mattdamore

Hey Tom!

In case anyone's interested, my paper that has been accepted to Religious Studies is available here:

I was just wondering how it is that you get to contribute to some like 'Religious Studies'. How do you agree with the magazine to the extent that they allow you to write for their magazine? Sorry to be off topic! I've always been interested in knowing that.

MattDamore

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

Sure. But that's just to say that an omnipotent being can't learn, forget, weight train, or atrophy. You're granting my conclusion. Yes, it's logically impossible for an omnipotent being to have any kind of fluctuation of power, and it's logically impossible for McEar to scratch his nose. So are they both omnipotent?

Deficiency is different from a lack of power. Being evil doesn't have anything to do with being omnipotent or not, as far as I can see.

Once again, you're granting my conclusion. You're saying God doesn't have the ability to cause himself to die. Sure, it's logically impossible for God to die, but "to commit suicide" is a logically possible action. It's logically impossible for McEar to scratch his nose, too.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by mattdamore :

Oh, they accept papers from any philosophical position. If you read it, you'll see that there's plenty of atheology represented. Faith & Philosophy, the other big one, is the same way; it's published by the Society of Christian Philosophers, but there's plenty of criticism of Christianity in its pages.

Normal

I defined omnipotent as being able to bring about any logically coherent state of affairs.

1) It is logically possible for an omnipotent being to scratch his nose.
2) It is logically possible for an omnipotent being to scratch his ear.
3) It is not logically possible for an omnipotent being to use an ability that would fluctuate his power.

McEar fails the first two conditions of omnipotence.

How is deficiency different from lack of power?

If we agree "existing" and "alive" are two different things, you'd have to show how it is logically coherent to define an omnipotent being as having the attribute "alive", before you can say that not having the ability to take it away is a contradiction of that being's omnipotence.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

Here's a state of affairs: "someone or other freely learns"

Is it logically coherent?

Can God bring it about?

4) It is logically possible for an omnipotent being to learn.
5) It is logically possible for an omnipotent being to do evil.
6) It is logically possible for an omnipotent being to commit suicide.

God fails 4-6.

A deficiency precludes maximal greatness, but doesn't necessarily preclude maximal power. You could have an omnipotent moron, for example.

Normal

Someone or other who is not omnipotent can freely learn, but what does that have to do with god?

I disagree that it is logically possible for an omnipotent being to learn, do evil, or commit suicide. The first two are fluctuations of power, the last one is simply incoherent.

But in the case of god don't we combine maximal power and maximal greatness?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

I'm not talking about the state of affairs "someone or other who is not omnipotent freely learns." I'm talking about the state of affairs "someone or other freely learns." Either that state of affairs is logically coherent, or it isn't. Which one?

Why does learning or doing evil necessarily cause how powerful a person is to change? And why is the idea of an omnipotent being committing suicide incoherent?

Combine how? Maximal greatness might require maximal power. If that were true, then maximal greatness would not require omniscience, moral perfection, or necessary existence, because an omnipotent being cannot instantiate any of those properties.

NonContradiction

The more I think about it the more I dislike describing the Abrahamic God as omnimax. If God is defined as one who has knowledge of, and power over, all things, then I don't see where you have an argument, do you? If something doesn't exist, or have the potential to exist, then God doesn't have knowledge of it or power over it.

As far as your statement that it's logically possible for an omnipotent being to commit suicide, I would think that it depends on how you define this omnipotent being.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by NonContradiction :

At least, my argument would have to be modified considerably. I'd have to find something over which an omniscient being couldn't have power, and I can't think of anything offhand. I personally believe the theist gains quite a bit with the abandonment of omnipotence.

bd-from-kg

Thomas Metcalf:

Before giving my response to your latest post to me, I want to make it clear what I’m up to here. I don’t believe in God, and I’m open-minded regarding whether the “classical” Christian conception of God is logically incoherent. I wouldn’t be upset in the least if your argument, or some modified version of it, succeeds. I’m basically a logician, and my main interest is in the validity of the argument, not in the conclusion.

In some cases I’ve tried to put myself in the position of an intelligent theist and tried to guess what he would see as the “best” objections from his point of view. This is especially true in the comments about “perfections”, which I think is probably an incoherent concept itself. But the only way to really test your argument is to play Devil’s advocate.

Compatibilist Freedom

Huh? If God causes me to learn about Mary unfreely, he hasn’t brought about L at all.

Perhaps if you explained in what sense you consider my learning about Mary to be “unfree”, and just how “free weak actualization” (whether done by God or someone else) would look different, I’d understand what you’re getting at.

But if we allow a description of how a state of affairs was brought about to be part of the description of the state of affairs itself, it’s trivial that omnipotence is impossible. Thus let A be any state of affairs that can be brought about by someone other than God (where “God” here just signifies the omnipotent being, there being at most one). Now let A' be the state of affairs “A, and A was not brought about by God”. Then A' is bring-out-able by someone, but not by God. This looks a little too easy.

Constrained Abilities

Yes, but it doesn’t change their intrinsic properties. If I’m locked in a donutless bakery I don’t have the ability to digest a donut, but I still have the capability.. That has nothing to do with my intrinsic properties.

But on reflection I realize that my real problem with examples of this sort that you’ve proposed is the way you toss around the term “alethically necessary” as if it could be an additional feature of a situation that is otherwise no different from a possible situation in which it’s absent. Thus it simply cannot be the case that I’m locked in a bakery as a matter of alethic necessity, because there’s nothing about my essential nature that entails my being locked in a bakery. You don’t determine whether there’s a “possible world” in which something is false by examining all possible worlds to see whether there’s one where it’s false; you analyze whether the notion of its being false is logically coherent.

Even if you take the position that “alethic necessity” is somehow different from logical necessity, they might as well be treated as equivalent in the present context, because there can’t possibly be any a priori necessities that would apply to God other than logical necessities.

The other problem that I have with equating “able” with “capable” has to do with making choices. It seems clear to me that saying that someone is not able to do X in the sense that he would never choose to do it is quite different from saying that he isn’t capable of doing X. More on this later.

But in terms of saying things like “God is incapable of learning”, I think on reflection that you’re right. In fact, even if some new facts suddenly sprang into existence somehow, God wouldn’t be able to “learn” them. He would simply know them immediately by virtue of His omniscience. There would be no act involved, and the term “learn” clearly refers to an act.

No, I don’t. But I’m still capable of learning calculus. My intrinsic properties didn’t change (or at least is isn’t logically necessary that they changed) as a result of my learning calculus.

Omnipotence is about power, and power is partly about being capable of doing things. But that’s not all that it’s about. A boxer who could land a knockout blow every time but could be felled by the slightest touch would hardly be called the most powerful boxer imaginable. To be considered the most powerful he would have to be not only capable of knocking out his opponents at will, but impossible to knock out himself.

Thus God must not only be capable of doing anything which is logically possible for a maximally great being (if He should choose to do it), but should be invulnerable to having anything done to Him against His will or without His cooperation. Even if you disagree as to whether the latter is included in the meaning of “omnipotent”, it is clearly a quality that God must necessarily have as a maximally great being.

First off, I must renew my objection here to applying the term “alethically necessary” to situations to which it seems self-evident that it doesn’t apply.

However, I think that your point here has more to do with things like omniscience precluding learning. This is a special case of the general rule that it’s impossible for God, as a perfect being, to go from a less perfect state to a more perfect one because He can’t be in an imperfect state to begin with, or from a more perfect state to a less perfect one since He can’t end up in an imperfect state. Thus God cannot reform or debase Himself; He can neither learn nor forget; He cannot end His existence; etc. All of these cases seem to be covered by a general caveat something like, “God can do anything which is logically possible for a maximally perfect being.” This is quite different from saying that He can do anything which is not incompatible with His nature, since (as you’ve pointed out a number of times) even poor McEar can make this claim.

The point is that God is supposed to have the property of omnipotence because it’s a “perfection”. (I.e., God is supposed to be the being who has all “perfections” to the maximal possible degree.) If omnipotence were defined in such a way that it infringes on some of His other perfections it would not be a perfection. So it must be defined in such a way that it doesn’t so infringe; otherwise there would be no reason to suppose that God has it.

It seems to me that to defeat this argument you need to show that there are (at least) two ways to co-define the various “perfections” so that none of them could be extended further without infringing on some of the others, and there’s no clear way to decide which set God would have by appealing to the notion of “perfect being” itself. That would show that there’s more than one possible “perfect being”, which seems incompatible with the very notion of a “perfect being”, and would certainly put the kibosh on the notion that God can be defined as “the” perfect being.

Certainty

Yes, but God’s not doing evil is not due to an inability to satisfy such a desire; it’s due to a lack of any such desire. It seems perverse to say that the fact that someone won’t do something that he doesn’t want to represents a limitation on his power. I’d say just the opposite. If someone finds himself doing things he doesn’t want to, that would indicate a limitation on his power: he would lack the very basic power to do what he wants to do and not do what he doesn’t.

Only in this one respect.

I’d say that S is capable of doing T, if in some possible world he is aware of the option of doing T and would do T if he chose.

If he’s not aware of the option of doing T (in any possible world) he’s not mentally capable of doing T, and if he’s aware of the option but wouldn’t do it even if he chose, he’s “physically” or “materially” incapable of doing it. This seems to me to be much more in accord with our “pretheoretic intuitions” about what it means to be capable of doing something.

First off, in conceding that Smith acted freely you’re conceding most of the point I wanted to make: in order to bring it about that someone freely does X, it’s sufficient to create a situation in which the person does X without being coerced and meets the other standard conditions for compatibilist freedom.

Just the same. I’d disagree that Smith didn’t have the power to refrain from returning the money. Compare this: I hate cantaloupes. I will never eat a cantaloupe under ordinary conditions (i.e., absent coercion or a substantial reward). Does that mean that I’m incapable of eating a cantaloupe under “normal” conditions? Is this a limitation on my power? Again, wouldn’t the real limitation on my power be if I couldn’t help but eat cantaloupes even though I hate them?

It seems to me that it’s certainly within my power to eat a cantaloupe, but that I choose not to.

That doesn’t make sense to me.

Look. If I take drugs because I’m addicted to them, but really, deep down, would rather that I weren’t addicted, one can say that I’m a “slave” to my addiction. If I spend a lot of time looking for people to have mindless sex with, but “deep down” consider this a waste of time and wish that I didn’t have a compulsion to do it, one can say that I’m a “slave” to my hormones. But if I do what I really, deep down, want to be doing, what will give me the deepest, most lasting, emotional satisfaction and personal fulfillment, how can I be said to be a “slave” to anything? It seems to me to be an abuse of language to say that someone is a “slave” to his own deepest nature. You’re always going to have some reason for doing what you do; if that reason is to be found in your fundamental nature, that’s the most perfect freedom, not slavery.

I agree on this one, but that’s because (unlike many people on this forum but like Aristotle) I think that virtue is in accordance with one’s deepest nature and vice is contrary to it. Jones has lost the potential to live in harmony with her true self, and this really is a “genuine lack of power”.