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    An omnipotent agent ought not to be required to have the ... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    An omnipotent agent ought not to be required to have the power to bring about state of affairs (f).

    Divine Attributes
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    2 reasons against

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.State of affairs (f) is identifiable with or analyzable as a conjunctive state of affairs with three conjuncts: (1) Plato decides to write a dialogue, (2) there is no antecedent sufficient causal condition of Plato's deciding to write a dialogue, and (3) there is no concurrent sufficient causal condition of Plato's deciding to write a dialogue.
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    • 2.It is impossible for an agent to have power over what is past.
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    • 3.Because it is impossible for an agent to have power over what is past, the second conjunct of this state of affairs is not possibly brought about by anyone.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
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    • 1.Conjunct (2) is not a state of affairs to be 'brought about' but rather an absence of causation, which is a relational property of the total causal history.
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    • 2.An omnipotent agent who timelessly creates the entire causal order can determine, by creative decree, which events lack antecedent sufficient conditions within that order.
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    • 3.If God timelessly ordains the complete causal structure of history, the absence of a prior sufficient cause for Plato's decision is itself within God's creative power, not beyond it.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Frankfurt-style cases show that an agent can act freely even when a counterfactual intervener would have ensured the same outcome, undermining the tight link between causal absence and freedom.
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    • 2.If libertarian free will does not require the absence of all sufficient causal conditions but only the absence of compulsive or determining external causes, conjunct (2) is either false or redundant.
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    • 3.A state of affairs wrongly analyzed as requiring causal absence does not impose a genuine logical limit on omnipotence; it merely reflects a contested and potentially mistaken theory of freedom.
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    Topics

    Divine Attributes

    Related

    A state of affairs wrongly analyzed as requiring causal absence does not impose ...An omnipotent agent ought not to be required to have the power to bring about a ...An omnipotent agent who timelessly creates the entire causal order can determine...Because it is impossible for an agent to have power over what is past, the secon...
    +6 moreShow less
    Conjunct (2) is not a state of affairs to be 'brought about' but rather an absen...Frankfurt-style cases show that an agent can act freely even when a counterfactu...If God timelessly ordains the complete causal structure of history, the absence ...If libertarian free will does not require the absence of all sufficient causal c...It is impossible for an agent to have power over what is past.State of affairs (f) is identifiable with or analyzable as a conjunctive state o...

    Similar

    An omnipotent agent is not required to be able to bring about impossib...94%An omnipotent agent ought not to be required to have the power to brin...93%For the same reason that an omnipotent agent is not required to bring ...90%There can be contingent states of affairs that an omnipotent agent is ...85%

    Source

    AI-extracted
    SEP: omnipotence
    View source passageHide passage
    Lastly, although (f) is unrestrictedly repeatable, (f) is another type of complex state of affairs. In particular, it is identifiable with or analyzable as a conjunctive state of affairs. This state of affairs has three conjuncts, the second of which is not possibly brought about by anyone. The conjunctive state of affairs in question can be informally expressed as follows: Plato decides to write a dialogue; and there is no antecedent sufficient causal condition of Plato’s deciding to write a dialogue; and there is no concurrent sufficient causal condition of Plato’s deciding to write a dialog...

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit