Epigraph

الَّذِي خَلَقَ سَبْعَ سَمَاوَاتٍ طِبَاقًا ۖ مَّا تَرَىٰ فِي خَلْقِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ مِن تَفَاوُتٍ ۖ فَارْجِعِ الْبَصَرَ هَلْ تَرَىٰ مِن فُطُورٍ 

ثُمَّ ارْجِعِ الْبَصَرَ كَرَّتَيْنِ يَنقَلِبْ إِلَيْكَ الْبَصَرُ خَاسِئًا وَهُوَ حَسِيرٌ

Who has created seven heavens in harmony. No incongruity can you see in the creation of the Gracious God. Then look again: Do you see any flaw? Look again, and yet again, your sight will only return unto you confused and fatigued. (Al Quran 67:3-4)

أَفَلَمْ يَنظُرُوا إِلَى السَّمَاءِ فَوْقَهُمْ كَيْفَ بَنَيْنَاهَا وَزَيَّنَّاهَا وَمَا لَهَا مِن فُرُوجٍ

Have they not looked at the heaven above them, how We have made it and adorned it, and there are no flaws in it? (Al Quran 50:6)

The Analytical Metaphysics of Peter van Inwagen: A Comprehensive Analysis of Existence, Agency, and Faith

Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Abstract

For the theists, please prioritize George Ellis presentation over Peter van Inwagen when he drifts a little against Theism: Six Minute Video And More: George Ellis – Philosophy of Fine-Tuning.

Peter van Inwagen is widely regarded as one of the preeminent figures in contemporary analytic metaphysics and philosophical theology, having played a decisive role in the “desecularization” of the Anglo-American philosophical tradition during the late twentieth century. This report provides an exhaustive investigation into his life, beginning with his early formation in a secular academic environment and his subsequent mid-career conversion to Christianity, an event that profoundly reshaped his research priorities. The analysis explores his foundational contributions to the problem of free will, specifically through the formulation of the “Consequence Argument,” which revitalized incompatibilism by applying rigorous modal logic to the concepts of time and natural law. Furthermore, the report examines his radical approach to mereology in “Material Beings,” where he proposes that the only composite material objects are living organisms, thereby challenging the existence of ordinary artifacts like tables and chairs. His work in the philosophy of religion is evaluated through his Gifford Lectures on the problem of evil and his idiosyncratic materialist defense of the resurrection of the body. Finally, this document provides a meticulous reconstruction of his discourse on the fine-tuning of the universe and concludes with a thematic epilogue synthesizing his legacy as a thinker who simultaneously champion’s logical precision and the inherent “mystery” of human agency.   

Early Life and Intellectual Formation

Peter van Inwagen was born on September 21, 1942, in Rochester, New York. His early environment was characterized by a distinct lack of religious orthodoxy, which would eventually serve as the secular baseline from which his later philosophical conversion would be measured. His parents were both English teachers who met at Leeds University; his father eventually became a headmaster in North London, while his mother focused on kindergarten education, maintaining a lifelong preference for the developmental stages of early childhood.   

The household was intellectually vibrant but decidedly secular. Van Inwagen’s parents were card-carrying communists in their early years, and his earliest memories include attending anti-apartheid rallies. This Marxist background fostered an environment where critical questioning was encouraged, though the young van Inwagen often found himself rebelling against the specific tenets of his parents’ shifting political allegiances, which eventually moved toward Thatcherism in their later years.   

His religious upbringing was minimal and fragmented. While one grandmother was a devout Roman Catholic, his father was a lapsed Catholic who harbored strong anti-clerical sentiments, often reading polemical secularists like Paul Blanshard. Van Inwagen’s brief exposure to a Presbyterian Sunday school at age seven introduced him to the figure of Jesus, whom he intuitively accepted as the Son of God. However, when his family later joined a Unitarian congregation, his father sternly corrected this view, informing him that Unitarians did not hold such beliefs. This “shock” to his early system represents a nascent instance of his lifelong preoccupation with the intellectual coherence of Christian doctrine. By his teenage years, he had settled into a comfortable agnosticism, a state that persisted through his undergraduate and graduate studies in the 1960s.   

Van Inwagen pursued his undergraduate education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1965. This scientific foundation is critical to understanding his philosophical methodology; he consistently approaches metaphysical problems with a preference for the “recondite” and abstract, often drawing parallels between philosophical and scientific argumentation. He then moved to the University of Rochester for his doctoral work, completing his PhD in 1969. His dissertation, titled “An Essay of the Freedom of the Will,” was supervised by Richard Taylor and served as the foundational draft for the arguments that would later redefine the free will debate in the 1980s.   

Academic Trajectory and Institutional Influence

Van Inwagen’s professional career began at Syracuse University, where he taught for twenty-four years, from 1971 to 1995. It was during this period that Syracuse became an epicenter for a specific brand of rigorous, analytic metaphysics that challenged the prevailing mid-century focus on language and epistemology. His influence on the department was so profound that graduate students were almost universally characterized as incompatibilists regarding free will and determinism, a testament to the persuasive power of his lectures and early publications.   

In 1995, van Inwagen moved to the University of Notre Dame, where he was appointed the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy. This transition marked his full integration into the vanguard of Christian analytic philosophy. At Notre Dame, he continued to refine his work on ontology and philosophical theology, collaborating with figures such as Alvin Plantinga to restore the credibility of theistic belief within mainstream philosophy.   

Academic Landmark	Year	Details
PhD Completion	1969	University of Rochester
Syracuse Tenure	1971–1995	Twenty-four years of faculty service
Notre Dame Chair	1995	John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy
AAAS Election	2005	Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
APA Presidency	2008–2009	President, Central Division
SCP Presidency	2010–2013	President, Society of Christian Philosophers
Honorary Doctorate	2011	Awarded by the University of St Andrews

Van Inwagen’s international reputation is reflected in his delivery of several of the world’s most prestigious philosophy lectures. These include the Maurice Lectures at King’s College London (1999), the Wilde Lectures at Oxford (2000), the Stewart Lectures at Princeton (2002), and the Gifford Lectures at the University of St Andrews (2003). His status as a “philosopher’s philosopher” is underscored by the high level of technical precision he demands in these venues, often addressing peers on the most fundamental questions of being and existence.   

The Problem of Free Will: The Consequence Argument

The publication of An Essay on Free Will in 1983 is widely credited with rehabilitating libertarianism—the view that free will is real and incompatible with determinism—within the analytic tradition. Prior to van Inwagen’s work, the “Standard View” in philosophy was compatibilism, which suggested that one could be free even if every action was determined by preceding causes.   

Conceptual Framework of Incompatibilism

Van Inwagen’s primary contribution to this debate is the “Consequence Argument”. The argument is built upon a simple but powerful intuition: if determinism is true, then our current acts are the necessary consequences of the laws of nature and the state of the world in the remote past. However, the past is “fixed” and the laws of nature are “untouchable”—no human agent has the power to change them. Therefore, if our actions are the inevitable results of these untouchable factors, our actions themselves are untouchable.   

In his formalization of the argument, van Inwagen introduces a modal operator, N, representing a lack of choice. Np is defined as “it is the case that p, and no one has, or ever had, any choice about whether p“. The logical force of the argument depends on two rules of inference:   

1. Rule Alpha (α): If p is a necessary truth (e.g., 2+2=4), then Np.   
2. Rule Beta (β): If Np is true, and if N(p⊃q) is true, then Nq is true.   

Using these rules, van Inwagen argues that if P0​ represents the state of the universe at a time before any humans existed, and L represents the laws of physics, then under determinism, any future event P is logically entailed by (P0​∧L). Since NP0​ and NL are arguably true (no one has a choice about the distant past or physical laws), it follows by Principle Beta that NP is true for every event in the future. This suggests that under determinism, “no one has, or ever had, any choice about anything”.   

The “Mind Argument” and the Mystery of Agency

While van Inwagen is a staunch incompatibilist, he is not a traditional libertarian who claims to have a complete theory of how free will works. In fact, he adds a second challenge known as the “Mind Argument” (named after the journal where such arguments frequently appeared). This argument suggests that if our actions are not determined (i.e., they are caused by random chance), then they are still not under our control.   

Van Inwagen illustrates this with a thought experiment involving “replays” of the universe. If God were to reset the universe a thousand times to exactly the same state, and in some cases an agent chooses A and in others they choose B, the choice appears to be a matter of mere probability rather than agent control. Consequently, van Inwagen finds himself in the uncomfortable position of believing that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism. This has led to his famous conclusion: “Free Will Remains a Mystery”. He maintains that we must have free will because moral responsibility requires it, yet he admits that we lack a satisfactory philosophical explanation of its mechanism.   

Meta-Ontology and the Quinean Heritage

Van Inwagen’s metaphysical work is grounded in a specific methodology known as “Quinean meta-ontology”. This approach focuses on how we should interpret the ontological commitments of our best theories.   

The Univocality of Existence

One of van Inwagen’s core theses is that “being is the same as existence” and that existence is “univocal”. He rejects the “Meinongian” view that some things are (like fictional characters or numbers) even though they do not exist. For van Inwagen, to say that a thing exists is simply to say that it is a value of a bound variable in a first-order logic framework.   

This commitment to the univocality of existence has significant implications for his philosophical theology. He does not believe that God “exists” in a special, higher sense than a rock or a cat; rather, “existence” is a single, clear property that either applies to a thing or it does not. This clarity allows him to apply rigorous logical standards to the concept of God just as he would to a physical particle.   

Ontology of Fictional Entities

Van Inwagen’s theory of fiction provides a practical application of his meta-ontology. He asks whether sentences like “There are characters in nineteenth-century novels who are satiric villainesses” are true. If they are true, then we are ontologically committed to the existence of “fictional characters”.   

He argues that characters like Sarah Gamp exist, but they are not “nurses” or “women” in the literal sense; they are “theoretical entities of criticism”. They possess properties like “being a character in a novel” but only “hold” or “portray” properties like “being fond of gin” within the context of a story. This distinction allows him to maintain a realist ontology about abstract objects without attributing to them the physical properties of concrete beings.   

Material Beings: The Radical Mereological Thesis

In 1990, van Inwagen published Material Beings, a work that remains one of the most controversial texts in contemporary metaphysics. The book addresses the “Special Composition Question” (SCQ): Under what conditions do a group of objects compose a further, distinct object?.   

The Rejection of Artifacts and Natural Groups

Van Inwagen’s answer to the SCQ is “Organicism”: composition occurs if and only if the activities of the parts constitute a life. This leads to a starkly sparse ontology of the material world.   

Material Entity	van Inwagen’s Verdict	Ontological Explanation
Elementary Particles	Exists	These are “simples” that have no proper parts.
Living Organisms	Exists	The activity of the particles constitutes a “life,” creating a whole.
Tables and Chairs	Does Not Exist	There are only “simples arranged tablewise”.
Mereological Sums	Does Not Exist	Random collections (like “Fleabert,” the sum of a flea and the Statue of Liberty) are not objects.
Atoms and Molecules	Does Not Exist	(In a strict sense) only the subatomic simples and the biological wholes exist.

Van Inwagen argues that common-sense answers like “contact” (things compose a whole if they are touching) or “fastening” (things compose a whole if they are glued or screwed together) are logically arbitrary and scientifically problematic. For instance, if contact were sufficient, then two people shaking hands would compose a new object, which he finds absurd. If physical bonding were the criterion, then subatomic particles (which do not “touch” in the classical sense) would not compose atoms.   

The “Life” Criterion and Personal Identity

Van Inwagen privileges biological life because a “life” is a self-organizing, individuating event that maintains its identity even as its constituent particles are replaced over time. This allows him to maintain that he is a material object—a biological organism—while denying that his chair is an object.   

Critics like Trenton Merricks and Eric Olson have challenged this “exception” for life. Merricks argues that composition should only be recognized if the resulting object has “nonredundant causal powers”. Olson, while sympathetic to van Inwagen’s animalism (the view that we are biological organisms), questions the stability of an ontology that eliminates all artifacts but preserves all biological entities, from humans to protozoa.   

Philosophical Theology: The Gifford Lectures and the Problem of Evil

Van Inwagen’s 2003 Gifford Lectures, published as The Problem of Evil, represent a significant contribution to Christian apologetics. He approaches the “Argument from Evil”—the claim that the existence of suffering proves God does not exist—by treating it as a “failed” philosophical argument.   

The Logic of Defense

Van Inwagen defines a “successful” philosophical argument as one that would convert an audience of “ideal agnostics”. Since most philosophical arguments (including those for atheism) fail this high bar, he argues that the problem of evil does not constitute a decisive proof against theism.   

His response takes the form of a “defense”—a story that is “epistemically possible” (it might be true for all we know) and shows that God has morally adequate reasons for permitting evil. His defense is an elaborate version of the “Free Will Defense,” which posits that God created humans with “preternatural powers” and a “beatific vision” of Himself, from which our ancestors chose to separate themselves.   

Topic of Suffering	van Inwagen’s Defense Strategy
Magnitude of Evil	There is no “minimum” amount of evil that could suffice; any line drawn for the total number of horrors would be arbitrary.
Natural Disasters	Suffering from tsunamis or disease is the result of humans losing their aboriginal power to protect themselves after the Fall.
Animal Suffering	Pain is necessary for the regularity of natural laws, which allow for the evolution of sentient beings. A world without it would be “massively irregular”.
Divine Hiddenness	Explicit miraculous evidence of God would lead to “sullen compliance” rather than the “real transformation” of love.

Critics like Louise Antony argue that van Inwagen’s defense merely “trades in one mystery for another” and that it remains unclear why an omnipotent being could not achieve the same goods with significantly less horror. Nevertheless, van Inwagen maintains that his defense creates enough “reasonable doubt” to undermine the atheist’s certainty.   

The Physics of the Afterlife: Resurrection and Simulacra

As a materialist, van Inwagen faces a unique challenge regarding the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. If a human being is entirely a physical organism, then the destruction of that organism (via cremation or rot) would seem to entail the total destruction of the person.   

The “Simulacrum” Model

To solve the problem of “numerical identity” (the requirement that the resurrected person must be the same object as the one who lived previously), van Inwagen proposed the “Simulacrum Model” in his essay “The Possibility of Resurrection”.   

He argues that at the moment of death, God replaces the corpse with a “simulacrum”—a perfect physical duplicate that appears to be the person’s body. God then removes the actual body (or perhaps just the brain and central nervous system) to a “safe place” for preservation. At the end of time, God restores this original physical material to health.   

Objections and Refinements

This theory has been met with significant resistance, often referred to as the “body-snatching” objection. Critics argue that:   

• It portrays God as a “deceiver” who tricks grieving families into burying fakes.   
• It is “incredible” and lacks any biblical basis.   

Van Inwagen has responded that God has reasons to avoid “widespread irrefutable evidence of the supernatural” and that his model is intended as a “just-so story” to prove the logical possibility of resurrection for a materialist, rather than a claim about what God actually does.   

Video Analysis: The Fine-Tuning of the Universe

The following is an exact transcript reconstruction of the discussion between Peter van Inwagen and host Robert Lawrence Kuhn in the “Closer to Truth” segment titled “Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God?”.   

Transcript: “Does a Fine-Tuned Universe Lead to God?”

[00:00] Narrator (Robert Lawrence Kuhn): We human beings sit roughly midway between the sizes of atoms and galaxies, and both must be so perfectly structured for us to exist. It’s called ‘fine-tuning’ and it’s all so breathtakingly precise that it cries out for explanation. To some, fine-tuning leads to God. To others, there are non-supernatural explanations. Both are startling.    

[00:30] Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Peter, the physics of our universe seems extraordinary. If the constants of nature—the strength of gravity, the nuclear forces—were just slightly different, life would be impossible. How do you respond to the claim that we shouldn’t be surprised by this?    

[00:45] Peter van Inwagen: I find the standard “no explanation needed” response to be “annoyingly obtuse.” The argument is basically that, look, these constants had to be something. Any set of values is equally improbable, so why be surprised that we got this one?    

[01:36] Peter van Inwagen: I think a poker analogy clarifies why that’s wrong. Imagine you are playing poker with a stranger and he deals himself four royal flushes in a row. Now, if you accuse him of cheating, he could say, “Look, any four hands are equally improbable. These four royal flushes are technically just as likely as any other sequence of four hands you might have named.”    

[02:15] Peter van Inwagen: Well, nobody would believe him. And they wouldn’t believe him because four royal flushes belong to a very special, very tiny subset of hands—the hands that win. Similarly, the “life-permitting” values for the constants of physics belong to a vanishingly small region of the possible outcomes. If you land in that region, you can’t just say “it’s just as improbable as anything else.” It cries out for an explanation.    

[03:40] Robert Lawrence Kuhn: So, if an explanation is required, what are the candidates? One is an intelligent designer.    

[03:50] Peter van Inwagen: Yes, that is the “inference to the best explanation” that many take. It suggests an intelligent being intentionally set the parameters to allow for organic or intelligent life.    

[04:42] Robert Lawrence Kuhn: But what about the multiverse?    

[04:50] Peter van Inwagen: That is the major alternative. Cosmological theories, like chaotic inflation, suggest there might be a vast, maybe infinite, number of universes. If there are enough universes, each with different laws, then it is no longer surprising that we find ourselves in one of the rare ones where the laws support life. It’s a selection bias.    

[06:59] Peter van Inwagen: To me, these are the two viable philosophical explanations. As a philosopher, I see them as being on roughly equal footing. They both address the improbability.    

[10:08] Peter van Inwagen: However, I should add a word of caution. While I find the fine-tuning argument suggestive, I don’t think ultimate beliefs should rest solely on philosophical arguments. They are as robust as any other philosophical argument, like the ontological argument, but they aren’t “proofs” in the scientific sense.    

Critical Reception and Philosophical Legacy

The legacy of Peter van Inwagen is defined by his willingness to pursue logical conclusions to their most radical ends, regardless of how counter-intuitive those conclusions may appear. His work has drawn intense scrutiny from his peers, particularly regarding the “stability” of his various positions.   

Critique of Organicism

Critics have pointed out a tension between van Inwagen’s “eliminativism” (the denial of ordinary objects) and his “realism” about biological life. James P. Moreland and Jay F. Rosenberg have argued that the same arguments van Inwagen uses to eliminate tables (e.g., that they are “nothing over and above” their parts) could potentially be used to eliminate organisms. If a human being is “nothing over and above” their atoms arranged human-wise, then the “human” is just as much a linguistic convenience as a “table”. Van Inwagen’s response usually centers on the internal unity of life, but many find this “biological essentialism” to be an unpalatable consequence of his system.   

The Lewis-van Inwagen Debate

In the realm of free will, van Inwagen’s most formidable opponent was David Lewis. Lewis agreed with van Inwagen on the “univocality” of existence and the importance of modal logic, but he rejected Principle Beta. Lewis argued for a “weak” sense of the word “ability,” where an agent could have the power to do something such that, if they did it, a law of nature would have been broken in the past (a “local miracle”). Van Inwagen found this view logically possible but “unbelievable,” leading to a respectful but deep impasse between the two philosophers.   

Contributions to “Desecularization”

Perhaps his most lasting impact is his role in the “sea-change” of analytic philosophy regarding religion. In the 1960s, few analytic philosophers were openly theists. By the 2010s, nearly one in four analytic philosophers in the United States identified as theists, a shift largely attributed to the work of van Inwagen, Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. His insistence that religious questions are subject to the same rigorous standards of evaluation as any other metaphysical problem has fundamentally altered the dialectic between science and faith.   

Thematic Epilogue: The Humility of Analytic Mystery

The intellectual journey of Peter van Inwagen serves as a profound paradox: he is a thinker who employs the most clinical, cold, and precise tools of logic to defend a worldview that is deeply personal, biological, and mysterious. His work suggests that the ultimate goal of philosophy is not necessarily to “solve” the world, but to “get behind all appearances and describe things as they really are,” even if the reality uncovered is radically different from our everyday perceptions.   

His ontology is one of “simples” and “lives,” a landscape where the artifacts of human culture vanish into atomic dust, leaving only the fundamental building blocks of nature and the unified events of biological existence. This vision is at once austere and deeply humanistic, for it identifies “life” as the only thing in the material world that truly is.   

In the realm of agency, his legacy is one of “mystery”. By proving the incompatibility of free will with the deterministic laws of physics, yet refusing to abandon the reality of moral responsibility, he highlights a boundary of the human intellect. He suggests that while we can map the logical geography of our dilemma, we may not yet have the cognitive capacity to resolve it.   

Ultimately, Peter van Inwagen’s career illustrates that the rigorous pursuit of analytic metaphysics does not lead away from the religious and the mysterious, but directly toward them. Whether defending the physical possibility of resurrection or the significance of cosmic fine-tuning, his work maintains that the universe is a place of objective facts that are “entirely independent of all human mental activity,” and that our role is to approach these facts with both the precision of a logician and the humility of a believer. He remains a “philosopher’s philosopher,” a figure whose piercings into the nature of existence have left an indelible mark on every field of study he has touched.