Divine Satisficing and the Ethics of the Problem of Evil

Faith and Philosophy 37 (1):32-56 (2020)
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Abstract

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, it reveals that God’s ethics has a radical satisficing structure: God can choose a good enough suboptimal option even if there is a best option and no countervailing considerations. Second, it resolves the long-standing worry that there is no account of the good enough that is both principled and demanding enough to be good enough. Third, it vindicates the key ethical assumption in the problem of evil without relying on the contested assumption that God’s ethics is our ethics.

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Chris Tucker
William & Mary

Citations of this work

Still Another Anti-Molinist Argument.Daniel Rubio - 2024 - TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 8 (2).
Vagueness and the Problem of Evil: a New Reply to van Inwagen.Luis R. G. Oliveira - 2021 - Manuscrito: Revista Internacional de Filosofía 44 (4):49-82.
Perfect Freedom and God's Hard Choices.Luke Wilson - 2022 - Faith and Philosophy 39 (2):291-312.
Murphy's Anselmian theism and the problem of evil.Luke Wilson - 2024 - Religious Studies 60 (4):549-563.
A perfectly free God cannot satisfice.Luke Wilson - 2025 - Philosophical Studies 182 (5):1179-1199.

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References found in this work

Impartial reason.Stephen L. Darwall - 1983 - Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
[no title].R. G. Swinburne - 1989 - Cambridge University Press.
The possibility of parity.Ruth Chang - 2002 - Ethics 112 (4):659-688.
The Coherence of Theism (revised edition).Richard Swinburne - 1977 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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