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Plantinga, Presumption, Possibility, and the Problem of Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Keith DeRose
Keith DeRose*
Affiliation:
New York University, New York, NY10003, USA
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Extract

My topic is Alvin Plantinga’s ’solution’ to one of the many forms that the problem of evil takes: the modal abstract form. This form of the problem is abstract in that it does not deal with the amounts or kinds of evil which exist, but only with the fact that there is some evil or other. And it is modal in that it concerns the compossibility of the following propositions, not any evidential relation between them:

(1) God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good

and

(2) There is evil in the world.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 497 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1991

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References

1 For some helpful distinctions between various forms of the problem of evil, see Adams, Robert M. ‘Plantinga on the Problem of Evil,’ in Tomberlin, J.E. and van Inwagen, P. eds., Plantinga (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1985)Google Scholar. Note that Adams calls this form of the problem the ‘logical abstract’ form. I prefer the terminology I have introduced for reasons that will soon become apparent. (Adams has told me that he also prefers my terminology.)

2 The Nature of Necessity, hereafter abbreviated as ‘NN’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1974), 165

3 Adams, ‘Plantinga on the Problem of Evil,’ 226. Adams goes on to show why Plantinga’s responses to the other forms of the problem are not as satisfying.

4 God, Freedom, and Evil, hereafter abbreviated as ‘GFE’ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s 1974), 11; cf. NN, 164.

5 GFE, 12; NN, 164

6 Mackie, ‘Evil and Omnipotence,’ Mind 64 (1955), 200-1; quoted by Plantinga in GFE, 16

7 See NN, especially 1-9, for Plantinga’ s characterization of ‘broadly logical’ modality. Plantinga equates his notion of ‘broadly logical’ modality with ‘metaphysical’ modality in Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press 1980), 102.

It is important to note that while Plantinga often follows the common philosophical practice of (mis)using the sentence form ‘It is possible that P’ with the embedded P in the indicative mood—a form which in ordinary English expresses an epistemic possibility that P (see Hacking’s, Ian ‘Possibility,’ The Philosophical Review 76 [1967], 143-68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, his ‘All Kinds of Possibility,’ The Philosophical Review 84 [1975], 321-37, and my ‘Epistemic Possibilities,’ The Philosophical Review forthcoming)—to express his ‘broadly logical’ possibilities (see, for example, proposition (11) in NN, 202), these ‘broadly logical’ possibilities are not in any way epistemic. They are a species of ways things could have been, not a species of ways things may (for all we know) be. I will often follow Plantinga in this practice of (mis)using modal expressions in this way, but the reader should. be careful not to let Plantinga’ s claims of possibility gain any illicit support from how acceptable these claims sound in normal English.

8 See Plantinga’s discussion of the Ontological Argument in NN, 196-221.

9 In NN, 165, n. 1, Plantinga refers the reader to God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1967), ch. 5, for Stage I. GFE contains both Stage I and Stage II.

10 Of course, it would be silly to require that PPP always be defeated by an argument. In some cases (e.g. 2 + 2 = 5, and even much less clear cases), PPP could be defeated by the intuitive plausibility of the impossibility of the proposition itself.

11 I am assuming, as Plantinga does, that all the inferences allowed by 55 are valid inferences when the type of necessity and possibility involved is Plantinga’s ‘broadly logical’ type. If 55 inferences are allowed, then it can be proven that no proposition of the above forms can be contingent. Of course, we do not want simply to say that only contingent propositions can receive the Presumption, because whether a proposition is contingent is precisely what we are trying to decide by applying the Presumption to it. The point I am making is that it is logically impossible (strictly logically impossible, as opposed to Plantinga’s notion of ‘broadly logical’ modalities) that a proposition of one of these forms be contingent. For a discussion of restricting the presumption to those propositions that can be contingently true, see Robert M. Adams, ‘Presumption and the Necessary Existence of God,’ NOUS 22 (1988), 21-2.

12 See Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett 1984), 72. Bennett’s restriction is stronger than the preceding restrictions because not all propositions with modal concepts nested within them are such that their possible truth entails their necessary truth. Consider At least one glimph exists, where a ‘glimph’ is defined as a lion which is essentially brown—a lion that is such that it is necessarily true that if it exists, then it is brown. Since ‘glimph’ is a modal concept, Bennett would not allow PPP to apply to At least one glimph exists. But since that proposition’s possible truth does not entail its necessary truth, it would escape the preceding restrictions.

Bennett admits that he has no argument for the view that PPP is correct only when restricted in his strong way (72). Robert M. Adams describes a plausible rationale for restricting PPP in this way in Adams, ‘Presumption and the Necessary Existence of God,’ 25-6. Adams goes on to register an objection to PPP so restricted (26-7), and, in the end, concludes that presumptions of possibility should not play a role in metaphysical and theological arguments (27-31).

13 This issue will be discussed in Section V, below.

14 NN, 165; cf. GFE, 26.

15 Plantinga mentions some other candidates, but criticisms very similar to those below would apply to these as well.

16 This is thought not to jeopardize God’s omnipotence since it is not possible to cause a creature to freely do what he wouldn’t do.

17 And if it is a fact that all the worlds in which I do good but no evil are unrealizable, this is a contingent fact.

18 Thus these suppositions would also tell against another of Plantinga’s candidates for r, which is the conjunction of (32) and

(28) God is omnipotent and it was not within his power to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil.

In fact, in GFE, this conjunction is Plantinga’s main candidate for r. In GFE, (28) and (32) are numbered (35) and (36) respectively.

19 Thus, the possibility of another of Plantinga’s candidates for r, the conjunction of (33) and (34) (see NN, 190), could also be called into question by the supposition that there are necessary relations between facts about what possible creatures would freely do.

20 I don’t.

21 And, in fact, I think that most of what pass for intuitions of metaphysical possibility are really no more than our not being able to see anything threatening the possibility of a proposition. I believe that our intuitive access to modal facts is largely through intuitions of necessity and impossibility.

22 On a ‘broadly logical’ or ‘metaphysical’ reading of ‘could have been,’ where more is required than a mere lack of contradiction in supposing otherwise (see Section II, above). I suppose there is no contradiction involved in any of these combinatorial possibilities, so they are all ‘analytically possible.’

23 Plantinga construes (1) such that this implication holds; see NN, 165.

24 See NN, especially 213-17.

25 NN, 216; my emphasis

26 See NN, 216-21.

27 Of course, we do have a good reason for thinking that (2) is possibly true: it is actually true!

28 More expansively, one is saying that there is possible world such that, if it were actual, then it would have been the case that God was unable to actualize any of the possible worlds which contain moral good but no moral evil.

29 And I do think that Stage I of Plantinga’s case is quite impressive.

30 This paper was first presented at a Fall 1987 seminar at UCLA on the problem of evil. I am grateful to the co-leaders of that seminar, Marilyn McCord Adams, and Robert Merrihew Adams, for their help and advice on this project.