Showing papers in "Faith and Philosophy in 1994"

How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World

Abstract: Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any of them, he can't create the best of them because there is no best. Faced with this predicament, Jove first sorts the worlds according to certain criteria. For example, he puts on his left worlds in which some inhabitants live lives that aren't worth living and on his right worlds in which every inhabitant's life is worth living; he puts on his left worlds in which some horrors fail to serve an outweighing good and on his right worlds in which no horror fails to serve an outweighing good. (We encourage the reader to use her own criteria.) Then he orders the right hand worlds according to their goodness and assigns to each a positive natural number, the worst of the lot receiving '1', the second worst '2', and so on. Next, he creates a very intricate device that, at the push of a button, will randomly select a number and produce the corresponding world. Jove pushes the button; the device hums and whirs and, finally, its digital display reads '777': world no. 777 comes into being. We see no incoherence in this story. Now, consider the proposition that Jove is not only good but essentially unsurpassably good. Suppose we add this to our story. Does some glaring incoherence reveal itself? We can't see one. If our story (so amended) is a logical possibility, then there is no contradiction in supposing that an essentially morally unsurpassable, essentially omnipotent and omniscient being could create a world inferior to some other world he, or some other possible being, could have created. It is important to see that our (amended) story does not merely suggest that Jove is not at fault in creating a world less than the best he could have created. It suggests much more than that an essentially omnipotent and omniscient being does nothing wrong in creating a surpassable world. It suggests that his creating a world inferior to one he or some other possible being could have created does nothing to impugn his status as essentially morally unsurpassable in any respect whatsoever. And so we claim that if any philosophical story can illustrate a logical possibility, our story illustrates how it is possible for an essentially morally unsurpassable, essentially omnipotent and omniscient being to create a surpassable world.1 We expect some people to disagree with us. We expect they will say things like this: An omnipotent being can actualize any actualizable world. If he actualizes one than which there is a morally better, he does not do the best he can, morally speaking, and so

The Conceptualist Argument for God's Existence

Abstract: The familiar types of argument for God's existence include the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new type of argument, the conceptualist argument. The argument is that the conjunction of actualism and conceptualism entails Anselmian theism, that God exists in every possible world. According to actualism, possibilities are propositions, and according to conceptualism, propositions are effects of mental causes. The addition of other premises enables the conclusion to be deduced that in every possible world, every true proposition is a mental effect of the same mind, the divine mind. This article also discusses intimations of the conceptualist argument in Leibniz and in contemporary philosophers such as Plantinga. I conclude that the conceptualist argument may be rationally acceptable, but is not rationally compelling.

Theism, the Hypothesis of Indifference, and the Biological Role of Pain and Pleasure

Abstract: Following Hume’s lead, Paul Draper argues that, given the biological role played by both pain and pleasure in goal-directed organic systems, the observed facts about pain and pleasure in the world are antecedently much more likely on the Hypothesis of Indifference than on theism. I examine one by one Draper’s arguments for this claim and show how they miss the mark. 1. Hume's Indifference Hypothesis In Part IX of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume has Philo reflect on the "immense profusion of beings" on earth, their "prodigious variety and fecundity" and their destructiveness and inability to achieve happiness. What hypothesis could possibly explain such mixed phenomena? Here the Manichean system occurs as a proper hypothesis to solve the difficulty; and, no doubt, in some respects it is very specious and has more probability than the common hypothesis, by giving a plausible account of the strange mixture of good and ill which appears in life. But if we consider, on the other hand, the perfect uniformity and agreement of the parts of the universe, we shall not discover in it any marks of the combat of a malevolent with a benevolent being. There is indeed an opposition of pains and pleasures in the feelings of sensible creatures; but are not all the operations of nature carried on by an opposition of principles, of hot and cold, moist and dry, light and heavy? The true conclusion is that the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold, or to drought above moisture, or to light above heavy. There may four hypotheses be framed concerning the first causes of the universe: that they are endowed with perfect goodness; that they have perfect malice; that they are opposite and have both goodness and malice; that they have neither goodness nor malice. Mixed phenomena can never prove the two former unmixed principles; and the uniformity and steadiness of general laws seem to oppose the third. The fourth, therefore, seems by far the most probable. (Hume 1970, pp. 103-104) Hume initially contrasts Manicheanism with "the common hypothesis," theism. The former, he says, explains the pattern of suffering and good in the world better than the latter; hence Manicheanism is more probable than theism on that account. However, theism explains the orderliness of nature better than Manicheanism, and so theism is more probable than Manicheanism in light of that fact. Interestingly, Hume does not pursue the relative merits of these competing hypotheses. Instead, he introduces a third: "the original source of all things is entirely indifferent to all these principles, and has no more regard to good above ill than to heat above cold..." Call this the Hypothesis of