This seems coherent: a morally unsurpassable and omnipotent being (Jove) is faced with a choice of which world to actualize where for any he might actualize there is a better. He creates a device that randomly selects from amongst the worlds he can actualize. The world that is chosen is, of course, surpassable, and yet, he seems not. We defend this conclusion against three versions of the claim that since someone could produce a world which surpassed Jove's, that being could morally surpass Jove. The first is that a superior being confronted with Jove's choice would not create at all; the second is that he would use Jove's device and it would select a superior world; the third is that he would create a superior world without using Jove's device. We argue that none of these ways of behaving would show that he was morally superior to Jove. Imagine that there exists a good, essentially omniscient and omnipotent being named Jove, and that there exists nothing else. No possible being is more powerful or knowledgeable. Out of his goodness, Jove decides to create. Since he is all-powerful, there is nothing but the bounds of possibility to prevent him from getting what he wants. Unfortunately, as he holds before his mind the host of worlds, Jove sees that for each there is a better one. Although he can create any of them, he can't create the best of them because there is no best. Faced with this predicament, Jove first sorts the worlds according to certain criteria. For example, he puts on his left worlds in which some inhabitants live lives that aren't worth living and on his right worlds in which every inhabitant's life is worth living; he puts on his left worlds in which some horrors fail to serve an outweighing good and on his right worlds in which no horror fails to serve an outweighing good. CWe encourage the reader to use her own criteria.) Then he orders the right hand worlds according to their goodness and assigns to each a positive natural number, the worst of the lot receiving '1,' the second worst '2,' and so on. Next, he creates a very intricate device that, at the push of a button, will randomly select a number and produce the corresponding world. Jove pushes the button; the device hums and whirs and, finally, its digital display reads '777': world no. 777 comes into being. We see no incoherence in this story. Now, consider the proposition that Jove is not only good but essentially unsurpassably good. Suppose we add

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Objective consequentialism is often criticized because it is impossible to know which of our actions will have the best consequences. Why exactly does this undermine objective consequentialism? I offer a new link between the claim that our knowledge of the future is limited and the rejection of objective consequentialism: that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ and we cannot produce the best consequences available to us. I support this apparently paradoxical contention by way of an analogy. I cannot beat Karpov at chess in spite of the fact that I can make each of many series of moves, at least one of which would beat him. I then respond to a series of objections. In the process I develop an account of the ‘can’ of ability. I conclude with some remarks about the bearing this attack has on subjective consequentialism.

Some philosophers have argued that value and modality might be such that even God, an omnipotent being, could be forced into a tragic dilemma where every available choice is wrong, and hence fail to be morally perfect. The short story, “Time of Trial,” imagines a young man, Seth, who, through no fault of his own, is forced into an intolerably difficult moral situation. If tragic choices imply that moral perfection is impossible, then Seth must act wrongly and lose his moral integrity. If not, then perhaps God can be the morally best possible being (perfect) even in such a universe.