Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
6-1-2013
Abstract
Scripture teaches that God has a plan for the universe. In this paper we argue that in order for it to function as a plan, it must have a temporal structure, a representational structure, and a proto-causal structure. This paper presents a formal model of the these three structures. As it turns out, the structures of God’s plan are best understood as the structures of a musical composition. We, then very briefly describe its implications. The first is that this model (based ultimately in the doctrine of God) grounds a metaphysics of science. Second, it grounds a structuralist philosophy of mathematics. Third, since the composite structure is a complex relational structure (some of whose parts are themselves mereological sums defined predicatively) global self-reference is eliminated. Therefore, if in the spirit of Leibniz we take God’s plan to be the actual world for a metaphysics of modality, we are able to preclude the incoherence that plagues set-theoretic constructions of platonic entities such as Roberts Adams’ maximal propositions and Alvin Plantinga’s ’book’ on the actual world. Yet, in one sense, our model is a logical extension of Plantinga’s ’actual world’ as a maximal, temporally-invariant state of affairs.So, the model also grounds a metaphysics of modality in the biblical doctrine of God. Fourth, the model provides the basis of a world-inclusion semantics for systems of formal logic.
Recommended Citation
Schultz, Walter J. and D’ Andrea Winslow, Lisanne, "The Structures of the Actual World" (2013). ACMS Conference Proceedings 2013. 24.
https://pillars.taylor.edu/acms-2013/24
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