CONSEQUENTIAL OMNIBENEVOLENCE

Ishtiyaque HAJI University of Minnesota, Morris

By placing God at the focal position in his metaphysics, Leibniz believed that he was entitled to the conclusion that the actual world (call it 'Alpha') is the best of all possible worlds. This conclusion, in turn, provided Leibniz with the material to develop nothing less than a complete theodicy. Although the Leibnizian argument for the view that Alpha is the best is well-known, the notion of omnibene­ volence on which the argument is predicated is less than transparent. Failure to clarify the relevant notion can be a serious shortcoming for, as I show below, certain seemingly plausible analyses of the concept of omnibenevolence are non-starters, while others in con­ junction with premises assumed to be unproblematic, do not entail that God would bring about the best world. My specific aims here are these: In section (1) I introduce a minimal set of assumptions to which the Leibnizian argument for creation is committed, and after rejecting a popular competitor, I provide a provisional analysis of the concept of consequential omnibenevolence (,C-omnibenevolence' for short), an analysis which I believe is of the sort presupposed by the Leibnizian argu­ ment. In section (2) I discuss an objection to the provisional analysis that is based on the view that no state of affairs is such that it is obligatory for God to bring it about. This will lead to a modification of the provisional analysis. In the third section, I adumbrate the argument that Alpha is the best, and in the next section I show how this principle,

(1) No-Best: For any possible world, w, there is some possible world better than w, undermines this argument on the assumption that God is C-omni- 208 benevolent. Lastly, I propose an alternative to C-omnibenevolence that does not presuppose the truth of the consequentialist moral principle that one ought to do the best one can, and that is consistent with No-Best.

I

S is a maximally complete state of affairs if and only if for any state of affairs, p, either S entails p or S entails the complement of p but not both. Assume that possible worlds are maximally complete states of affairs. Assume that God (if He exists) is essentially omniscient,_ essentially omnipotent, essentially omnibenevolent, and necessarily existent. Since He is a necessary existent, God exists at each time in each possible world. Being omniscient, God knows all truths. Since no entity can bring about any non-contingent state of affairs, assume that God's omnipotence at most requires that God be able to bring about contingent states of affairs. 1 Assume, finally, that every bearer of value is a state of affairs, and that each state of affairs can be assessed in terms of its intrinsic value. We now proceed to construct the concept of consequential om­ nibenevolence. Let Best be the consequentialist view that one ought to do the best one can. Roughly, on this view, of all the states of affairs that a person, S, can bring about as of a time, t, bringing about state of affairs, p, is obligatory for S at t if and only if as of t S's bringing about p is better than S's bringing about anything other than p; bringing about p is permissible for S at t if and only if as of t S's bringing about p is at least as good as S's bringing about anything other than p; and bringing about p is wrong for S at t if and only if as of t S's bringing about p is worse than S's bringing about anything other than p.2 Assuming a consequentialist frame-

1. For further restrictions on what an omnipotent being can do, see Gary Rosenkrantz and Joshua Hoffman, 'What An Omnipotent Agent Can Do', Inter­ national Journalfor the Philosophy of Religion 11 (1980), 1-19. 2. As many have indicated, there are formal problems with these sorts of consequentialist principles. For our purposes, we can safely ignore these prob­ lems. The best formulation of Best with which I am conversant, one which evades many (if not all) of the formal worries that plague other consequentialist theories,