How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World

Abstract

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

Leibniz, creation and the best of all possible worlds

“…However, the Howard-Snyders deny this intuition and argue that Thor's supposed moral 13 See Howard-Snyder (1994). Page references are to (1994).…”

Modalidade e o melhor dos mundos possíveis: Leibniz, Aquino, e a discussão contemporânea

“…Strickland parte das próprias declarações de Leibniz de que o melhor dos mundos possíveis é "aquele 24 A ideia Leibniziana de que este é o melhor dos mundos possíveis é concebida como uma resposta para o problema do mal (isto é, da suposta dificuldade que a existência de mal no mundo colocaria para a existência de um ser onipotente, onisciente e onibenevolente) em seu livro Teodiceia. 25 Ver, por exemplo, BLUMMENFELD, 1975;HASKER, 1984;GROVER, 1988;GROVER, 1998;GROVER, 1999;HOWARD-SNYDER, 1994;HOWARD-SNYDER, 1996;GROVER, 2004;KRAAY, 2007;KRAAY, 2008;LANGTRY, 2008. 26 Ver, por exemplo, KRAAY, 2008.…”

Freedom with a Human Face

“…William Rowe (1993) departs from the argument in the text at just this point, seeing the makings of an argument that there cannot be an absolutely perfect creator. Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder (1994) reply that, since it is inevitable that for any creative act, there will be infinitely many better choices, an arbitrary choice of a sufficiently good universe would not be deficient. You can't ask the impossible, even of a perfect being.…”