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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that An omnibenevolent being and an omnipotent being cannot be identical, because their properties conflict.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.An omnibenevolent being would be impeccable and thus incapable of wrongdoing.
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    • 2.An omnipotent being would be capable of doing things that would be wrong to do.
      ?

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    • 3.A being cannot be both incapable of wrongdoing and capable of wrongdoing simultaneously.
      ?

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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Omnipotence, on the Anselmian view, entails the power to actualize any logically possible state of affairs, including states involving great evil.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Omnibenevolence, as analyzed by Adams and Zagzebski, entails a motivational structure that makes acting evilly not merely unlikely but constitutively impossible for the agent.
      ?

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    • 3.A being whose motivational constitution renders evil impossible lacks the power to actualize evil states through its own agency, contradicting the Anselmian omnipotence requirement.
      ?

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    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Harry Frankfurt's analysis of free will shows that genuine agential power requires the ability to act on first-order desires that conflict with higher-order volitions.
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    • 2.An omnibenevolent being, by the account defended by Eleonore Stump, has perfectly unified will such that no first-order desire toward evil can arise, eliminating the motivational plurality Frankfurt's account requires for full agential power.
      ?

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    • 3.Therefore, the perfectly unified will constitutive of omnibenevolence structurally precludes the unrestricted agential power that omnipotence demands, making the two attributes incompatible in a single being.
      ?

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