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- Daniel Howard-Snyder (1994). How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World. Faith and Philosophy 11 (2):260-268.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 knowledgable. 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. (We 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.No categoriesReading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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One historically significant model of God holds that God is a perfect being. Analytic philosophers of religion have typically understood this to mean that God is essentially unsurpassable in power, knowledge, goodness, and wisdom. Recently, however, several philosophers have argued that this is inconsistent with another common theistic position: the view that for any world that God can create, there is a better world that God could have created instead. The argument runs (roughly) as follows: if, no matter which world God creates, there’s a better creatable one, then God’s action in creating a world is necessarily surpassable. And if God’s action in creating a world is necessarily surpassable, then God is necessarily surpassable. If this argument is sound, it reveals a serious flaw in an important model of God. In what follows, I set out this argument, and I then distinguish and evaluate four replies.
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| | Other links: digitalcommons.ryerson.ca springerlink.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.
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| | Other links: yujinnagasawa.com jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... 14. Forthcoming. 'The Best of All Possible Worlds' (PDF file) (with Campbell Brown), Synthese (Kluwer). The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... There are three possible situations regarding createable possible worlds: (1) there is a best possible world of that sort; (2) there are two or more unsurpassably good worlds of that sort; (3) there is an infinite series of significantly and increasingly better possible createable worlds. Rowe argues that if (1) is true then, if God exists, he does not deserve our praise or gratitude for doing what he could not fail to do, namely, create the best possible world. With this I agree. He argues that if (2) is true, then God does not deserve our praise or gratitude either, because it did not matter which of these worlds he created. I disagree with Rowe here arguing that we can be grateful for being alive even if there is an equally good possible world where we do not exist. Rowe also argues that if (3) were true, God could not exist, for (3) would allow that there is some being greater than God, which is impossible. I also disagree with Rowe about what follows from (3): God could not create the worst of the best worlds in the infinite series of increasingly better worlds, but he could create some extremely good world in that series without that possibility implying that there could be some being greater than God.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Jove, an essentially omnipotent, essentially omniscient and morally good being, faced with a choice of which world to create (where for any he might create there is a better) randomly selects no. 777. Is he, therefore, morally surpassable? William Rowe says “yes”. For Thor, an essentially omnipotent and essentially omniscient being in Jove’s predicament who does not randomly create but selects no. 888 because he is prepared to select no world less than no. 888, has a degree of moral goodness that exceeds Jove’s. By exploring two options---either Thor has a reason for being so prepared or he doesn’t---we question the coherency of Rowe’s Thor.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... In “How an Unsurpassable Being can Create a Surpassable World,” Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder employ a fascinating thought experiment in anattempt to show that a morally unsurpassable being can create a surpassable world. Imagine that for each positive integer there is a world that a good,omnipotent, omniscient being can create. Jove randomly selects a number and creates the corresponding world; Thor simply creates world 888. The Howard-Snyders argue that it is logically possible that Jove is morally unsurpassable. William Rowe counters that Thor morally surpasses Jove, thus contradictingthe claim that Jove is morally unsurpassable. Does either Jove or Thor morally surpass the other? How do their strategies compare? Could a morally unsurpassable being employ Jove’s strategy? The purpose of this paper is to answer these questions.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest that it is possible for an omnipotent being, Jove, to create randomly a world from a continuum of ever more perfect possible worlds. They then go on to argue that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable despite creating a surpassable world. I raise a number of problems for the view that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable when he creates (randomly or not) a surpassable world.
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| | Other links: jessesteinberg.com jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder suggest that it is possible for an omnipotent being, Jove, to create randomly a world from a continuum of ever more perfect possible worlds. They then go on to argue that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable despite creating a surpassable world. I raise a number of problems for the view that Jove could be characterized as morally unsurpassable when he creates (randomly or not) a surpassable world.
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| | Scholar | More options ... Discussion of Daniel Howard-Snyder, How an Unsurpassable Being Can Create a Surpassable World
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