Grim’s arguments against omniscience and indefinite extensibility

摘要

Patrick Grim has put forward a set theoretical argument purporting to prove that omniscience is an inconsistent concept and a model theoretical argument for the claim that we cannot even consistently define omniscience. The former relies on the fact that the class of all truths seems to be an inconsistent multiplicity (or a proper class, a class that is not a set); the latter is based on the difficulty of quantifying over classes that are not sets. We first address the set theoretical argument and make explicit some ways in which it depends on mathematical Platonism. Then we sketch a non Platonistic account of inconsistent multiplicities, based on the notion of indefinite extensibility, and show how Grim’s set theoretical argument could fail to be conclusive in such a context. Finally, we confront Grim’s model theoretical argument suggesting a way to define a being as omniscient without quantifying over any inconsistent multiplicity.