Samuel Clarke, one of the major historical proponents of the PSR Cosmological Argument! Rowe gives a good overview of his argument for omnibenevolence in his study of the Cosmological argument.

I am referring to the modal ontological argument which finds its first formulation in Anselm and it’s best historical articulation in good old Leibniz. From Plantinga’s work onwards plenty of theists defend it, classical or otherwise, it’s just doctrinaire Neo Thomists who have a grudge against it (plenty of analytical scholastics have defended it e.g. Davies, Lowe, Klima, Leftow, Pruss and Koons).

http://phiorg.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Lowe-1.pdf

As to whether it works without additional supplement I’d say it at least makes the likelihood of God’s existence equal to God’s conceptual coherence which we further clarify through conceptual analysis. There are amendments which attempt to prove the possibility premise which may work and I’d hold that modal perfection arguments do indeed succeed.

But the ontological argument and perfection being theology have been one of the oldest and most time honoured ways of arguing for Divine Goodness.

Last edited by DanielCC (4/29/2018 7:27 am)

Miguel wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

Hypatia wrote:

How so? If you are a moral nihilist, you could very easily stick to cosmological arguments and defend the existence of a necessary being who is beyond meaningless human concepts of good and evil.

Omniscience and omnipotence are pretty self-explanatory given classical theism, but I'm honestly still looking for good reasons to accept omnibenevolence. Or better reasons than a Kierkegaardian leap to faith, at least.

I think Clarke's argument for the why a necessary omnipotent being would not be immoral (because immorality springs from limitations in power or rationality) if agency were accepted is underated and under-discussed. It's big selling point is that it might not require one to commit to a specific moral theory beyond a very weak moral realism (that there are non-relative moral truths).

Also: people know the main argument for a perfect being - they are just poisoned against it by years of Thomist rhetoric (whether or not it succeeds is ultimately another matter but its success definitely does not require more controversial premises than the very specific accounts of hylemorphism, powers theory and existence many of the Five Ways rely upon).

I've given some arguments for divine goodness in a thread here that are somewhat similar to Clarke's. I think it's sound. Honestly, I think divine goodness is one of the easiest attributes to prove *provided we have shown God to be personal*. Problem of evil notwithstanding, I just think it's quite insane to think there could exist a maximally powerful, personal creator God who sustains us all in existence and *yet* that God is somehow not good or morally perfect. So I personally focus more on arguments for God's personhood/intellect/freedom etc.

I think this quote, however: "(the ontological argument's) success definitely does not require more controversial premises than the very specific accounts of hylemorphism, powers theory and existence many of the Five Ways rely upon" is quite absurd and rhetorical. I do agree the OA has been unfairly abused by thomists, but it just seems very exaggerated to me to suggest a direct argument for the possibility of a perfect being could be less (or just as) controversial as arguments in favor of hylemorphism, powers theory, and so on. .

No, I will re-affirm this. One doesn’t need the ontological argument as an alternative even as I was going to raise it as a wider point of why so few non-Thomist philosophers pay much attention to the Five Ways - it isn’t as pop atheists might have it that Anthony Kenny’s book destroyed the credibility of these arguments but that few philosophers reach all background metaphysics required independently.

If you were to say the background metaphysical requirements of the modal ontological argument are no less controversial than Powers theory say I might agree. It along with the whole array of other Thomist metaphysical stances however certainly not.

Compare if you would a simple first cause Cosmological argument (a version of the Second Way without the real distinction) - that would be on a level with the ontological argument, if not (maybe) simpler.

Last edited by DanielCC (4/29/2018 5:50 pm)

Miguel wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

Miguel wrote:

I've given some arguments for divine goodness in a thread here that are somewhat similar to Clarke's. I think it's sound. Honestly, I think divine goodness is one of the easiest attributes to prove *provided we have shown God to be personal*. Problem of evil notwithstanding, I just think it's quite insane to think there could exist a maximally powerful, personal creator God who sustains us all in existence and *yet* that God is somehow not good or morally perfect. So I personally focus more on arguments for God's personhood/intellect/freedom etc.

I think this quote, however: "(the ontological argument's) success definitely does not require more controversial premises than the very specific accounts of hylemorphism, powers theory and existence many of the Five Ways rely upon" is quite absurd and rhetorical. I do agree the OA has been unfairly abused by thomists, but it just seems very exaggerated to me to suggest a direct argument for the possibility of a perfect being could be less (or just as) controversial as arguments in favor of hylemorphism, powers theory, and so on. .

No, I will re-affirm this. One doesn’t need the ontological argument as an alternative even as I was going to raise it as a wider point of why so few non-Thomist philosophers pay much attention to the Five Ways - it isn’t as pop atheists might have it that Anthony Kenny’s book destroyed the credibility of these arguments but that few philosophers reach all background metaphysics required independently.

If you were to say the background metaphysical requirements of the modal ontological argument are no less controversial than Powers theory say I might agree. It along with the whole array of other Thomist metaphysical stances however certainly not.

Compare if you would a simple first cause Cosmological argument (a version of the Second Way without the real distinction) - that would be on a level with the ontological argument, if not (maybe) simpler.

 
"Few philosophers reach all the background metaphysics" could be, but at this point I am starting to take "most philosophers" less and less seriously. The history of analytic philosophy definitely shows that most anglo-american philosophers are prone to believing in absurd bullshit (logical positivism; behaviorism; reductivism; brute facts; scientism; compatibilism and overall rejection of libertarian free will; I won't even mention logical revisionism) while unfairly rejecting decent arguments. The record isn't pretty at all.

True, but the point still stands if we apply it to scholastic philosophy as well. Even if one accepts powers theory and hylemorphism, as most of the scholastics did, Thomistic arguments need a very specific account of these. As I mentioned I think many Thomists engage in simplistic rhetoric by which they compare a very specific Thomist position with an unfortunate or implausible general position e.g.. regularity theory of causation or resemblance nominalism, the implicature being that the falsity of said positions entails the truth of Thomism.

Miguel wrote:

And it could be my own bias but I just find essence/existence and hylemorphism to be very strong positions, honestly. I don't think it's as easy to give an uncontroversial direct argument for God's existence being possible (*without* using versions of cosmological arguments and others) than it is to argue for specific thomistic metaphysics.

Well main arguments in support of or purporting to proof that premise require as their philosophical background some form of moral realism and associated epistemology (there are moral facts and we can detect them) and potentially some variation of the Ought Implies Can principle of deontology. Yes they are subject to challenge but I don't think they have any where near the degree of specificness as, say, there being a constituent of all substance prime matter which is 1. the substratum that persists through change, 2 the principle of individuation, and 3 the principle of spatial extension

Of course it may well be that wider concerns about the Divine Attributes might force one to endorse positions as specific as or even including Thomistic premises but that it isn't apparent a priori.

Re hylemorphism, do you think hylemorphism being a very strong position is a strong enough pointer to Thomistic hylemorphism though - might not someone look at the main arguments for it, decide it has clear advantages over competing theories and then embrace (say) Scotus' account, as said arguments for are equally supportive of that as they are of the Thomistic position.

Last edited by DanielCC (4/30/2018 7:22 am)

I'm not asking because I think it's easy to prove that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God or anything like that.

John West wrote:

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

I think there is ambiguity here. The usual atheist objections aim to show God isn't omnibenevolent (if he's omnipotent) in the sense he doesn't live up to a standard of objective goodness, not that he isn't omnibenevolent because there isn't objective goodness. The PoE, for example, loses whatever sting it has if there is no objective good, so the atheist using it must grant there is such for the sake of argument at least.

I'm curious: does anyone here think that God could exist in a world without objective good? (Not you, Dan. I already know what you think.)

 
No, because God is good itself, and in any case it is good that there exists a maximally great being like God. So to me it doesn't make sense to say God exists but no objective good exists.