Two Purely Actual Beings?

The Aristotelian Proof is a version of a class of arguments for God’s existence called cosmological arguments. Cosmological arguments start with some feature of the world—usually an undeniable feature—and attempt to show that God must exist in order to account for or explain the existence of that feature. So, in Feser’s presentation of the Aristotelian Proof we start with change as the feature of the world that requires some account or explanation. Other cosmological arguments start with causation itself, contingency—the fact that some things might not have existed at all—, the beginning of the universe, etc.

A typical problem for other versions of cosmological arguments is that even if they are sound (they really do prove the existence of a first, a necessary being, a cause of the beginning of the universe, etc) they only get us to a being that is needed for a moment and then not really needed after that initial moment. For example, even if it true that the universe has a beginning and that requires a cause of the universe, it does not follow that the cause is still needed. Maybe that initial cause got the universe going and then dropped out of existence altogether.

Now, Feser’s version of the Aristotelian Proof (AP) does not face that problem exactly. But it does face, at least initially, a similar problem. According to the AP a purely actual being must exist whenever change occurs. But the proof, all by itself, does not seem to guarantee that the exact same purely actual being must exist to explain every instance of change. For example, suppose a change occurs at t1. The AP shows that at t1, a PA must exist to explain that change. Suppose another change occurs at t2. The AP shows that at t2, a PA must exist to explain that change. But the PA that must exist at t1 need not be the same PA that must exist at t2.

It is true that any PA is a necessary being, a being that cannot fail to exist, a being that must exist. So, the PA that must exist at t1 to account for the change at t1 must exist at t2 as well as all other times (I realize that this way of speaking seems to commit me to thinking that the PA is a temporal being, but I don’t think it does; I can translate the above into timeless phrases, but it will be quite unwieldy). And the PA that must exist at t2 to account for the change at t2 must exist at t1 as well as all other times.  So if there is a PA at t1 and a distinct PA at t2, then there are two PAs that exist at the same time (or timelessly). It is also true that this line of reasoning will generate a distinct PA for all instances of change. If there are ten such instances, then according to this line of reasoning we have just as much reason to think that there is one PA as we have to think that there are ten PAs, and so on for every instance of change.

So, the relevant question to ask, it seems to me is this:


Question: is such a scenario possible? Is it possible to have two (or more) PAs, where each is the purely actual actualizer of a different series of changes?

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