Thursday, December 16, 2010

Revising the contradictory 'Desire' set

My previous set was a bit vague, so I'll try to improve it a bit:

Let S be the state of affairs 'God's being worshiped'
Let EW be any being other than God, an eligible worshiper

1) God is a perfect being
2) A perfect being only desires obtaining states of affairs*
3) At all times, God desires S
4) Prior to God creating EW, S does not obtain
Therefore:
5) God desires a non-obtaining state of affairs
Therefore:
6) God is not a perfect being

Just the symbols:
G is P
P only desires A
At all times, G desires S
Prior to G creating EW, S is ~A
G desires ~A
G is not P

This isn't much of an improvement.  Premise 3 is enticing because it seems like a statement of immutability, but I don't think it's the correct expression of immutability.  There is the issue of transcendence and immanence.  Premise 2 might be permissible on some view...perhaps from the transcendent vantage point all states of affairs are temporally indexed.  So God knows the proposition 'David types on his computer at t' to be true, and also desires the state of affairs 'David's typing on his computer at t.'  I've probably made an egregious error.

*Hard actualism?

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