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Determining the Best of All Possible Worlds
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Strickland, Lloyd H. |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | Up until about a decade ago, optimism, or the view that this is the best of all possible worlds, was the subject of a great deal of discussion in the philosophical literature. This has now largely ceased, apparently because a consensus view has been reached that the very concept of the best of all possible worlds can be shown to be incoherent by deploying the following simple argument: for any world that might be termed the best, there is always another which is better, therefore the concept of the best of all possible worlds is meaningless.1 To put the conclusion another way, the description “is the best of all possible worlds” can have no referent from among the full range of possible worlds. The perceived strength of this argument, which is sometimes referred to as the No Best World argument, is such that even its adherents rarely use more than a sentence or two to introduce, develop, and deploy it. This is odd because the argument as presented above is in need of fleshing out, since as it stands it seems incomplete. Why is it that for any given world there is always another that is better? While many of the defenders of the argument do not explicitly say, some of them provide useful glimpses of the sort of answer they have in mind: |
| Starting Page | 37 |
| Ending Page | 47 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10790-006-6863-4 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/339052/1/Determining%20the%20best%20of%20all%20possible%20worlds-finalrevision.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-006-6863-4 |
| Volume Number | 39 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
