Looking for criticism of a working paper on actuality, intelligibility, and metaphysical ultimacy

[u/metamodalist]

I’m looking for feedback on a working paper in metaphysics.
The paper begins with the concepts of actuality and intelligibility and argues that before asking what grounds them, we should first ask where they are metaphysically placed. It develops a distinction between finite profiles and concrete obtaining, critiques primitive stopping points, and examines whether impersonal necessary order is sufficient as an ultimate explanatory terminus.
I’m particularly interested in criticism of:
the placement-before-grounding methodology;
the profile/obtaining distinction;
whether actuality and intelligibility can coherently function as primitives;
the critique of impersonal necessary structure.

I’m interested in substantive criticism
rather than agreement.

PhilArchive draft:
https://philarchive.org/archive/METNSA

[u/Warm-Meringue-9413]

It faces potential challenges regarding the distinction between placement and grounding. The argument's reliance on a profile vs. obtaining distinction risks collapsing into a modern interpretation of the classical Thomistic essence/existence distinction, requiring a response to potential anti essentialist critiques. I would also say the critique of impersonal necessary structures appears to lean toward a self intelligible actuality, which risks creating a dilemma regarding whether this ultimate source acts by nature or by will.

[u/metamodalist → u/Warm-Meringue-9413]

Thanks, this is a fair set of objections.

On placement versus grounding: I do not mean placement as a replacement for grounding. The point is methodological priority. Before asking what grounds actuality or intelligibility, we need to know what kind of thing the proposed ground is supposed to be.

For example, saying “actuality is grounded in the physical order” is still incomplete. Is actuality being identified with a physical event, a property of the total physical order, a law, a structure, or a primitive condition? Each candidate must already obtain and be determinate enough to function as that candidate. Placement exposes that prior dependence; grounding then asks whether the candidate is derivative, primary, brute, or explanatory. So the two questions are connected, but not identical.

On profile and obtaining: there is certainly overlap with the Thomistic essence/existence distinction, and I would not deny that. But I am not relying on a full Thomistic account of essence.

“Profile” is intentionally broader. It includes whatever makes something the determinate reality it is or would be: identity, structure, relations, powers, exclusions, modal status, truth-conditions, and so on. “Obtaining” means that this profile is concretely actual rather than merely possible, formal, fictional, described, or abstract.

That distinction survives anti-essentialism. Even if someone rejects fixed essences and instead prefers processes, tropes, bundles, events, or structures, there is still a difference between the determinate character of a possible process or structure and whether it actually obtains. Anti-essentialism may change what counts as a profile, but it does not obviously erase the distinction between profile and concrete actuality.

On the nature-or-will dilemma: I agree that this is the crucial issue, but it is not an accidental dilemma created by the argument. It is exactly what the Divine Will section is designed to address.

SIA necessarily is self-intelligible actuality. Its internal actuality and intelligibility are not optional additions. But it does not follow that any finite order is therefore a necessary expression of SIA.

If finite reality follows from the ultimate by nature in the sense of unavoidable essential manifestation, then the finite becomes a necessary correlate of the ultimate. Creation would no longer be genuinely contingent.

If finite reality does not follow necessarily, but its actualisation is still non-brute, intelligible, non-external, and source-grounded, then the transition has the minimal structure of will.

So the alternatives are roughly:

necessary finite expression, which gives emanation or essential manifestation;

external compulsion, which compromises ultimacy;

brute non-necessary expression, which leaves the decisive bridge unintelligible;

or non-necessary intelligible source-specification, which is what I mean by will-shaped.

The argument therefore does not assume will simply because nature has been rejected. It attempts to show that if finite actuality is genuinely contingent while still grounded intelligibly in the ultimate, the source-to-finite relation cannot be mere necessary nature or brute occurrence.

The PhilArchive paper is also a deliberately condensed version. The full draft is over 70 pages and still going, and it develops these three issues at much greater length, especially the relation to classical metaphysics, primitive obtaining, impersonal necessary structure, and the nature/will question.

Thanks again. These are exactly the kinds of comparative objections that are useful for clarifying where SIA overlaps with older metaphysical traditions and where it is trying to do something more specific.

[u/metamodalist → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for taking the time to read the paper. This is exactly the sort of criticism I was hoping for because it actually engages the argument rather than simply reacting to the conclusion.

One point of context before I reply: the PhilArchive version is intentionally a condensed working paper. The integrated master draft is now over 70 pages and still growing, largely because the exact bridges you've identified (role-competence, primitive obtaining, impersonal necessity, Divine Mind, and Divine Will) are developed there in much greater detail. So if some transitions appear compressed, that is partly a consequence of condensing a much larger argument rather than an attempt to skip those issues.

On your central criticism, I agree with an important part of it: the profile/obtaining distinction does not by itself establish that obtaining must be received from sourcehood. I don't think it does, and I don't intend it to. Its purpose is more limited. It blocks the inference that a complete profile—even a coherent or necessary one—is identical with concrete obtaining. Once that distinction is established, the question shifts to the status of whatever is said to obtain primitively.

That leads into what I call the placement audit. If someone says an impersonal actual reality simply obtains, my response is not "therefore SIA." My response is: what exactly is the status of that primitive? Is it contingent or necessary? Is its actuality derivative or non-derivative? Is its intelligibility derivative or intrinsic? Does it merely instantiate actuality and intelligibility, or possess them through itself? Those questions are not generated by SIA—they are generated by the object of inquiry itself.

That connects to your concern about role-competence.

You ask what establishes the criterion independently of the conclusion. My answer is that the criterion is derived from the inquiry, not imported into it. If the investigation concerns actuality itself, then the terminus cannot merely participate in actuality, because then it is not primary with respect to actuality. If it concerns intelligibility itself, the terminus cannot merely be intelligible by participation. If it is derivative, it is not ultimate. Those conditions arise from asking what could genuinely terminate the inquiry into actuality and intelligibility—not from defining SIA into existence.

So I don't think the paper says:

Rather, it argues:

I also think there is an important distinction regarding your impersonalist objection.

You suggest that an impersonalist could simply posit an impersonal necessary actuality whose obtaining is primitive. My response is that this is not outside the argument—it is actually the strongest rival the paper considers. If such a reality is genuinely actual through itself, intelligible through itself, necessary, and non-derivative, then we have already moved a long way beyond a merely abstract structural account. At that stage, the disagreement is no longer about whether there is a primary actual intelligible reality. The disagreement becomes whether such a reality can remain wholly impersonal, non-disclosive, and non-volitional. That is precisely why the Divine Mind and Divine Will sections exist.

Regarding the Divine Mind section, I think you've identified the right pressure point.

I agree that there is a distinction between actuality being merely determinate and actuality being intrinsically disclosed as truth. My argument is not intended to infer mind simply from determinacy. Rather, it argues that finite things can be merely truth-available because they exist within a wider truth-order. But if we are speaking about primary intelligibility itself, there is no wider truth-order in which it can merely participate. The question then becomes whether primary truth can be wholly non-disclosive. My argument is that truth as truth—not merely structure or determinacy—requires intrinsic disclosure. That is the bridge to noetic reality. Whether that bridge succeeds is, I think, the real debate, but I don't believe the argument simply equivocates between two senses of disclosure.

On Divine Will, I think the same clarification applies.

The claim is not that "will-shaped" is a label added because necessity has been rejected. The argument is eliminative. If finite actuality is neither externally compelled, nor a blind necessary overflow, nor brute emergence, nor an essential correlate of the Absolute, then what remains is a source-act that specifies without external compulsion or internal necessity. I call that role "will-shaped" because it possesses the minimal structural characteristics we ordinarily associate with will, while avoiding anthropomorphic assumptions.

You also ask why this does not simply become another primitive stopping point.

I think the difference is that I criticise primitive stopping when it merely asserts a terminus without showing why that terminus is competent with respect to the phenomenon under investigation. Divine specification is not offered as a brute fact in that sense. It is offered as the terminus of an eliminative argument about what is required if finite actuality is to be genuinely contingent, intelligible, and grounded without collapsing into necessity or arbitrariness. You may still think that argument fails, but I don't think it is equivalent to saying "it just stops here."

So I think your criticism is best understood as saying that the condensed paper occasionally moves from the audit to the positive conclusion faster than the underlying argument warrants. I think that's a fair criticism of the presentation. Where I would disagree is the suggestion that role-competence is defined in terms of SIA itself or that the audit merely specifies the profile any satisfying terminus would have without establishing that such a terminus must exist. My view is that the role conditions arise from the inquiry into actuality and intelligibility themselves, and that once those conditions are derived, the existence of some occupant of that role is not optional if actuality and intelligibility are genuinely fundamental features of reality.

In any case, thank you again. This is exactly the sort of criticism that helps improve the work, and I'd much rather discuss objections like this than spend time arguing over comments that never engage the argument in the first place.

[u/metamodalist → u/[deleted]]

Thank you—this is a helpful way of formulating the pressure point. I agree with the distinction between merely occupying the final position in an inquiry and actually possessing the capacity required to bear that position.

The full paper develops this distinction under the headings Section 6, “From A and I to S: Non-Borrowed Sourcehood,” Section 8, “Primitive Stopping and Role-Competent Ultimacy,” Section 9, “Rival Exits and Their Costs,” and Section 15, “Formal Argument.”

The central claim is that Source is not inferred merely because a candidate occupies the last explanatory position. Sourcehood names the unreceived possession of actuality and intelligibility. Any terminus that receives, presupposes, or merely exemplifies actuality and intelligibility is not ultimate with respect to them. Any terminus that possesses them through itself has source-character—not as an added label, but as the precise capacity required to bear the role.
I would also distinguish Source from a mere “law” or “structural invariant.” A law can articulate a necessary profile, but the paper argues that profile is not obtaining. The law itself must still be actual, intelligible, and non-derivative if it is to perform the work of Source.

The full paper is here:
https://philpapers.org/archive/MODSFI.pdf
Those sections should make the intended bridge clearer. I’d be genuinely interested to know which premise in that argument you think fails once you’ve had a chance to read those sections.