2.1. Minimal monotheism

It’s very easy to give a rough-and-ready characterization of monotheism. Roughly, it’s the view that there is exactly one god (or deity, or divine being…). As easy as it is to give a rough-and-ready characterization, it’s just as hard to give a precise and accurate characterization. The main reason for the difficulty is that the rough-and-ready characterization leaves unanswered what it is to be a god, and that question is itself very knotty.Footnote ³ Complicating matters still further, there might be no correct, single answer to that question. There are—and historically have been—more and less demanding conceptions of what it is to be a god. Some require personal characteristics, like intellect and will, and some don’t; still others demand the absence of any personal characteristics; some require perfect or unsurpassable goodness, some don’t; and so on. What goes these days by the name “classical theism”—and plays a starring role in contemporary philosophy of religion—is but one specific version of monotheism. It’s one that results from specifying a conception of what it is to be a god that is Anselmian, or “tri-omni,” or some such thing.

So, what follows is a somewhat stipulative attempt to more precisely state what I’ll call minimal monotheism. Minimal monotheism is weak enough so as to be entailed by any standard version of monotheism, and strong enough so as to be inconsistent with any standard version of atheism, polytheism, and pantheism. The attempt is still somewhat stipulative, because the questions of what are “standard” versions of monotheism, atheism, polytheism, and pantheism admit of no answers that aren’t at least partly stipulative (and tendentious). Any my characterization will also be somewhat vague and schematic. But it’ll serve my purposes well enough. The claim that monotheists have good reason to be monists, and monists have good reason to be (minimal) monotheists, is interesting and important (if true), wherever exactly we reasonably choose to draw the line between monotheism and its neighbors, and even if that line is somewhat fuzzy.

Minimal monotheism must entail that there is a being who is the source, or creator, or explanation, of all this (as I gesture left and right and up and down), of all (concrete) things visible and invisible, tangible and intangible, other than itself—of the universe, for short.Footnote ⁴ If the universe were a product of two extremely powerful Spirits—each having been responsible for creating one half of the universe—monotheism would be false. Even if one of the two extremely Spirits were responsible for creating everything but the other Spirit—the latter of whom simply decided not to create at all—monotheism would be false.

It would be easiest if we could just assume that being such a source of everything (other than itself) is part of what it is to be a god. But that conceptual assumption leads to the troubling result that in the scenarios we’ve just considered, there are zero gods. That doesn’t seem right. We’d naturally say that in those scenarios there are two gods, not zero—that polytheism is true, not atheism. More simply and problematically still, polytheism would be ruled out as a straightforward conceptual impossibility. Sourcehood, after all, is straightforwardly asymmetric. It may turn out that polytheism is impossible. It may even turn out that polytheism is a conceptual impossibility. But it shouldn’t be obviously conceptually impossible, in a way that would render its myriad adherents throughout history positively stupid.

Now, I’d be willing to live with these awkward results. I could always say that there are no doubt less demanding conceptions of divinity—such that in some legitimate sense of “god” the claim that there is more than one god is at least conceptually possible, and would be true in the scenarios I mentioned—but that I’m working with a more demanding conception, and given that more demanding conception, nothing is a god unless it’s the source of everything (but itself). Then monotheism could still be put as the claim that there is exactly one god.

But as a matter of fact, we will in any case have to add some additional clauses, to ensure that monotheism is inconsistent with both polytheism and pantheism. We can put the motivation schematically: being a god, is going to be rather demanding. It’s not like my foot might be god. But given that it’s rather demanding, the claim that there is exactly one of that kind of thing will be consistent with there being a multitude of very impressive beings—way too impressive for the multitude to be consistent with monotheism—that just missed the cut of being a god. Maybe they’ve got two out of three divine-making features; maybe they’ve got seven out of seven, but to a slightly lesser degree than is needed to make the cut. A situation in which there are such beings alongside the one being that makes the cut doesn’t seem like monotheism enough: it doesn’t respect the vast gap that there’s supposed to be between the one God and everything else. A monotheist is going to want to say both that there is a being that has all, or at least a great many, of the divine-making features, and also that every other being has none, or at most very few, of these divine-making features. Or, more neutrally, that there’s no other being that even comes close to the one God. Let’s remedy this defect in the formulation by just adding a conjunct: Monotheism is the view that there is exactly one god and nothing other than the one God even comes close to it. But now once we’re adding conjuncts, we might as well be explicit about the sourcehood issue: Monotheism says that there is exactly one god, who is the source of all things other than It, and nothing other than the one God even comes close.

Finally, as opposed to pantheism and panentheism, monotheism in all of its forms says that that being lies beyond—in the sense of being neither identical with nor made up of—anything tangible or spatial or material. Indeed, God lies beyond everything other than Himself. God is a “transcendent being,” for short.

Bottom line: minimal monotheism says that there is exactly one god, a transcendent being that is the source of all things other than It, and nothing other than the one god even comes close. This will do for now.

As I’ve already indicated, many theists will think minimal monotheism isn’t specific enough to capture their view of God. It certainly doesn’t capture everything that particular monotheistic religions will say about God’s nature. But it’s more or less what the whole monotheistic family shares in common—and distinguishes them from atheism, pantheism, panentheism, and polytheism. That’s why it’s minimal monotheism. Despite its vagueness and partly stipulative character, it’s serviceable enough.

2.2. Monism

Now for “monism.” Monism says that being is one. More perspicuously, that there is just one being. But here we can ask two questions, which give rise to two axes along which version of monism can differ. One question is whether “being” is supposed to be the most general term for anything whatsoever, or if it’s supposed to pick out a more restricted category of things. If a more restricted category, then monism-so-understood is consistent with there being many things, just so long as only one of them belongs to the restricted category. If a more restricted category, what is the category? A number of proposals have been put forward: the category of substances (Spinoza Ethics Part 1 Proposition 14), or individual things (van Inwagen, Reference van Inwagen2009), or basic or fundamental concrete things (Schaffer, Reference Schaffer2010a, Reference Schaffer2010b), or concrete things that have perfectly natural properties (Sider, Reference Sider2007). Schaffer (Reference Schaffer2010b) calls the unrestricted version, existence monism, and his own restricted version, priority monism.

It’s worth nothing that at least “on paper” Schaffer’s is just one possibility among several versions of restricted monism. But they’re all getting at a distinction between what is metaphysically basic/ground floor, and what is metaphysically derivative/built up, using each one’s preferred ideology. These differences might matter in some contexts, but I don’t think they’ll matter for us here. So I’ll just let Schaffer’s own priority monism—the view that that there is exactly one basic concrete thing, exactly one concrete thing that isn’t grounded in any other concrete thing—serve as a stand-in for all of them. Indeed, since existence monism (what I’ve called unrestricted monism) is strictly stronger than priority monism, I’m going to treat bare monism as equivalent to priority monism. Monism says that there’s exactly one basic concrete thing—following Plotinus, let’s call it “the One.” Every other concrete thing, if there be any, will be grounded in some concrete being distinct from it. Assuming metaphysical foundationalism, it will ultimately be grounded in the One.

But this still leaves open a second question, about the identity of the One. Is it something we’re familiar with? If so, which thing? If not, can we say anything else about it? More generally, we can ask what kind of thing it is: is it natural or supernatural? Matter or spirit?

Here, monism as such as silent. As far as monism says, it could be my left foot, or Mt. Sinai, or the cosmos, or something else entirely. But nearly all of the extant developments of monism don’t stay silent, and they speak nearly in unison in declaring that the One is the cosmos—understood as the mereological sum of all the concrete things.Footnote ⁵ Call their view “Cosmic Monism.” Cosmic monism is incompatible with monotheism.Footnote ⁶ It’s incompatible with monotheism because it implies that everything is either identical with the cosmos, or grounded in the cosmos. But God, according to monotheism, is not identical with the cosmos, for monotheism says that God is neither identical with nor made up of anything tangible or spatial or material.Footnote ⁷ And God’s being grounded in the cosmos seems inconsistent with monotheism twice over: first in virtue of God’s having to be the source of that in which He is grounded, and second in virtue of the cosmos having to be nothing close to the one God, despite the fact that it grounds everything else! Neither seems possible.

So the now-dominant development of monism—that is cosmic monism—is in fact incompatible with monotheism. (Indeed, given the argument from the previous paragraph, any development of monism that doesn’t identify the One with God is incompatible with monotheism. So theistic monism, which is the conjunction of monism and monotheism, is equivalent to the superficially stronger claim that adds to that conjunction the identification of the One with God. Henceforth, I will use “theistic monism” as shorthand for that claim.) But other than a prior commitment to the falsity of monotheism, is there a reason to follow all of these monists in developing monism in a specifically cosmic direction? Is there something about monism just as such that, even if it does not logically imply the falsity of monotheism, puts it at odds or in tension with it? On the surface, perhaps, the answer is yes.

5.1. Indifferent monistic arguments

There are a number of decent arguments for monism. But most of them are neutral between cosmic monism and bottom-up monism, and between naturalistic and non-naturalistic monism’s more generally. Even though as they’ve been presented and developed many of these arguments do issue in the conclusion of cosmic monism, it turns out upon more careful examination that it’s because they beg the question against other versions of monism. That is, they’re really arguments for monism just as such, and it’s only if we simply assume that cosmic monism is the only monistic game in town that we can go on to draw cosmic monism as a conclusion.

I will move rather quickly here, because I think it’s pretty easy to see that the relevant arguments are actually neutral between cosmic monism and other ways to develop monism.

First, the argument from quantum mechanics, which draws on the quantum mechanical phenomenon of entanglement (see Schaffer, Reference Schaffer2010b). Schaffer sees it as an argument for what he calls “monism”—which is of course specifically cosmic monism. But in order for the argument to even get off the ground, it needs to assume something like the following: For any set of sub-cosmic objects that compose the Cosmos, the members of that set are in an entangled state, that is the quantum-mechanical state of the Cosmos is not determined by the fundamental properties of the members taken individually. But while this is true for all of the ordinary sub-cosmic objects that compose the cosmos, it’s not true of the null individual, if such a thing exists. The null individual’s fundamental properties do determine the quantum-mechanical state of the Cosmos (along with everything else), if it exists. It’s only because Schaffer ignores the null individual that he assumes this to be true of absolutely every set of objects that compose the cosmos.

Likewise, if the argument is going to establish cosmic monism in particular, then it needs to assume something like the following: if there’s no set of fundamental subcosmic objects that compose the Cosmos, then cosmic monism is true. But even granting the metaphysical foundationalism that lies behind this assumption, it simply ignores the possibility that the relationship between the One and the rest of the cosmos isn’t mereological. That is, it just assumes that the One is going to cover the cosmos by overlapping every part of it, as opposed to by thinking it, or being manifested in it, or performing it. It ignores all the monistic options that see the One as transcendent. (By the same token, it ignores all the parallel pluralistic options. Once we recognize the other sorts of grounding relations that the basic objects might stand in to the rest of the cosmos, this argument loses much of its force.)

Second, the argument from nomic integrity, which draws on the idea (which he calls “Russellian Laws”) that the cosmos is the one and only thing that evolves by the fundamental laws (see Schaffer, Reference Schaffer2013). But that idea is plausible only if we restrict our attention to the cosmos and all of its ordinary subcosmic parts. If there is a null individual, or a thinker that has the cosmos as an idea, or a power that has the cosmos as a manifestation, or an agent whose performance constitutes the cosmos, then that thing could just as well evolve by the fundamental laws.Footnote ²⁵ It’s just not obvious—once all of these other options are in view—that, as Schaffer puts it, “The cosmos [is] the one system for which nothing is “outside,” [and hence] is the one system immune to disruption.”

Next, the argument from gunk, which draws on the metaphysical possibility of there being no simples, no mereological atoms (see Schaffer, Reference Schaffer2010b). But of course that possibility is ruled out if the existence of a null individual is metaphysically necessary—and presumably, the existence of a null individual is a noncontingent “proposition of metaphysics,” it being necessary if it’s so much as possible (and so a fortiori if it’s so much as actual).Footnote ²⁶ Moreover, if the argument is going to establish cosmic monism in particular, it’s going to need to assume the following: in a gunky world, the only object that could be basic is the cosmos. But even granting the anti-arbitrariness and minimality intuitions that lie behind this assumption (ibid.), it simply ignores the possibility that the relationship between the One and the rest of the cosmos isn’t mereological. That is, it just assumes that the One is going to be distinguished in virtue of its mereological role (the one and only thing that overlaps everything), rather than some other role.Footnote ²⁷

Next and finally, the Spinozistic-Bennettian argument that draws on the insubstantiality of material objects (they’re all extended, and every extended material thing has parts upon which it depends) and the insubstantiality of proper subregions of the whole of spacetime (they each depend on the whole of spacetime) (see Bennett, Reference Bennett1984, Ch. 4). But even granting Spinoza the additional assumption that there is some substance, these premises entail Spinoza’s conclusion that spacetime is the one and only substance only if we simply ignore the possibility of a substance that is neither material nor a region of spacetime—as the null individual, or an immaterial thinker or agent or power, would be.Footnote ²⁸

5.2. Monistic argument specifically for bottom-up monism

None of the above arguments for monism tells one way or the other between naturalistic and non-naturalistic developments of monism. But there is an argument for monism that supports bottom-up monism in particular.

The second argument I gave from monotheism to monism was an instance of a more general argument. The more general argument is from pervasive failures of recombination—or the pervasive presence of absolutely necessary connections—between what appear to be distinct existences. The idea behind the argument is that this appearance must be misleading in some way; what appear to be distinct existences must in reality not be. There must be something they share in common. For otherwise nothing could explain the fact that they are necessarily connected in this way. And, on the other hand, such a necessary connection is the sort of thing that needs to be explained; it cannot just be a brute fact that modal space is constrained in that way.Footnote ²⁹ As the cosmic monist sees it, what any two (subcosmic) concrete things share in common is that they are grounded (ultimately) in the cosmos. As Schaffer (Reference Schaffer2010a, p. 342) puts it, “failure of free recombination is the modal signature of an integrated monistic cosmos.”

The first thing to say is that this monistic argument, like the rest we’ve seen, does nothing to actually establish cosmic monism in particular. The last move in the argument is just cosmic prejudice. The second thing to say is that this monistic argument, unlike the rest we’ve seen, is not indifferent between different views on the nature and identity of the One. If the argument succeeds in establishing monism, then it also imposes certain constraints on what the One could be. Simply identifying the One with the cosmos won’t satisfy those constraints.

The first reason is that identifying the One with the cosmos does nothing to explain the relevant necessary connections between subcosmic objects. It gives an impression of explaining them, without actually doing so. (I don’t just mean that the explanation it provides needs a further explanation; I mean it provides no substantive explanation at all.) The impression of an explanation is due to the fact that according to cosmic monism, the subcosmic objects are indeed both grounded in a single thing, the cosmos. But this all by itself doesn’t yet explain why a particular necessary connection obtains—or even why there are necessary connections at all between subcosmic objects. Suppose there’s a necessary connection (causal, spatial, or existential) between the Sun and the Moon—that is, between the way each is intrinsically. But now, even if the Sun is the way it is because of how the cosmos is, it’s presumably because of the way the cosmos is, as we might say, sun-wise; and even if the moon is the way it is because of how the cosmos is, it’s presumably because of the way the cosmos is, as we might say, moon-wise. The cosmos being the way it is sun-wise does nothing all by itself to explain the intrinsic features of the moon. Or at least we have no particular reason to think it does. So then in order to explain the necessary connection between the sun and the moon, the cosmic monist will just have to add that there is a necessary connection between the fact that the cosmos is thus-and-such sun-wise and the fact that the cosmos is such-and-so moon-wise. But that’s exactly what we’re trying to explain! Or at least it’s so damn close to the explanandum that it’s clear no explanatory progress has been made. Notice that to begin with we could have easily formulated the explanandum in this somewhat more convoluted manner. (That is: Why is there a necessary connection between the way the cosmos is sun-wise and the way it is moon-wise?) If we had, then the pluralist would have an explanation where the cosmic monist had none. (Pluralist explanation: Because there is a necessary connection between the sun and the moon.) But whether monism or pluralism has the advantage can’t depend on which question we choose to ask. So cosmic monism does no better than pluralism. Which is to say, not very well at all.

But the situation is entirely different for bottom-up monism. That’s because the way the null individual is sun-wise (the way it is in virtue of which the sun is the way it is)—indeed, the way it is any-wise—does something to explain the intrinsic features of the moon. After all, the null individual is part of the moon. And so any intrinsic feature F that the null individual has will give rise to the moon’s being a certain way intrinsically. This is just an instance of a general truth about the relationship between the intrinsic features of parts and wholes: for any x and y and F, if x is part of y, and F is a property intrinsic to x, then the property having a part that has F is a property intrinsic to y. So, a bottom-up monist won’t need to pencil in anything by hand. The claim that the Sun and the Moon (and every other concrete thing) are grounded in the null individual can all by itself explain why it is that there is a necessary connection between the sun and the moon (as it can also explain why it is that there is a necessary connection between the way the cosmos is sun-wise and the way the cosmos is moon-wise).Footnote ³⁰

The cosmic monist can try to mimic the bottom-up monist here. In order to do so, they’d presumably need to assume that any intrinsic feature that the cosmos has will give rise to the moon’s being a certain way intrinsically. And presumably that’d be because of a general truth about the relationship between the intrinsic features of things and their grounds (for any x and y and F, if x is grounded in y, and F is a property intrinsic to y, then the property being grounded in something that has F is a property intrinsic to x), or because of a general truth about the relationship between the intrinsic features of wholes and their parts (for any x and y and F, if x is part of y, and F is a property intrinsic to y, then the property being a part of something that has F is a property intrinsic to x). But, as I’ve indicated already, these general claims are much less plausible than the corresponding claim about parts and wholes. Sure, maybe some of the properties that a ground has intrinsically give rise to a “corresponding’ property had intrinsically by the grounded thing; and maybe some of the properties that a whole has intrinsically give rise to a “corresponding’ property had intrinsically by the part. But we’ve been given no good reason to believe that every property had intrinsically by the ground or the whole does the same. Even if the cosmic monist is right, the way the moon is intrinsically intuitively depends only on how the cosmos is moon-wise, not sun-wise.

The second reason that identifying the One with the cosmos won’t satisfy the relevant constraints is that there are actually two things that need to be explained. One is the (relevant) necessary connection itself. The other is the fact that there can be a necessary connection, when the connection is between the intrinsic natures of the relata. To see that this is a further explanatory demand, suppose we grant the cosmic monist her cheap explanation for the necessary connection, namely that there is a necessary connection between the fact that the cosmos is thus-and-such sun-wise and the fact that the cosmos is such-and-so moon-wise. Ok. But this has done nothing to explain how it could be that there’d be a necessary connection between intrinsic natures. Here we need to keep in mind that providing an explanation for P doesn’t all by itself explain how P could be. If someone explains the necessary connections between intrinsic natures with the suggestion that God said “let it be so!,” then even if that person’s explanation is right, they’ve done nothing to explain how there could be such a thing. So, this is a separate explanandum. And I don’t see what the cosmic monist’s explanation is going to be. As I’ve said, that there is a necessary connection between the fact that the cosmos is thus-and-such sun-wise and the fact that the cosmos is such-and-so moon-wise doesn’t yet explain how there could be a necessary connection between intrinsic natures. And the more general point that the sun and the moon share a ground doesn’t all by itself explain that either, any more than the fact that my cousins and I share grandparents explains how it could be that we are necessarily connected. What’s needed is some further specification of the particular grounding relation in play, and some insight as to how it makes these necessary connections possible. If we can point to a particular relation that the One stands in to everything else, which also satisfies some interesting further condition, a condition that makes intelligible how there could be a necessary connection between the intrinsic natures of what appear to be wholly distinct existences, then we have the ingredients for an explanation. And that’s precisely what we have given bottom-up monism, and lack given cosmic monism.Footnote ³¹ According to bottom-up monism the One is part of everything. And that relation (in that direction) does satisfy an interesting further condition, namely that for any x and y and F, if x is part of y, and F is a property intrinsic to x, then the property having a part that is F is a property intrinsic to y. And this makes intelligible how there could be necessary connections between intrinsic natures. Identifying the One with the cosmos does nothing to make that intelligible.Footnote ³²

5.3. Bottom-up monism to theistic monism

So the only pro-monism argument that actually supports a specific development of monism, supports bottom-up monism, which identifies the One with the null individual. But the null individual has quite a few divine qualities. As Hud Hudson (Reference Hudson2006) points out, it is “likely to be a (i) necessarily existing, (ii) concrete, (iii) one of a kind entity; it is (iv) the one and only simple, being a part of everything else. In fact, in virtue of being a part of every point in space time, it has a straightforward (albeit nonstandard) claim to be (v) eternal and (vi) omnipresent.”Footnote ³³ And bottom-up monism says that this thing’s existence and nature grounds the existence and nature of every other concrete thing. The claim that there is something with features (i)-(vi) that grounds everything else isn’t quite monotheism, but it takes us quite a long way down the monotheistic road.Footnote ³⁴