In Defence of No Best World

Australasian Journal of Philosophy (4):811-825 (2020)
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Abstract

Recent work in the philosophy of religion has resurrected Leibniz’s idea that there is a best possible world, perhaps ours. In particular, Klaas Kraay’s [2010] construction of a theistic multiverse and Nevin Climenhaga’s [2018] argument from infinite value theory are novel defenses of a best possible world. I do not think that there is a best world, and show how both Kraay and Climenhaga may be resisted. First, I argue that Kraay’s construction of a theistic multiverse can be resisted from plausible assumptions about set theory. Next, I argue against the value-theoretic assumptions that underlie Climenhaga’s argument and show how to give an infinite value theory where there is no best world.

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Daniel Rubio
Toronto Metropolitan University

Citations of this work

God and gratuitous evil: Between the rock and the hard place.Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 94 (3):317-345.
Intrinsically Good, God Created Them.Daniel Rubio - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion.
How Valuable Could a Person Be?Joshua Rasmussen & Andrew M. Bailey - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (2):264-277.
Death's Shadow Lightened.Daniel Rubio - 2021 - In Sara Bernstein & Tyron Goldschmidt (eds.), Non-Being: New Essays on the Metaphysics of Nonexistence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 310-328.

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References found in this work

Modal Logic as Metaphysics.Timothy Williamson - 2013 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Primitive thisness and primitive identity.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1979 - Journal of Philosophy 76 (1):5-26.
Surreal Decisions.Eddy Keming Chen & Daniel Rubio - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (1):54-74.
Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity.Robert Merrihew Adams - 2004 - In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: a guide and anthology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Indeterminism and the Thin Red Line.Nuel Belnap & Mitchell Green - 1994 - Philosophical Perspectives 8:365 - 388.

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