4th BLB Meeting, 25th April. 2017: "Inconceivability, indefinite Extensible Perfection and Counterpossibles: An Anselmian Reconstruction”

Written by：管理员 Last updated：2017-04-23

Organizer: Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai)，Sun Yat-sen University

Topic: "Inconceivability, indefinite Extensible Perfection and Counterpossibles: An Anselmian Reconstruction”  

Speaker: Pao-Shen Ho (Research Fellow at the Dept. of Philosophy, Zhuhai)

Time: April 25th, 2017

Venue: Rm 114, No. 16 Building at Haibin Honglou

Abstract:

According to perfect-being theology (PBT), a.k.a. Anselmian theism, God is that than which nothing greater can be (or can be thought), and His divine natures can be explicated by consulting our intuitions about perfections. Attributes derived via AT typically include omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, as well as necessary existence. To clarify, the distinction and relation between possibility and conceivability can be sidestepped insofar as PBT is concerned not with proving that God exists, but with the method by which to investigate what God is. Accordingly, I shall suspend two debates usually associated with PBT: the contemporary debate on whether existence is a predicate, and the scholastic debate over modal distinctions such as that between esse essentiae and esse existentiae.