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- Plantinga has offered a sophisticated restatement of the ontological argument. @h@ In a simplified version his revision goes like this. Let us begin by defining the property of maximal excellence, a property that includes omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. Obviously God, if he exists, has maximal excellence in the actual world. But maximal excellence is not sufficient for Godhead: we need to consider worlds other than this one.
- Plantiga :
- "Those who worship God do not think of him as a being that happens to be of
- surpassing excellence in this world but who in some other worlds is powerless or
- uninformed or of dubious moral character. We might make a distinction here
- between greatness and excellence; we might say that the excellence of a being in a given
- world W depends only upon its . . . properties in W, while its greatness in W depends
- not merely upon its excellence in W, but also upon its excellence in other worlds. The
- limiting degree of greatness, therefore, would be enjoyed in a given world W only by a
- being who had maximal excellence in W and in every other possible world as well." (The Nature of Necessity, 214)
- Maximal greatness therefore is maximal excellence in every possible world,
- and it is maximal greatness, not just maximal excellence, that is equivalent
- to divinity or Godhead. Anything that possesses maximal greatness must
- exist in every possible world, because in a world in which it does not exist it
- does not possess any properties. If it is possible for maximal greatness to be
- instantiated, then it is instantiated in every world. If so, then it is instantiated
- in our world, the actual world; that is to say, Godhead is instantiated and God exists.
- Plantinga’s argument obviously depends on the coherence of the apparatus
- of possible worlds, and on a solution having been found to the
- problem of transworld identity. He believes that he has found such a
- solution, and he presents it at considerable length in his book. But it
- should also be remarked that in the case of a possible God, rather than
- of a possible human, the problem does not seem so pressing; it seems
- foolish to put to Plantinga the question, ‘Which God are you proving the
- existence of ?’ It remains the case, however, as Plantinga himself points out,
- that the whole argument depends on the truth of the premiss that it is
- possible for maximal greatness to be exemplified—that is to say, in his
- terms, that it is exemplified in some possible world.
- ...Plantinga’s reinstatement of the argument, using logical techniques more modern
- than any available to Russell, serves as a salutary warning of the danger
- that awaits any historian of logic who declares a philosophical issue
- definitively closed.
- From : Kenny, A., & Kenny, W. A. (2007). Philosophy in the modern world: A new history of Western philosophy (Vol. 4). Oxford University Press.
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