Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Repository | Journal | Volume | Article

237048

The best of all possibleworlds

Yujin Nagasawa

pp. 309-320

Abstract

The Argument from Inferiority holds that our world cannot be the creation of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent being; for if it were, it would be the best of all possible worlds, which evidently it is not. We argue that this argument rests on an implausible principle concerning which worlds it is permissible for an omnipotent being to create: roughly, the principle that such a being ought not to create a non-best world. More specifically, we argue that this principle is plausible only if we assume that there is a best element in the set of all possible worlds. However, as we show, there are conceivable scenarios in which that assumption does not hold.

Publication details

Published in:

(2005) Synthese 143 (3).

Pages: 309-320

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-005-7043-y

Full citation:

Nagasawa Yujin (2005) „The best of all possibleworlds“. Synthese 143 (3), 309–320.