[lit-ideas] Re: Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnibenevolence
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:12:14 -0800
Lloyd Mitchell wrote
The god, says Diotima in the Symposium, is not a philosopher: he is
already wise. The wise being cannot be a *lover* of wisdom - cannot
exist as driven by the overwhelming desire to become what he is not: to
become wise. to *know* what he intensely recognizes that he does not know.
It seems to me, then, that there is at least one thing that the
omniscient being cannot know: what it is not to know something.
This is an interesting argument. And, at first glance it does seem that
God (who is omnisciently never puzzled) cannot know what it is 'like' to
be puzzled, so that we, who are often puzzled, know something that an
omniscient being doesn't know, thus calling into question that being's
omniscience. This might be named 'Mitchell's Paradox.'
But by parity of reasoning, wouldn't it follow that God cannot know a
great many things: what it is like e. g.to have lost a fortune in the
stock market; what it is like to have won the Olympic 400 meters; what
it is like to be an 80-year-old woman dying of cancer—? However, by the
same token, perhaps, neither can I, except in a strained, analogical
sense. All I can know for sure is that others have done or experienced
these things.
This is a nice puzle though. I suspect that the whole concept of
'knowing what it is like to...' is under-explored.
Robert Paul
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