Incommensurability, incomparability, and God's choice of a world
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 69 (2):91-102 (2011)
| Abstract | Anselmian theism holds that there necessarily exists a being, God, who is essentially unsurpassable in power, knowledge, goodness, and wisdom. This being is also understood to be the creator and sustainer of all that is. In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, this role is generally understood as follows: God surveys the array of possible worlds, and in his wisdom selects exactly one for actualization, based on its axiological properties. In this paper, I discuss an under-appreciated challenge for this account of the Anselmian God’s selection of a world. In particular, I urge that there are failures of comparability between various possible worlds, and I argue that, given certain assumptions, these failures threaten the rationality of God’s choice of a world. To the extent that rationality is deemed necessary for unsurpassability, this result also challenges the core Anselmian notion that God is an unsurpassable being | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesKlaas J. Kraay (2007). Divine Unsurpassability. Philosophia 35 (3-4):293-300.
Klaas J. Kraay (2006). God and the Hypothesis of No Prime Worlds. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 59 (1):49-68.
Klaas J. Kraay (2009). Can God Choose a World at Random? In Yujin Nagasawa & Erik J. Wielenberg (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan.
Paul Tidman (1993). The Epistemology of Evil Possibilities. Faith and Philosophy 10 (2):181-197.
Jesse R. Steinberg (2007). Leibniz, Creation and the Best of All Possible Worlds. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 62 (3):123 - 133.
Klaas J. Kraay (2011). Theism and Modal Collapse. American Philosophical Quarterly 48:361-72.
Klaas J. Kraay (2010). Theism, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse. Philosophical Studies 147 (3).
Wes Morriston (2001). Omnipotence and the Anselmian God. Philo 4 (1):7-20.
Klaas J. Kraay (2008). Creation, Actualization and God's Choice Among Possible Worlds. Philosophy Compass 3 (4):854-872.
Yujin Nagasawa (2008). A New Defence of Anselmian Theism. Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233):577-596.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads25 ( #49,575 of 549,067 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,185 of 549,067 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
