God, Conceivability, and Necessary Goodness

It is a basic principle of logic that if S entails B and necessarily S, then necessarily B. So, if it is true that God, an omnipotent and omniscient being, is necessarily good, and a good God would not allow a world to exist where there is more evil than good, then necessarily there cannot exist a world where more evil exists than good. Theodore Guleserian has a problem with this. He argues that we can easily conceive of a world where more evil than good exists. He says:

Think of a world, we will call it 'B' in which the only sentient beings whose existence is contingent are non-rational animals of various sorts or are sentient beings a good deal like the higher non-rational animals in our world - all of which suffer long spontaneous bouts of excruciating pain, and spend the few hours between bouts barely doing what is necessary to survive. We can draw the picture as detailed as we like: in this world, mutations do not take place, so the species to which these animals belong do not evolve. Perhaps they exist for an infinite stretch of time. And during this eternity they never experience anything we would call pleasure - only relief from pain. Pain-avoidance and other innate drives would be the only factors motivating their behaviour. (God and Possible Worlds: The Modal Problem of Evil, Nous, 1983)

Guleserian argues that given we can easily conceive of this world, it would appear that it is possible; there is, after all, nothing logically inconsistent about it. But this leaves us with the following options. Either (1) we say that an omniscient, omnipotent, and good (OOG) being would allow for a world where more evil than good exists, which entails that there is not one world that an OOG being would prevent, or (2) we say that a world with more evil than good is impossible, or (3) we deny that God is necessarily good.

To hold (1), he says, would go against our most fundamental moral intuitions and therefore should be rejected. We ought to reject (2) because we can conceive of a world where more evil exists than good, and it is in our basic intuition that what is conceivable is possible, at least in this case. We should accept (3) for it is the option that requires the least sacrifice on our basic intuitions: for even if we are convinced in the existence of God, and even that God is a OOG being, to reject that God has any of these attributes necessarily is not to reject that he has them at all, say contingently. 

I agree with Guleserian that (1) ought to be rejected. However, there are serious problems with his rejection of (2). Here is why.

First, Guleserian’s argument is founded upon the controversial idea that conceivability is a guide to possibility. This principle is popular amongst Cartesians who believe that the mind is separate from the body because one can conceive of thinking without a body - see Swinburne. But as pointed out by opponents of Cartesian dualism, how does the Cartesian know that he does not think this only because he poorly understands the mind? Like how someone with a poor grasp of a Euclidean triangles might think it possible for such a triangle to have angles that add up to something other than 180 degrees. Similarly, perhaps a greater understanding of God and good and evil would show that it is actually impossible. For this reason, I am of yet unsure if conceivability is a good guide to possibility.  

Second, the idea that God's existence makes a world with more evil than good impossible is not as counterintuitive as Guleserian claims. For contrary to Guleserian’s claims, many theists rely on the idea that an OOG being could not create a world with more evil than good to justify the very existence of evil, by appealing to sceptical theism. The sceptical theist response to evil argues that the reasons for why God allows suffering are beyond our ken. We are not in the epistemic position to judge the reasons that God might have for allowing the evil that he does. Nevertheless, we know that since He is good, and necessarily so, there must necessarily be good reasons for why He allows evil.

Third, if we believe that it is a great making property to be good rather than evil, then we have good reason to believe that God is necessarily good, despite what intuition may say otherwise. This reasoning being that the Ontological Argument proves that a maximally great being - a being that has all great making properties and no lesser making properties - exists necessarily. Guleserian anticipates this objection and argues that it is a weak argument as there are few supporters of the Ontological argument. However, this is just incorrect. The Ontological Argument is a well established and accepted argument within philosophical theology and has many supporters today, such as Plantinga and Craig, to mention a few. It is therefore not something that can be dismissed out of hand easily.

For these reasons, Guleserian’s argument is to be rejected. 

Hoffman on Why God Cannot be Contingently Omnibenevolent

In his paper ‘Can God do Evil?’ Joshua Hoffman puts forward a simple argument for why God must be necessarily omnibenevolent rather than contingently omnibenevolent. Hoffman begins his paper by noting that many philosophers and theologians have argued that God must be necessarily omnipotent. The reason for this being that if God was contingently omnipotent, then it is a mere contingency that He was able to create the universe, and it might have been the case that no universe at all was created. But, Hoffman argues, this would entail that there is no ultimate explanation of the universe or sufficient reason for the universe. Thus, the position that God is contingently omnipotent is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) and should be rejected; this is if we grant, as Hoffman does, that God must be omnipotent to create ex nihilo, and we accept the PSR.

Hoffman believes that a parallel can be forwarded to demonstrate that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent. His argument is that an omnibenevolent being seeks to bring about an optimal world - this being a world that is at least as good as any other possible world. Hence, if God was necessarily omnibenevolent, God necessarily creates an optimal world. However, if God is only contingently omnibenevolent, then it is only a ‘cosmic accident’ that God is ‘so well intentioned.’ And this again conflicts with the PSR and should hence be rejected. 

Hoffman’s account, however, is flawed. For any argument that attempts to apply PSR reasoning to God ought to be viewed with some suspicion. For suppose we say that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent in order to provide an explanation for why God must have created an optimal world; we are still left with unanswered questions as to why God chose to create a certain world over that of another. Even if an omnibenevolent God must create an optimal world, why, we can ask, does God create this particular optimal world over that of another? Why has he chosen to create a world where all things are as good as they can be and a leaf falls at t1 instead of an equally good world where a leaf falls at t2? There are a few options that can be proposed to answer this. (1) There is only one unsurpassable optimal world that has no rival. Therefore, there needs to be no explanation beyond God’s omnibenevolence why He created this one. (2) There is an explanation, but we cannot or do not yet know what it is. (3) There is no reason for why God chose for the leaf to fall at t1 instead of t2.

(1) seems highly implausible. It is difficult to see how a world where leaf falls a second later than a leaf in another world ceteris paribus can be less or more optimal. Any appeal to chaos theory (the idea that small things can effect massive change, like the flapping of a butterflies wings causing perturbations in the atmosphere that can cause a tornado across the globe) is negated by the fact that God had to choose between the world ending at t1 or a millisecond later at t2; in this case there is no time for chaos theory to have effect. However, if either (2) or (3) are accepted, then a problem arises for Hoffman’s theory. If (2) is correct, then the person who believes that God is only contingently omnibenevolent can argue that there is a reason for why God is ‘so well intentioned’, it is just that we do not or cannot know what this reason is. If (3) is correct, then he can likewise say that there is no reason for why God is so well intentioned. 

Given that (1) is implausible and it would be inconsistent to hold to (2) or (3) in the case of God choosing between optimal worlds but not in the case of why He chooses an optimal world, Hoffman’s argument is to be rejected.  

Is God Greater if He is Only Contingently Good?

Avak A. Howsepian, in his paper 'Is God Necessarily Good?', argues that it is greater for God to be contingently good than necessarily good. The reason given for this by Howsepian is that a contingently good being is able to do more good acts than a necessarily good being. To demonstrate this, Howsepian defines two ways that one can do a good action: first, one can do a good action by directly performing that action, and second, one can do a good action by choosing to refrain from doing evil. So, to give the example provided by Howsepian, Fiske may do a good action by choosing to feed the hungry but may also do a good act by choosing to refrain from gluttony. Howbeit, Howsepian argues that we can only refrain from doing a good action if there is a possibility to do otherwise and we know that there is a possibility to do otherwise: I cannot intend to square a circle because I know that a square circle is impossible. A necessarily good being, therefore, cannot intend to refrain from evil because he would know that it is impossible for him; whereas a being who is only contingently good can, having the ability to be able to directly do a good action and do the good act of refraining from an evil. Howsepian says that the latter is clearly not as great as the former. Hence, God, should be conceived as a contingently good being rather than a necessary good being.

Howsepian’s analysis is faulty. Here is why. First, Howsepian’s argument is first predicated upon the idea that what makes God good is His possibility of doing good actions. But how does this make one any more good than a being who has not got the possibility of doing these good actions? For instance, it is possible that I be as good as the Apostle Paul, or John Wesley, or some other great saint. But this does not make me as good as them: the mere possibility of being as good as these saints does not entail that I am as good as them. Similarly, for a being to have the possibility to do more good actions than x does not show Him to be any more good than x. What it does show is that the being has the ability to do more things and is thus more omnipotent. We have already dealt with whether God’s goodness threatens his omnipotence here. 

Howsepian concedes this point and reformulates his argument. Howsepian writes: 

Of course, one could ask, why might one think that an appeal to a proper subset of possible good action types could be helpful in adjudicating the question of whether or not a necessarily omnipotent, necessarily omniscient, and contingently good being is more benevolent than a necessarily omniscient, and necessarily good being? The answer to this question can be most readily appreciated by further considering the truth of the following proposition: If G* is wholly good and G* can refrain from evil actions, then G* will refrain from evil actions.

We are now entering dangerous waters. We are no longer saying that God is good because He has the possibility to do good actions but because He does good actions. But this would make God’s goodness dependent upon creation (perish the thought!) as God can do more good actions in a universe where He chooses to create than in a universe where He does not choose to create. But it seems evident that a God who needs to depend upon His creation in order to be good is not maximally great. Howsepian has evidently made an error in his reasoning somewhere along the way.

Part of the problem is that Howsepian seems to think that God is to be called good in exactly the same way that we are to be called good. But this obviously cannot be the case. We are subject to moral commands and duties that we have to obey, and we call people good when they choose to follow these commands and duties. But on traditional theism, God is not under any moral commands or duties; for it is God who issues the commands and duties of morality, and it would be absurd to say that God commands Himself. If God is going to be called good in an identical manner to us, then the commands and duties of morality must come from something external to God, which He then becomes subject to. But not only does this sacrifice God on the altar of the Euthyphro Dilemma, it also seriously weakens the aseity of God. Whatever reason, then, we have for calling God good, it is not because He follows the commands and duties of morality. And it is here where Howsepian first errs. (I will address in a later blog post by what we mean when we call God good.)

But let us grant Howsepian his definition of what it means for God to be good. Because even if we do this, it is by no means clear that refraining from an action is a morally good action. It is true that we attach a certain praiseworthiness to when we refrain from an evil action; however, we only intend not do an evil act when weakness is involved: the drug abuser intends not to do the evil action of taking drugs because he is tempted towards that evil. I do not intend to refrain from drug taking. The thought does not cross my mind. I aim to live a healthy life, etc. and it follows from this that I do not take drugs. But for Howsepian this is not enough to count as actively refraining in a way that is praiseworthy. Howsepian argues that if I am absorbed in a game of chess, I might not be doing evil but I am not refraining from it. I need to be actively refraining for it to count. But this entails the absurd conclusion that the drug abuser who needs to be constantly refraining from taking drugs is more good than myself who does not need to refrain from drug taking, because I am not a drug abuser. Where Howsepian has gone wrong is that he has equivocated the praise that we give for achievement with moral praise. The reason we praise the drug abuser who has resisted the temptation to take drugs is because it was a difficult thing for him to do and not because he is to be morally praiseworthy. We can therefore deny that resisting evil is a morally praiseworthy act. 

Howsepain has thus not demonstrated that it is better for God to be contingently good than necessarily good.

A Sketchy Essay on ‘Must an Anselmian Being be Necessarily Loving?

Traditionally, it was agreed that an Anselmian being must be necessarily omnipotent, omniscience, and omnibenevolent. However, in recent philosophy there have been challenges to this notion. Atheist Philosopher Stephen Law maintains that God could just as easily have been evil than good, and that all the traditional arguments for God’s existence prove can be parodied to prove just as much an evil god than a good God. But is this true? Could God really be evil rather than good? I think not. 

To show this to be the case we need to consider the following points.

First, what does it mean to be an Anselmian being? 

Second, what is the nature of good and evil?

Third, given our answer to the second question, in what sense can God be said to be good or evil?

I will address each of these in turn - albeit, briefly. 

1.

An Anselmian being is to be defined as the greatest possible being conceivable, or the most perfect being, or the greatest of all possible beings. Hence, in order to come to an adequate conception of an Anselmian being we to some extent need to know what properties contribute to the greatness of an entity that exhibits them. Our search for a conception of an Anselmian being will set us on an adventure of foraging for properties that appear to contribute to the greatness of the entity that exhibits them. This will involve picking out properties that are regarded as intrinsically good and postulating what these properties amount to, all the while making sure that no imperfections have crept into our conception. 

In the past, it has been held that any property exhibited by God is held to its maximum extent. Hence, if it is good to have property Y, then an Anselmian being has property Y to the greatest possible extent. Some have been unhappy with this formulation and have instead proposed what has been termed the combination formulation. On this understanding, what makes God maximally great is that He has the best combination of properties possible. But on such a view it may be the case that God has one property to a lesser extent than it could be. For example, it may be believed that instantiating property Y to its greatest possible extent means that one cannot instantiate property B. Yet having property Y to a great, but not its greatest extent, means that one can. A supporter of the combination formulation might therefore argue that is greater for God to instantiate a property Y to a great, but not is maximal extent, in order that He may also instantiate property B, this being greater than just instantiating property Y to its maximal extent. 

There are, however, three concerns with the combination formulation. First, on any combination formulation, the question is raised as to why God has these properties in the way that He does. Suppose that we deduce that the greatest combination is to have the properties X, Y, and Z at different respective values. But we would be justified in asking why God has these properties at these values instead of, let’s says, more of X at the sacrifice of Y. It is important to note that we are asking the question here in a De Re and not a De Dicto fashion. Of course, it is meaningless to ask why beings defined as instantiating properties X, Y, Z at particular levels instantiate those properties at those levels. This would be a De Dicto question. But it not meaningless to ask why a particular being has the properties he does at those particular levels. This is a De Re question. The supporter of the combination formulation has to either shrug his shoulders and say that he does not know or find some explanation prior to God to explain why God’s attributes are so arranged in this particular way - which questions God’s as ‘ipsum esse subsistens’.

This problem does not arise for the traditionalist - there is no limit on any of God’s properties that he has to explain. Rather, all that he has to contend for is that for any property that is intrinsically good to have, God has this property and He is the absolute standard for that property. 

This leads us to own second concern; namely, that there could be a being who exhibits a property that is intrinsically good to a greater extent than God. This not only has the troubling implication that there could be a being who is greater in a good making property than God, but also seriously poses a challenge to those who are in any way inclined towards some form of Platonism whereby God is the ultimate substantiation of any good making property, from which all other things derive from and which all things are compared against as a standard. If God is no longer the yardstick for an intrinsically good property, then God is no longer the one setting the standard. This is a serious weakness for the combination position. 

The third problem is that the following three are all possible conclusions that can be drawn from the combination position. (1) It could be the case that there is a single possible peak of goodness that can only be exhibited by instantiating certain properties - again, let us say X, Y, and Z. (2) Alternatively, it could also be said that a multiplicity of good beings is possible - different combinations leading to an equal amount of goodness. (3) It might also be postulated that we cannot accurately measure goodness and there are possibly many multiple incommensurably beings. Both (2) and (3) again pose a challenge to God’s self-subsistence and idea that He is the sole and lone source of all goodness. Yet, there seems to be no strong reason to prefer (1) over (2) or (3). This problem, of course, cannot occur on the traditionalist model as there can only be one being who exhibits all intrinsically good properties to their maximum extent. 

For these three reasons the traditional Anselmian formulation is to be preferred. We now turn to our enquiry into the nature of good and evil. 

2.

It would be beyond this short essay to lay out every possible formulation of good and evil that there has been in philosophy. I will therefore a defend a formulation that has been popular in classical theism of the likes of Augustine and Aquinas - the idea that evil is a privation of something good. While this position, though classical held, has seen less popular support by certain modern philosophers today, there are good reasons to hold to this position. 

First, it accords well with how we naturally view good and evil. We say that something is evil or defective when it does not accord to how that thing is meant to be according to its nature. Thus, we say that a dog with three legs is experiencing evil in so far as he is not living up to what it is to be a dog - a four legged canine. Equally, a man born with a tail is considered to be a defective man in so much as he is not living up to what a man ought to be - a tailless homo-sapien. But the same is not true for a dog, for a dog without a tail is defective. Thus, in defining particular accounts of evil, we start with definition of what the thing experiencing evil should be and look for some defect against that definition that hinders it from achieving it. 

The same is said concerning moral duty. In a paper co-authored by Steuart Goetz and Bill Anglin (1982, IJfPoR), there are a few reasons suggested for how a moral evil can be a privation. One could side with Aquinas and say that moral sin is when the will is not subordinated to God. Sin is the abandoning of a higher good for a lower one, thus putting things out of order. Hence, moral evil is a privation of proper order. Alternatively, one could argue that moral evil is where there is some privation in terms of duty, such as the duty to respect and preserve life. Murder is a nonfulfillment of a duty to preserve life etc…

Second, the privation view of evil avoids the worrying conclusion that God is responsible for creating evil. The theist, especially the Christian theist, maintains that God is the creator of all things. He also wants to hold that God is not the creator of evil. The idea that evil is not a privation poses a problem to this, as this means that evil is something, and if this something is created, then God must be the creator of it. 

Third, related to the point above, the privation position on evil accords well with other metaphysical positions held by classical theists. Again, if one wishes to hold to any form of Platonism, then a non-privation view on evil poses a problem. For if God is the standard for all things, and evil exists, then God must be the standard for evil. But since there clearly exists good things, God must be the standard for goodness too. But this adds dualism into the nature of God and cannot be. Thus, the only alternative would be to hold to, as Augustine feared, Manichaean dualism.

Given these three reasons, the privation view of evil is not at all unconvincing. Indeed, it has supporters today and should not be dismissed out of hand as some whacky long gone theory of Aristotle. I will give a fuller and better defence of the privation account in a later blog post.

3.

With these positions established, in what sense can we say that God must necessarily be good? Since the privation view of evil argues that what is good is being - these two things being convertible, it can be argued that God is good because he is pure being and contains within Himself the ends of all things. However, this is not fully what we are looking for. We are still left with the question of why God must necessarily be loving. 

One might attempt to argue with Aquinas and say that God is loving by choosing to create and give being to creatures and things, as this is to give the creatures a good. So, to quote Aquinas:

God loves all existing things. For everything that exists is, as such, good, because the very existing of each thing is a certain good, as are each of its perfections. Now… God’s will is the cause of all things and… everything therefore has to be willed by God in so far as it has reality or any goodness at at all. So, God wills some good to every existing thing. Since loving is the same as willing something good, God clearly loves everything. (ST, 1.20.2)

Aquinas clarifies that:

Yet he does not love the things as we do. For since our will is not the cause of things being good, but responds to that goodness as to its objective, our love in willing good for something is not the cause of that goodness. Instead, its goodness (real of imagined) evokes the love by which we will for the thing both that it retains the goodness it has and that it gains goodness which it lacks, and we act so as to bring this about. But God’s love pours out and creates the goodness of things. (ST, 1.20.2)

While this shows that a God who has created is loving, we are still left with the question of what if God never created at all. Would God still have been loving then? And does not this run the risk of making God’s love dependent upon him creating creatures? The usual response to this is that one is not saying that God is loving because he creates but that His creation shows that he is loving. This is then furthered by an appeal to the metaphysical idea that effects look like their causes. And since the creation is good, God himself - the cause of creation - is good. While I think that these appeals have their merits, and will be be examined more in further blog posts, neither of these are the argument that I wish to pursue here. For there is perhaps one argument that given what we have said provides convincing reason for why we ought to consider God to be necessarily loving. 

This argument will begin by considering reasons for why God chooses to create. Now, there are some who say that it is wrong to speak of God acting for reasons. The justification for this line of thought is that we only have reasons when we want or desire something. Reasons lie in needs: we have a reason to brush our teeth because we want and need to keep them clean; we have a reason to leave the lecture early because we want to catch a train, and so on. God, however, does not have any wants or needs; He is fully satisfied within Himself. I will leave aside whether God has reasons for acting or not as an open question, although I am not entirely convinced about the relation made between reasons, wants and needs. Nevertheless, this problem might be avoided by distinguishing between reasons to act and reasons for acting. To give a quick example: to fulfil my desire to help others might be a reason to give to charity. But the reason for acting this way is because I am a loving person. 

With this in mind, we can begin to ask what reason God had for creating the world. Now, it might be said that what lead God to create the world was His love for His creatures; however, this would be wrong headed for the simple reason that it would put the creature before God. God cannot love that which is yet to exist, nor can it be that God creates to fulfil His need for love, or because he desired union with creatures, or wished to multiply the amount of good that existed in the world already. Neither of these options are tenable. For God desires and needs nothing and contains all the fullness of goodness within Himself. God’s creation does not multiply goodness. 

What, then, could explain God’s reason for creating the world? What has traditionally been concluded is that the reason for God creating is His love for Himself. God is His own end in His act of creating. This position is desirable for the following. First, it means that God is not moved to act on any reason but His own self. Second, if any end is worth aiming for a fully self-sufficient being, it is God’s own self and sufficient nature. Should God desire anything, then it is only worthy for Him to desire Himself. Third, we must imagine that whatever is valuable is what God aims for, and yet only God Himself is ultimately valuable. 

But why should God loving himself lead to the creation the universe? Well, as we saw previously, if we are to accept a privation position on evil, then there is an essence or nature of a thing that defines what it is to be that thing - an ideal or standard to which that thing aims for if you like. Now, since we cannot say that this exists within the objects upon earth - as temporal things are fleeting and temporally, we would have to put these within the mind of God Himself, as ideas that pre-existed the objects that they represent. Thus, in loving himself, God loves these ideas of His; and this somehow causes these ideas to be diffused in the act of creation. We might draw an analogy between how the sun, by shinning, illuminates all things. Similarly, pure love, through the act of loving, brings into ‘light’ the ideas that it focuses upon. 

Much of the plausibility of this theory comes from the fact that it is the best way to account for how an all sufficient, maximally great being could have a reason to create. For when engaging in perfect being theology, we should incline towards views of God and His nature that appear to maximise His greatness, unless compellingly contradicted by reason or Scripture. To give an example, if we consider it greater that a being have knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, we should be inclined to believe that God has this knowledge, unless this knowledge is shown to be impossible. 

So, if love for oneself is necessary for the creation of the world, then one has to be loving in order that He may create. This makes love - at least self-love - an intrinsically good property for God to have. But as we have already stated, any property that is intrinsically good is held by God to the greatest possible degree; God, therefore, has the property of love to the greatest possible degree and is necessarily omnibenevolent 

Such a parallel can not be maintained with an evil god; since what could draw the evil god to create? For it could not be evil god’s hatred for himself that causes him to create, for such a being would certainly not be great; nor, as we have seen, could it be creatures themselves for such creatures are yet to exist; neither could it be to fulfil evil god’s desire for hatred, as a maximally great being has no desires that need fulfilling. It seems, then, that the inability to draw such a parallel renders the coherency of an evil god as improbable.  

4.

To conclude, we have seen that if the privation position of evil and traditional Anselmianism is defended, then only a loving God is compatible with a fully self-sufficient being who has the ability to create the universe.