Metaphysics Tutorials

{[green A space in which to work out various points to raise in the metaphysics tutorials. ]}

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God

• The resultant God entities from the cosmological and teleological arguments seem to bear very little resemblence to the God entity worshipped in churches on Sundays.
• Are the qualities attributed to God really maximisable as is required by the ontological argument? — e.g. is power maximisable?
• Could one respond to the problem of evil by simply stating that we lack the perspective to see that what is an apparently evil act is in fact a good one? — e.g. Murder is in fact a release from the vale of sorrows for the murdered and a prime motivator for serious introspection and a gain in self-knowledge of the murderer and those who knew both parties. — This amounts to questioning the premise “evil exists” by means of questioning whether or not we really know what evil is. — Probably wouldn’t make for a very nice society to live in however. (But could one then just give other, pragmatic reasons for our laws.)

Chris Wilcox

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Hi Chris,

I think I’m in the same tutorial as you.

Perhaps you could think about the problem of good v. evil in the context of torture. Is the torture of one person good if it yields information that saves many lives? I was going to raise the issue today, but we ran out of time.

I’ve also made a brief posting on the mathematical anti-realism wiki. Hope that you don’t mind the intrusion.

Dick Parker

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