this criterion concerns divine omniscience.
Franz Brentano, The Origin of O u r Knowledge of Right and Wrong, ed. Oskar Kraus, English edition ed. Roderick M. Chisholm (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 14. Roderick M . Chisholm, "Believing and Intentionality: A Reply to Mr. Luce and Mr. Sleigh," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 25 (1964-65): 264-69, p. 269.
DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND CRITERIA O F INTENTIONALITY
I3I
Let us consider the prefix (G) "God believes that." Let us suppose that God not only exists but, further, that God is a necessary being and has the attribute of omniscience necessarily. Now there are many sentences such that the result of prefixing (G) to them is logically contingent. Consider, for example, the sentence "God believes that Reagan was born in Illinois." This sentence expresses a contingent matter, for Reagan could have been born elsewhere. But what about truths such as 2 2 = 4 ? Let us use the terminology of possible worlds. I will assume that a sentence is logically contingent if and only if its truth value is not the same in every possible world. According to our assumptions God exists and is omniscient in every possible world. And since knowledge requires belief, the belief that 2 2 = 4 is a belief that God has in every possible world. So it would appear that the sentence
+
+
(H)
"God believes that
+ 2 = 4."
2
would not be logically contingent. For there is no possible world in which God would fail to have the belief that 2 + 2 = 4. But, then the prefix (G) would not count as a psychological prefix according to the contingency criterion. It would be a mistake to respond that God does not exist or that God For the actual exislacks necessary existence or necessary omni~cience.~ tence of a being with these features is not required. What is significant is that the existence of such a being seems to be conceptually coherent. If intentionality is a mark of the psychological, a truly adequate criterion of intentionality should apply to all psychological states. It should not matter what sort of being is in a psychological state. T o avoid this difficulty one might try to argue that the contingency criterion can handle the problem of the intentionality of God's beliefs in the following manner. Let us note that the criterion ends with the claim "a sentence is intentional if it implies the result of prefixing some sentence by an intentional prefix." This way of putting the criterion allows us to count such sentences as (J)
"Jones knows that
2
+ 2 = 4 and 2 + 2 f 4."
as intentional even though (J) is necessarily false.4 For (J) implies
' A third sort of inadequate reply would be to embrace the view that Alvin Plantinga calls universal possibilism according to which there are no necessary truths. See Alvin Plantinga, Does Bad Have A Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980),pp. 92-126.If such a view were correct, then it would not distinguish psychological sentence prefixes such as "Socrates believes that" from non-psychological prefixes such as "It is possible that," for all matters of truth and falsity would be contingent. Compare Ausionio Marras, "Intentionality and Cognitive Sentences," Philosophy and
132 ERIC RUSSERT KRAEMER
(K)
"Jonesbelievesthat2+2=4and2+zf~."
And since (K) is logically contingent, the sentence prefix "Jones knows that" satisfies the contingency r e q ~ i r e m e n t So . ~ if we can find some sentence implied by ( H ) that contains the right sort of sentence prefix, then (H) would also count as intentional. Now sentence ( H ) does imply the promising looking candidate (S)
"Someone believes that
2
+ 2 = 4."
And it might seem that this latter sentence is contingent. However, if God as traditionally conceived does exist, then (S) would not be contingent. For since God would exist in every possible world and would know that 2 + z = 4 in every possible world, there would be no possible world in which (S)failed to be true. The same sort of problem can be raised for other sentences implied by (H). Other criteria of intentionality face a similar difficulty. Consider, for example, another more complicated criterion of intentionality. Chisholm has proposed the following pattern:6
. . . of the four types of sentence, "S believes that, for every x , x is F" (UC),"For every x , S believes that x is F" (UD), "S believes that there exists an x such that x is F" (EC),and "There exists an x such that S believes that x is F" (ED), neither the first nor the third implies any of the others, the second implies all but the first, and the fourth implies the third but does not imply either the first or the second. Chisholm goes on to claim that no non-psychological prefix follows such a pattern. Let us call this criterion the epistemic quantification criterion. Let us also note what happens if S is replaced with "God." Since God is omniscient, any sentence with form (UC) "God believes that, for every x, x is F" would imply a sentence with form (UD) "For every x, God believes that x is F." For if God believed that everything is F, He would not fail to believe with respect to anything that it would be F. The converse implication would also hold. For if God believed with respect to everything that it was F, God would not fail to believe that everything was F. Any sentence with form (EC), "God believes that there exists an x such that x is F," would imply a sentence with the form (ED) "There exists an x such that God believes that x is F." For an omniscient God would not make any doxastic errors. Thus, this second criterion of intentionality also does not apply to God's beliefs. Phenomenological Research 29 (1968): 257-63, pp. 262-63.
In this manner one can avoid a problem raised by W. G. Lycan in "On Intentionality and
the Psychological," American Philosophical Quarterly 6 (1969): 305-1 I, see p. 308.
Roderick M. Chisholm, "Believing and Intentionality," pp. 264-65.
DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND CRITERIA O F INTENTIONALITY I 3 3
I have here considered two recent, seemingly plausible attempts to characterize intentionality more precisely. Both of these attempts do seem to avoid the problems that have been raised against earlier efforts to characterize intentionality.' But on neither of these criteria are God's believings intentional. And it should also be noted that God's believings do not count as intentional according to these earlier criteria either. The problem, then, is this. If belief is intentional, then God's believings should also be intentional. But, what criterion of intentionalty will both God's believings and mortal believings count as intentional? One approach to this problem would be to appeal to Brentano's early characterization of the intentional as "a direction upon an object."' One might claim that there is a primitive feature of directedness that is characteristic of both sorts of believings. In the interests of parsimony, however, this approach should be endorsed only when one has good reason to believe that more illuminating answers are not to be found. There is one further approach to this problem that I would like to mention. One may try to account for the intentionality of God's believings with the following criterion. A sentence is intentional if it contains a name or a description the replacement of which by another name or description results in a sentence which satisfies the contingency andlor the epistemic quantification criteria. It is clear that many non-psychological sentences will not satisfy this criterion. Consider for example: (C)
Jones caused it to be the case that Smith is alive.
Replacing either "Jones" or "Smith" with, for example, "Robinson," will not yield a sentence that satisfies either of the two other criteria. However, (H)would satisfy the criterion, for if we replace "God" with "Smith" the resulting sentence (S)
"Smith believes that
2+
z=4."
clearly meets both the contingency and the epistemic quantification criteria. But even if we are able to account for the intentionality of ( H ) with a criterion such as this last, a serious philosophical worry remains. Let us again consider the case of the intentionality of states of knowledge. It is See Roderick M. Chisholm, "Intentionality" in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: MacMillan, 1967), vol. 4, pp. 201-4. ' Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, ed. Linda L. McAlister (New York: Humanities Press, 1 9 7 3 ) ~p. 88. *
I34
ERIC RUSSERT KRAEMER
permissible to account for the intentionality of knowings by appealing to the intentionality of believings.' For the psychological aspect of knowing seems to derive wholly from that of believing. But the intentionality of God's beliefs does not appear to derive in a similar fashion from the intentionality of the beliefs of mortals. Thus it would seem to be a mistake to suppose that a criterion such as this last proposal captures what is really distinctive about the intentionality of God's mental states. So the problem of providing both an interesting and a truly general criterion of intentionality seems to remain to be solved.
" See Marras, "Intentional~ty a n d Cognitwe Sentences,"
p. 262.
DIVINE OMNISCIENCE AND CRITERIA O F INTENTIONALITY
I35
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[Footnotes] 4
Intentionality and Cognitive Sentences Ausonio Marras Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Dec., 1968), pp. 257-263. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28196812%2929%3A2%3C257%3AIACS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1 9
Intentionality and Cognitive Sentences Ausonio Marras Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 29, No. 2. (Dec., 1968), pp. 257-263. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8205%28196812%2929%3A2%3C257%3AIACS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1
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