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    If compatibilism is true, then God's acting in the best w... — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
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    If compatibilism is true, then God's acting in the best way in every possible world does not undermine the freedom or moral assessability of God's actions.

    Divine AttributesFree Will & Foreknowledge
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    1 reason for
    2 reasons against

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.There is no possible world in which God acts in any way other than the best way.
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    • 2.Compatibilism holds that freedom does not require the ability to act otherwise with all circumstances held constant.
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    • 3.An action can be free and subject to moral assessment even if only one outcome is genuinely possible at the point of action, provided compatibilist conditions are met.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Compatibilist freedom requires that an agent's action flows from her own desires and character, not from external compulsion or necessitation by factors outside the agent.
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    • 2.If God's nature necessarily determines every action God performs, God's will is necessitated by metaphysical features not chosen by God, paralleling external compulsion.
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    • 3.Therefore, divine necessary goodness satisfies compatibilism only if necessary nature counts as 'internal,' but this begs the question against libertarians who deny necessitated will is ever truly internal.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Moral praiseworthiness, as argued by Kant and later Fischer, requires that the agent could have responded to reasons favoring a different course of action.
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    • 2.An agent who cannot, in any possible world, respond to reasons favoring a suboptimal action lacks the reasons-responsiveness that grounds genuine moral assessment.
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    • 3.God's necessary perfect goodness, on standard Anselmian accounts, rules out any possible world where God responds to reasons for less-than-best action, undermining the reasons-responsiveness condition even compatibilists like Fischer treat as necessary.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesFree Will & Foreknowledge

    Connections

    2 topics

    Moral Responsibility2 linkedAgainst an attribute of God1 linked

    Related

    An action can be free and subject to moral assessment even if only one outcome i...An agent who cannot, in any possible world, respond to reasons favoring a subopt...Compatibilism holds that freedom does not require the ability to act otherwise w...Compatibilist freedom requires that an agent's action flows from her own desires...
    +5 moreShow less
    God's necessary perfect goodness, on standard Anselmian accounts, rules out any ...If God's nature necessarily determines every action God performs, God's will is ...

    Similar

    If compatibilism is true, then the fact that God cannot act otherwise ...89%God's inability to choose to do wrong does not undermine God's freedom...85%An action can be free and subject to moral assessment even if only one...85%Source compatibilism holds that free will is grounded in the agent bei...84%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: perfect-goodness
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    There are various ways to resist this argument. Many compatibilists about free will deny that this sort of ability to do otherwise is a requirement on freedom; even if they insist on there being some possibility of the agent’s acting otherwise given some alternative possible set of desires, they do not hold that at the point of action, with all held constant, it must be possible for the agent to act otherwise. (See the entry on compatibilism.) So given compatibilism, we cannot object that God
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Moral praiseworthiness, as argued by Kant and later Fischer, requires that the a...
    There is no possible world in which God acts in any way other than the best way.
    Therefore, divine necessary goodness satisfies compatibilism only if necessary n...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit