The Deus ex Machina Objection and Epistemic Atheism

In the original context, Kant mounts his objection against both hyperphysical influx and pre-established harmony. In the last chapter I have analyzed why the system of intellectual intuition is hopeless, now I will turn to the Deus ex machina objection to pre-established harmony. As I have noted, Kant’s Deus ex machina objection is more directed at pre-established harmony in general than to Crusius’ preformation-system in particular. In other words, it is not that preformation system per se is false. Rather, pre-established harmony is false, and preformation system as one species of pre-established harmony is thereby false.

Kant’s Deus ex machina objection to Crusius’ system of pre-established harmony between representation and object is not a new invention. It echoes the same famous objection made by Leibniz against Malebranche’s occasionalism of natural causation, according to which God is invoked to intervene the world from moment to moment for each state of the world. In his first published essay New System of Nature composed in 1695, Leibniz introduces his Deus ex machina charge as follows:

149 See Stang 2015.

114 It is quite true that, speaking with metaphysical rigor, there is no real influence of one created substance on another, and that all things, with all their reality, are continually produced by the power [vertu] of God. But in solving problems it is not sufficient to make use of the general cause and to invoke what is called a Deus ex machina. For when one does that without giving any other explanation derived from the order of secondary causes, it is, properly speaking, having recourse to miracle. (1989, 143)

As the passage indicates, Leibniz’s mention of miracle might allude to his perpetual miracle argument, one of Leibniz’s most famous objections to occasionalism. According to this argument, the occasionalist account of natural causation by appeal to a supernatural cause amounts to saying that God exercises a perpetual miracle on the world, for all the natural events are miraculous in the sense that all events exceed their own causal powers. Thereby it implies there is no genuine distinction that can be drawn between laws of nature and miracle.¹⁵⁰

In this very passage, however, it is not the specific consequence of perpetual miracle, but a general mode of explanation of Deus ex machina, that constitutes the chief target under Leibniz’s attack. Here Leibniz employs Deus ex machina to highlight a particular pattern of inference that underlies the system of occasionalism. According to Leibniz, an explanation invokes God as Deus ex machina if the explanation invokes God by making use of God as the general cause without giving an explanation from other secondary cause. On the one hand, Leibniz is convinced that God should play a role in the explanation of natural phenomena to display his divine wisdom and benevolence. On the other hand, he believes that we cannot simply invoke God as the immediate cause and thereby ignores the complex mechanism in nature as the secondary cause. It is by specifying which causal role God plays that Leibniz distinguishes the illegitimate invocations to God as Deus ex machina from the legitimate ones. Different from the perpetual argument, what Leibniz does here is to make a normative claim on epistemic legitimacy: what kind of explanation is legitimate if it invokes to God.

The charge of invoking Deus ex machina seems applicable to Leibniz’s own system, too. It does appear puzzling to his contemporaries that Leibniz feels his own theory of pre-established harmony free from this charge, since it also makes an appeal to God. In his letter to Leibniz on March 4^th in 1687, Arnauld expresses his worry that Leibniz’s system of pre-established harmony seems “saying the same thing in other words that those claim that my will is the occasional cause of the movement of my arm and that God is the real cause of it”.¹⁵¹

150 For Leibniz on perpetual miracle see Adams 1994, 90-99.

151 Leibniz 1967, 105.

115 Anticipated by Arnauld’s scruple, it is not surprising to hear that Kant charges Crusius’

intellectual pre-established harmony with invoking God as Deus ex machina.

However, the intellectual pre-established harmony does not fall prey to the Deus ex machina objection only if the notion of Deus ex machina is captured precisely as Leibniz explains. With the well-defined notion of Deus ex machina in hand, however, Leibniz could easily distance his pre-established harmony from occasionalism and dismiss the latter as explanatorily illegitimate by taking God as the general cause.¹⁵²

As we have seen, the distinction between God’s role as ultimate cause and his role as immediate cause matters so much for Leibniz. In spite of that, the distinction is not that significant for Kant. Kant’s entire Deus ex machina objections rests upon his dismissal of the distinction. For Kant Malebranche’s system of assistance and Leibniz’s system of pre-determined harmony are close neighbors. Indeed, Kant calls them respectively as individually established harmony and generally established harmony in his Inaugural Dissertation. (AA 2:409) Since Kant radicalizes the notion of Deus ex machina, to decide whether some explanation is susceptible to the Deus ex machina objection is not a matter to see whether God plays the explanatory role as immediate cause or as remote cause, but a matter to see whether God plays any explanatory role regardless of what role it is. To invoke God as Deus ex machina is simply to accord it some role in the explanation of natural phenomena. Consequently, any mode of the explanation of a priori knowledge by appeal to God invites this kind of objection. In this sense, Leibniz’s system of pre-determined harmony is no better off than Malebranche’s system of assistance.

Kant’s reconceptualization of Deus ex machina should not obscure its continuity with Leibniz’s original conception; their difference is a matter of degree. Both of them employ this objection as a charge to the legitimacy of the mode of explanation, and both of them impose demands on theoretical norms. In fact, Leibniz and Kant can be regarded as working in the same direction.

Leibniz takes the step to deprive God of the immediate or secondary cause of the explanation of natural phenomena. Kant takes a further step to deprive God of any role in the explanation of knowledge.¹⁵³

152 For Leibniz’s motivation and effort to distance his own pre-established harmony from perpetual miracle see Rutherford 1993, 135-159. For a different account see Jolley 1998.

153 It is not obvious whether this objection can be extended to the explanation of any phenomena. Again, it might be illuminated to see whether Kant has ever resorted to God in his philosophy. It is noteworthy that pre-critical Kant does resort to God in their explanation of the origin of the real connections between isolated substances. One natural question is whether a complete theory of physical influx also invites the Deus ex machina objection. Then, the only two alternatives we have are either to bite the bullet to say that pre-critical Kant leaves himself open this objection, or to draw a line of the legitimate appeal to God such that Kant’s objection is not to be applied to himself.

One simple answer is that the appeal to God is merely a dogmatic residue of the pre-critical Kant, which is discarded in his critical philosophy. Therefore, there is no inconsistency in Kant’s epistemic atheism.

116 As I have noted, the Deus ex machina objection is directed to a wide range of positions. In particular, Kant claims explicitly that the Deus ex machina objection is also applied to intellectual intuition. The move to invoke intellectual intuition is also one that makes an appeal to God. In this case, God does not play the role of the guarantor of the parallelism between thoughts and objects outside thoughts. God instead plays the role of the creator and giver of the objects of a priori knowledge. The C-criterion of truth is reliable because it is guaranteed by God. The object of a priori knowledge is available because it is provided by God.

The explanatory schema of Deus ex machina can be formulated as follows: something x is F for God wills or makes it. It is reminiscent of Kant’s objection to the appeal to occult qualities in explanation: something x is F for x has an occult quality of F-ness. The system of occult quality does not constitute a genuine explanation, since it does not explain its explanandum in other terms. While pre-established harmony seems to explain its explanandum in other terms, it makes an appeal to an infinite cause that could explain everything. Both systems of explanation could explain everything in an effortless way by appealing to the omnipotent scheme. It is no wonder that both invite intellectual laziness.

With this schema one simply cannot tell a good explanation from a bad one since everything could be explained in such a way. It is less an argument than an implicit assertion of what counts as the legitimate mode of explanation. The recourse to God makes philosophy as human intellectual endeavor less rewarding. In effect, the Deus ex machina objection is an objection to triviality. In sum, the problem of the inference to the explanation by God is that the scheme is too general to be explanatorily informative and it is too cheap to be explanatorily profitable.

Initially, it appears not to be a fatal objection. The objection seems to be normative in character.

It excludes the mode of inference to explanation by God neither due to its falsity, nor due to its incoherence, but due to its triviality, which is obviously not a theoretical virtue. The system of pre-established harmony could be a true story; we cannot preclude the possibility that it is the case that the relation of representation to object is subject to a system of pre-established intellectual harmony.

Underlying the objection is one of Kant’s most fundamental assumptions, epistemic atheism.

Epistemic atheism claims that God does not play any role in explaining the possibility of knowledge.

It is noteworthy that epistemic atheism should be distinguished from other kinds of theism, which are more famous in philosophical literature. Metaphysical theism is the view that God exists, a view most philosophers and scientists assume.¹⁵⁴ Moral theism is the view that God plays some role in

154 The stronger versions of metaphysical theism hold that God creates the world or lays down laws of nature to the world.

117 explaining the possibility of morality, a view Kant himself defends in his ethics. One should be wary of the complex relationship between various kinds of theism atheism. Both epistemic theism and moral theism presuppose metaphysical theism. However, epistemic atheism is independent of other kinds of atheism. It does not imply metaphysical theism; neither does it imply moral atheism.

Meanwhile, epistemic atheism is compatible with metaphysical theism and moral theism; Kant himself is an example of embracing these three positions.

It is fair to say that epistemic theism is the dominant view in early modern philosophy. The spectrum of epistemic theism ranges widely, and it includes Christianized Platonism, divine illumination, divine reliabilism, and divine perspectivism. On Kant’s interpretation, Plato and Malebranche embrace the Christianized Platonism that God creates objects for our a priori knowledge, accompanied by the commitment to the realism of abstract objects. Augustine and his followers endorse the doctrine of divine illumination, according to which all of our ideas are located in God.¹⁵⁵ Descartes embraces the doctrine of divine reliabilism, according to which God guarantees our epistemic apparatus such that we could perceive clearly and distinctly.¹⁵⁶ Even Spinoza’s pantheism is no exception. On this issue, Spinozism could be dubbed as divine perspectivism, according to which we human beings could represent adequate ideas from a God’s point of view.

The only exceptions to this dominant tradition before Kant are British empiricists Locke and Hume.¹⁵⁷ Obviously, Kant aligns himself with this tradition.¹⁵⁸ Epistemic atheism delineates the boundary of explanatory legitimacy. In Chapter 5 we will see that empiricist philosophy still occupies one horn of the new dilemma of relation problem. It is not only because that the borrowing model of the knowledge of empirical path can yield the same scope of knowledge independently of the metaphysical status of physical objects; it is also because the explanatory legitimacy implied by epistemic atheism makes empiricism the most viable position in the philosophical spectrum.

The rivalry between the empirical path, the mystical fanatical path, and the logical fanatical path under discussion results from the two seemingly mutually conflicting desiderata: explanatory legitimacy and explanatory adequacy. However, none of the three paths could satisfy both desiderata at the same time. The empirical path satisfies the former; it is explanatorily legitimate yet not explanatorily adequate. On the contrary, the two fanatical paths satisfy the latter; they are

155 The Christianized Platonism should not be conflated with the divine illumination since the former merely adds the origin of abstract entities.

156 See Jolley 1998.

157 Hobbes could be classified as an epistemic atheist. Hobbes is rather skeptical of the Christian theist outlook, though he recognizes the existence of God. However, Hobbes certainly does not exert great influence on Kant’s theoretical philosophy.

158 In addition to Kant, one philosophical school that is devoted to developing this aspect of Locke’s philosophy is French materialism.

118 explanatorily adequate yet not explanatorily legitimate. One central motivation of Kant’s transcendental path is to develop a theory possessing the theoretical virtues of both explanatory legitimacy and explanatory adequacy.

119