Advertisement
Guest User

Untitled

a guest
Feb 23rd, 2020
129
0
Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 2.85 KB | None | 0 0
  1. 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.
  2.  
  3. Plantiga :
  4. "Those who worship God do not think of him as a being that happens to be of
  5. surpassing excellence in this world but who in some other worlds is powerless or
  6. uninformed or of dubious moral character. We might make a distinction here
  7. between greatness and excellence; we might say that the excellence of a being in a given
  8. world W depends only upon its . . . properties in W, while its greatness in W depends
  9. not merely upon its excellence in W, but also upon its excellence in other worlds. The
  10. limiting degree of greatness, therefore, would be enjoyed in a given world W only by a
  11. being who had maximal excellence in W and in every other possible world as well." (The Nature of Necessity, 214)
  12.  
  13. Maximal greatness therefore is maximal excellence in every possible world,
  14. and it is maximal greatness, not just maximal excellence, that is equivalent
  15. to divinity or Godhead. Anything that possesses maximal greatness must
  16. exist in every possible world, because in a world in which it does not exist it
  17. does not possess any properties. If it is possible for maximal greatness to be
  18. instantiated, then it is instantiated in every world. If so, then it is instantiated
  19. in our world, the actual world; that is to say, Godhead is instantiated and God exists.
  20.  
  21. Plantinga’s argument obviously depends on the coherence of the apparatus
  22. of possible worlds, and on a solution having been found to the
  23. problem of transworld identity. He believes that he has found such a
  24. solution, and he presents it at considerable length in his book. But it
  25. should also be remarked that in the case of a possible God, rather than
  26. of a possible human, the problem does not seem so pressing; it seems
  27. foolish to put to Plantinga the question, ‘Which God are you proving the
  28. existence of ?’ It remains the case, however, as Plantinga himself points out,
  29. that the whole argument depends on the truth of the premiss that it is
  30. possible for maximal greatness to be exemplified—that is to say, in his
  31. terms, that it is exemplified in some possible world.
  32.  
  33. ...Plantinga’s reinstatement of the argument, using logical techniques more modern
  34. than any available to Russell, serves as a salutary warning of the danger
  35. that awaits any historian of logic who declares a philosophical issue
  36. definitively closed.
  37. From : Kenny, A., & Kenny, W. A. (2007). Philosophy in the modern world: A new history of Western philosophy (Vol. 4). Oxford University Press.
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement