Divine Simplicity

The doctrine of Divine Simplicity is merely a particular expression of the Aseity-Dependence Doctrine.  If ADD can be preserved apart from DDS, then we’ll lose much of the motivation for accepting DDS.  William Lane Craig tackles such a project by embracing skeptical lines against Platonism.  If his project upholds ADD, then it seems like his project should get a pass--but at what cost?  WLC also rejects that God has proper parts, which he would find problematic given ADD.  But he rejects that God possesses proper parts because he rejects proper parts wholesale, so the concession isn’t one that makes God unique over against other things.

If ADD can be preserved apart from DDS, what sort of motivation would we have for DDS?  Depends on whether we motivate ADD by the act/potency distinction as Tomaszewski does, and if it's motivated in this fashion, it looks like DDS falls out naturally.  I don’t really like the act/potency distinction.  We might also be led to DDS by the First Way.  

Some hold (Tweedt and Koons) that DDS can lead to resolutions of tensions within the Trinity.  This may be a path towards motivating DDS.  

Is God composed of existence and essence?  Or is the truthmaker for God’s essence identical with the truthmaker for God’s existence?  WLC does not interact with TMA in God Over All.

Most criticisms of the doctrine are towards the Naive-Formulation:  God is made out to be a property and God’s properties all become identical.  But these are avoided in the TMA formulation of the doctrine

Outline A Theistic Argument Against Platonism? The Truth-Maker Account offers a more general account of predication than the rivals, and can embrace a wide range of different positions given its general neutrality.  

The TMA preserves the idea that God has no intrinsic accidents.  Non-Classical theists will reject this, surely.  

Thomas Morris: Bootstrapping Augustinian
Michael Bergmann, Jeffrey Brower, Graham Oppy, Alex Pruss are TMA
Stump and Kretzmann have done some preliminary work in the 1980s and 90s approximating TMA.  
Alvin Plantinga is skeptical. Rejects DDS.
Brian Leftow has some important work on the matter; “Is God an Abstract Object?” Plus his skeptical approach to TMA, mainly for historical interpretive reasons.  
Christopher Tomaszewski has definitely resolved the issue of modal collapse IRT to divine simplicity, at least according to Pruss. See his Collapsing the modal collapse argument

Christopher Tomaszewski thinks that he can motivate DDS by an appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity.  

NCT can do quite a bit: First, there is a kind of essential, metaphysically necessary, and intelligible unity to God’s parts that is absent from the bearded sky man. It’s no coincidence, for instance, that omniscience, omnipotence, etc. are co-instantiated. By contrast, a bearded sky man involves a whole host of seemingly arbitrary limitations and coincidences: why is the beard 7.8 inches long and not 7.81 or 7.79? Why isn’t the man cleanly shaven? And so on. In the case of God, God’s unlimited perfection can provide the resources for seeing why each of God’s numerically distinct attributes are all compresent, without any arbitrariness or possibility of being separated from one another or limitation.

I don’t think the Aloneness Argument is any good. God still has relational properties in the Alone World.  Aloneness itself seems to be relational.