- Evil is a lack of being.
- God was free not to create anything at all.
- If a state of affairs S is in every respect better than a state of affairs T, and it was permissible for God to bring about T, then it is permissible for God to bring about S.
Together, these statements seem to add up to a universal theodicy, i.e., a theodicy for every (narrowly logically possible?) state of affairs. For let N be the state of affairs brought about by God in not creating anything. If S is any state of affairs other than N, then S is better than N in every respect, since anything that exists in N exists in S and evil is non-being, so any kind of evil in S is also found in N, but there is a good in S not found in N, since S involves God's creating something. Call this line of thought the pseudo-Augustinian theodicy--it is inspired by St. Augustine's discussions in the Confessions, though as we shall see I doubt that St. Augustine would endorse this.
- Evil is a lack of being.
- God was free not to create anything at all.
- If a state of affairs S is in every respect better than a state of affairs T, and it was permissible for God to bring about T, then it is permissible for God to bring about S.
Together, these statements seem to add up to a universal theodicy, i.e., a theodicy for every (narrowly logically possible?) state of affairs. For let N be the state of affairs brought about by God in not creating anything. If S is any state of affairs other than N, then S is better than N in every respect, since anything that exists in N exists in S and evil is non-being, so any kind of evil in S is also found in N, but there is a good in S not found in N, since S involves God's creating something. Call this line of thought the pseudo-Augustinian theodicy--it is inspired by St. Augustine's discussions in the Confessions, though as we shall see I doubt that St. Augustine would endorse this.
The pseudo-Augustinian theodicy is not very popular these days, with good reason. It is easy to find a clear counterexample. Consider a world w* just like the actual world but where all creatures' existence ends tomorrow. The pseudo-Augustinian theodicy would justify God actualizing w*. But it is impossible that God actualize w*, since by not prolonging the existence of creatures past tomorrow, God would be breaking the promises of the Gospel, which promises would also exist in w*. There are, then, cases where creating one thing (e.g., an inscription of a divine promise) necessitates God's creating another thing (e.g., whatever it is whose existence is entailed by the fulfillment of the promise). The pseudo-Augustinian argument failed because, as Augustine knew, evil is not just any privation, but a privation of a due good. By creating one good, God can make others be due. By creating humans, God makes sight be a due good, so that a world containing humans and no sight contains an evil not contained in the God-alone world, namely the evil of blindness.
However, I still think that there is something to the pseudo-Augustinian theodicy. For there clearly is something to the idea that God owes us nothing, that all we get from God is grace. Now we need to qualify this idea to take care of the case of divine promises. For God can make us a promise in virtue of which he is obligated (to us? to himself?) to do something. He did not owe it to us to make that promise, but given the promise, the fulfillment is required. Moreover, it may be that God owes punishment to the wicked. (It is less clear on Augustinian grounds that God owes any rewards to the just, since the justice of the just is simply their acceptance of God's grace.)
Take now an evil, such as Fred's lacking arms. To mount a successful argument from evil on these Augustinian grounds, it seems that we would need to establish that God somehow owed arms to Fred. But that is far from clear, unless one can argue that human nature constitutes a divine promise to create everything that the nature specifies as normal. But there does not seem to be very good reason to understand human nature in such a way. Moreover, suppose that instead of creating Fred the human without arms, God created Fird, a member of a species very much like human but where not having arms is normal, and suppose that Fird's actual bodily capabilities are just like Fred's. While it is objectively true that Fred's armlessness is an evil while Fird's is not, it is not at all clear that Fred has any right to complain. For in a sense Fred is no any worse off than Fird. They both have the same capabilities. The only difference is that Fred has a nature with additional goods specified in it than Fird does, and Fred does not have these goods. It is true that if Fred has the belief that he should have arms and Fird does not have such a belief, then Fred is more likely to resent his armlessness. But it is not at all clear that God has done any wrong vis-a-vis Fred by not creating arms for him, even if Fred's armlessness has no other good consequences for Fred or anybody else.
There is an obvious retort to these considerations: God's goodness is more than justice--God is generous, loving, etc. However, God's infinite generosity and love is already fulfilled in the internal relations of the Triune Godhead. Moreover, once we see (with Augustine?) our existence as itself the greatest of the gifts that God could give us, then the temptation to think God as insufficiently generous or loving in the case of ourselves may well fade.
Now, it is true that in many cases we can expect more of God than justice and our mere existence. But that is because of God's grace, which goes beyond what God does of metaphysical necessity. On the Augustinian approach, it is to a very large extent true that God owes us nothing. God has already been generous and loving with us by creating us ex nihilo. Insofar as the problem of evil is mounted from God's essential qualities, I wonder if the tough-minded Augustinian considerations may not in fact put a very serious dent in the problem of evil.
Or at least that's the best I can make of the Augustinian materials.
Of course, it might seem that the problem has just been shifted. Given that Christian theology holds God to be, as a contingent matter of fact, generous to us beyond giving us existence, maybe the problem of evil can be replaced with an argument against Christianity based on God's being, allegedly, not as generous as he's made out to be. However, that argument appears distinctly weak, especially in light of the fact that most of the promised generosity concerns the giving of spiritual grace.
Alex,
I've been pulled by this pseudo-Augustinian argument (though I don't know where I stand with it now). I usually put it something like this:
A rough analysis of owes: A owes B C on account of D.
ex: [I (A] owe [you (B)] [50 bucks (C)] because [I lost the bet (D)].
Consider what God owes any particular creature:
God owes me (C) on account of (D), where (C) is some good. What could (D) be?
Tentatively, I say that if (D) is based on something about me, then it is owed based on either the sort of thing I am, or the things I do. But neither of those work.
I don't think (D) is based on what I am, though I don't have a knock-down proof. In Scripture, Paul tells us that none are righteous. In tradition, the 2nd Council of Orange (529) says that, after the fall, "the whole man, both in body and in soul, was changed for the worse." Original sin may help bolster this claim. Or, if you are the sort of Christian who accepts Total Depravity, you may have another reason for rejecting that the reason God owes me something (D) is based on the sort of thing I am.
I don't think (D) is based on what I've done either. Again, citing Orange, "Concerning the things that belong to man. No man has anything of his own but untruth and sin." Furthermore, suppose that God does owe me something based on what I've done. It seems to me that what I'm owed (C) based on what I've done(D) is death, that being the wages of my sin. So, if (D) is based on what I've done, then not only doesn't God owe me good stuff, I'm owed death.
(D) could stem from other things (not about me), like divine promises or covenants. But even there, the call to discipleship is the call to death (Bonhoeffer?) Jesus doesn't offer an earthly rose garden; he offers persecution and a cross.
I'm not quite convinced that (D) couldn't be God's love, or just the truths of morality (which are founded in God's nature). However, those topics may take a while to say, so I'll leave them for later in the debate. I'm happy here to have given another way of making (what I take to me) the same point you've made in this post.
Alexander, I have a problem with your presentation of the Augustinian theodicy. I'm not sure how Augustinian it really is.
When I first encountered the Augustinian doctrine of evil, I was told it implied that there cannot be absolute evil, since evil is like a hole in a sock - the hole is only a hole if there is some sock for there to be a hole in. If the hole gets bigger and the sock gets smaller, then the situation gets worse. But if you don't have any sock at all, then you don't have a perfectly bad sock. Of course, it might be a bad thing that you lack a sock, but only if you are in a situation where socks are required, and for that to be the case, there have to be some things that exist. (The example came from a sermon by Fr. Robert Ombres OP)
As I understand it, this is the reason why, in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape says that so far, the infernal laboratories have been incapable of developing a vice that is entirely original: to make something bad, you have to start with something that is good, that has existence, and corrupt it by taking things away. (This argument is not explicit in Lewis' text, but I assumed that he had the Augustinian view in mind).
If this is so, I don't think we can say that a universe where something exists is automatically better than a universe where nothing exists. This is because a defective object could be worse than no object at all.
You compare two universes, N in which nothing exists, and S in which something exists. S is better because it contains at least one good that does not exist in N, and N contains no goods not also found in S.
This suggests that, in general, if there are two universes Y and Z, and Z contains everything that Y contains, plus at least one extra thing, Z is better than Y.
(I realize that you don't explicitly subscribe to this as a general principle, but it would seem to me to be rather arbitrary to apply it only in the case where Y is the empty universe; as I follow your logic, you believe S is better than N because the fact of containing all N's objects plus at least one more is a sufficient reason for judging S better.)
Now, suppose there is a universe,Y, where I exist, in a glider. Now to get to universe Z add to the glider a jet engine, but neglect to add any fuel. I crash to the ground. Better not to have a jet engine at all than to have an incomplete jet engine.
As explained by Fr.Robert, the Augustinian principle means that evil is always the incompleteness of an existing object. A universe that contains nothing contains nothing that is incomplete.
Leaving aside the question of how Augustine should be interpreted, Fr. Robert's interpretation has, it seems to me, intuitive advantages. A perfect universe is one such that it would not benefit from the addition of anything new, but it doesn't seem intuitive that there should be no possible additions that could be made. Helen of Troy would not benefit from an extra nose. If it comes to that, my hypothetical glider was fine until the redundant jet engine was added. Also, I agree that the universe we have is better than nothing - but isn't this a providential feature of it? It doesn't seem beyond our imagination to think of universes that, intuitively at least, are worse than if there were no universe at all.
Woops - Alexander, on re-reading your original post, I think I've just managed to restate an objection that, in effect, you already considered. Post in haste, regret at leisure. I comfort myself that in creating a redundant post, I gave an unwitting actual example of that which my I intended to give only a hypothetical instance: the principle that sometimes it is better not to add anything to what already exists.
Hi Alexander. A few comments:
"For there clearly is something to the idea that God owes us nothing, that all we get from God is grace."
This seems wrong to me. If I create children, I owe them something, to care for them, protect them from harm, love them...So would God if he were to exist.
wrt to the Fird case: I think if God creates beings without, say, x-ray vision, then he does something wrong. That is, assuming x-ray vision would make those individuals better off than they otherwise would have been. Similarly, if I could take a pill that would prevent my next child from becoming blind, I am obligated to take the pill (even if the pill delayed the birth a few months).
And premise 1 is false. Evil is not lack of being. But, nobody really thinks that anyway, right? Pain exists and it's evil if there is such a thing as evil.
And premise 2 is false. God could not have refrained from creating if creating was the right thing to do, which it would have been and if God's nature entails that he must do the right thing. Similarly, God is not free to torture children for fun.
Mr. Lee:
It is not at all clear whether the obligations of God are like the obligations of parents. It may, for instance, be morally relevant that, excepting Adam and Eve, each of us who is a parent also had parents, and hence had ourselves had the right to those benefits that our children have the right to from us. There may well be other relevant differences.
As for pains, I am not convinced that veridical pains (pains correctly indicating a malfunction) are an evil. My colleague Mark Murphy thinks that pains are only bad insofar as one has a desire not to have the pain, and then the evil is that of a mismatch between the world and the desire (to be fixed by either changing the world or the desire). A mismatch might be argued to be a lack of match.
It seems to be an essential part of the concept of God in Judaism and Christianity that God could have refrained from creating at all. I do not see why creating would be obligatory, barring consequentialist assumptions.
Mr. Murphy:
You know, I once actually ran across a paper about the two-nose problem in Augustine. I can't remember what the paper said, but it seems to me the Augustinian story will have to be that order is a positive being (this is quite plausible if one is a neo-Platonist like Augustine), and Helen with two noses lacks some order that the one-nose Helen has.
I think the issue here isn't whether something good is added whenever something is added. Augustine is very clear that something good is added. The question is whether the overall value of the universe is improved whenever something good is added.
In terms of the metaphysical problem of evil, the idea of evil as a lack simply allows Augustine to say that God doesn't cause anything to exist that is positively evil. All evil is simply the lack of good that could be present. But he admits that something can be made worse off by being disordered. When he gives the analogy of a painting that has ugly pieces amidst beautiful pieces, with the overall picture looking better because of the ugly pieces, he clearly thinks the arrangement of the parts is what makes it overall good. Putting one more ugly piece in exactly the wrong place or even putting one beautiful component in the wrong place would detract from the overall picture, even though a mereological calculation of the total good present will increase.
So what's going on is that when he responds to the metaphysical problem of evil what counts is a mereological notion of good, whereby nothing is evil, and anything has positive contribution to the total value. When he responds to the moral problem of evil, he thinks order counts, since we're looking at all value and not just the value of the thing that may or may not be created. So he allows for other contributory factors like order.
There is an obvious retort to these considerations: God's goodness is more than justice--God is generous, loving, etc.
In addition to duties of justice, there are also duties of beneficence. The problem(s) of evil almost uniformly appeal not to justice (though much more could be said by way of the just distribution of goods and evils in the world) but to beneficence or goodness. JJ Thomson makes an interesting and familiar case that the violinist has no right against me that I provide the bare minimum to keep him alive. I violate no duties of justice in failing to do so. But it would be incredibly indecent of me not to give him 5 mins., if that is what he needs to stay alive. In the case of God, it might not be unjust, but it would be certainly indecent of him not to provide limbs to someone simply because he did not owe it to him.
Mike:
But supposing that you have already lavished many great goods on the violinist, it is less clear whether you have a duty of beneficence towards him.
Moreover, it may be that duties of beneficence arise from the benefactor and the recipient of the beneficence both being members of the human community, or something like that. Or else these duties arise out of our duty to love God, and hence to do good to those God loves, or perhaps out of a duty to "pass on" the good that God has given us. In other words, the Augustinian may answer that there are significant differences between our duties and God's.
I am not endorsing much of this, but simply exploring the option.
Alex,
There are always specific views about the nature of morality and moral relations, about the basis of morality (say, in our relation to God and so on) that will serve to support the theistic position. But if we help ourselves to any moral assumptions that will serve--assumptions that we sometimes find congenial--then (i) we leave out of the discussion just those (or at least many of those) we'd like to persuade, and (ii) we make the argument top-heavy. The probability of the conjunction of assumptions (prior to theism) is going to be quite low. So, just as a point of method, the moral assumptions we make here ought to be one's that are defensible on independent grounds (i.e., independent of our attitudes to theism/atheism). Not every theist does this, of course, or cares to. In bringing in Thomson, I simply wanted to underscore the impoverished moral view of typical libertarianism. It fails to capture all sorts of morally important relations: in particular it does not do well with the benefactor/beneficiary relation, though Thomson does say something favorable about it. If we construe God as a big libertarian and claim victory in the debate about evil, it seems to me we do so at a severe cost. First, we attribute to God a moral view that has not been especially well-received. And second we have a conception of God that is a monstrosity, morally speaking.
Alex:
Okay, you said: "t is not at all clear whether the obligations of God are like the obligations of parents."
I was assuming that parents have special obligations to children in virtue of creating them. If one denies this and then justifies the denial by pointing out a disimilarity between God and human parents, then I wonder what that difference is. I don't think having parents oneself is a relevant difference. Moreover, if one denies that God has parental obligations in this context, then it would be bad to appeal to God's beingh like a parent in other contexts, and in fact, often theists do this.
More importantly, I agree with Mike. I think God would have obligations of benificence. And I don't think these obligations arise by being members of a human community. Spock would have the same obligations in his community.
"As for pains, I am not convinced that veridical pains (pains correctly indicating a malfunction) are an evil."
A few things. First, if pains aren't evil, I don't know what evil is. I simply have no concept of evil as your using the term. Second, we could run the same privation line on goodness, that is, goodness does not exist, it is a privation of evil. You would then need to justify treating one as a privation and the other not, and I wonder how that would go.
"A mismatch might be argued to be a lack of match."
That seems wrong to me.Not getting what one wants, if one wants not to have some pain, if that is what generates the badness of pain, involves frustration of desire. And that is not a lack of anything. I know what it's like to feel pain and there is an object of my desire and it is a real thing, even if it can also be described as an absence.
"I do not see why creating would be obligatory, barring consequentialist assumptions."
I'm a Consequentialist. But you need not be a Consequentialist to think God's goodness requires him to do certain things. If God has two alternatives, creating a beautiful world or not, and if he were to decide not to, then "I" would say two things: That being is not morally perfect and that being is not deservingt of worship or admiration.
Christian:
I have no problem with saying that God has obligations of beneficence to the beings he has chosen to create. I just do not know of a good argument for that claim.
As for the possibility of God's not creating anything, consider first the following. Suppose God created a world containing aleph-7 perfectly happy persons. Could one reasonably argue that God is not morally perfect because he could instead have created a world containing aleph-8 perfectly happy persons? I think clearly not. (If one could make that argument, one would be setting a logically impossible task for God, namely the task of creating a cardinality of perfectly happy persons than which there is no higher cardinality.) (If one thinks that actual infinities are impossible, replace aleph-7 and aleph-8 with really big finite numbers.)
So, once God creates enough good, no reasonable complaint can be made that he did not make more good. But how much is "enough"? Suppose that God creates an infinity of happy angels, in quantity sufficient to satisfy duties of beneficence. Now we can ask: Would it be permissible for God to additionally create creatures that are going to be imperfectly happy, but whose existence is still a good for them (Augustine thinks this condition is always satisfied)? I feel some pull towards answering in the affirmative, though in the end I want to step back from that. And if so, then the pseudo-Augustinian theodicy can still be run even if it is impossible for God to fail to create, as long as we admit--as we should--that we have no evidence against the claim that God created an infinity of happy angels.
But back to the question whether it would be permissible for God not to create anything. What we've come to is the idea that if God creates a sufficient good, then he is under no obligation of beneficence to do more (else he would have an unmeetable obligation, it seems). Now suppose first that Descartes is right that God is causa sui. If so, then the obligation of beneficence has already been satisfied by God's causing his own existence, since God is a good much greater than the happiness of aleph-7 finite perfectly happy persons.
Of course you will rightly say that Descartes' idea of God being self-caused is incoherent. But now consider the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and/through the Son. Now, the Christian tradition insists that the processions are not a causal processes. But nonetheless they are loving action of the Father and/or the Son. This loving action of generation, internal to the triune Godhead, may then be sufficient to satisfy any duties of beneficence.
If so, then a triune God, at least, has no obligation of beneficence to create any other persons. Three persons is fully enough.
Alex,
Greetings! I'm so glad you joined Prosblogion! And I have two critical points about your argument.
1. In the quick and dirty version you give at the top of the post, I think the conclusion (that any narrowly logically possible world is permissible for God to create) doesn't follow, for reasons other than those you mention. Namely, that the state of nothing-created is not "brought about" by God, since he does nothing to bring it about. Hence it is not permissible for him to bring it about. Hence, although creating anything would be better than not creating anything, it doesn't follow that creating just anything is permissible.
2. Your argument shows, perhaps, that the world is permissible for God to create. But I would have thought that the (or a) argument from evil was not about permissibility but about omnibenevolence. The attributes of God are supposed to be, not that God meets minimal standards of justice, but that he meets maximal standards of love. And if the world is only intelligible as the creation of a just, but not very loving, creator, then I think we still have a pretty good atheological argument from evil.
Alex:
A nasty person would walk by a drowning child in a pond if he did so to avoid ruining his shoes. Saving the drowning child is required and is an act of benificence. So God would be nasty if he allowed it for similarly petty reason. Do arguments get any better than that? The obligation is prima facie, but that's enough.
Moreover, I agree that God is not obligated to create the best possible world. Mike has shot that idea down. My claim is that God is required to a create a world with goodness in it rather refrain from creating, not that he is required to create the best possible world. Nothing you said above casts doubt on that. Once modified, I don;t see how the theodicy is going to go through.
"If so, then the obligation of beneficence has already been satisfied by God's causing his own existence."
That's impossible. God could not cause his own existence. Causation relates contingent events, and God is not contingent. Also, causation relates distinct events, and God is not distinct from himself.
"This loving action of generation, internal to the triune Godhead, may then be sufficient to satisfy any duties of beneficence."
In addition to the fact that the doctrine of the trinity is incoherent to begin with, I'm unclear how the Son's proceeding from the Father is going to satisfy an obligation to make a minimally decent world. I don't understand procession, for one, and even if it turns out to be comprehensible, you'll need to argue that the Son's value satisfies moralities demands. But that's clearly wrong.
Note: I avoid saying "clearly" but here I think it's appropriate.
This loving action of generation, internal to the triune Godhead, may then be sufficient to satisfy any duties of beneficence.
Alex,
Singer once advanced a principle of beneficence which stated that moral agents ought to do A (where A is an act of beneficence) if performing A does not require a comparable moral cost. Suppose that principle is too strong. Consider this principle: A moral agent S is required to perform a beneficent action A if performing A requires no cost (moral or otherwise) to the agent or anyone else. So imagine there are no moral costs, no energy costs, no economic costs and no opportunity costs in performing A. It seems to me perfectly reasonable to conclude that S ought to perform A.
But, of course, no beneficent action requires any cost of any kind to an infinitely powerful being with infinite resources. Applying this reasonable principle to God there should be no end to his beneficent action.
But suppose now that there are infinitely many ever-improving worlds--worlds including greater and greater benefits. Does that present a problem? Well, not an insurmountable one. Let S1-Sn be a series of 3D-stages of our world. For any world, there is a sequence of 3D-world stages that are actualized over the temporal length of that world. Among the solutions to the problem is to have God actualize every on-balance positively valued world stage S1-Soo of every world over a (perhaps) infinite amount of time. I am of course making the Humean assumption that there are no logical connections between world-stages, but that is likely true anyway. There are of course other solutions including, inter alia, multiverse and hyperspace solutions. But the latter two approaches require some important restrictions that might vitiate the solution. If this picture is right, then we should not expect to find the extremely large number of on-balance bad stages that we find in the actual world.
A problem is that principles of required beneficence may simply be unfulfillable, and hence incoherent (if ought entails can), in the case of an omnipotent deity. For no matter how much beneficence has been bestowed on an individual, more can be bestowed at no additional effort.
One will do better if one replaces principles of required positive beneficence with principles of required harm prevention (which is what Singer is in fact defending). However, some folks have argued that the life of a creature necessarily involves evil, simply by falling short of divinity. If that's right, then even principles of required harm prevention may become incoherent.
I wonder how well the principles hold up in cases where the potential benefactor has already bestowed enormous benefits on the benefited person.
A problem with the idea of God actualizing all sufficiently good worlds or world-stages is that there are too many worlds or world-stages. (Sketch of proof: Suppose God actualizes a set S of worlds or world-stages. Let P be the union of the sets of persons of the members of S. Let N be a cardinality greater than the cardinality of P. Then, very plausibly, there is a possible world w that is sufficiently good and that contains exactly N happy disembodied persons. This world w is not a member of S, since N is greater than the cardinality of the set of persons of any member of S. Hence, for any set S of worlds or world-stages that God actualizes, there is a strictly larger set, namely the union of S with {w}, that he could have actualized.)
Premise 1 seems to require revision. If God creates ex nihilo, and evil is non-being then God and evil are co-existing prior to the creation of the world. (Dualism) I would think Augustine has something else in mind. Also, if everything is “grace” what then is the value of nature? Perhaps this is where the “due” is lurking.
If it is possible to keep increasing beneficence relative to some world because God’s goodness is unlimited, then the answer doesn’t seem to be where some are looking, namely in God’s beneficence. The limit and hence explanation of why this world as opposed to another I'd suggest is to be found in the nature of this world and not in the beneficence of God per se. A theodicy then need not worry so much about what God owes but more following Maritain, about God’s innocence.
What is particularly bothersome to me about the problem of evil and divine beneficence is it seems much easier to simply skip all of the evil and create a world in which it is impossible for agents to sin. I think God could surely make a whole set of impossible to sin and perfectly good worlds given compatibilist type freedom, (PGW) and many of them seem better than the world we have. Even if God doesn’t owe us that kind of world there seems to be other reasons for thinking that the Plotinian and Augustinian line is wrong, that the evil makes the world on the whole better since it at least appears to imply goodness requires its opposite. As far as my belief goes, and this is sheer confession, God doesn’t require evil to possess or exercise various divine powers such as justice, mercy, etc. the beautiful does not require the ugly.
Alex,
I like your sketch here,
Sketch of proof: Suppose God actualizes a set S of worlds or world-stages. Let P be the union of the sets of persons of the members of S. Let N be a cardinality greater than the cardinality of P. Then, very plausibly, there is a possible world w that is sufficiently good and that contains exactly N happy disembodied persons. This world w is not a member of S, since N is greater than the cardinality of the set of persons of any member of S. Hence, for any set S of worlds or world-stages that God actualizes, there is a strictly larger set, namely the union of S with {w}, that he could have actualized.)
But I didn't intend that there is ever a temporal point at which God has actualized every on-balance positive world-stage. The actualization occurs through an infinite speace of time. I agree, though. Were God to stop actualizing world stages, then there might well be better worlds that he might have actualized instead. I'm working under the assumption that there are infinitely many ever-improving worlds. Actualizing valuable world-stages in sequence would therefore be interminiable. But that's no problem, since it is never the case that God has actualized a world that is suboptimal. Actualization takes place over an infinite space of time, and so is never (setting aside the question of whether God is capable of supertasking) fully completed.
Mike:
I am not too clear on how your construction works, but as far as I can see, on your construction God only actualizes at most continuum-many world-stages. But he could do better than that by actualizing a higher infinite cardinality of stages simultaneously.
Alex
Mr. Robinson:
Premise 1 is meant to say that every evil is a non-being. It does not follow that every (form of?) non-being is an evil. Sorry for the ambiguity.
But he could do better than that by actualizing a higher infinite cardinality of stages simultaneously.
Alex, the sequential actualization is necessary, since the same individuals will likely be parts of several worlds in the series of improving worlds. So they cannot be simulutaneouly actualized.
Mike:
Yes, but it still would be possible to simultaneously actualize a higher infinite cardinality of stages of mutually distinct individuals.
Unless, of course, there is an argument to be had that it is impossible to have a higher infinite cardinality of mutually distinct individuals.
Unless, of course, there is an argument to be had that it is impossible to have a higher infinite cardinality of mutually distinct individuals.
Alex,
The argument has to go the other way, I should think. You'd have to know a prioi that the infinite sequence of improving worlds did not overlap wrt any individuals. Of course, by individuals, I do not mean just persons or rational agents. They also cannot overlap with respect to any particles of matter, or any other individuals. How would you know a priori that there is no such overlap? How would you know that as you move upward in the sequence you are sure to reach a world that does not overlap with any preceding world? For all I know, the infinite sequence overlaps in all sorts of ways.
Mike,
Happy Easter!
Well, first of all, we could limit ourselves to persons, because these worlds could consist simply of God and lots of very happy disembodied intellects directly created by God, each busily alternating between doing mathematics and praising God. Now, it is true that there might be some overlap. But then we can just omit the individuals in the overlap.
Let me be more precise. Suppose God creates a total of N (finite or infinite) individuals. Let w1 be that world. Let M be an infinite cardinality greater than N. Then there is a possible world w2 consisting of God and M very happy mutually non-interacting disembodied intellects created by God (they interact with God but not each other). Then there is a possible world w3 consisting of God and M very happy mutually non-interacting individuals none of whom exist in w1. Then there is a possible world w4 which is just like w3 but that omits all the contingent individuals who also exist in w1. It is plausible that w4 would be better than w1 (or could be made so with small adjustments).
Here I used the theorem that if S is an infinite set of cardinality greater than that of a set (finite or infinite) T, then the set of all members of S who are not members of T has the same cardinality as S.
Then there is a possible world w3 consisting of God and M very happy mutually non-interacting individuals none of whom exist in w1.
Alex,
Happy Easter to you!
I think your claim here begs the very question at issue. My guess is that you're going to claim the kind of modal knowledge about improving worlds (and their constituents) that's in question. But, what reason is there to believe that disembodied praise-giving worlds are among the best? What reason is there to believe that such worlds (assuming there are any) are better than embodied spirit worlds? On the contrary, there presumably was some very important reason to instantiate so much in the actual world--perhaps having to do with the Principle of Plenitude, or perhaps having to do with the value of the "Great Chain of Being"--that one would suspect (or would be forgiven for suspecting) that all of the better worlds instantiate similar things. But there are lots of alternatives: suppose improving worlds are nested with respect to the beings they contain. We add more very good beings as we move upward in the sequence, but we do not subtract any. The problem is that there is some metaphysical fact of the matter here. And we do not know that this is not the case and we get no where by simple stipulation.
I am not assuming that the disembodied being worlds are the best. Rather, I am assuming that they are good.
Let me reformulate. This will be a reductio argument against the idea that there is a best world. Suppose w1 is best. Let u2 be a universe of disembodied happy beings, with the cardinality of the set of these disembodied happy beings being infinite and greater than than the cardinality of the set of all individuals of w. Let u3 be the portion of u2 consisting of those disembodied happy beings in u2 that do not exist in w. u3 still contains infinitely many disembodied happy beings. Let w4 be a world consisting of u3 plus all the concrete stuff in w1. Then, I claim, w4 is better than w1. Hence, w1 is not best.
I'd didn't mean to suggest that there is a best world (though what I said reads that way). On the contrary, I am conceding that there are infinitely many better and better worlds. So we are agreed on that, I think. Our dispute concerns which worlds are in that series.
You have a straightforward suggestion on how to construct a series of good worlds that improve and do not overlap in the individuals they contain. My worry is that the rules for constructing such a series do not entail that any such worlds or only such worlds are in the infinite sequence. For instance, it might be true that for any world that contains disembodied beings praising God there are infinitely many better worlds containing embodied beings. Or it might be that for any world containing disembodied beings there is another world containing embodied beings that is at least as good.
I don't think anyone knows that these hypotheses are false. But these are the very hypotheses that raise worries about the instantaneous actualization of every world that is on-balance good. If there is any overlap at all, it is simply not possible to actualize all of those worlds at the same time.
Someone might respond along lines similar to yours that perhaps counterpart theory is true. If it is, then there is no problem here. I suspect that's right, but I'm skeptical of counterpart theory too (I hope for the right reasons). The disagreement might come down to the assertion that it is epistemically possible that it is metaphyscially possible that there is the sequence you describe. That much I'd have to concede. But what milquetoast metaphysics!