Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

That may be, but they're not signs of a lack of power. No one's saying omniscience and moral perfection are inconsistent with maximal greatness, but they are inconsistent with maximal power.

And McEar cannot perform "to scratch one's nose," because it would contradict McEar's nature. Might McEar be omnipotent?

We just need to talk about essential properties here. It is an essential property of me that I am a living person. It is an accidental property of me that I have short hair. I think everyone can agree with this. Do you think George Washington, the person, exists?

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by rainbow walking :

Suppose I am locked in a bakery. Suppose I eat all the donuts in the bakery. Suppose no donuts will ever be made in that bakery, or placed in there, or ever come to be in there, and suppose I will never get out of the bakery. Do I have the ability to perform "to eat a donut"?

Please be careful with the terminology here. If something is logically necessary, it exists in all logically possible worlds. So if learning were logically necessary, it would mean learning existed in all possible worlds. Do you mean it's unnecessary for something?

I'm not sure what you mean here. What are you asking?

Incoherence does not admit of degrees. And what do you mean by one of the tasks being necessary to render omnipotence and omniscience compatible? Is that what you mean?

And she'd be wrong, unless she offered a different definition of "omnipotent."

But omnipotence requires performing all logically possible tasks, not just all logically necessary tasks.

Yes. And God can't make evil choices, whereas I can.

Normal

Learning itself is a sign of lack of power, which is what I am saying. I assume god also cannot body build, even though this is a function that his creation uses to gain power, it is a function useless to god.

But scratching one's nose and existing are two different things. You don't exist because of an action, you exist because you do.

George Washington the person does exist, why not? He's just not breathing anymore. Why should we consider "living" anymore an essiential property then "short hair"? Both can be taken away.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

Why, though? Why is the ability to learn a lack of power? It's a lack of knowledge, certainly, but no one thinks knowledge is the same thing as power.

We're talking about the "doing evil" action here. God can't do evil. You say that's okay, because it would contradict his nature. I say, then, that McEar not being able to scratch his nose is also okay, because it would contradict his own nature. So either both God and McEar are omnipotent, or neither is.

But only taking away the former makes people decide someone has ceased to exist. I don't think anyone will agree with you that George Washington, the person, still exists. The body does, or at least, miscellaneous parts of it.

ComestibleVenom

I think the strongest formlation of arguments to incoherence note that even infinite beings (with their similarly infinite cop-outs) have no theoretical machinery that permits a coherent - that is, conciliently fitting together of various properties - interpretation of God's actions.

God might therefore be said to be non-coherent.

bd-from-kg

Not being all that familiar with this area, I’m not really in a position to judge whether your confidence about this is justified. All I can say is that it’s by no means obvious to me that the problem can’t be fixed in a reasonably straightforward way.

Well, strictly speaking the first statement is meaningless. “If there were such things as square circles my argument would show that they must have five sides” is trivially true, since there is no possible world in which the condition holds. But I understand what you mean: the argument does seem to go through if one thinks of “freely” in LFW terms (and manages to forget that the concept is incoherent). And it’s true that the argument might have important psychological consequences. Also, it seems to me (and most theologians as well) that theistic morality becomes a shambles if one abandons the concept of LFW, so your argument (if sound) leaves the theologian in an impossible dilemma.

Here’s where we part company. I don’t think that this is a valid principle at all. For example, let’s say that Mary wants me to play the piano at two o’clock. She knows that I love her, so that if she asks me to play at two o’clock, I will. So she asks me to do it, and I do. In that case (with the obvious assignments) there is an agent b != a such that if b did not choose for s to happen at t, s would not have happened at t, yet s was brought about freely by a.

[Note: This would still be a valid counterexample if (in order to avoid an obvious objection to the claim that I acted freely) I had said only that it’s “extremely probable” that I would play the piano if Mary asked me to. But I don’t think that this modification is necessary, for reasons that I’ll discuss below.]

Again I don’t see how this is valid. Suppose that God wanted you to learn that you had a sexy new neighbor named Sue, and causes you to learn it by inducing Sue to knock on your door to introduce herself. (Whether she does so freely is irrelevant.) You freely answer the door and listen as she introduces herself and explains that she now lives next door. It seems to me that you have freely learned what God wanted you to learn. If not, explain in what sense your actions were not “free” in the CFW sense.

But this sort of requirement can never be met. What you’re saying is that you didn’t really choose freely to do Y unless the situation (including your own internal state) in which you made this choice was itself brought about by your own free choice. (If this wasn’t a free choice, what’s the point of the requirement?) But then by the same logic, for this to have been a free choice, you must have freely brought about the situation in which you made it. And so on ad infinitum. In other words, the causal chain culminating in your choice to do Y must consist (in some crucial sense) of free choices made by you “all the way back”. But all the way back to where? If we trace this chain back far enough we arrive at a point before you existed, at which point this requirement can’t possibly be met.

In short, CFW only makes sense if you’re willing to terminate this chain at some point and say that an act is “free” if it can be traced back to some finite point to choices made by you, even though the chain itself can be traced to causes that lie entirely outside yourself.

The answer to the first question is “yes”. But if by “make” you mean “cause” or “bring about” (rather than “coerce”) the answer to the second is “no”.

Now for a couple of other points on which we disagree:

(1) I don’t think that it’s appropriate to say that someone lacks the capability to do something merely because his circumstances are such that the occasion will never arise. Take your bakery example. Let’s suppose that a competent doctor is locked in the bakery with you, along with all relevant diagnostic equipment. He examines you thoroughly and concludes that your digestive system is in perfect order, so you are capable of digesting a donut. Would you say that the doctor is talking nonsense? It seems to me that he’s saying something perfectly sensible and probably true.

A “capability” is supposed to be a property of the thing that is said to have it, and not a relationship between it and other things. The fact that you’re locked permanently in the bakery is a relationship between (among other things) you and donuts: you’re in, they’re out. What can this have to do with your capabilities?

Confusion on this point can easily arise from the fact that being capable of doing something is different from being able to do it. “Being able” can involve one’s relationship with other things. Thus I may be capable of reciting the Gettysburg Address, but not be able to do so because I’m gagged. Thus talking about what God is able to do can be misleading. Omnipotence is supposed to be a property of God, not a relationship between Him and other things, so it has to be defined in terms of what He’s capable of doing, not what He’s able to do.

To make this more directly relevant, let’s consider whether it’s correct to say that I am capable of learning calculus. Now as it happens I have learned calculus, so I would say that this shows that I am capable of learning it, even though I’m no longer able to learn it since I already have. But you would say that I’m not capable of learning it by virtue of the fact that I already know it. Does this make sense? Did I lose a capability that I once had as a result of learning calculus? It seem to me that I haven’t changed in terms of cognitive capabilities (or if anything my cognitive capabilities have increased); all that’s changed is that I now know something I didn’t know before.

(2) I agree basically with curbyIII that the fact that someone will certainly not do something doesn’t mean that he isn’t free to do it.

The best way to see this is to recall that the concept of “free will” is intimately related to the concept of moral responsibility: a person cannot be morally responsible for an act unless he acted freely in doing it. But if we combine this with the notion that a person didn’t act freely if he was certain to act as he did (i.e., he would always act in the way he did under circumstances that are essentially the same), we get some very paradoxical results.

For example, suppose that Smith and Jones both find a wallet lying on the sidewalk with a considerable amount of cash in it, but also with identification that would make it very simple to contact the owner. It seems clear in both cases that they can keep the money with no one being the wiser if they choose. Smith returns the wallet and the money, but Jones keeps the money and throws the wallet away.

Now we would certainly want to say, at least ordinarily, that Smith’s act is worthy of praise and Jones’s worthy of blame. Are there circumstances where we wouldn’t say this?

Well, yes. If we’ve observed Smith and Jones in this kind of situation many times before and noticed that both of them decide totally randomly whether to keep the money or return it, we would be inclined to treat both actions the same. The fact that one returned the money and the other kept it does not reflect any significant difference between them, it just reflects the fact that one happened (purely at random) to be in a state that disposed him to return the money while the other was equally randomly in a state that disposed him to keep it.

This shows that we are really praising and blaming is not the actions themselves, but the different characters which they are presumed to reflect. As soon as we realize that they do not reflect different characters, we have no reason to treat them differently.

Now suppose that Smith’s character is so robust that he is almost certain to return the money, while Jones’s is so corrupt that he is almost certain to keep it. In that case there is no doubt that Smith's act deserves praise while Jones’s deserves blame. This is true whether by “almost” we mean that the odds are one in a thousand of either of them acting differently, or one in a million, or one in a trillion.

But now suppose that Smith’s character is even more sterling – that he is a man of such incorruptibility and integrity that he is certain to return the money, whereas Jones’s character is so debased that he is certain to keep it. (Certainty of this kind is probably impossible in this world, but that’s irrelevant.) Would we now say that Smith’s act is not worthy of praise and that Jones’s is not worthy of blame? That doesn’t seem to make any sense. If we praise a virtuous act because it is presumed to reflect a virtuous character, why would we refuse to praise a virtuous act on the grounds that it reflects a perfectly virtuous character? Or if we blame an act because it presumably reflects a debased character, why would we refuse to blame an act on the grounds that it arises from a completely debased character?

Yet this is just what we shall be forced to say if we accept your principle. Since Smith was certain to return the money, you will say, he did not act freely in returning it, and hence is not morally responsible for his act, and so is not deserving of praise. Similarly, since Jones was certain to keep the money, he did not act freely, hence is not morally responsible for his act, and so is not deserving of blame.

These implications of your principle are so ridiculous that it seems to me that we have no choice but to reject it in order to avoid falling into total absurdity.

Normal

An omnipotent god using an ability to become more powerful is logically incoherent, whether it be learning, "body building", or playing Playstation.

Ah I see. The problem with the McEar example is then that scratching his nose doesn't measure against any kind of objective scale. If god exists, there must be an objective scale of morality, and he must only perform good, doing otherwise would be a sign of deficancy. McEar can only scratch his nose, but doing this is neither a sign of deficancy nor a sign of power, so he is not omnipotent, he just is.

That would be a subjective stance on the property of existence. All of his body still exists, in some form.

Thomas Metcalf

bd-from-kg :

Thanks for all your comments. Yours is a good example of the right way to object to my argument. Of course, I can't fully agree with any of your objections, but they're presented "correctly"...

Yes, that's what I'm talking about.

Compatibilist Freedom

There are instances in which someone causes someone to do something unfreely, and instances in which someone causes someone to do something freely. Let the first case be "unfree weak actualization" or UWA, and the second case be "free weak actualization" or FWA. God can only bring about L via UWA, and I can bring about L via FWA or via UWA. So there is a logically possible bring-about-able state of affairs L*: "L is brought about via FWA." God cannot bring about L*, while I can.

Constrained Abilities

Putting people into certain situations constrains their abilities. I don't think anyone could disagree with that. Every time you wanted to eat a donut, you would fail. If someone held a gun to your head and said "Eat a donut or I'll kill you," you'd be screwed. And the event "You eat a donut" would never, ever happen, no matter what you did. That's why I'd say you don't have the ability to perform "to eat a donut," or at least to bring about "a donut is eaten by me."

Suppose there were a switch in my apartment by the kitchen sink, and I thought it was a garbage disposal control but it didn't turn the garbage disposal on or off. Instead, it turned out to be very powerful: it paralyzed God completely. Suppose I turned on the switch and left it on. Wouldn't God cease to be omnipotent? He'd still have the "capability" to perform all sorts of actions, but his "ability" would be totally constrained by an alethically contingent situation. In fact, suppose the switch had been left on for all eternity, and would always be on. Suppose it were alethically necessarily on. In this case, my intuitions, at least, say God wouldn't be omnipotent.

When we talk about this in terms of states of affairs, I think the intuitions lean toward my position. Do you think you have the ability, right now, to bring about the state of affairs "bd-from-kg learns calculus"?

Certainty

Suppose God wanted to choose to do evil. He could never satisfy this desire. And it seems like a permanently unsatisfiable desire indicates semipotence. You seem to be rejecting my definition of capability, because my definition (requires a possible world in which a being with S's properties performs T) yields the result that God is incapable of doing evil. What's your definition of capability?

Your example of a morally perfect person is an interesting one. I'd say Smith did freely return the money -- but she didn't have the power to refrain from returning the money. She was a slave to her permanently good moral character. Unless LFW is true, she was still "free" to refrain from returning the money. A person who is completely morally corrupt, and will never, ever, do good, seems to me to be semipotent as well. She could never choose to do good, and this seems to be to be a genuine lack of power.

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Normal :

I agree, but I don't understand how this is an objection. I can use my ability to become more powerful. So there's something else an omnipotent being can't do. (I don't think this should be a limitation on omnipotence, as it happens, because no omnipotent being could have this ability.)

Then what's your definition of omnipotent? How is the power to do evil importantly different from the power to scratch one's nose?

Is it possible to cause oneself to cease to exist?

Normal

But using abilities like learning, forgetting, weight training, atrophy, all have to do with fluctuations of power. It is logically impossible for an omnipotent being to have any kind of "fluctuation" of power.

God being forced to do only good is based on the objective system of morality "forcing" him to do good because doing otherwise would be a sign of deficany and contradict his omnipotence. McEar scratching his ear is a logical state of affairs, but so is McEar scratching his nose, the fact he cannot bring about both logical states of affairs means he is not omnipotent.

No, it is only possible to cause oneself to die. The only thing you can "end" is your ability to be alive. If you want to say god can commit suicide you have to show he has the properties that would constitute him being "alive", in the sense you are talking about.