Peter van Inwagen and Michael Tooley Debate

Trent,

M. Tooley doesn't actually appeal to the logical problem of evil, he puts forward an evidential version that appeals to logical probability. It's posted, a version of it anyway, at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

It's definitely worth checking out.

Trent: It seems to me that Tooley would be well advised to appeal to the logical argument from evil. In particular, the hegemony of philosophers who held the view that PVI expressed, i.e., that Plantinga had put the logical problem of evil to bed, is now I think more widely recognized as too hasty. In particular, it is recognized I think fairly broadly that there is a logical gap in Plantinga's argument that has not been filled in and it is difficult to see how Plantinga could fill it in. That logical gap is that Plantinga leaps from:

L: There are some logically possible worlds that are not feasible for God to bring about though God is omnipotent.

to the conclusion:

R: It was not within God's power to actualize a world with free will but no evil.

It is true that some possible worlds are not feasible in virtue of the fact that the counterfactuals of freedom make it impossible for God to create some S ex nihilo in circumstances C and S will freely refrain from performing an act of sin A because it is true of S in C that "if in C, S would freely do A."

However, it does not follow that there is not another possible world populated by other or different persons who never go wrong. For it is logically possible that there is another person S* who is exactly like S in all respects in the nearest possible world except that it is true that "if in C, S* would freely refrain from performing an act of sin A." Indeed, there is in fact a logically possible person S** who is exactly like S, except that in each situation where S would go wrong, S** goes right in each such situation. Why didn't God create S** and only those permutations of each of us who would go right in each situation where we go wrong? These possible persons may not be those who actually exist -- and in fact they clearly are not -- but Plantinga gives no reason why God could not create these possible persons instead of those he did create according to Plantinga. The notion of transworld depravity is simply one example of an instance where God could not bring about a particular instantation that always goes right. It doesn't follow that there are no possible persons who always go right -- and in fact there is an infinite number of such possible persons because possible persons are merely logically indexed possibilities. Plantinga's argument gives no reason why an omnipotent being couldn't create these transworldly sanctified possible persons instead of the schlocks he created who frequently and tragically go wrong.

Blake,

Who are the wide body of people who think Plantinga too hasty because there is a logical gap in Plantinga's argument? I can't think of any people working in philosophy of religion who don't think the logical problem is dead. I haven't read everything though, so maybe you could point me in the direction of some recent literature that would support this claim.

BTW, Plantinga considers the question of other possible persons in section 7 of his book God, Freedom, and Evil. To wit, it's at least possible that every creaturely essence is suffers from transworld depravity.

Blake,

In Plantinga's argument the assumption A = it is possible that every creaturely essence is transworld depraved. Let w be the world in which A is true. So it is a contingent fact holding in w there is no creaturely essence C and world w' such that God could actualize C in w' and C does nothing wrong. So your suggestion that there might be some creaturely essence that God could actualize that would do nothng wrong is mistaken. It is of course true and consistent with Plantinga that there are some worlds in which no instantiated essence goes wrong.
But you're right that there has been some interesting argument against twd and Plantinga's argument. See M. Bergmann in a fairly recent issue of F&P. Something like 'Might counterfactuals and twd" (I think).

Mike: You are of course correct that Plantinga makes the ASSUMPTION: A = it is possible that every creaturely essence is transworld depraved (call this TWD). And it follows from this otherwise unsupported assumption A that there is no creaturely essence that God can create that is such that it doesn't go wrong. But he does nothing to argue for this assumption generalized to all possible creaturely essences. It doesn't follow, as he seems to think, from the observation that there are some possible persons that God cannot create in virtue of the counterfactuals of freedom that there aren't any he can create who would not always go wrong with respect to at least one action. God could have created only those who go right because God had other possible persons open to him to create who would not go wrong in C.

Note carefully that what TWD supports is that there are some creaturely essences that God cannot create who would always go right. His example of Curely who accepts the bribe is a particular instance of such a creaturely essence. However, that doesn't show that other possible persons were not open to God to create. In other words, it doesn't show that R follows from L. What he doesn't support is that every creaturely essence is of this type A. In fact, given that creaturely essences are merely indexical possibilities of the logically possible permutations of possible persons, there not only are such persons, but Plantinga has not given a reason why God cannot create these persons.

Matthew: Those who recognize and show that Plantinga does not support TWD generalized for all possible persons or creaturely essences inclue Michael Losonsky and Heimir Geirsson in an article "Plantinga and the Problem of Evil," forthcoming in the Southern Journal of Philosophy, Michael Bergmann (mentioned above), Daniel Howard Snyder and John O'Leary Hawthorne in "Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga's Free Will Defense, Benjamin Huff in an article in Element "Contingency and Classicl Creation: Problems wiit Plantinga's FWD".

"Note carefully that what TWD supports is that there are some creaturely essences that God cannot create who would always go right"

But it is a premise in Plantinga's argument (see NN, p. 188 bottom and ff.) that it's possible that *all* creaturely essences suffer from TWD. I guess I will quote a little:
"Now the interesting fact here is this: it is possible that *every* creaturely essence suffers from transworld depravity . . . But if every such essence suffers from transworld depravity, then no matter which essences God instantiates, the resulting person . . . would always perform at least some wrong actions" (NN., 188-9, my emphasis)
So, in Plantinga's verson of the argument, there is some world in which every creaturely essences is twd.
Of course, it's another question whether the argument is sound. What I'm saying is that the argument, as Plantinga presents it, is valid. Maybe you have an argument for why Plantinga cannot assert that in some world every CE is TWD. Maybe you are unconvinced by Plantinga's apparent use of sheer modal intuition to substantiate the claim that such a world is possible. I don't know. But, in any case, these are points that need argument.

For the life of me I can't see why Plantinga's argument had as much pull as it did. Suppose the point about the logical possibility of every essence doing something wrong is a good point. Suppose he can make sense of the haecceities, and defend the tough premises. I don't see how this helps at all with many cases of evil, cases sudden infant death syndrome, children born with horrible diseases that lead them live short painful lives. Wrong action is just irrelevant here.

Now, one can add other stories to the free-will defense. Maybe together, they provide a logical possibility, but not the free-will defense alone.

Christian,

The logical problem states that it is logically impossible for God to coexist with evil. It does not say that it is impossible for God to coexist with some subset of evils. What is supposed to make the logical problem forceful is the intuition that necessarily, God can "properly eliminate" every evil (where proper elimination amounts to eliminating evil without any cost in value).
So the logical problem makes a much stronger claim than you're making. That's why the argument is so well received. I incidentally don't see where he appeals to haecceities (or needs to) in the argument, but that's a separate point.
Regarding the evils you mention, Plantinga does offer this defense: it is a broadly logical possiblity that such evils are also instances of moral evil, this time of demonic activity. This is of course presented emphatically as a purely logical possibility. But that is all that is needed for to fend off the logical problem of evil. The evidential problem is another story altogether, and maybe that's what you want to underscore.

Blake, I think your argument could apply only to a libertarianism with counterfactuals of freedom. Some think genuine libertarianism insists that counterfectuals of what someone would do need to be grounded in some truthmaker, and they can't see how a libertarian view can countenance truthmakers for why free choices will be of a certain sort without becoming too close to compatibilism. If you're argument is rightm the free will defense thus requires a robust libertarianism without counterfactuals of freedom. That doesn't mean the argument fails to show that there's no contradiction. It just means that showing no contradiction requires denying that there are counterfactuals of freedom.

But such a view is out there, and that's all that's needed to show that the logical problem of evil is dead. I'm not even a libertatian. I'm a compatibilist. I still think the logical problem of evil is dead, because there's a kind of freedom that if it existed would have prevented God from ensuring the beings with that kind of freedom would not do evil. That shows that the contradiction needs some further premises, such as the premise that there are counterfactuals of freedom (which your argument relies on) or the premise that compatibilism is true (which Mackie's argument relies on). When this was pointed out to Mackie, he acknowledged that he was assuming that and thus had nothing to say to someone who denied his view of what freedom is.

I also don't think the free will defense is required to show that there's no logical problem. All you need is some reason why a perfectly good being would not prevent some particular kind of evil even knowing it would happen and being able to prevent it in terms of omnipotence. Many things even libertarians have offered in response to the problem of evil don't require full-blown libertarian views of freedom to make sense. There's also much on the problem of evil from those who aren't libertarians such as Leibniz and Malebranche (both compatibilists) or from Augustine and Aquinas (both of whom seem to me to have had something serving the purpose of counterfactuals of freedom and thus who aren't strong libertarians in the sense I just distinguished).

I have to say that I'm with Matthew and Trent on this one. I know of no major philosopher of religion who still thinks the logical problem of evil is a live problem for theism. I'm actually amazed that it took something like Plantinga's admittedly odd approach to show this, because I think the work of Augustine, Aquinas, Malebranche, and Leibniz (among many others) had already demonstrated that there's no logical problem with holding all four claims.

Hi Blake,

I'm having trouble discerning whether your problem with Plantinga's argument is with his general procedure for proving that two propositions are logically consistent, or rather with whether the particular possibility he's hit upon (in order to prove consistency in this context) is in fact a genuine possibility. Could you clarify?

On Plantinga's view, we can -- in general -- prove that p is consistent with q by finding some proposition r whose conjunction with p is both possible and entails q. Using the numbering from _God, Freedom, and Evil_ the p and q in this case are:

(1) God is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good.
(3) There is evil.

Plantinga thinks we prove that (1) is consistent with (3) -- and therefore provide a rebutting defeater for the logical problem of evil -- by finding a possibly true proposition which is consistent with (1) and together with (1) entails (3). On his view, (22) is that possibly true proposition:

(22) God creates a world containing evil and has a good reason for doing so.

Of course, this invites the question: *is* (22) consistent with (1)? Well, on Plantinga's view we answer this question by applying his method all over again. We can prove that (22) is consistent with (1) by finding (another) possibly true proposition which is consistent with (1) and together with (1) entails (22). The crucial proposition on offer here is (35):

(35) It was not within God's power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil.

...which, together with (36):

(36) God created a world containing moral good.

...allows one to deduce (22) from (1).

I suppose one could hold that (35) is not in fact possibly true. But as far as I can tell, you've given no argument for this. Likewise, I suppose one could hold that Plantinga's general procedure for proving logical consistency is somehow defective. But again, as far as I can tell you've given no argument for this. So it's not clear to me where precisely you see the problem lies. Could you clarify?

In your initial post you claim that there is a "logical gap" in that "Plantinga leaps from:

L: There are some logically possible worlds that are not feasible for God to bring about though God is omnipotent.

to the conclusion:

R: It was not within God's power to actualize a world with free will but no evil."

But the only gap I see is not in Plantinga, but (unless I'm mistaken!) in your construal of his argument. In particular, Plantinga does not assert the truth of R, but only its possibility. And (given his general procedure for showing (1) to be consistent with (3)), all he needs is the possibility of R, not its truth.

At times (especially in your first post) it seems that you are indexing CCFs to particular logically possible worlds. Whatever possible worlds are, it is a necessary truth that they are what they are (whatever is possible is necessarily possible). But the same does not go for CCFs: their truth is contingent at best. Plantinga is saying that, for all we know, the CCFs which God has to work with entail the truth of TWD. TWD, if true, is surely only contingently true at best, but I can't see how *that* undermines the use to which Plantinga puts its possible truth in generating a rebutting defeater for the logical problem of evil.

Hi Christian Lee,

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Plantinga address your exact question -- the question of natural evil -- in section 10 of Part I of GFE. Of course, there he deploys his basic line of reasoning in the context of a logical version of the problem of evil. If you want to see how he deploys it vis-a-vis the *evidential* argument from evil, cf. s. 11 of the same book. (This is an early statement of his views, of course.)

Is the logical problem of evil dead?

Plantinga told me that God has created beings with free will that have never chosen evil.

How can it even be *possible* that all creatures suffer from transworld depravity when Plantinga himself thinks there are counterexamples?

That is like claiming it is possible that the 49ers always win the Superbowl. That is not possible, as we know of counterexamples.

Is there a logical problem of legs?

Suppose I try to defend unipedalism - the doctrine that everybody except me has only one leg.

Could bipedalists point to the fact that I can see that most people have two legs, and tell me that it is a valid, logical, deduction from seeing people with two legs, to a conclusion that people actually have two legs?

I can use Plantinga's methods to show that there is no logical problem of legs and that we unipedalists can defy all attempts to show that our views are logically inconsistent.

All I need is to have the bare possibility of demonic activity affecting my senses when I see legs, and that is all that is needed to fend off the logical problem of legs.

If Plantinga's methods can also be used to fend off the logical problem of legs, and 'show' that unipedalism is logically consistent, then they are very weak methods.

You need a lot more than Plantinga's methods to counter the claim that it is no more rational to believe in an all-powerful God who allows evils like abortion, than it is rational to believe that we only have one leg.

And, of course, Plantinga's TWD has counterexamples, according to Christian doctrine of fallen and non-fallen angels.

It is not possible for all creatures to suffer from TWD, if some do not suffer from TWD.

Just as it is not possible for all swans to be white, if some swans are not white.

Oops, sorry for repeating some of the excellent points just made prior to my post :-)

Blake is quite right.

Suppose it is a sad fact that a person, call him John, will choose evil in a certain situation, then does that restrict a God , only limited by logically possiblities.

One logical possibility, is that John has a near identical twin brother, Jonathan. Jonathan behaves very similarly to John, as twin brothers do.

But Jonathan is not John. He does not behave identically. On one or two occasions he will do the opposite of John. He might even choose good when John chooses evil.

I would just love to see Plantinga try to show that it is not logically possible for people to have near-twin brothers, who behave similarly , but not identically.

That seems not only possible, but even plausible.

Surely there are near-twins in nature, and a God , limited only by logical possibility, could easily find a close enough twin.

Brake also writes 'It is true that some possible worlds are not feasible in virtue of the fact that the counterfactuals of freedom make it impossible for God to create some S ex nihilo in circumstances C and S will freely refrain from performing an act of sin A because it is true of S in C that "if in C, S would freely do A."'

True, but irrelevant as a defense, as the circumstances C need to be described in just a little more detail.

Let me describe two different sets of circumstances C, and anybody will see that I will indeed freely choose one way in any given set of circumstances, yet God has no difficulty finding sets of circumstances where I freely choose whatever happens to suit his plans best.

1) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose tea.

2) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose coffee.

Clearly, I can conceive of both sets of circumstances, and they are both possible, and they are obviously different to each other.

If God wants me to drink tea, he puts me in set of circumstances 1. I freely drink tea.

If God wants me to drink coffee, he puts me in set of circumstances 2. I freely drink coffee.

Where is the problem?

It strikes me that Plantinga's defense is a 'saving the appearances' defense.

‘Saving the appearances’ refers to what happened before it was established that the Earth went around the Sun. On the theory that all revolves around the Earth, Venus and Mercury appear to behave incorrectly.

‘Saving the appearances’ was the name given to extensions of the Earth-as-centre theory, so that despite appearances to the contrary, it could still be believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe.

Does anybody really care that the extensions to geocentric theory made the appearances logically consistent with the theory that all revolved around the Earth?

Logical consistency (even if Planting has acheived it), is really not a defense.

'L: There are some logically possible worlds that are not feasible for God to bring about though God is omnipotent.'

This is an interesting statement to me. Does an omnipotent God need a mechanism to bring about a logically possible situation?

Surely an omnipotent God just declares that a certain logically possible world is the actual one.

Perhaps if there is no mechanism for God to bring about a particular logical world, he can perform a miracle?!?

Mike and Greg,

So it has been years since I looked at Plantinga.

Reply: Haecceities? Okay, maybe not required for his defense. I think he analyzes essences as haecceities and argues that it is possible for all essences to be 'depraved', but that is just an artifact of his take on modality. For all I know the argument doesn't need it.

Reply: "The logical problem states that it is logically impossible for God to coexist with evil. It does not say that it is impossible for God to coexist with some subset of evils." Okay. I thought it natural to interpret 'evil' as 'any evil'. If Plantiga's claim is restricted to moral evil, then that's different.

Reply: Demons explain natural evil. I think this is required if Plantiga's defense is to work as a defense of all evil. Now, I think there are arguments against this view. Personally, I am rather happy with 'this is cloud-cuckoo-land'.

Which brings up Jeremy's point. Particular defenses, like Plantinga's, are instances of a more general reason giving strategy. To show the logical problem is no problem, is just to present some logically possible reason, good, that modally requires some evil. Then one motivates the importance of the good, then one tries to argue against the reliability of intuitions to the contrary, then one argues that we are in an epistemically impoverished position because of these poor intuitions, then one thinks that one has been succesfull.

I'm not convinced by this strategy. None of the premises in these arguments is more obvious than that this world has alot of bad stuff and that the world would be better without it.

Tough to respond to so much. But I will note that most objections to Plantinga's argument are based on misunderstandings. This is true of Mackie's famous response as well (and Bergmann, who presents his own very informed objections, nicely describes lots of these). Plantinga's metaphysics also encourages this: it's difficult to track. But I'll say something about this observation (my slight modification added),
"Plantinga told me that,
(a) God has created beings with free will that have never chosen evil.
How can it even be *possible* that
(b) all creatures suffer from transworld depravity when Plantinga himself thinks there are counterexamples?"

But it is evident that (a) is not a counterexample to the possibility of (b). Compare: I tell you that (a') I have ten coins in my pocket. I then claim that possibly (b') everyone has two coins in his pocket. It's pretty clear that (a') is not a counterexample to the possibility of (b'). Obviously, it is *possible* that I have two coins in my pocket, though in fact I actually have ten in my pocket. And for precisely these sorts of reasons (as I gather is clear) (a) is not a counterexample to the possibility (b).

' And finally, with each evil, there is an unknown good that comes out of it."'

So said Peter van Inwagen.

What is the unknown good that comes out of abortion?

PVI also said 'But these evils are there; otherwise the world wouldn't be what it is today, and people wouldn't need to believe in any form of higher power.'

I think this is the reasoning behind Ezekiel 25:25-26 'I also gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by; I let them become defiled through their gifts—the sacrifice of every firstborn —that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the LORD.'

Should child sacrifice be allowed if it helps evangelise people?

Does Mike think it is possible that everybody in the world is male, although we have one or two counterexamples?

Can anybody think of any atheist defenses against , say, the Ontological argument, or other arguments, that rely on a possibility that atheists admit has counterexamples?

I can't think of any atheist arguments where people have used analogies like 'It is possible that everybody has two coins in the pocket, although I know for a fact that some people don't.'

Are there atheist arguments where analogous arguments are used?

Can unipedalists claim it is possible that everybody only has one leg, even when they know that there are counterexamples?

And that therefore there is no logical problem of legs, just as there is no logical problem of evil?

Most people in the street would claim that it is not logically consistent to believe that most people only have one leg, but then most people are not professional philosophers.

No intense at sarcasm intended at all, but I cannot see the difference between Plantinga's defense and a defense of unipedalism.

"Does Mike think it is possible that everybody in the world is male, although we have one or two counterexamples?"

Yes. In general, I deny that what is actual is necessary. I think I hold that belief in common with everyone who has thought a little about modality (and probably with most who haven't). In particular, yes, I claim that it is possible that everyone (I take it you mean every human) in the world is male. But what does it mean? It means that there is a possible world in which everyone is male (perhaps Adam alone). And since it is possible, it is possibly actual. I also believe that it's possible for you to have six toes on each foot! But I don't believe its actual.... :)

Mike is clearly right here, and there is any easy explanation of the confusion. Steven is hearing the possibility claim in question as an epistemic possibility, contradicted by what we know to be the case. Plantinga's possibility claims are not epistemic ones, however.

Christian, you say:

I'm not convinced by this strategy. None of the premises in these arguments is more obvious than that this world has alot of bad stuff and that the world would be better without it.

But it doesn't have to be obviously true. It doesn't even have to be true. It just has to be possible. I think the argument that we're epistemically impoverished drastically undermines any claim that anything in this area is obvious to begin with, but it doesn't even matter if it is obviously true. To defeat some of the possible explanations of natural evil, you need to be able to assert that some vast system of natural laws is possible and consistent in a way that I don't see how we could even begin to sort through. I can't see how anyone can claim to evaluate the possibility of that claim, but it requires asserting that there are certain possible systems of natural laws that I don't see us in any such position to assert.

Then there's the epistemic possibility of things with greater intrinsic value than anything we've experienced. We see this in Augustine and Aquinas, and I think Malebranche and Leibniz also consider this as a possibility. To assert that the existence of God is incompatible with the existence of evil, one has to rule out any possibility of intrinsic goods that are much more important goods than the evils that take place. How could any of us be in such a position?

If there's a potential infinity of good starting at some point in the future when compared with a finite length of bad now, that also seriously undermines the badness of any bad in this life. If such a future is even possible, then it lowers the value of any temporary bad as compared to the same bad in a world that doesn't have a future of eternal good. Especially if the future good is much better because of the shorter-term bads, that means it's much better for eternal length as opposed to worse for a temporary length. If it's possible that the best overall world is an ongoing eternal world with some serious temporal bad in the infinitesimally small part that we call so far, then there's no inconsistency. I can't see how we're capable of assessing the possibility of such a thing. One has to do so to assert an inconsistency between God and evil.

The list goes on. The point is that what seems obvious only seems obvious because of our epistemic deficiencies. It fails to account for how what's obvious would be changed if we could think about evil in this life compared with eternity. It fails to account for how what's obvious would be changed if we could grasp how good some intrinsic good we don't know about really is that makes all the intrinsic goods we've experienced seem pitiful. It fails to account for how what seems obvious might change if somehow we could grasp all the systems of natural laws and see many limits we're unaware of on putting natural laws together with a goal of minimizing evil.

Jon,

I like the diagnosis. I go back and forth on epistemic possibility here. Certainly on Chalmer's notion, it is epistemically possible that water is not H2O, though of course that proposition is metaphysically necessary. I take that to mean that we might have discovered that water is not H2O, and that does sound right to me; some other world in which the relevant contingent facts are different might have been actual.
But I'm guessing that you don't take Chalmers (and the other two-dimensionalists) to be talking about a concept of epistemic possibility that is important (or very important) to epistemology.

So if Mike is not making epistemic claims, then what is the defense?

Why not just take the easy route and say that possibly we are all brains in vats, and so there is no real evil?

Isn't that a defense to the logical problem of evil?

Do I get to be counted with the people mentioned above? - Plantinga , Augustine, Aquinas, Malebranche, and Leibniz?

Or does refuting the Logical Problem of Evil involve a little more work than producing a world that nobody believes corresponds to ours, and then claiming that because there is no problem of evil in that world, there is no problem of evil in ours?

Has anybody thought of an atheist defense to various proofs of God, which involves supposing something that the atheist proposing it knows to be contradicted by what is the case in our world?

Is Jeremy Pierce correct?

Suppose the two of us are in Hell, and Satan is poking us with red-hot pokers, and saying 'There is no God. It was me all along, and I fooled you all just so I could see the look on your faces now.'

Wouldn't it be obvious then that there was no God, and that the evil Jeremy was experiencing was inconsistent with the existence of God?

I would say that it was obvious that there was no God. Presumably Jeremy would say 'The point is that what seems obvious only seems obvious because of our epistemic deficiencies.'

Does increasing the amount of evil make a difference to Jeremy's argument?

Steven, I'll reword Mike on Jon's points about these possibility claims. You seem to be denying that there are any contingent truths. If I've got ten coins in my pocket, and it's not possible thatI have two coins in my pocket, then it's necessarily true that I have ten coins. There's no possible world in which I instead have two. If I've got two legs, and that makes it not possible that I have one, then there's no world in which I have one. I couldn't have lost a leg earlier in life. I couldn't have been born with just one leg. It's necessary that I have two legs, and I have two in every possible world. Yet all of these things are taken by everyone but necessitarians to be obvious examples of contingent truths, which means they could have been false.

For your statements to come out true, there has to be just one possible world, i.e. the actual world. I know you can't mean that, though, because that would solve the problem of evil extremely easily. If God couldn't help but allow evil because there's only one possible world, and that one possible world has evil in it, then there is no contradiction between God's existence and the existence of evil. God didn't have any choice, because no other way things could be was even possible.

There is evil in the world. We see it. We experience it. This is just like my having two legs and ten coins. That's how it is. We can perceive it. If that makes it necessarily so, then the existence of evil is by parity of reasoning also necessary. So given that there's evil, it's not possible that there wasn't evil, and then even an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being couldn't avoid the full amount of evil we've got in this world. In fact, we shouldn't be surprised at all that this is the amount of evil we have, because it was the only possible amount of evil there could have been. So you've solved not just the logical problem but even the evidential problem.

I hope you realize the fallacy in this argument, but you should notice that you've been committing the same fallacy in your response to Plantinga and then in your unipedalist argument. I don't agree with Jon about what that fallacy is. I don't think you're assuming epistemic possibility. I think you're assuming conditional possibility. Given that X is true, X must be true. Of course, such a statement is tautological. What's fallacious is to conclude on its basis that X must be true simpliciter. All we can conclude from the existence of X is that X exists, not that X's existence is necessary. So too for evil, the ten coins, and my second leg. Given their existence, they must exist. But that doesn't make their existence necessary, and it means all sorts of other situations might be possible.

Being in hell and being told by Satan doesn't say anything about the consistency of the existence of God and the existence of evil. All it says, if Satan is to be believed (which is doubtful to begin with), is that God doesn't exist, not that God's existence is incompatible with evil.

The brain in vat possibility doesn't remove the evil, because we still experience pain and suffering, and we still do evil things. That wouldn't count as a defense or theodicy except as a possible piece of a larger defense or theodicy.

As for epistemic claims, there are clearly epistemic claims being made here. What's being said is that certain scenarios that we can't epistemically rule out might be genuinely metaphysically possible. All it takes to shoot down the logical problem of evil is to raise scenarios that we don't know are not metaphysically posssible. To assert the logical problem of evil, one has to rule out all such scenarios as even metaphysically possible. Even if they are actually false, their metaphysical possibility is enough to refute the logical claim that God and evil can't coexist. It's an entirely different matter to explain why God and evil do coexist, but that's not what the logical problem of evil is about. That's what the evidential problem is about.

Increasing the amount of evil affects my argument if it's possible to lessen the potential good of an infinite future of good by making something worse for a comparably very short time. I don't have any idea if that's possible, and neither do you. That's the point. I'd say something similar about some of the other standard epistemic deficiency arguments.

I'm not sure I understand you.

Plantinga's TWD means that in all possible worlds that God can actualise, a being like the Angel Gabriel would choose evil.

This is a bit like claiming that in all possible worlds God can actualise, people will have 10 coins in their pockets.

This is easily refuted by giving an example of a world God has actualised where not everybody has 10 coins in their pockets.

Not all creatures can suffer from TWD, if there is a world God can actualise where some creatures are not depraved.

This seems very clear to me.

Your claim is that :-
1) God has created beings with free will that have never chosen evil
2) It may not be logically possible for God to create beings with free will that have never chosen evil.

Clearly , it *is* logically possible for God to create beings with free will that never choose evil. Plantinga goes so far as to claim that God has done just that.

And that wraps up Plantinga's claim that God cannot actualise a world with beings with free will that never choose evil.

Plantinga sets a very low standard for logical consistency.

It appears to me that most people have two legs.

Can I show that it is logically consistent to believe that everybody has one leg?

1) My senses and memory tell me people have two legs
2) It is possible demons are deceiving my sense and memory.
3) Therefore, it is possible that everybody only has one leg.

This is entirely analogous to Plantinga's defense.

Is it rational to believe that people only have one leg? All appearances are against it.

Plantinga's defense is literally just a saving the appearances defense.

That went out when Copernicus pointed out it was easier to think the Earth went around the Sun.

Steven, regarding your point about arguments for theism:

This argument for theism would have to be a disproof of atheism that takes the same form, i.e. asserting a contradiction among the claims atheism makes. I know of no such argument that has a large enough following among philosophers to be worth making a comparison.

Jeremy 'All it takes to shoot down the logical problem of evil is to raise scenarios that we don't know are not metaphysically posssible.'

Is there a logical problem of legs? I'm pretty sure I can rustle up a Truman Show type scenario where you are being systematically deceived, which means that you cannot (according to Plantinga) rule out the possibility that you are wrong about how many legs most people have.

Is it rational to tell people they cannot logically conclude people have two legs from the mere fact they see people with two legs?

At least we seem to agree that God can create beings with free will that never chose evil.

The free will defense does not assert your following claims:

2) It may not be logically possible for God to create beings with free will that have never chosen evil.

What it asserts is:

2') It may not be logically possible for God to create beings with free will and then ensure that they never choose evil.

That seems to me to be impossible to rule out. All it takes for 2' to be true is for some beings to possess libertarian free will and for there not to be counterfactuals of freedom that ground what they will do in any given context. You need to be able to have two exact duplicates in qualitatively identical circumstances who choose different things. If you have that, then God can't just actualize a person and put the person in a setting that can ensure what the person will do. If that's even possible, then there's a world in which God is all three omnis and evil occurs. Then there's no logical impossibility, as the logical problem of evil asserts. You don't need any of this trans-world depravity stuff. Plantinga needs that because he doesn't hold to this robust kind of libertarianism, but if that kind of libertarianism is even possible then God cannot ensure that a being with that kind of freedom will do a certain thing in certain circumstances.

Steven, I agree that I cannot rule out the possibility that most people have only one leg. I may well be in the Matrix or some such thing, for all I can absolutely rule out. So? This isn't about what things I know or what knowledge is. It's about whether we can assert the impossibility of certain claims that, if true, would explain why a good, ominipotent, omniscient God would allow evil. You seem insistent on pointing out that there are extremely implausible things that are impossible to rule out. Again, I wonder why that's relevant. We're not talking about the plausibility of any claims or the likelihood of any scenarios. We're talking about mere possibility, since that's what claims of logical contradictions are denying.

If we were discussing the evidential argument, those would be relevant. To defeat the claim that the actual amount of evil in the actual world counts as evidence against believing in an actual God, then asserting the mere possibility of something implausible isn't going to go very far. But to defeat the claim that it's absolutely impossible for four claims to be consistent, all one has to do is come up with a situation that, for all we know, is possible. That means the person asserting the contradiction cannot continue to assert that it's a contradiction until explaining exactly why the perhaps unlikely or implausible scenario is not just unlikely or implausible but is in fact absolkutely impossible. That's what has not been done, and I will repeat that I think it cannot be done from our epistemic position.

Steven,

Funny you say that "Why not just take the easy route and say that possibly we are all brains in vats, and so there is no real evil."

That is exactly how these defenses strike me. Transworld-depravity is about as plausible as I'm a brain in a vat. No defense at all.

Jeremy,

I think I disagree with a lot of what you said. The defenses have to be true, not just possibly true. The claim is that there is actual evil that is incompatible with certain important claims about God. If that claim is right, then God does not actually exist. I have a feeling defending this claim would take a bit of space, but roughly, I think there is confusion between epistemic and objective possibility going on.

And I don't think the claim that we are epistemically impoverished casts doubt on anything. I think our system of natural laws is consistent with there being a lot less evil. Just consider our world with fewer tsunamis and diseases. If you tell me I can't, then I deny that claim. The claim about what I can't imagine strikes me as, extremely less plausible, than imagining this world with 9/11.

You said "I can't see how we're capable of assessing the possibility of such a thing. One has to do so to assert an inconsistency between God and evil."

No, the idea is that it is pretty obvious there is an inconsistecy and that allows us to rule out the various stories about "possible goods" and I suggest that the various stories have much less epistemic weight than the inconsistency claim. The idea being that defenders have the methodology backwards. Start with what is obvious, not with what is dubious.

And what is obvious is not obvious because of deficiencies. At least, I claim that is what obvious to me is not obvious because of deficiencies, rather, it is people who attempt to tell stories to explain away an inconsistency that are the ones who have a deficiency. Imagine the argument played out between Moore and his skeptic.

Skeptic: "You just think there is an external world because it seems obvious to you, but that is becuase you are deficient."

Moore: "No, it's just obvious."

Skeptic: "That's exactly what a deficient person would say."

Moore: "I was just gonna say that to you."

Skeptic: "But isn't it possible you are wrong."

Moore: "Epistemically, no. Metaphysically, yes."

Skeptic: "So you agree there is a world wherwe we are all brains in vats! You can't rule that world out can you now?"

Moore: "Yes I can. This ain't one of them."

Anyway, that's my little dialogue. My claim is that something like that is going on above. I mean, invisible demons causing natural evil...infinite unknowable goods...depravity...as opposed to:

This world can be pretty lousy, definitely not the product of perfection.

I think the obvious is getting lost in the modal magic and skepticism.

Christian, you're giving the evidential problem again. That's not what the logical problem asserts, as has been pointed out several times now, and I won't bother to go through it again.

Insofar as the natural laws point is a defense against the logical problem, all you need is that no world could be constructed with no natural disasters. You don't need to argue that this world would be worse with one fewer death from natural disasters or anything of that sort. If you're dealing with the actual amount of evil, you're back at the evidential problem once again rather than the logical problem. So your whole second point commits the same mistake as the first. It takes the name 'logical problem of evil' to refer to the problem that is standardly called by the name 'the evidential problem of evil'.

I've only skimmed the previous comments, so apologies if I repeat a point that's already been made.

Regarding the FWD, it seems to me that a non-Molinist libertarian (NML), such as an open theist like myself, is going to have a much easier time making it stick because the NML does not need to invoke the very difficult notion of trans-world depravity (TWD).

Frankly, I've never found Plantinga's notion of TWD even remotely plausible. If God knows the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom for a veritably infinite ensemble of possible free creatures and knows for each of those creatures that is would freely do X in any possible free choice situation in which it might be placed, then it seems highly probable to me that God could have found plenty of creatures that would always freely refrain from sin.

For that reason, I think the theist is MUCH better off vis-a-vis the logical problem of evil if no such counterfactuals are true and knowable by God antecedent to creation. Together with the grounding problem, I take the problem of evil to have considerable weight against Molinism and other models of meticulous providence in favor of some model of general providence.

Jeremy,

That's not right. There are many reasons for this. First, I'm not putting forward an argument from evil. I am claiming that the FWD is barely plausible and that a certain strategy is bad.

The evidential argument concludes: It is therefore likely that God does not exist.

The logical problem: God does not exist.

I suggest that a defense of the former is bad and it is not obvious how this is supposed to imply that I think the truth of the latter is the explanation for this fact. Well, I just don't think it is relevant.

Generally, providing a defense is supposed to be providing a set of propositions that are consistent and possibly true. Plantinga thinks he has done this. I don't think so. So, again, this has nothing to do with an evidential version of the argument.

The way you write it sounds as if you think that in order to show Plantinga's argument fails, one must show that for any possible evil justifying good, that good doesn't obtain in a world like our world. I deny that this is required, just like I deny that one must show that we are not brains in a vat in order to reasonably believe we have hands.

"If God knows the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom for a veritably infinite ensemble of possible free creatures and knows for each of those creatures that is would freely do X in any possible free choice situation in which it might be placed, then it seems highly probable to me that God could have found plenty of creatures that would always freely refrain from sin."

It is simply not a matter of finding some creaturely essences that will never go wrong, no matter how many there are. As emphasized above, Plantinga finds it possible (of course, given his own modal intutions) that EVERY creaturely essence is transworld depraved. Therefore there is some world w such that EVERY creaturely essence in w is transworld depraved. Since w might be actual, it is a contingent fact that God might be unable to actualize any such essence in any world and have it never go wrong. That's a direct implication of transworld depravity. So the problem is obviously not an epistemological one for God. It is simply false that, in w, He could have found some essences that would "always refrain from sin". In fact, THERE ARE NO creaturely essences to uncover in w such that were just those specific essences actualized in some world, they would never go wrong. This particular question is settled with Plantinga's central premise that it is possible that every creaturely essence is TWD.
As might well have been expected, Plantinga did not make some silly mistake in his FWD argument.

Incidentally, hat's off to Jeremy P. who has been clarifying relevant points in the argument all afternoon--er, now evening.

Mike,

Now I'm confused: You wrote "Since w might be actual, it is a contingent fact that God might be unable to actualize any such essence in any world and have it never go wrong. That's a direct implication of transworld depravity."

Question: Is the first might objective or epistemic?

If epistemic, one will argue that w is not actual and we know it and hence, that it is false that w might be actual.

If objective, then one will argue that since alpha is not w, then whether there is a world w where everybody is depraved is irrelevant to whether the FWD shows that the amount of actual evil in our world is compatible with God's existence.

Wow, I go to trial and an epidemic of posts breaks out! I think that I'll concentrate initually on what Mike Almeida has said. First, yes I have read the Nature of Necessity and God, Freedom and Evil and I'm well aware of Plantinga's Transworld Depravity (TWD) argument. However, the argument doesn't carry the weight it must because it assumes what must be proven.

Plantinga merely assumes, without much argument at all, that if it is possible that for a given creaturely essence it is possible that God could not create that particular essence and also bring it about that this essence never goes wrong, then such a fact could be true of all possible creaturely essences. Indeed, for every essence there are innumerable possible worlds that God cannot create because what the essence does is not up to God -- and for every act the essence would freely do there is the complement of the act it would not do and thus a possible world God cannot bring about. So if it is true of Curely in world W that if Curley were in C he would accept the bribe, there is a possible world that includes Curely that is not within God's power to bring about, i.e., the possible world where Curely rejects the bribe.

That is fine and all true. However, it doesn't follow and it hasn't been shown that it is logically possible that every creaturely essence suffers from transworld depravity. While it is true that God cannot create Curely such that he never goes wrong given the counterfactuals of freedom that are true of him, it is implicit in the notion of contra-causal freedom with which Plantinga operates that there is another creaturely essence exactly like Curely in every respect in circumstances identical to circumstances C in possible world W up to the time that Curely accepts the bribe who nevertheless rejects the bribe. Moreover, there is in fact a another possible creaturely essence that is exactly like Curley who goes right in every circumstance where Curely goes wrong.

Now the critical point -- Plantinga never explains why an omnipotent God couldn't create this perfect creaturely essence who is exactly like Curely in every respect except who always goes right. If God is in fact omnipotent, then even though he cannot create Curely and bring it about that Curley freely always goes right, there are still other creaturely essences that God can create who never go wrong.

Where Plantinga goes wrong, it seems to me, is that he thinks that the counterfactuals of freedom are up to the creaturely essences to make true or bring about (note this Kevin Timpe), but in fact because the essences are not actual unless and until created, these counterfactuals are not brought about by anything or anybody -- they are just barely logical indexical possibilities. Thus, it follows that there is in fact an infinite number of creaturely essences and the counterfactuals of freedom true of some of them such that they always go right in any circumstances we can specify. God cannot create Curely and make him always freely go right; but God had another alternative. He could create these other creaturely essences who never go wrong.

Not every creaturely essence can suffer from TWD for the simple reason that such essences are just logically indexed possibilities that range over the complete range of what is logically possible. Since it is logically possible for every person who ever lived that there was another creaturely essence just like them that never went wrong in the same circumstances, such creaturely essences are possible and no reason has been given as to why it is not open to God to create them. Moreover, it is easy to see how it is open to God to create such perfect essences. God can foresee (or whatever God does to know such things) which creaturely essences are indexed such that the counterfactuals of freedom true of them dictate that they will always freely choose right in the possible world in question -- and create them.

Thus, Plantinga's FWD fails because it assumes that it is possible that all creaturely essences suffer from TWD, when in fact it is demonstrable that there are creaturely essences open to God to create who always go right.

I agree wholeheartedly with Alan Rhoda that the open theist is in a significantly better position to respond to the logical problem of evil because the best that God can do is to create those essences that would probably go right -- and wait and see. Indeed, given that the counterfactuals of freedom are not up to the agents of whom they are supposedly true, it is difficult to see how libertarian free will could possibly obtain given Molinist assumptions.

As for the more general defense suggest by Greg Welty that was originally suggested by Plantinga, i.e., that God may have a good reason for permitting morally evil choices, I think that it is the best the classical (Molinist or Thomist or Calvinistic) theist can do. However, it seems to me that the defense is a morally indefensible position because it assumes that we are not in a position to weigh moral options so that we never really know if we are doing right or wrong -- but whatever we in fact fail to do or do is all for the best. So we can do nothing at all and rest assured that God has so planned matters that that is the best mixture of good and evil that God was able to bring about. I doubt that any Christian could accept the moral quietism and complacency that is implicit in such a defense. This defense to the problem of evil seems to be its own evil!

Christian, I'm not sure what you're getting at. I haven't been talking about what it takes to show Platinga's argument fails. I've been talking about what it takes to show that the logical problem of evil fails. All it takes is to show that some possible world, even if we know it's not the actual world, contains evil and has a good with all three omni-traits. If there's even a possible world that's not actual where that is true, then there's no contradiction between the existence of evil and the existence of such a God. I haven't been commenting on whether Plantinga has done that with his trans-world depravity argument. I did say that you can do it without bothering with trans-world depravity as long as you deny middle knowledge. But then it's been done, and the logical problem of evil is dead.

I've been saying that other things might also do the same job without the strong sort of libertarianism that requires denying middle knowledge. You've been responding that we don't know if those things are possible. I've been saying what matters for showing a logical inconsistency is ruling out any way that would show consistency. If there's any slippage, then it's not an incompatibility.

If people wanted to show that it's logically contradictory to believe you have no hands, then all you would have to do is raise the brain-in-vat scenario, and you would show consistency even if in the actual world you do have hands. It's not logically inconsistent to believe you have no hands, because in some possible world you have hands. That doesn't mean you should believe you have no hands, and it doesn't mean you don't know you have hands. But those have to do with questions like those raised in the evidential argument, i.e. what it's reasonable to believe based on the evidence and so on. Those issues do not have to do with logical consistency. That's why it's not a parallel to the issues raised in the logical problem of evil.

Blake, I don't see how it follows that we don't know whether we're doing right or wrong. Simply because God allows me to do something, how is it supposed to follow that God approves of my doing it? Allowing it might be perfectly good while doing it is thoroughly evil. We have all sorts of parallels to that. We don't think we ought to prevent people from insulting each other, at least those of us who believe in free speech. But that doesn't mean it's right to use that free speech to say false things about people that will harm their reputation. I would not approve of my wife leaving me for another man, but that doesn't mean it would be right for me to stop her if she chose to do that.

It's particularly common in scripture to explain time allowing people to continue to do wrong as time allowing them to repent (cf. II Peter 3) or time allowing the evildoers to carry out a judgment on others (cf. Habakkuk), but in both cases it's wrong to assume that means the evildoers are doing things God would approve of, as both passages make clear by emphasizing that God will eventually judge those evildoers. I think this is an important distinction, and I wonder if you're simply assuming some sort of consequentialism, according to which the only factor that makes an action good or bad is the consequence. Otherwise I'm not seeing how you get the conclusion that God's allowing something amounts to the same moral import as God's doing it directly.

Thanks to Jeremy and Mike for doing much of the heavy lifting today.

Blake-
If Plantinga's argument "assumes what must be proven" philosophers would be on it like a Texan on a pork chop. Returning to your previous comment, three to four papers don't seem like a large enough sample to support claims about a wide body thinking Plantinga is too hasty. The Bergmann is on my list, but I've read the Howard-Snyder and O'Leary Hawthorne piece. They note that they are swimming against the current, and add that "We think it more than just a bit hasty to write off Plantinga's defense." They even close their critique with suggestions for how Plantinga's defense can be modified to meet their objection.

Let me add that Plantinga's account is popular in part because it meshes nicely with Mackie, which makes for a nice teaching module. However, even if Plantinga's defense does fail, there are numerous other ways that the theist can respond as Jeremy rightly points out. It isn't without good reason that most theists and atheists philosophers have moved onto the evidential argument from evil.

Jeremy: It follows from the fact that God created everything there is ex nihilo and that God is perfectly good, that the world that in fact obtains must be the best that God can do -- given the resources available to him given which counterfactuals of freedom obtain. Thus, we can be assured that God would not have created us unless this world were the best he could do -- and thus anything we in fact do is the best that can be done.

Take an example -- the one Rowe uses of the little girl who was brutally beaten, raped and then murdered in Detroit. Why did God allow it when he had the power to intervene and stop it? Because for reasons we cannot fathom it was better, all things considered, that this event was allowed to occur. Well, what if I had been present when this little girl was being beaten? I would have stopped it because by my lights this events is evil beyond belief. But then I would then have contributed to a state of affairs that is not as good all things considered by following my own moral lights. Because I am not even in a position to know whether this event is ultimately evil or without justifying reason in God's plan, according to the CORNEA defense, I cannot judge whether there is in fact a genuine evil that has occurred in this instance. But them I am massively ignorant about what is morally obligatory and what is not -- or what is best to bring about and what is best to let alone.

However, if theism is true, I know one thing. Whatever in fact occurs is all for the best. So I can do nothing and rest assured it was all for the best. When this little girl is being beaten, if I accept this cognitive ignorance of moral value defense, then I am obligated to just let whatever happen occur because I just don't know whether it is the right thing to do all things considered. I must leave it to god.

Matthew: The argument that Plantinga is a smart guy so he can't be wrong just doesn't count for much. Similarly with the argument that a lot of smart guys (and a few smart gals) just cannot be wrong. The key premise of Plantinga's argument is that "possibly all creaturely essences suffer from TWD." But he didn't demonstrate that; he assumed it. But that is what must be demonstrated and it can be shown that it doesn't follow from what Plantinga did argue correctly and establish, e.g., Leibniz's Lapse regarding omnipotence.

Look, I've given an argument as to why God had open to him another possibility -- to create other creaturely essences that never go wrong whose very possibility of going right in the exact same cirucmstances is entailed in the notion of libertarian free will that Plantinga adopted. You've got to respond to that argument -- and if I've gone wrong I'm open to being corrected. But I think that Snyder and O'Leary Hawthorne are correct in their arguments.

Moreover, what Snyder and O'Leary Hawthorne ultimately revert to is the general defense that I addressed in the immediately prior post. I agree that it is just logically possible that God has good reasons for allowing what, for all the world, appear to us to be brutally horrendous evils that couldn't possibly be justified by some good for which that evil is logically necessary. However, it requires the Christian to adopt a moral stance in the world that is morally vitiated because now we are not in a position to judge such moral matters. Why do we lack such cognitive capacity? Well, because God created us that way. So God has placed us in as situation where we cannot even judge what is ultimately good or evil (unless you believe that rape and murder are good prima facie) and our moral incapacity to judge is God's doing. The very position presents a morally unacceptable argument as to why God allows evil.

Matthew: I would suggest that you look at the four articles that I cited which all come to the same conclusion -- Plantinga's FWD is incomplete because it fails to offers reasons or argue for the key premise -- that possibly all creaturely essences suffer from TWD. I think it is significant that all see the same deficiency -- and it appears to me that they are clearly correct. Now maybe this deficiency can be remedied but I've given reasons to believe that it cannot be.

Jeremy and Mike,

I've been thinking about my reponse and I think I dropped the ball. Roughly, I think I was assuming that in order for a defense to count as successful, not only must one show that there is a world w in which God exists and moral evil exist, but one must also show that "For all we know, w is actual".

That last bit is not required. That just has to be a mistake on my part. Logical consistency is not an epistemic notion.

That said, I change my criticism slightly. I don't deny that Plantinga did what he attempted to do and remain agnostic about that, but instead, deny that he has shown that "For all we know, w is actual". Here, the epistemic constraints on showing that w is actual are those I mentioned.

It appears to be conceded that the logical problem of evil, while not watertight, is at least as strong as a claim that because we can see that people have two legs, we can logically conclude that people really do have two legs.

And that is a very strong claim.

Defenders against the logical problem of evil have to deny that seeing people with two legs lets us logically conclude that people have two legs.

They do exactly that, which I think illustrates the bankruptcy of Plantinga's defence.

You need not only a logical defense, but also a defense which does not also defend irrational views.

Can anybody prove that I am not all good?

Why should Christians condemn me as a sinner, whent they cannot even prove that I am not all-good?

Of course, I am sometimes observed to do bad things, but I can easily posit a possible world where demons force me to do things against my will.

Natually, I deny that such demons exist in our world, but apparently that is no problem when I come to defend the claim that Steven Carr is not a sinner.

--------------------
TRANSworld Depravity

A comment on Brake's post where he writes ' If God is in fact omnipotent, then even though he cannot create Curely and bring it about that Curley freely always goes right, there are still other creaturely essences that God can create who never go wrong.'

And , in fact, Plantinga clsims God *has* created beings with free will that have never chosen evil.

How can all creatures be depraved in all worlds God can create, when God can create a world where some creatures are not depraved?

Mike writes 'In fact, THERE ARE NO creaturely essences to uncover in w such that were just those specific essences actualized in some world, they would never go wrong.'

So if the Angel Gabriel was actualised in some world (ie our world), the Angel would go wrong and be thrown out of Heaven?

Allowing evil
-------------

I'm not sure about the claim that it is right for God to allow evil.

Are the following claims both true?
1) There are no valid moral reasons to allow abortion
2) God has a valid moral reason to allow abortion

Libertarian free will
---------------------

Jeremy writes ' Plantinga needs that because he doesn't hold to this robust kind of libertarianism, but if that kind of libertarianism is even possible then God cannot ensure that a being with that kind of freedom will do a certain thing in certain circumstances.'

In fact, it appears to me to be trivially true that people will do a certain thing in certain circumstances, yet God can easily arrange that they do is what suits God's plans.

1) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose tea.

2) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose coffee.

These are two different sets of circumstances, and I do two different things.

Obviously, it is trivially true that Plantinga is right that if you put me in a particular set of circumstances, then I will freely choose one way and not even God can do anything about my choice.

In set 1), I will freely choose tea and God cannot change that.

In set 2), I will freely choose coffee and God cannot change that.

But what is the problem about God finding a set of circumstances where I freely choose tea, and also being able to find a set of circumstances where I freely choose coffee?

There is no problem. It is trivially easy to find those sets of circumstances.

I have a short story about counterfactuals of freedom at

http://stevencarrwork.blogspot.com/2005/09/god-omniscience-free-will-and.html It is based on Borges famous Library of Babel.

Steven: All Plantinga is doing is showing that:
(1) God exists
is not logically inconsistent with
(2) evil exists

If he can show that, then he has provided a defense to the logical problem of evil. Has he done that? To show that all that Plantinga has to do is to show that there is a third proposition that is consistent with both (1) and (2) that is itself logically possible. So Plantinga gives us: (3) Possibly God has some reason for permitting the evils that actually obtain that we cannot fathom.

Is this a valid defense to the logical problem of evil? If (3) is an acceptable premise to the theist, then it would seem so. So you seem to have missed the point that all that Plantinga needs to show is that the premises are possibly true -- not that they are actually or necessarily true.

Yet is (3) acceptable to the theist? I would ask why God created us with such limited cognitive capacities and limited ability to make moral judgments about what is genuinely evil and good. Perhaps (3) is not consistent with (1) after all.

The argument that I have addressed is Plantinga's Free Will Defense. Is it a valid defense? Well, there are certain conceptions of God that seem not to be logically viable in the light of this defense. For example, if I have understood him, Jeremy concedes that perhaps Molinism of the type Plantinga assumed in his response to Mackie is not logically possible because perhaps my argument works if there are counterfactuals of freedom assumed by Molinism. However, if there are no counterfactuals of freedom, it is difficult to see how God could have foreknowledge of what free persons would do if created by God. So perhaps giving up the Molinist view also requires amending the notion of God to be more like the open view of God where God lacks foreknowledge. But that would be a type of victory for the problem of evil because it shows that at least the dominant or majority view of God held by most believers is not logically consistent with the existence of genuine evil.

Now for a kicker -- whenever we speak of evil we ought to understand what David Griffin has called "geniune evil" or evils that are not justified because they are not logically necessary to realize a greater good. The question then becomes whether we have good reason to think that we know that there are in fact genuine evils.

Blake writes 'Steven: All Plantinga is doing is showing that:
(1) God exists
is not logically inconsistent with
(2) evil exists

If he can show that, then he has provided a defense to the logical problem of evil.'

CARR
If that is all Plantinga is trying to do, then all he has done is create a 'saving the appearances' type of defense.

Didn't Mackie write in 'The Miracle of Theism' that Plantinga's defense was missing the point, even if formally sound? I don't have the exact quote.

Steven: Mackie argued that Plantinga had failed to recognize that given that there are in fact an infinite number of essences that there must be some that freely never go wrong and there is no reason that God could not create them. Mackie failed to interact fully with the libertarian nature of freedom involved in Plantinga's defense -- Mackie admitted that he had assumed compatiblist freedom. Mackie missed that Plantinga had shown that some possible worlds are not feasible for God to create even if he is omnipotent.

My reasons for thinking that Plantinga's argument is incomplete and that it can be shown that there are creaturely essences that are within an omnipotent being's power to create is different. I claim that Plantinga's argument is logically incomplete at the most crucial point of proof. Plantinga doesn't show that it is logically possible that every creaturely essence would go wrong given the counterfactuals of freedom that are true of that individual indexed for possible worlds. We know that it is possible that there is a possible creaturely essence in the very world that God has created who always goes right because given the definition of libertarian free will that Plantinga assumed there is in fact a possible essence that always freely goes right -- it is just that God must create different creaturely essences than he actually did.

So if free will is accepted in the compatibilist sense, then the FWD fails -- as James Sennett and Andrew Eshelmann have argued. If there is libertarian free will, then the FWD fails for the reasons I have argued (and as others have as well).

Matthew: BTW you might look at Swinburne's Providence and the Problem of Evil where he states that given the infinite number of possible creaturely esences it was open to God to create only those who always go right. Surely you don't think a philosopher the caliber of Swinburne would just miss the fact that Plantinga had established otherwise do you? (He quotes Plantinga so he knew what the issues were). What Swinburne argues is that tempted goodness that goes right is more valuable than merely perfected goodness so there is reason to allow actual evil. I don't think this approach works -- but he sees that Plantiga's argument doesn't do the logical work that it must and a theodicy is needed.

"Thus, Plantinga's FWD fails because it assumes that it is possible that all creaturely essences suffer from TWD, when in fact it is demonstrable that there are creaturely essences open to God to create who always go right".

This is the argument you have against Plantinga's twd?

Let's suppose it is *demonstrable* that there are CE's "open to God who always go right". I'm certain that there is no such *demonsration* available-demonstrations are much stronger than proofs. But let's not waste words, since the argument is blatantly invalid anyway. Here's the argument against twd offered above:

1. There are CE's that God can actualize that
never go wrong.

2. It is not possible that every CE is such that
were God to actualize them they would go wrong.

(2) simply does not follow from (1) for precisely the same reasons that (2') does not follow from (1'),

1'. There are words that I can read.

2'. It is not possible that every word is such
that I cannot read it.

It could not be more evident that (2') does not follow from (1') and equivalently that (2) does not follow from (1). So premise (1), supposing it were true, would present no problem for twd anyway.

Mike: Nope, not my argument against TWD. Of course you are correct that 2 does not follow from 1 -- I never claimed that it did. But by substituting "God" with "I" in your premises your argument conceals a pretty important point. What I argued is that Plantinga has not shown that it is possible that every CE is such that were God to actualize it that it would go wrong. This possibility must be demonstrated and not assumed because on its face the notion of an omnipotent being seems to be such that it must not be limited by contingent possibilities before the creation -- or at least limited only by logically impossible tasks. The inability imputed to me in your 2' arises because I lack a power -- a power that an essentially omnipotent and omniscient being surely must have. Thus, it follows from:

1# There are words than God can read.

that:

2# It is not possible that every word is such that God cannot read.

The reason that 2# must follow from 1# is because 3# is true:

3# For any word that can be read it is impossible that an omniscient being is unable to read it.

So your analogical argument succeeds if I am the subject of the predicate; but it fails miserably if God is the subject of the predicate. So to complete his proof Plantinga must show:

1* It is possible that every CE is such that were God to actualize it it would go wrong.

However, without a proof of 1* it leaves open this possibility:

2* It is not possible that every CE is such that were God to actualize it would always go wrong because there are some CEs within God's power to actualize that are such that were God to actualize them they would always go right.

Further, when it is seen that there are an infinite number of such possible CEs who always go right, we must deal with transfinite logic. There is no limit to the number of possible CE's open to God to actualize who would always go right even though there are some CEs that God cannot actualize who would always go right.

I then gave an argument showing that if counterfactuals of freedom are true, then for every CE that God did actualize, there is another CE* exactly like CE that is such that it is within God's power to actualize it and were God to actualize it, it would always freely go right in C where CE would go wrong. So we have pretty good reason to believe that it is not possible that every CE that God could actualize would always go wrong as TWD claims.

Mike, 2D approaches are really interesting, and I'm not sure quite what to think yet, partly because, though I grasp the formal structures in question, it's not always easy to see how to move from "pure" to "depraved" accounts here, to use Plantinga's language. But in the case under discussion here, the attempted counterexamples to Plantinga's form of argument used above involve claims that are clearly contingent, and that's why I wrote that the best diagnosis of the misrepresentation of Plantinga's claims involved a confusion between epistemic and broadly logical possibility. Whatever we end up saying about the effects of 2D approaches to metaphysical impossibilities, we'll still agree that there's an epistemic reading of the arguments given above that makes them sound but irrelevant to Plantinga's argument.

Joh: I've read a lot of your stuff that I really like -- I'm still pondering Marverick Molinism BTW. Are you saying that since we don't know whether it is impossible that every CE is TWD, that we must accept as a possibility that "possibly every CE is TWD" due to our empistemological limitations? I'm just lost at what you're saying here and I'm quite sure it's my problem and not yours. Could you explain a bit more what you have in mind by the epistemological reading?

Brake writes ' Mackie missed that Plantinga had shown that some possible worlds are not feasible for God to create even if he is omnipotent.'

Many people have missed a proof that an omnipotent God cannot bring about any logically possible situation he desires.

Is Plantinga trying to show that an omnipotent being needs a *mechanism* to bring about a logically possible situation? Just as an omniscient being needs a mechanism to obtain knowledge?

Plantinga is making a category error in thinking that God needs to 'actualise' a situation. An omnipotent being just declares that a certain logical possible world is the actual one. That is what omnipotence means. It might involve a miracle, but omnipotent beings can do that.

An analogy. Fox can watch all NFL games played in a season and then choose the best as the one they will show at the end of the season.

They simply declare that that game is the actual game they will broadcast. Fox do not need to 'actualise' any plays at all in the game. Not one.

Actualising a world (in Plantinga's sense) is different from saying that one particular possible world is the actual one.

My short story http://stevencarrwork.blogspot.com/2005/09/god-omniscience-free-will-and.html also illustrates the problems in Plantinga's position that an omnipotent being needs a *mechanism* to bring about any logically possible world he likes.

And I've also posted more than once on this thread , the proof that libertarian free will and Molinism is entirely compatible with God creating a being who freely chooses whatever suits God's plans.

Steve: What Plantinga has shown is that god cannot create a possible person S and also bring it about that S always freely chooses what is right. To do that God would have to bring about S's acts, and God cannot do that if S is contra-causally free. Thus, there is a possible world W in which S is actual in a circumstances C, and there is a true counterfactual about S that in W "if S were in C, then S would freely go wrong at t." Thus, it follows from the notion of libertarian free will that can be described by true counterfactuals of freedom (if there are any) that there is a possible world that God cannot create even though he is omnipotent, e.g., the possible world W where S is in C and S freely goes right. So there are possible worlds that God cannot create even though he is omnipotent because not even God can cause an agent's act if that agent is contra-causally free.

Blake ' What Plantinga has shown is that god cannot create a possible person S and also bring it about that S always freely chooses what is right.'

So how *did* God create beings with free will that never chose evil? (The angels who never rebelled against God)

I agree completely with your analysis that there are counterfactuals, and in a particular circumstance C, a person will choose one way, and not even God can do anything about that *given those circumstances*.

But how is that a problem for God to find circumstances in which the person freely chooses good?

Take the following sets of circumstances, see if God can do anything about what I freely choose *given those circumstances*, and see if God can create circumstances where I freely choose coffee and circumstances where I freely choose tea.

1) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose tea.

2) I am sitting down to breakfast in an hotel at 8:30 am on Wed. 2/11/2005, and a waiter is asking me ‘Tea or Coffee’, and God has infallible knowledge that I will choose coffee.

These are two different sets of circumstances, and I do two different things.

Obviously, it is trivially true that Plantinga is right that if you put me in a particular set of circumstances, then I will freely choose one way and not even God can do anything about my choice.

In set 1), I will freely choose tea and God cannot change that.

In set 2), I will freely choose coffee and God cannot change that.

Your analysis seems to be utterly correct. I can find no fault in it.

Given set 1, or set 2, I freely choose one way, and God cannot bring it about that I choose another way, given that I am in set of circumstances 1 or set of circumstances 2.

But what is the problem about God finding a set of circumstances where I freely choose tea, and also being able to find a set of circumstances where I freely choose coffee?

Blake,

If I'm understanding you correctly, then my earlier criticism still applies. The truth of CCFs is contingent at best. So, consider:

CCF1 If Curly were placed in circumstances C, then Curly would freely take the bribe.

It is no doubt true that there is a possible world w in which CCF1 is false. That's part of what it means to say that CCF1 is contingent. And, presumably, *in w* Curly is in C and refuses the bribe.

Unfortunately, we're still left with the truth of CCF1, which precludes God from actualizing w. The CCFs are what they are, independent of God's will.

So, when you say:

"While it is true that God cannot create Curely such that he never goes wrong given the counterfactuals of freedom that are true of him, it is implicit in the notion of contra-causal freedom with which Plantinga operates that there is another creaturely essence exactly like Curely in every respect in circumstances identical to circumstances C in possible world W up to the time that Curely accepts the bribe who nevertheless rejects the bribe."

...this looks mistaken to me. Of course there is another logically possible world, in which Curly rejects the bribe in circumstances C. But that doesn't help God out in the slightest, since the relevant CCF (CCF1) precludes God from actualizing that world.

In effect, you seem to be saying, "Yeah, perhaps all true CCFs preclude God from creating a world with moral good but no moral evil, but hey, there are logically possible worlds in which people only do moral good but no moral evil, so why didn't God create *those* worlds? After all, they're logically possible!" But the thing to say here is, "The CCFs are both contingent, and true. Since they're contingent, there are doubtless many possible worlds in which they are false. But since they're *true*, God can't actualize any of those other possible worlds."

In your recent postings, you repeatedly hammer home this notion that God could have just actualized 'other' essences. You say, in the material cited above, that "it is implicit in the notion of contra-causal freedom with which Plantinga operates that there is another creaturely essence exactly like Curely in every respect in circumstances identical to circumstances C in possible world W up to the time that Curely accepts the bribe who nevertheless rejects the bribe." This is no doubt true. If Curly has contra-causal freedom then there *is* a world in which Curly refuses the bribe in circumstances C. But as long as there is a *truth* about what Curly *would* do in circumstances C (the truth enshrined in CCF1 above), then strictly speaking this other world is irrelevant to God's creative options.

In short, you seem to be inferring from the contingency of the CCFs, to the notion that there are possible worlds in which the CCFs are false. This looks right. But then you infer from the existence of these possible worlds, that TWD is impossible. This doesn't look right. It doesn't follow from the fact that the CCFs which God had to work with *could* have been false, that those aren't the CCFs which God had to work with! Similarly (to get a bit closer now to Plantinga's actual claim), it doesn't follow from the fact that the TWD thesis is only contingently true if true at all, that therefore it's not possibly true.

What's interesting is that you go on to say, "Not every creaturely essence can suffer from TWD for the simple reason that such essences are just logically indexed possibilities that range over the complete range of what is logically possible." But (if I understand what you mean by the phrase) "logically indexed possibilities" are *necessarily* what they are, whereas CCFs are only contingently the case. Which CCFs are true varies from world to world. There are no doubt worlds in which other CCFs are true. How does that help God, since he must create in accordance with the CCFS that are in fact true?

You say: "Thus, Plantinga's FWD fails because it assumes that it is possible that all creaturely essences suffer from TWD, when in fact it is demonstrable that there are creaturely essences open to God to create who always go right." No, all you've 'demonstrated' is that for any creaturely essence whatsoever, it is logically possible that they always go right. This doesn't come close to showing that it is logically possible for God to actualize a world incompatible with the CCFs which in fact obtain, and thus actualize any of these other essences. The truth of the CCFs don't depend on God's will, after all.

Finally, you say, "it seems to me that the defense is a morally indefensible position because it assumes that we are not in a position to weigh moral options so that we never really know if we are doing right or wrong -- but whatever we in fact fail to do or do is all for the best." I don't see how this follows. For starters, God having a good reason for permitting morally evil choices doesn't involve the claim that "all is for the best," and I think that holds whether you take "all" distributively or collectively. Plantinga isn't mounting a "best of all possible worlds" theodicy; in fact he explicitly criticizes that Leibnizian notion in the course of making his defense. In addition, why would God's having a good reason for allowing evil choices preclude our "weighing moral options" and lead to moral agnosticism on our part? Here I defer to Jeremy's comment on this point; there are many mundane counterexamples to the point you have in mind.

". . . on its face the notion of an omnipotent being seems to be such that it must not be limited by contingent possibilities before the creation -- or at least limited only by logically impossible tasks".

A little confusing. The set of creaturely essences CE in w is such that it is *broadly logically impossible* that there be any other set of CE's in w. God cannot change that, and that is compatible with his omnipotence, on your view of omnipotence. Of course there are many other sets of CE's in other worlds. But since it is impossible to add CE's to w, God IN W must either actualize or not actualize the CE's in w. Of course, God IN W', might actualize other CE's (viz. those in w'). In fact, God can actualize any set of CE's, since God is in every world, as Plantinga would readily agree. So what can't God do?

1. God IN W cannot actualize any CE IN W'.

God does not create CE's and He does not determine their distribution in worlds. These are facts that God finds. Indeed it is broadly logically impossible that He should do so.
So nothing Plantinga says is incompatible with God's omnipotence. Your objection sounds like Leibniz's Lapse, to use Plantinga's term for this error.

Mike: I should make clear that I adopt David Lewis's universal possibilism about possible worlds and not Plantinga's limited possibilism. Thus, which possible world God finds himself in must be up to God because, as I understand the metaphysical issue, God delimits which among possible worlds he creates. So God doesn't start out IN W at all, but decides whether he is in W, W1, W2, W3 etc. without limit. There are some possible worlds that God isn't in if his existence isn't logically necessary, so we could limit it to those that are compossible with God's existence. So I can see no reason why we should say that God is IN W before he decides which possible world to actualize. If he is, then only one possible world is open to him actualize, namely, W. That can't be right.

Further, we have to keep in mind that if free will is compatiblist or doesn't require alternative possibilities, then these various possible worlds don't branch at all based on counterfactuals of freedom because they are entailed by the possible world that God creates and it appears that he could strongly actualize any possible world compossible with God's existence. The purpose of Plantinga's argument is that God is limited by th logically impossible task of creating contra-causally free cretures and then causing their actions. That is clearly logically impossible because semantically impossible. So God does indeed find CEs, but he has a vast array of possible worlds that are defined by the structure of logically possibility. Given David Lewis's view of possible worlds, there are worlds just like with CEs that never go wrong. Why are they foreclosed to God's power?

Now I suppose that one could appeal to ignorance and suggest that we don't have very good reasons for adopting Lewis's view of possible worlds over Plantinga's, so it is just possible that Plantinga's view is the correct one. But that is another discussion. But it is clear that God is not located in a single possible world W and that he can actualize only W. So no Leibniz's Lapse here.

Greg: You argue that given:

CCF1 If Curly were placed in circumstances C, then Curly would freely take the bribe.

It follows that "it is no doubt true that there is a possible world w in which CCF1 is false. That's part of what it means to say that CCF1 is contingent. And, presumably, *in w* Curly is in C and refuses the bribe.

Unfortunately, we're still left with the truth of CCF1, which precludes God from actualizing w. The CCFs are what they are, independent of God's will."

You are quite correct that if God actualizes w that he gets a world where Curely goes wrong. And maybe there is are no worlds where Curley goes right. But God isn't stuck with creating Curley. He could actualize Curley* who in another world open to God to actualize w* goes right. God is not limited to actualizing any world where Curely goes wrong or even any possible world where Curely is located. He could forego actualizing Curely at all. However, there is another possible world with Curely* who always goes right where Curely goes wrong. So what forecloses the possibility that God actualizes Curely* in w* where the CFFs that are false of Curely are true of Curely*?

You assert that the possible world in which Curely* is located "is irrelevant to God's creative options." How so? If God had the choice between Curely and Curely*, he'll choose Curely* every time since he is perfectly good. So that seems relevant.

You assert: "you seem to be inferring from the contingency of the CCFs, to the notion that there are possible worlds in which the CCFs are false. This looks right. But then you infer from the existence of these possible worlds, that TWD is impossible. This doesn't look right. It doesn't follow from the fact that the CCFs which God had to work with *could* have been false, that those aren't the CCFs which God had to work with! Similarly (to get a bit closer now to Plantinga's actual claim), it doesn't follow from the fact that the TWD thesis is only contingently true if true at all, that therefore it's not possibly true."

Actually, I'm saying there is another possible world exactly like this one except populated by Curely* in which the CFFs true of Curely* are that Curely* would always go right. God isn't stuck with creating Curely or any possible world in which Curely is located, so the fact that God cannot create Curely and bring it about that Curely never goes wrong is irrelevant. He had another option -- and this option is built into the very possiblity of another CE exactly like Curely but who never goes wrong.

Further, logically indexed possibilities are not necessarily what they are; but the fact that these possibilities range over the full range of what is logically possible is necessary -- it is built into the very notion of logical possibility within possible worlds logic adopted by David Lewis. I'm not sure Plantinga really addresses this issue as clearly as Lewis does.

Now, you seem to believe that there are CFFs that "are in fact true." I think that you mean that they are true in a given possible world. That is true. But it isn't true that they would be true in all possible worlds precisely because they are contingent and not logically necessary nor are they essential to any personal essence that is free. There are CFFs that describe what every possible person would do if actualized and they don't obtain in any actual world unless and until God decides which world he will actualize. There are CFFs that obtain in the various possible worlds that can be in fact true if God actualizes that possible world in fact. I think what you mean is that there are CFFs that obtain in any given possible world where a particular essence CE is located and these are not within God's power to make false. Agreed. But you have failed to address the range of possible worlds that were open to God to create. Do they range over all logically possible permutations of logical possibility as Lewis maintained, or do they merely range over some possibilities because the CFFs delimit them? It seems to me that Lewis must be correct because we are speaking merely of what is logically possible for God to strongly actualize given the range of logically possible worlds he could create.

Finally, you are correct that Plantinga doesn't adopt a best of all possible worlds view. He adopts the view that God does a passable job given the infinite array of possible worlds open to him to actualize. So God must always have better worlds open to him to actualize than this one.

What we know is that God wouldn't allow any genuine or unjustified evils -- evils which are not necessary to some greater good. We know that there are evils which we cannot begin to fathom either: (a) how they would justify the beating, rape and murder of a little girl in Detroit; or (b) how there could be a good for which such an occurrence is a logically necessary condition. So we are ignorant of what is truly evil since we all agree that this occurrence appears to us to be genuinely evil as far as we can discern. Whether God had a better world open to him to actualize is thus irrelevant to whether we are morally ignorant of what is truly good or evil. We cannot judge what is truly and genuinely evil because God allows events to occur that, as far as we can see, are truly and genuinely evil and we would stop them if we could and we would hold others to be evil if they were present and had the power to stop them without danger to themselves and failed to do so. So given our best lights we just cannot judge what is genuinely good and evil. We can trust that given God's purposes, whatever occurs is not genuinely evil -- so we can do nothing and be assured that no genuine evil ever occurs. But can a Christian really accept that conclusion? I trust not. thus, the very argument seems to me to be another instance of evil.

Why didn't God make us more morally sensitive or give us greater cognitive capacities to assess moral issues? He could do so without limiting free will. We must say that it is because morally obtuse beings like us are preferable. But that just can't be.

Blake-
You claimed that there is a wide body of people who think Plantinga too hasty because there is a logical gap in Plantinga's argument? My claim wasn’t that Plantinga doesn’t in fact go wrong, but instead that I’m dubious there being a wide body of people who think this. In support you offer four papers, or six philosophers, which doesn't seem to constitute a wide body of people. Further, no one has offered an argument that ''Plantinga is a smart guy so he can't be wrong just doesn't count for much'' or ''that a lot of smart guys (and a few smart gals) just cannot be wrong.'' I don't see how you could think I was offering such an argument, but anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I don't place much weight in authority. I tend to leave such arguments to the Thomists. :)

The papers by Howard-Snyder and Hawthorne, and Bergmann, seem like the best candidates for raising serious trouble for Plantinga. Since I haven't read the Bregmann, and I don't think the other merit comment, let me point out a couple of things about "Transworld Sanctity and Plantinga's Free Will Defense." First I think it should be noted that the authors claim that they cannot provide a knockdown argument for their suggestion that it is reasonable to refrain in believing that possibly every transworld essence is depraved. I think there is room to reasonably resist their suggestion, but more is going to need to be said. Two, they don't view Plantinga's defense as an abject failure. Hence the line that, "we think it more than just a bit hasty to write off Plantinga's defense." I find it curious that while Howard-Snyder and Hawthorne don't think we should write off Planinga's defense based on their objection you think we should. Finally, I think your argument for other CE's, and our inability to make moral judgments have been well answered by Mike, Jeremy, and Greg. Simply reaffirming your objection in the face of their answers isn't going to further the discussion here.

I'm also left to wonder if LDS folks have some special reason for wanting to see the problem of evil go thru. Is there some antecedent reason for LDS people to defend the POE?

Perhaps somebody could fill in a gap in my education for me?

We know that possible worlds have to be actualised before they are the actual world.

One possible world consists of God alone. That is not a necessary world.

So who could actualise this possible world?

-----------------------
About evil in general

Matthew writes 'What we know is that God wouldn't allow any genuine or unjustified evils -- evils which are not necessary to some greater good.'

Is abortion necessary for some greater good?

Why did God try to ban Adam and Eve from eating from a certain tree? Why try to ban something you are going to allow?

Matthew: Perhaps you are correct that those I have cited don't represent a landslide -- but as you admit, it is beside the point. The question is whether Plantinga's argument is complete. I think that they show that it isn't. He doesn't show that it is possible that every CE suffers from TWD, and that was my primary point. It needs to be shown and not assumed. Do you disagree with that?

As I have already noted, Howard-Snyder and Hawthorne don't ultimately defend the FWD; rather, they revert to the general argument that it is possible God has some reason for allowing the moral evils to occur that do occur. They do say that they believe that we just cannot be sure whether TWD is worakble given the complexity of the issue and hence shouldn't be written off hastily. So that leaves the issue an open question -- one that both you and I agree deserves further investigation. I'm curous as to why the other papers don't merit comment. Is it because you haven't read them?

You stated: "If Plantinga's argument "assumes what must be proven" philosophers would be on it like a Texan on a pork chop." If this isn't an argument from that fact that philsophers must have already realized anything that could be wrong in Plantinga's argument if it were there, then what is it? I don't know you well so I took this statement to be the argument that I should just admit there isn't more to say because if there were, it would have already been said by all these philosophers who like pork chops. In fact, it is the same argument you're lodging now -- it appears to me that you think that Mike, Jeremy and Greg have answered and I'm just too dense to see why. Is that your argument?

You are right that merely reaffirming my objections to their "answers" won't change anything -- but I fail to see how they have answered. They haven't addressed the issue from the perspective of universal possibilism and the structure of logical possibility in David Lewis's theory -- so I fail to see any answer. Is there some reason why you believe that they have answered that? Further, it is clear that God had open to him to create more morally sensitive people who have greater cognitive capacity to assess good and evil than we do without affecting free will, and I have asked why God didn't create these people instead? No answer.

How has Greg answered the moral incapacity problem? He said that Plantinga's view didn't require the best of all possible worlds. I responded and said that I agree but it is beside the point because there still aren't any genuine evils on Plantinga's view and we must be vastly ignorant as to what genuine evil is. How has anyone responded to that?

I wouldn't be so bold as to answer for all LDS folk. Most LDS folk that I know hold a rather classical view of God's omnipotence and have the very same problem of evil that the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition of God has. I don't believe in that kind of God and I believe that it isn't an adequate view. I don't believe that Molinism or Thomism or Calvinism are viable. In fact one of the problems I have dealing with Plantinga's FWD at all is that I don't believe CFF are true or false generally. Open theism is a possibility, but I don't believe that free will of the type required for loving relationships is compatible with creatio ex nihilo (based in part on Mike Almeida's paper in Religous Studies showing that God cannot actualize free creatures). So that leaves a view like process thought and I tend to view my own LDS beliefs through that lens. But I'm quite atypcial of LDS in that respect. However, LDS thought denies creatio ex nihilo and I think that most LDS believe that such a denial makes responding to the POE much easier and more satisfying with respect to possiblities for theodicy. So perhaps there is some stake in seeing POE go thru with respect to certain views of God's power.

Perhaps somebody could fill in a gap in my education for me? We know that possible worlds have to be actualised before they are the actual world. One possible world consists of God alone. That is not a necessary world. So who could actualise this possible world?

God could actualize such a world by refraining to create. It's not as if actualizing a world is something special. I'm actualizing this world by writing this comment, as opposed to another world in which I don't write it. Beings in a world take part in actualizing that world. It's a separate questions whether God actualizes a particular world, as compatibilists and libertarians with exhaustive foreknowledge views would say, or whether God merely takes part in actualizing the world along with the help of other free beings, as open theists would have it.

As for Howard-Snyder, he seems to me to defend the FWD in this paper. He doesn't defend the idiosyncrasies of Plantinga's particular free-will defense, but he also doesn't start with all of Plantinga's assumptions about modality and counterfactuals of freedom. So I think it's just a mistake to conclude on the basis of his paper with John Hawthorne that he thinks the FWD doesn't work. From my personal interaction with both of them, I can fairly confidently state that they both think the FWD decisively solves the logical problem of evil. Their hesitation is about the particular way Plantinga tries to do it because of his inability to say some of the more obvious things a libertarian would say, due to restrictions within his modal views and his Molinism.

Does the world where God alone exists have to be the actual world before God can actualise the world where God alone exists?

If God is not part of the world, then there is no world if God chooses not to create. You were assuming that God is part of the world, so I'll run with that assumption. Further assuming (per impossibile, in my view) that an A-theory is true and God is temporal, there's still an easy solution to this problem. The world itself, of course, exists on the assumption that God is part of the world. What's true about the world isn't caused at least until God creates. Whether it's true of the world before that depends on your view of alethic settledness. But it doesn't ultimately matter. What causes the world to have the features it does is God, and that happens at creation. What makes it the actual world in the other sense is that it exists, and that was always true from eternity. I think this is just a conflation of two senses of actualizing the world.

Hi Blake,

I thought the term "universal possibilism" was Plantinga's term in _Does God Have a Nature?_ for Descartes's views on the relation between God's will and necessity. Lewis doesn't take a view on this theological dispute, does he? :-) In fact, I don't think Lewis uses the term at all in _On the Plurality of Worlds_. What are you referring to? Lewis's notion that all possible worlds exist in the same ontological sense that our flesh-and-blood universe exists ("me and all my surroundings")? I can't see how that helps your case against the FWD. For one, it would preclude the notion of God actualizing a world, wouldn't it? If all possible worlds equally exist in the same way our spatio-temporal universe exists, what is there left for God to do? :-)

Lewis has in fact published some thoughts on Molinism and CCFs; are you referring to those, specifically?

I agree that "which possible world God finds himself in must be up to God," but as Plantinga deploys the concept of a CCF in his free will defense, the CCFs which are true are true independently of God's will. He doesn't make them true, although he might go on to actualize some of their antecedents. So the truth of these CCFs will mark out some worlds as logically possible but not feasible. Whether or not one accepts this view, I'm not sure there's a good argument on offer that it's *impossible* that things be this way, is there?

You say: "if free will is compatiblist or doesn't require alternative possibilities, then these various possible worlds don't branch at all based on counterfactuals of freedom." This seems right, but all Plantinga needs to defeat the logical argument from evil is the *possibility* that free will is libertarian rather than compatibilist. That's consistent with free will actually being compatibilist, I think.

You say: "You are quite correct that if God actualizes w that he gets a world where Curely goes wrong." Well, actually, in the example I gave, if God actualizes w then Curly *refuses* the bribe. But anyway...

And now for the crux of our disagreement. You say: "And maybe there is are no worlds where Curley goes right. But God isn't stuck with creating Curley. He could actualize Curley* who in another world open to God to actualize w* goes right." But surely, the Plantingean reply is to say that it's possible that the relevant CCFs preclude God from actualizing w* in which Curly* goes right. I don't see how positing a Curly* in distinction from Curly helps here. The possibility of TWD is the possibility that *every* creaturely essence available to God -- Curly* as well as Curly -- is such that it goes wrong in any world whose actualization isn't precluded by the truth of CCFs. That is, it's possible that there are enough CCFs to preclude these Curly*-goes-right worlds as well.

You say: "However, there is another possible world with Curely* who always goes right where Curely goes wrong. So what forecloses the possibility that God actualizes Curely* in w* where the CFFs that are false of Curely are true of Curely*?" But the CCFs are, *ex hypothesi*, independent of God's choice to actualize a world. What matters is not what CCFs are true *in a world*, but what CCFs are true, *simpliciter*. And it's possible that the CCFs which are in fact true (though contingently so) rule out the actualization of any Curly*-goes-right worlds.

You say: "If God had the choice between Curely and Curely*, he'll choose Curely* every time since he is perfectly good." No, he won't choose a Curly*-goes-right world if the CCFs which are in fact true preclude the actualization of a Curly*-goes-right world! And (says Plantinga) it's possible that true CCFs preclude precisely this.

Much of the rest of your initial response to me is based on the notion that which CCFs get to be true is based on God's decision to actualize a world. But on Plantinga's view, these CCFs aren't based on God's decree. Rather, God's decree is informed by his logically prior knowledge of which CCFs are true. In effect, while the truth of CCFs changes from world to world, nevertheless the CCFs don't fall under that aspect of a world which God can actualize. They are actualized (i.e., obtain, or are true) prior to God's decree. One way to put this (a bit misleadingly) is to say that the actual world is partly actualized prior to God's decree. The part that is actualized are the CCFs which in fact obtain. (BTW, this is what WL Craig is getting at in his "three logical moments of omniscience" in _The Only Wise God_.)

You say: "It seems to me that Lewis must be correct because we are speaking merely of what is logically possible for God to strongly actualize given the range of logically possible worlds he could create." No, the FWD turns on the notion of a feasible world, not a logically possible world. The former is a subset of the latter.

Finally, on the notion of the FWD entailing moral agnosticism on our part, once again I'm going to have to point you to Jeremy's original comments in this regard. Have you really addressed them? Your comments once again suppose that Plantinga holds that every case of evil in fact leads to a greater good. I can't see how that is an entailment of the FWD at all.

"I agree that "which possible world God finds himself in must be up to God""

This is an unusual thing to say. On the traditional conception of God, he has, among other attributes, necessary existence. Certainly this is Plantinga's position. But then God does not "choose what world's he finds himself in". He is in every world, and indeed, necessarily so.
God might be a contingently existing being, as the quote suggests (i.e., existing in some worlds and not in others), but, I'd say, that is as controversial as giving up omniscience for God.

'The possibility of TWD is the possibility that *every* creaturely essence available to God -- Curly* as well as Curly -- is such that it goes wrong in any world whose actualization isn't precluded by the truth of CCFs.'

Does this mean that , if TWD, is true, every creaturely essence, including the Angels Gabriel and Michael, will go wrong in our world?

What is meant by an 'essence'?

If I understand rightly, the essence of me has the property that in the situation I found myself in 5 minutes ago, I freely chose to turn off the radio.

God cannot actualise a world where I find myself in that world, and I decide to keep the radio on. It is just a fact about my essence that I freely choose to turn off the radio in that situation.

Does this mean that if a being was observed to behave exactly like me at all times, except a world was actualised when I kept the radio on, that being would ,in essence, not be me? It would essentially, be a different person?

Mike: How could God possibly 'exist' in infeasible worlds or worlds where there are vast amounts of evil in relation to good? These infeasible worlds are still logically possible, it is just that God can't be in them because he cannot bring them about or strongly actualize them. Don't there have to be some possible worlds God cannot actualize and therefore in which God does not obtain or exist or in which he is not located?

Mike-
I'd have thought it unusual too except that in GFE Plantinga says

Now if God is not a necessary being (and many, perhaps most, theists think that he is not), then clearly enough there will be many worlds He could not have actualized--all those, for example, in which he does not exist. Clearly, God could not have created a world in which he doesn't even exist.

Hi Mike Almeida,

You're correct, I did say: "I agree that 'which possible world God finds himself in must be up to God'." That was a bit infelicitous. I should have said: on Plantinga's view, which possible world *gets actualized* is up to God.

The comment you cite was simply an attempt to note an area of agreement between Blake and myself on this issue, while going on to note the remaining disagreement. I took it that my position might be more persuasive to Blake if I owned up to those bits of his view that I actually accepted. No need to make the conflict any more than it has to be :-) However, I can see that what I wrote was misleading. Sorry about that.

You're quite right that Plantinga affirms God's necessary existence. Thus, God exists in all possible worlds. But *that* claim gets cashed out, in Plantinga's metaphysical system, as: for any world w, if that world were to obtain, then God would exist. That claim is neutral on which world in fact gets actualized. So what I wrote was a fairly sloppy way of saying: "Which *particular* possible world God finds himself in is up to God *in the sense that* God's choice (or refraining from making a choice) determines which world in fact will obtain."

Matthew wrote: "But on the offending line, I took "which possible world God finds himself in must be up to God" to mean that it's up to God which possible world he decides to actualize."

You know, I really should read to the bottom before posting. Matthew has summed up what I meant fairly concisely. Of course, perhaps Blake meant something different than what I took him to be saying.

Hi Greg,

I see. For Plantinga, "what world God finds himself in" is simply a matter of his creative activity (or inactivity). So God must find himself in some world. And which world that is depends on what, in addition to the necessary truths and necessarily existing things (i.e. the uncreated things/states of affairs), God decides to create. But of course, as you note, Plantinga is an actualist.

Well ya'll are being more charitable than I probably deserve. I meant that God's relation to possible worlds is such that which of the possible worlds God actualizes has to be up to him and that all possible worlds must branch from W or the one necessarily actual world where God alone is actual(on the orthodox view) "prior" to creation. So God is not "in" possible worlds that are accessible from W unless and until he actualizes one -- others are just modal possibilities (thus rejecting Lewis's modal actualism of all possible worlds). So God is outside other possible worlds and "surveys" them and considers which to actualize among all feeasible worlds. Given God's perspective from W, virtually all worlds that are feasible are within God's power to actualize. However, since there is an infinite number of such feasible worlds, the possibility that all possible permutations of possible worlds may not be among the sets feasible worlds open to God to actualize is 0. That is why I assess the proposition: "possibly all CEs suffer from TWD" differently from y'all.

If possible worlds are analyzed as y'all suggest, and God exists "in" non-actual possible worlds, then it seems to me that we beg the question against the possibility that God's actuality is necessary because there are possible worlds that are just not compossible with God's existence, i.e., worlds that are not feasible since God is essentially maximally powerful and cannot exist in a possible world he cannot actualize. Further, God couldn't exist in a possible world where there are vast amounts of genuine evil (in my sense) because God is perfectly good and thus genuine evil is not compossible with God's existence in such worlds -- but I just cannot bring myself to believe that such possible worlds are not logically possible.

Could God exist in a merely potential way in a possible world as a mere non-actual possibility? Now that is a strange notion.

Greg,

Just a quick point worth making here. It is true that the world God actualizes is up to him *in the sense noted*: i.e., God creates whatever creatable things he wishes. But it is crucial to note that God does not create CE's (he instantiates them or not). So the CE's that are actual are not those of his choosing, just as other uncreated things are not those of his choosing. He simply finds himself with a set of actual CE's. From there he can modify the world in various ways, but he cannot create more CE's. This is where the FWD argument gets its bite, and I'm guessing this point has been the source of some confusion in the thread.

I just wanted to add that there is a puzzle of God in possible worlds that are merely possible and not actual. If God is essentially actual or pure actuality as Thomists claims, then the notion of a possible world in which God is not actual is logically impossible. Thus, those worlds that can be actual must be compossible with God's being actual, but there is only one world in which God is actual, the actual one -- unless universal actuality of possible worlds is maintained. Isn't that right?

"...the notion of a possible world in which God is not actual is logically impossible".

Of course, there is no possible world in which God is not actual. It is true *at* every possible world w that 'w is actual'. You seem to think that at possible world w (that is not identical to our world), the proposition 'w is actual' is false. But that is a mistake on every view of possible worlds from Lewis to Plantinga. So if you go to a possible w in which God exists and ask if God is actual, then the answer will be yes. Just as in this world when we ask if God is actual the answer is yes. This does not entail modal realism or that every possible world is like this one in being concrete. It is to say that every possible world is possibly actual.

I just wanted to add that there is a puzzle of God in possible worlds that are merely possible and not actual...
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This puzzle hinges on a fairly equivocal use of the term "actual" from one clause or sentence to the next.

In contemporary philosophy, the predicate "is actual" is commonly used in at least two distinct ways. The first and most common use is existential. The existential use is indicated whenever a statement of the form "x is actual" is taken to express the same proposition as "x exists".

However, there is an alternative technical use that is employed in contemporary Possible Worlds discourse that does not express the existential sense illustrated above, and does not apply to individuals indiscriminately.

In Plantinga's theory for example, this specialized use of the term applies only to states of affairs. In this theory, "is actual" is synonymous with the predicate "obtains"; and applies only to states of affairs (rather than normal individuals like you, me, or God). And for Plantinga, possible worlds are just states of affairs of a certain sort, where states of affairs are themselves necessary beings.

So bringing these semantic distinctions to bear on the paragraph above:

"If God is essentially actual or pure actuality as Thomists claims, then the notion of a possible world in which God is not actual is logically impossible."

If the Thomistic claim that God is "essentially actual" means that God is a necessary being (which I'm pretty sure it isn't!), then indeed there is no possible world where God is not actual (where "actual" is given the normal existential reading).

"Thus, those worlds that can be actual must be compossible with God's being actual..."

This seems right, if the first occurance of "be actual" is given the "obtains" reading, and the second occurance of "being actual" is given the normal "exists" reading. That is, every world w that is possible actual (ie, possibly obtains), is such that God is actual (ie, God exists) in w.

"...but there is only one world in which God is actual, the actual one"

This is incorrect, on the normal existential interpretation of "actual" as it applies to individuals like God. God is a necessary being, and hence, is "actual" or "exists" in every possible world, even in those worlds that are not "actual" in the technical or "obtains" sense.

Make sense?

"However, there is an alternative technical use that is employed in contemporary Possible Worlds discourse that . . . does not apply to individuals indiscriminately"

I'm not sure I follow this. It is pretty evident that Plantinga uses the predicate 'is actual' in just the way Lewis did, indeed he quotes Lewis (Anselm and Actuality) on the point in NN 49 ff"

"At any world W. . . the predicate 'is actual' designates of is true of W and whatever exists in W . . ."

So surely 'is actual' is properly applied at W to the individuals in W.

FWIW, I agree with Mike Almeida's recent comments.

Blake, you say:

"However, since there is an infinite number of such feasible worlds, the possibility that all possible permutations of possible worlds may not be among the sets feasible worlds open to God to actualize is 0. That is why I assess the proposition: "possibly all CEs suffer from TWD" differently from y'all."

What's the reasoning for the first claim here, that there are an infinite number of feasible worlds? I don't see how that follows from the fact that there are an infinite number of logically possible worlds. Could you explain?

I'm not sure I follow this. It is pretty evident that Plantinga uses the predicate 'is actual' in just the way Lewis did, indeed he quotes Lewis (Anselm and Actuality) on the point in NN 49 ff"

At any world W. . . the predicate 'is actual' designates of is true of W and whatever exists in W . . ."

So surely 'is actual' is properly applied at W to the individuals in W.
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Plantinga certainly acknowledges that "is actual" has a purely existential sense, that can be applied (unrestrictedly) to ordinary individuals, and he even employs that use in the NN and elsewhere. But he also employs "is actual" in a non-equivalent, and non-existential sense.

For Plantinga:

(1) c obtains

and

(2) c exists

are both expressible by the sentence:

(3) "c is actual"

despite the fact that, for him, 1 and 2 are not identical propositions. Context will dictate which of 1 or 2 is the intended meaning for any given use of 3.

"The actual world, for example (suppose we name it "A" for ease of reference) is a state of affairs that obtains. Had some other world been actual, A would not have obtained; still there would have been such a thing as A; A would have been a merely possible state of affairs. Obtaining or actuality for states of affairs is like truth for propositions." - The Nature of Necessity, pg.47-48

Here Plantinga proposes a restriction of actuality or obtainment to and *for* states of affairs in the same way that the truth-property is restricted to and *for* propositions (rather than those properties being applicable to just any object whatsoever, which would be unproblematic when the broader existential sense of "is actual" is intended).

"Quine's being a politician, however is a state of affairs that is not actual and does not obtain. Of course it isn't my claim that this state of affairs does not exist, or that there simply is no such state of affairs; indeed there is such a state of affairs and it exists just as serenely as your most solidly actual state of affairs. But it does not obtain; it isn't actual." - Actualism and Possible Worlds, Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, pg.107.

Here and in the other quotation, Plantinga anticipates the potential confusion of infering the negation of 2 from his use of expressions like the negation of 3, in contexts where the negation of 1 is intended.

For a more explicit elaboration of this distinction between actuality-as-existence (for generic individuals) vs. actuality-as-obtainment (for states of affairs only) as it bears on the semantics of a broadly Plantingaen theory of modality, have a look at Peter Van Inwagen's essay: Two Concepts of Possible Worlds, reprinted in Ontology, Identity and Modality, pg. 211ff

Greg: A feasible world is just a subset of all logically possible worlds. But "all" doesn't mean the same thing in transfinite logic that it means in finite logic. A subset of an infinite set may be an infinite set as well.

The number of possible worlds is infinite (since there is an infinite number of possible persons and an infinite number of permutations of each possible world) of which the order of infinity is aleph. The number of feasible worlds, being a proper subset of an infinite set, would be infinite because there is no limit to the number of CEs or permutations of CEs. Moreover, for every given CE, there will be another CE* exactly like CE for every accidental property of CE. This is true even though for every free act of a CE in any given possible world W there is another possible world W* that is not feasible for God to actualize because the CFF is false for each free act of that CE in W.

Opeth quoting Plantinga,

"The actual world [A]. . .is a state of affairs that obtains. Had some other world been actual, A would not have obtained; still there would have been such a thing as A; A would have been a merely possible state of affairs. Obtaining or actuality for states of affairs is like truth for propositions." - The Nature of Necessity, pg.47-48

Opeth interprets this as follows,

Here Plantinga proposes a restriction of actuality or obtainment to and *for* states of affairs in the same way that the truth-property is restricted to and *for* propositions (rather than those properties being applicable to just any object whatsoever, which would be unproblematic when the broader existential sense of "is actual" is intended).

Where's the alleged restriction? He does not propose any restriction at all in this paragraph. Neither the word nor any synonym so much as appears there. All that is mentioned here is an analogy between obtaining for states of affairs and truth for propositions. But no surprise there. Even as late as the actualism paper Plantinga is not entirely sure that there these are ontologically different things.
The PvI paper makes out some broad differences between abstractionism and concretism about possible worlds (descriptions that neither Lewis not Plantinga are esp. happy about), but nothing in that paper provides any reason to doubt that Plantinga uses the predicate 'is actual' *univocally* as Lewis suggests, viz., at any world W. . . the predicate 'is actual' designates or is true of W and whatever exists in W . . . And, independently of this, I really don't see the need to posit some ambiguity in "is actual".

The difference you might be getting at, and that Plantinga does make, is between something "existing in w" or "being actual in w" and something being actual simpliciter or existing simpiciter. He is explicit that the former are defined in terms of the latter. We get the clarification we need without multiplying alleged meanings for 'is actual'.

There's a much simpler resolution. Concede for the moment that 'is actual' has these two meanings and, indeed, has these two meanings in Plantinga's work.
The question under discussion was whether, for every individual i in W, it is true at W that i is actual. The suggestion that this is not true looks like a very interesting and controversial metaphysical claim. But, it turns out that it isn't. It turns out that the claim in (1),

1. For some individuals i in W it is not true at W that i is actual

is just like the claim in (2),

2. For some well-functioning pens, it is not true that the pen can be used to write with.

(1) is true because 'is actual' sometimes means 'obtains'. (2) is true because some well-functioning pens are porcine enclosures.
Neither (1) nor (2) makes any interesting metaphysical claim.

Mike: I think the source of my befuddlement on this issue is that God "actualizes" possible worlds in creating ex nihilo. If all possible worlds are already "actual", then he does nothing that hasn't already been done.

So perhaps it makes more sense to speak in terms of merely possible worlds and concrete worlds, and what God does is "makes concrete" a possible world. But then I must ask, can a non-concrete God do anything at all? It seems that we must concede that logically and/or chronologically prior to any act, God is in a concrete world and all logically possible worlds branch from what is compossible with this concrete world since God is essentially concrete -- all other essences are not. The discussion of Phillip Bricker in his paper "Concrete Possible Worlds" seems useful to this discussion. Dos that make sense?

Blake,

I don't think I said that "all possible worlds are already actual". That seems to assert that there is a multiverse or pluriverse (not a universe). I have no idea how to argue about that. Instead I said something minor and uncontroversial: viz., that all possible worlds are actual at themselves (being actual-at-itself is not the same as being actual). This just means, from the point of view of w, w is actual (but not from the point of view of any other world). Not a big deal.
On your other point, I think it's a useful way to think about it that God just "starts out" with necessarily existing things and propositions. The world that gets actualized depends on whatever else he creates from there.

Hi Mike.

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"The actual world [A]. . .is a state of affairs that obtains. Had some other world been actual, A would not have obtained; still there would have been such a thing as A; A would have been a merely possible state of affairs. Obtaining or actuality for states of affairs is like truth for propositions." - The Nature of Necessity, pg.47-48

Opeth interprets this as follows,

Here Plantinga proposes a restriction of actuality or obtainment to and *for* states of affairs in the same way that the truth-property is restricted to and *for* propositions (rather than those properties being applicable to just any object whatsoever, which would be unproblematic when the broader existential sense of "is actual" is intended).

Where's the alleged restriction? He does not propose any restriction at all in this paragraph. Neither the word nor any synonym so much as appears there.
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The first sentence of the citation correlates actuality with obtainment. The second sentence distinguishes non-actuality, or non-obtainment from non-existence (existence is clearly in view when Plantinga says of some possible but non-actual or non-obtaining world A, that "still there would have been such a thing as A"). So according to this citation, non-obtainment is to be distinguished from non-existence, and this despite the fact that colloquially, both properties are often expressed by the predicate 'non-actual'.

Lets try to establish the same point from a different angle. Lets follow you in supposing that "is actual" has only the one univocal meaning for Plantinga. From this supposition, a contradiction can be derived from the following three citations taken from NN.

(4) "There are any number of merely possible worlds; each of them exists - exists in the actual world." - NN, pg 48

(5) "Obviously, at least one possible world obtains. At most one obtains" - NN, pg.45

(6) "...at any world W...the predicate 'is actual' designates or is true of W and whatever exists in W" - NN, pg.49-50

On the face of it, 4-6 make for uneasy bedfellows. Consider the following argument, where "is actual" is a univocal predicate, synonymous with both "exists" or "obtains", and where w and w' are non-identical possible worlds.

(6) w is actual (premise)
(7) If w is actual, then its not the case that w' is actual (5)
(8) Its not the case that w' is actual (6, 7, mp)
(9) If w is actual, then w' exists at w (4)
(10) w' exists at w (6,9, mp)
(11) If w is actual, then [if w' exists at w, then w' is actual] (6)
(12) If w' exists at w, then w' is actual (6,11, mp)
(13) w' is actual (10, 12, mp)

And 8 clearly contradicts 13. Assuming that Plantinga is not baldly contradicting himself, this argument alone shows that "is actual", "exists" and "obtains" are not to be regarded as synonymous terms of Plantinga's modal theory.

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All that is mentioned here is an analogy between obtaining for states of affairs and truth for propositions. But no surprise there. Even as late as the actualism paper Plantinga is not entirely sure that there these are ontologically different things.
---

If by "these" you're refering to states of affairs and propositions, Plantinga provides a brief indiscernibility argument that the two are different kinds of entities in the Actualism paper (page 108).

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The PvI paper makes out some broad differences between abstractionism and concretism about possible worlds (descriptions that neither Lewis not Plantinga are esp. happy about), but nothing in that paper provides any reason to doubt that Plantinga uses the predicate 'is actual' *univocally* as Lewis suggests, viz., at any world W. . . the predicate 'is actual' designates or is true of W and whatever exists in W"
---

From the Van Inwagen paper:

"Abstractionists apply the words "actual" and "nonactual" only to certain abstract objects. That is, they do *not* apply them to concrete objects" - Two Concepts of Possible Worlds, pg.212-213.

Here Van Inwagen makes the abstractionist's technical usage explicit, by restricting the application of the predicate "is actual" to only certain kinds of objects. For any possible world w, and any concrete object x, such that x exists at w, Van Inwagen here denies that the predicate "is actual" is applicable, or true of x (at w), which apparently contradicts the Plantinga/Lewis claim that "is actual" is applicable, or true of whatever exists at w (and clearly, no restriction is placed on the kinds of objects that can exist at any given world w).

So what Van Inwagen here means by "is actual" must differ from what Plantinga there means by "is actual" (since obviously properties having a different extension at any given world are non-identical).

"It is reasonably clear what it means to say of a state of affairs, which is an abstract object, that it is 'actual': that it obtains...But what could it mean to say of a concrete object like a horse that it was 'actual'?...If we examine the way in which, eg. 'nonactual horse' has in fact been used, we see that this phrase almost always means, in the mouths of its habitual employers, 'nonexistent horse'... And indeed, it is difficult to see what else it might mean." - 213
---

Here Van Inwagen implicitly distinguishes his own perfered theoretical use of the term 'is actual' from the common existential use of the term by its "habitual employers".

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The difference you might be getting at, and that Plantinga does make, is between something "existing in w" or "being actual in w" and something being actual simpliciter or existing simpiciter. He is explicit that the former are defined in terms of the latter. We get the clarification we need without multiplying alleged meanings for 'is actual'.
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While Plantinga and Van Inwagen do define or analyze indexed properties by the other primitive terms and concepts of their shared modal theory (rather than the other way around), this is not the distinction that presently interests me.

The distinction I'm drawing attention to is that the term "is actual", like so many other terms of Possible Worlds Discourse, has more than one accepted meaning and use; and discerning a given usage is crucial to formulating genuine metaphysical puzzles (like the Thomistic puzzle you alluded to orginally) that make use of such terms, if the puzzle is to amount to anything more than an equivocal pseudo-problem.

My apologies for the botched numbering job in my last post's argument. Here is the corrected argument:

(4) "There are any number of merely possible worlds; each of them exists - exists in the actual world." - NN, pg 48

(5) "Obviously, at least one possible world obtains. At most one obtains" - NN, pg.45

(6) "...at any world W...the predicate 'is actual' designates or is true of W and whatever exists in W" - NN, pg.49-50

On the face of it, 4-6 make for uneasy bedfellows. Consider the following argument, where "is actual" is a univocal predicate, synonymous with both "exists" or "obtains", and where w and w' are non-identical possible worlds.

(7) w is actual (premise)
(8) If w is actual, then its not the case that w' is actual (5)
(9) Its not the case that w' is actual (7, 8, mp)
(10) If w is actual, then w' exists at w (4)
(11) w' exists at w (7,10, mp)
(12) If w is actual, then [if w' exists at w, then w' is actual] (6)
(13) If w' exists at w, then w' is actual (7,12, mp)
(14) w' is actual (11, 13, mp)

And clearly 9 contradicts 14...etc.

Opethan,

This argument looks right to me. I incidentally did not refer to the Thomistic puzzle. I thought you were saying (a few postings up) that the sense in which 'is actual' is used in PW discourse is one on which it is false to say that for any individual i in W, it is true in W that i is actual. But that is not what you're saying. You're saying instead that there is *a* technical usage on which that is false; and you've got a pretty convincing case that there is.