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What does Mackie mean when he says there are no objective values?
“There are no objective values.” Mackie quickly clarifies that he is using ‘value’ as a normative catch-all. that covers not just evaluative categories such as goodness and badness, but also deontic categories such as. duty and obligation and aretaic categories such as being contemptible and being rotten.
What was Mackie’s main argument?
Mackie’s main objection is to question whether there is any coherent sense of ‘free will’ which satisfies both (i) and (ii): “if God has made men such that in their free choices they sometimes prefer what is good and sometimes what is evil, why could he not have made men such that they always freely choose the good?
What does Mackie argue?
John Mackie argued that God’s perfect goodness is incompatible with his failing to. actualize the best world that he can actualize. And God’s omnipotence is incompatible. with his being unable to actualize a morally perfect world.
What is J. L. Mackie’s argument from queerness?
The so-called “argument from queerness” is one of two arguments against the existence of objective values put forward by J. L. Mackie in his Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, the other being the “argument from relativity.” By the term “objective value,” Mackie primarily means moral goodness, rightness and wrongness, …
What did J. L. Mackie believe?
Concerning religion, he was well known for vigorously defending atheism, and also arguing that the problem of evil made untenable the main monotheistic religions. His criticisms of the free will theodicy are particularly significant.
What does Mackie think about moral claims?
Mackie believed that ordinary moral claims presuppose that there are objective moral values, but there are no such things. Hence, the practice of morality is founded upon a metaphysical error. Mackie’s arguments against the existence of objective values are of two main kinds.
How does Mackie define a fallacious solution to the problem of evil?
2.2 Fallacious solutions. Fallacious solutions are solutions which, even though the may seem plausible at first, in fact do not amount to the rejection of any principle which gave rise to the contradiction.
What does J. L. Mackie say about the problem of evil?
Atheist philosophers such as Anthony Flew and J. L. Mackie have argued that an omnipotent God should be able to create a world containing moral good but no moral evil. As Flew (1955, p.
Why does the free will defense not work?
Mackie has presented the objection that God, being omnipotent and omnibenevolent, would easily be able to create the best of all possible worlds. He reasons that such a world would be one in which all humans use their free will only for good – something they do not do. Hence, the free-will defense fails.
What is Mackie free will Defence?
Mackie thinks that the free will defense is a complete failure: it explains no evil at all. The free will defense. Because free will is a good, a wholly good being might wish for others to have free will. But it is impossible to both give free will to creatures and stop them from using that free will to do evil.
What is the free will objection?
There are also two objections to the idea that free will can explain enough evil: [3] Suppose that free will is compatible with divine foreknowledge, and incompatible with determinism. Still, free will, even if it is a good thing, is not good enough to justify all the evil in the world that results from it.
How does the free will defense respond to the logical problem of evil?
A variety of arguments have been offered in response to the problem of evil, and some of them have been used in both theodicies and defenses. One argument, known as the free will defense, claims that evil is caused not by God but by human beings, who must be allowed to choose evil if they are to have free will.
What is the argument from evil against the existence of God?
The Argument from Evil is a class of arguments which purport that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God. As Hume put it, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent.
What is the free will Defence as articulated by Alvin Plantinga?
Plantinga’s Free Will Defense goes as follows: “A world containing creatures who are significantly free (and freely perform more good than evil actions) is more valuable, all else being equal, than a world containing no free creatures at all.
What is the free will defense quizlet?
STUDY. Plantinga argues that the Logical Problem of Evil is solved by attributing evil to human free will. In Plantinga’s view, God made humans able to perform actions that are significantly free.
Which of the following claims is the most likely to be rejected by both Pascal and James?
Which of the following claims is the most likely to be rejected by both Pascal and James? It is possible to demonstrate the existence of God on the basis of sense experience.
Which of the following best summarizes Pascal’s wager argument?
Pascal’s Wager is best summarized by which of the following? Even if we can’t rationally demonstrate whether or not God exists, it makes more sense to be a believer in God than an atheist.
Which of the following philosophers argued that God is constantly self creating?
In Principles of Philosophy, Descartes argued for God’s existence from the persistence of objects through time. His reasoning makes it clear that he regarded conservation as a continual re-creation.