Perfect Existence for Oxford University Press (with Alex Pruss)

This is a first draft of the first chapter of a book forthcoming with OUP (target: in 2027). I provide this draft here for your entertainment and for the opportunity it gives us to get some the best kind of feedback from those we write for (else: for whom we write). (Note: ChatGPT would never write a paragraph like this!)

This introductory chapter sets the stage for our inquiry.

This book is about the fundamental nature of reality. For sake of exploration and neutrality, we do not begin with a fully specified view. Instead, we begin with a more general question: what could fundamental reality be like?

Our strategy is to investigate this question by means of a hypothesis. We call it the perfection hypothesis. In its initial form, the hypothesis says that fundamental reality has a nature that is perfect, or purely excellent, in a sense to be clarified. Much of the work of this book will be devoted to clarifying that hypothesis. We will ask what perfection is, what it could explain, what it would imply, and whether there are pathways of thought that lead from widely accepted premises to the conclusion that fundamental reality is perfect.

We do not assume a particular concept of perfection, nor do we assume at the outset that a perfect foundation would imply the attributes that theists have traditionally ascribed to God

The idea of a perfect foundation is familiar in philosophical theology. Many theists think God is the foundation of reality and that God is perfect. Still, those two claims raise further questions. If there is a foundation of reality, why think it is perfect? If a first cause, necessary being, or ultimate ground exists, why think it has anything like the attributes associated with divinity? More generally, if reality has an ultimate foundation, why does that foundation have the nature it has rather than some other nature? These questions are not merely theological. They belong to the general inquiry into the nature of reality.

Our aim is to examine whether perfection can help answer such questions. We will argue that the concept of perfection can illuminate not only the nature of God, if God exists, but also the nature of fundamentality itself. The result, if successful, would be a more precise way of thinking about the deepest structure of reality. It would show how an axiological concept, the concept of perfection or supreme excellence, can contribute to questions that are often framed in causal, modal, or explanatory terms.

The central purpose of the book is to bring clarity to a foundational question about the nature of reality. What could the foundational nature of reality be? Here we present three reasons why our project in seeking clarity about the fundamental nature of reality has value.

First, the perfection hypothesis can help with a classic problem in natural theology. Theistic arguments often leave people with a question: why introduce perfection into an inquiry about fundamental reality? One answer is that many philosophical arguments already point toward some sort of foundation. Cosmological arguments, contingency arguments, grounding arguments, and certain arguments from explanation seek to identify a reality that does not depend on anything outside itself. Such arguments, if successful, point to the existence of a first cause, necessary realm, ultimate ground, or foundational reality. Yet even if such arguments succeed, an important question remains: what is the nature of this foundation?

This question generates what we will call the gap problem. In theological contexts, the gap problem is often understood as the problem of moving from a general foundation of reality to God. An argument may conclude that there is a first cause, but the conclusion does not immediately show that the first cause is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good, personal, worthy of worship, or otherwise divine. An argument may conclude that there is a necessary being, but the conclusion does not immediately show that the necessary being is God. The gap problem is the problem of seeing whether, and how, one might move from fundamental reality to a more theologically significant conclusion.

We think this problem has a more general form, even apart from theological contexts. The deepest issue is not merely how to get from a first cause to God. The deeper issue is how to understand the nature of fundamental reality at all. Suppose there is something explanatorily fundamental. Suppose, that is, there is some reality that does not have an external explanation in terms of a prior ground, cause, or source. We may still ask: what could such a reality be like? What differentiates it from dependent reality? Why does it have the nature it has rather than some other nature? What, if anything, could make it suitable to be fundamental?

The perfection hypothesis is a way of probing these questions. The hypothesis is not merely that reality has a foundation, nor merely that the foundation exists necessarily. It is that the foundation has a nature that is perfect, in a sense that helps explain why it could be fundamental. On this approach, perfection is not an optional decoration added to a metaphysical foundation after the fact. It may be part of what makes the foundation intelligible as a foundation.

We do not assume at the outset that perfection entails every classical divine attribute. Indeed, part of our project is to distinguish different concepts of perfection and to examine what follows from them. Some concepts of perfection may be too strong, too obscure, or too vulnerable to familiar paradoxes. Other concepts may be too weak to do explanatory work. We seek a concept that is modest enough to be philosophically tractable and substantive enough to illuminate the nature of fundamental reality.

This book is therefore both constructive and exploratory. It is constructive because we develop positive arguments for the perfection hypothesis. It is exploratory because we present these arguments as pathways of thought rather than as instruments of dialectical victory. We want to know what can be seen from the hypothesis that fundamental reality is perfect. We also want to know where that hypothesis faces pressure, how it can be clarified, and what it may contribute even for those who do not ultimately accept it.

Second, the inquiry matters for metaphysics more generally. The question, “Why does anything exist at all?,” naturally leads us to the thought that some reality lacks an external explanation. If everything depended on something else, and if dependence never reached anything independent, then we would still seem to lack a complete account of why dependent reality exists. For this reason, many philosophers have thought that some reality is fundamental. Yet that move does not end the puzzle. It relocates it. Once we posit fundamental reality, we can ask how anything could be fundamental. Why does that reality lack an external explanation? What makes it different from realities that call for explanation?

This is the puzzle of existence in a deeper form. It is not merely the puzzle of why there is something rather than nothing. It is also the puzzle of why the ultimate something, if there is one, has the nature it has. Suppose fundamental reality were fundamentally blue. We would naturally wonder why it is blue rather than red. Suppose it had exactly seventeen basic powers. We would wonder why seventeen rather than sixteen or eighteen. Suppose it had a precise limit in knowledge, power, goodness, or causal scope. We would wonder why that limit rather than another. The point is not that every such question has a distinct answer. The point is that certain kinds of fundamental features appear to call for further explanation.

So part of our project is to see how perfection might—or might not—shine light on the deepest possible explanation of things. To illustrate briefly, if imperfections involve limits, boundaries, or arbitrary restrictions with respect to excellence, then imperfections in the fundamental nature of reality would seem to call for explanation. Why that limit? Why that boundary? Why that degree? By contrast, a purely excellent nature may lack such arbitrary limits. If so, perfection could mark a relevant difference between what can be fundamental and what calls for a further ground. We explore this line in detail.

A third value of our inquiry concerns the concept of perfection itself. Philosophers of religion frequently appeal to perfect being theology. They ask what a perfect being would know, what a perfect being could do, whether a perfect being would create, whether such a being could permit evil, and whether a perfect being would be simple, timeless, immutable, personal, or necessarily existent. These questions presuppose that we have some grasp of perfection. Yet the concept of perfection is often left underdeveloped. Sometimes it is treated as maximal greatness; sometimes as supreme value; sometimes as the possession of all great-making properties; sometimes as the absence of defect; sometimes as the possession of unlimited excellence.

These conceptions are related, but they are not identical. Different concepts of perfection generate different theories of God and fundamental reality. Some generate paradoxes. Some lead to modal difficulties. Some threaten to build in more than the argument can support. Others do too little. We therefore need a careful account of perfection itself. A central task of this book is to clarify the concept in a way that is useful for metaphysics and theology.

There are also many projects in perfect being theology. But this book focuses squarely on the possible role of perfection in solving a general metaphysical problem about the nature of fundamental reality. That is what sets the project apart. We are not merely asking whether God is perfect, given theism. We are asking whether perfection helps us understand what fundamental reality could be.

A project like this faces a common skeptical worry. Some readers may suspect that arguments for a perfect foundation are unlikely to succeed. Others may worry that the whole project is polemical. The concern is understandable. In some contexts, arguments for God or divine perfection are presented as defenses of a prior theological package. When the conclusion appears fixed from the beginning, the reasoning can seem like rationalization rather than inquiry.

We want to proceed carefully, mindful of this skeptical worry. To help us build an understanding, rather than merely defend a prior package, our aim is cooperative and exploratory. We do not seek to win by stipulation, by selective presentation, or by dismissing the force of objections. We want to investigate what the perfection hypothesis can explain, where it is vulnerable, and what it may help us see. We will therefore present our arguments as pathways rather than as proofs in a triumphalist sense. A pathway may be worth exploring even if one is unsure where it ends. It may reveal unnoticed connections. It may clarify why certain premises are attractive. It may expose hidden costs in alternatives. It may show that a conclusion is less remote from common commitments than it first appears.

We also want to address the more general worry that no real progress can be made on questions of this sort. It is easy to think that debates about ultimate reality simply reproduce prior commitments. Theists reason like theists. Atheists reason like atheists. Naturalists reason like naturalists. Platonists reason like Platonists. If that were the whole story, then a book like this could have little philosophical value beyond reinforcing one side of an old debate.

We think the situation is more hopeful. One reason for hope comes from our survey work. In our earlier work on necessary existence, we found that many people, including many who did not antecedently accept a necessary being, nevertheless accepted principles from which a necessary being could be derived. In this book, we extend that method to the perfection hypothesis. We have developed a Perfect Existence Survey to test whether people already find plausible various premises that lead, in surprising ways, toward the conclusion that fundamental reality is perfect.

[Insert survey results here. Preview: the results suggest that many respondents who do not begin by accepting a perfect foundation nevertheless accept clusters of premises that support one or more pathways to the perfection hypothesis. This matters because it shows that the arguments developed in this book do not merely appeal to those who already accept the conclusion. They draw out implications of commitments that many people already find plausible.]

The significance of this survey is not that philosophy can be settled by polling. The truth of the perfection hypothesis does not depend on majority opinion. Rather, the survey serves a diagnostic purpose. It helps us see which premises have independent appeal and which arguments may connect with beliefs people already hold. If a person rejects a perfect foundation while accepting premises that support it, then the argument has philosophical work to do. It can reveal a hidden tension, invite reconsideration, or clarify which premise should be abandoned.

We will also consider reverse arguments against the perfection hypothesis. This is important for balance. If there are pathways from plausible premises to a perfect foundation, there may also be pathways from plausible premises to the denial of such a foundation. The philosophical task is to examine both. We aim to leave the reader not with a sense that every difficulty has been dissolved, but with a sense that genuine progress is possible. One can investigate ultimate reality without being trapped either by inherited dogma or by skepticism about reason’s reach.

We proceed by developing and testing our central hypothesis: the deepest foundation of reality is not merely unexplained, powerful, or necessary, but perfect. We begin with the puzzle of existence and the question of what could make something suitable to stand at the explanatory foundation of all things. We then clarify what we mean by perfection, not by trying to resolve every dispute about value, but by developing a working conception of supreme excellence fit for metaphysical inquiry.

The main course of our journey explores several routes into the perfection hypothesis. We ask whether arbitrary limits in fundamental reality would themselves call for explanation, whether modal reasoning strengthens that pressure, and whether simplicity points toward a foundation without basic restrictions, parts, or constraints. We also consider whether the very nature of perfection might give us reason to think it is instantiated, drawing on recent work connected to ontological arguments without assuming that traditional versions succeed.

At the final steps, we consider its implications, whether favorable or unfavorable. We treat the perfection hypothesis not only as a possible conclusion, but as a theory to be tested. We ask whether it helps illuminate consciousness, value, order, agency, evil, suffering, and the broader structure of reality. We then consider major objections and explore how the hypothesis might connect with larger theories of everything, including naturalism, axiarchism, Platonism, and classical theism. The aim is not to close every question, but to open a path of inquiry in which perfect existence becomes central to the search for the ultimate nature of reality.

End of Chapter

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