omnipresence - hudson

Source: TW

Hud Hudson’s chapter on omnipresence is really well done and offers a balanced approach, quoting from Thomas Aquinas and Anselm, as well as from Hartshorne, Swinburne, Wierenga and Taliaferro. It also discusses theories of omnipresence that do not think of God as occupying a space as well as “occupation theories”. In discussing the latter, HH refers to Josh Parsons’ discussion of relations and location.

He also identifies and discusses six puzzles connected with occupation theories:

  1. The problem of simplicity. How can a simple entity be present in multiple locations? (NB: Easy to answer if you think in terms of #SanskritPhilosophy, think of ātman and ākāśa as being simple and vibhu).
  2. The problem of multilocation. How can something occupy (i.e., be fully present) in two numerically distinct regions? (Again, think of ākāśa for a solution: God would just need to be co-extensive with ākāśa, perhaps?
  3. The problem of containment. Would not God be limited by Their occupying a specific region?

As for 2, Hudson suggests that this can be solved through the concept of entension (≠extension), as elaborated by Parsons. ‘x entends’ is defined as follows: “x is an object that is wholly & entirely located at a non-point-sized region r & for each proper subregion of r, r*, x is wholly located at r*”. (NB: I am yet to read Parsons and I don’t know how he justify this possibility).

As for 3., Hudson replies that God’s freedom can be safeguarded bc They bear “occupation relations accidentally rather than essentially”.

  1. The problem of timelessness. How can sth occupy a region and be atemporal? (Again, Hudson suggests that this is not too big a problem, bc it could be an accidental rather essential feature of God).
  2. The problem of incorporeality. How can sth occupy a region and fail to have a body? (Again, Hudson suggests that this might be an accidental and extrinsic characteristic of God, and that also Hartshorne and Swinburne had to compromise even more here, even accepting a form of pantheism)
  3. The problem of co-location. How can two numerically distinct things each occupy the same regions? (Again, think of ākāśa, ātman etc. for examples of entities that can co-extend over the same region without excluding each other)

Two more points: At the end, Hudson discusses the individuation principle and wonders whether “necessarily, for any located objects, x and y, x is located at all and only the same regions as y iff x=y”. This leads to problems, Hudson says, for Trinitarian Christians. Within Sanskrit philosophy, no one I know would agree about it, at least not in the case of vibhu entities.

At the beginning, Hudson discusses Anselm’s understanding of omnipresence as amounting to “God’s sensing or perceiving at each place and time”. He also discusses Thomas’s understanding of omnipresence as “a necessary condition of God’s causality”. In other words, Anselm needs omnipresence to enable omniscience. Thomas needs it to enable omnipotence. However (here EF speaking) they also have passages speaking of the need for God to sustain" the world, which seem to speak of something else.

Embodiment

Source: TW

RichardSwinburne on omnipresence in his 1977 book: “Clearly God is not supposed to be embodied in either the first or fifth way” (i.e., as experiencing pain related to one’s body or as being affected irrationally to something happening to the body) (p. 112).

However, God is embodied in the sense that “he can cause effects at every place directly (as an instrumentally basic action) and knows what is happening at every place without the information coming to him through some causal chain” (p. 113).

Hudson 2009 opposed this idea, for it is both too weak and too strong. “[T]oo weak for it fails to secure my exclusive relation to my body (since God and I presumably meet the relevant criteria) and too strong for, plausibly, there exists parts of my body that I have no non-mediated power over” (p. 203).

I am not sure both objections highlight real fatal mistakes. A Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta author would accept the former (our body is both ours and God’s) and would say that the latter only applies to our bodies, but not to God’s.