Jashiel Resto Quiñones

Perfect Being Theology holds that God is the greatest possible being and that the divine nature is fixed by the perfections a being instantiates. This paper examines four ways of relating perfections to overall greatness: Distributivist Atomism, Collectivist Atomism, Distributivist Non-Atomism, and Collectivist Non-Atomism. I argue that each approach faces structural difficulties. The atomist views require that all perfections be jointly instantiated at their intrinsic maxima, which raises a substantive worry about whether the relevant set of perfections is compossible at all. The non-atomist and collectivist views avoid that worry by permitting tradeoffs or relation-dependent maxima, but they generate new problems: they fail to single out a unique best package of perfections, they leave unresolved why any one package should fix the divine nature, and—given the standard claim that the greatest possible being exists necessarily—they produce a dilemma involving polytheism or the absence of any greatest possible being.

It is arguable whether Kant is a divine command theorist. It is less controversial whether Kant holds Divine Duty Impossibilism [DDI - the view that God cannot have moral obligations]. Not only does Kant endorse DDI but he offers subtle arguments for it that are intimately connected to his moral theory. My contention is that Kant’s philosophy permeates the literature on Divine Command Theory (DCT) both in its recent past and current iterations: the notion of self-commanding and the claim that God cannot be obligated because he cannot deviate from doing what is good are deeply Kantian. I further contend that if we read Kant’s philosophy closely, we will find it enlightening to the current discussion about DDI and its relation to DCT. In this chapter I will defend both contentions. Here is how I will proceed. In Section ‘Kant on moral obligation and DDI’, I show that Kant’s moral theory implies DDI. In Section ‘Being bound by the law vs. being under the law’, I argue that Kant’s moral theory suggests that there is a distinction between being under the moral law and being bound by the moral law. In Section ‘Quinn and Resto Quiñones on God’s obligations’, I show how Kant’s moral theory deflates Quinn’s argument for DDI but also deflates Resto Quiñones’s argument against DDI. Lastly, in Section ‘Alston’s Kantian argument for DDI and Stump’s reply’, I show how Kant’s moral theory and nuanced distinction discussed in Sections ‘Kant on moral obligation and DDI’ and ‘Being bound by the law vs. being under the law’ can be used to improve Alston’s argument for DDI and refute Stump’s criticism thereof. In general, Sections ‘Kant on moral obligation and DDI’ and ‘Being bound by the law vs. being under the law’ are a discussion of Kant’s moral theory and endorsement of DDI, while Sections ‘Quinn and Resto Quiñones on God’s obligations’ and ‘Alston’s Kantian argument for DDI and Stump’s reply’ are a discussion of how Kant’s views (as explained in Sections ‘Kant on moral obligation and DDI’ and ‘Being bound by the law vs. being under the law’) can be applied to the current DDI and DCT debate. With this I hope to show that Kant has had a great influence in the contemporary DCT and DDI debate.

In contemporary philosophy of religion and metaethics, Divine Command Theory (DCT) posits that moral obligations depend on God’s commands. This theory has garnered significant scholarly attention. However, existing versions of DCT often rely on problematic metaethical assumptions, particularly that God cannot command himself and that all moral obligations depend on divine commands. This dissertation critiques these prevailing extant versions of DCT and proposes a better alternative: Moderate Divine Command Theory (MDCT). According to MDCT, only some (not all) moral obligations depend on divine commands. This dissertation shows that MDCT can salvage important theistic commitments while retaining the virtues of extant DCT and eschewing contentious assumptions: overall, it is a more defensible and nuanced account. Furthermore, this dissertation establishes that MDCT better withstands common objections to extant DCT. Lastly, this dissertation shows that accepting MDCT—particularly, opening the possibility of God’s self-commanding—allows us to provide a novel solution to the logical problem of evil.

According to Perfect Being Theism, God is the absolutely perfect (i.e., greatest possible) being. The notion of absolute perfection can be analyzed in different ways. On one interpretation, to be absolutely perfect requires the exemplification of all absolute perfections. On another interpretation, to be perfect requires the exemplification of the best possible combination of perfections. It seems that the latter analysis is better than the former, because it does not fall prey to the problem of incompatible perfections, viz., that there (probably) are perfections that cannot be coexemplified. Here I argue that even if perfect being theists accept the latter analysis, the problem of incompatibility does not go away. I argue that perfections are (probably) incomparable: it is false that some perfection is better than, worse than, or equally good to another perfection. If so, then it is impossible or at least extremely difficult to say that among the combination of perfections there are, there is one that is best among them. I also argue that adopting the former analysis with some restrictions (as Mark Murphy does) leads to the same incompatibility and incomparability problems.

Theological voluntarism is a family of metaethical views that share the claim that deontological statuses of actions are dependent on or identical with some divine feature. Adams's version of this theistic metaethical view is a divine command theory (DCT). According to Adams's DCT, the property being-morally-obligated is identical to the property being-commanded-by-God. Thus, a natural consequence of Adams's DCT is that an agent is morally obligated to do something just in case God commands that agent to do such a thing. From Adams's DCT, it follows that God is morally obligated to act just in case God commands himself to act. Quinn argued that commanding oneself is incoherent and, therefore, that God cannot be morally obligated to act. The claim that commanding oneself is incoherent has seldom been discussed in the divine command theory literature. This article is an attempt to change that. Here, I argue (contra Quinn) that that no constitutive rule (or condition of satisfaction) of self-commands is incoherent, from which it follows that self-commanding is not an incoherent speech act. I conclude that divine command theorists can, without the charge of incoherence, affirm that God can be morally obligated because God can command himself.

This paper is one (among many) approach to the question, “are AIs persons or are they conscious?” from a Heideggerian perspective. Here I argue for two claims. First, I argue that René Girard’s mimetic analysis of mitsein (being-with), one of Heidegger’s foundational concepts, illuminates what Heidegger takes mitsein to be. Second, I claim that this Girardian analysis gives us a way to answer the question of whether AIs have Dasein, to which I argue that the answer is negative. Specifically, I claim that Dasein requires mitsein, and mitsein (according to Girard’s analysis) requires mimesis. Moreover, mimesis requires that the mimetic being finds truth in the mimetic object, that is, it comports in a meaningful way toward the unconcealed object being imitated by Dasein. But since AIs cannot comport in meaningful ways toward the object of imitation, i.e., they are not truth-apt, they cannot engage in mimetic behavior, hence cannot have mitsein. But, necessarily, Dasein is being-with-others, Therefore, AIs cannot have Dasein. If we assume (as I think Heidegger would) that every person has Dasein, we may justifiably conclude that AIs are not persons, at least from a Heideggerian ontology.

Perfect being theism is the view that the perfect being exists and the property being-perfect is the property being-God. According to the strong analysis of perfection, a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies all perfections. On the other hand, the weak analysis of perfection claims that a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies the best possible combination of compatible perfections. Strong perfect being theism accepts the former analysis while weak perfect being theism accepts the latter. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to reject both versions of perfect being theism. On the one hand, strong perfect being theism is false if there are incompatible perfections; I argue that there are. On the other hand, if either no comparison can be made between sets of perfections, or they are equally good, then there is no best possible set of perfections. I argue for the antecedent of this conditional statement, concluding that weak perfect being theism is false. In the absence of other analyses of perfection, I conclude that we have reason to reject perfect being theism.