The traditional approaches to epistemology are task-oriented and enjoy prescriptive aspects. They do not allow the employment of empirical sciences in epistemology. This is because they believe that such sciences lack any kind of prescriptive aspect and enjoy a descriptive nature. Some contemporary epistemological theoreticians, such as realist naturalists, believe that we have no choice but to employ empirical sciences in epistemology, for they provide us with a more accurate understanding of concepts such as justification and knowledge. It appears that (...) we are able to provide the necessary answers to the problems posed by traditional epistemologists in this regard. Therefore, the use of empirical sciences in epistemology is not only permissible but also necessary. (shrink)

According to the permissibility solution to the lottery paradox, the paradox can be solved if we conceive of epistemic justification as a species of permissibility. Clayton Littlejohn has objected that the permissibility solution draws on a sufficient condition for permissible belief that has implausible consequences and that the solution conflicts with our lack of knowledge that a given lottery ticket will lose. The paper defends the permissibility solution against Littlejohn's objections.

Permissivism about rationality is the view that there is sometimes more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. In this paper I discuss the relationship between permissivism, deference to rationality, and peer disagreement. I begin by arguing that—contrary to popular opinion—permissivism supports at least a moderate version of conciliationism. I then formulate a worry for permissivism. I show that, given a plausible principle of rational deference, permissive rationality seems to become unstable and to collapse into unique rationality. (...) I conclude with a formulation of a way out of this problem on behalf of the permissivist. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the current readings of permissive law fall into hermeneutical difficulties and do not completely explain Kant’s complex use of the concept. I argue that the shortcomings of these interpretations can only be overcome by relating permissive law to practical teleology. That teleological thinking has a role in Kant’s moral thought by way of history is not new. Here, however, I argue that the system of rights itself is in some manner teleologically situated. This interpretation (...) allows us to understand that Kant’s Doctrine of Right plays the role of a realist utopia. (shrink)

Moral obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable. Following the pattern of the duality definitions of necessity and possibility, we have that something’s being permissible could be defined as its not being obligatory to not do it. And that something’s being obligatory could be defined as its not being permissible to not do it. In this paper, I argue that neither direction of this alleged interdefinability works. Roughly, the problem is that a claim that some act is obligatory (...) or permissible entails that there is a moral law, whereas a negative claim that some act is not obligatory or not permissible does not. Nevertheless, one direction of the interdefinability can potentially be salvaged. I argue that, if we do not require the conceptual possibility of moral dilemmas, then there is a way to plausibly define obligation in terms of permissibility. I conclude that permissibility is the only feasible deontic primitive. (shrink)

I wish to examine a rather different way of thinking about permissibility, one according to which, roughly speaking, an agent acts impermissibly if and only if he acts for reasons insufficient to justify him in doing what he does. For reasons that will emerge in Section II, I call this the inferential account of permissibility. I shall not here try to prove that this account is superior to its rivals. My aims are more modest. I shall develop the inferential account, (...) exhibiting some of its attractions along the way, and then show that it is invulnerable to a number of influential objections to the very idea that an agent's reasons for acting could be directly relevant to whether he acts permissibly. If these objections have seemed decisive, it is because we have not considered the full range of possible accounts. The inferential account of permissibility is both plausible and attractive---it deserves to be taken seriously. (shrink)

Lougheed, in his paper ‘African vital force and the permissibility of euthanasia’,1 offers a non-western perspective rooted in African traditions, broadening the debate on euthanasia by emphasising the importance of culture and context. We first challenge Lougheed’s stance that being an object of harmonious relationships serves as an argument against the permissibility of a patient requesting euthanasia. Then, based on the Latin American (LATAM) experience and by introducing the concept of relational autonomy, we aim to further contribute to Lougheed’s call (...) for a broader dialogue on euthanasia that incorporates non-western values. A communitarian approach, rather than necessarily opposing euthanasia, can support the right to it by promoting both individual dignity and collective well-being. Although ethical norms are highly influenced by culture, certain ethical principles, such as ‘respect for persons’, should be universal.2 Considering Kant’s categorical imperative, ‘ So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end and never as only a means ’, as the foundation of the principle respect for persons, Lougheed’s argument against the permissibility of euthanasia grounded on a person being the object of something for someone else, neglects this universal principle. While some individuals in collectivistic societies would give more weight to the benefits to others when considering ending their own lives, and we acknowledge that patients with advanced illnesses or in end-of-life processes can still nurture harmonious and meaningful relationships, …. (shrink)

Does it ever happen that there are things we shouldn’t do and the reasons we shouldn’t do them are moral reasons, yet doing them is not morally wrong? Surprisingly, yes. I argue for a category that has not been recognized by moral theorists: morally permissible moral mistakes. Sometimes a supererogatory action is the thing a person should do; in failing to act, one makes a morally permissible moral mistake. Recognizing the category of morally permissible moral mistakes solves a puzzle about (...) supererogation, expands the universe of possible moral views, and shows some apparently inconsistent moral views to be consistent. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold that a norm of truth governs the propositional attitude of belief. According to one popular construal of normativity, normativity is prescriptive in nature. The prescriptive norm can be formulated either in terms of obligation or permission: one ought to or may believe that p just in case p is true. It has been argued that the obligation norm is jointly incompatible with the maxim ought implies can and the assumption that there exists some truth that we (...) cannot believe. The problem of the incompatible triad has motivated some to adopt the permissible norm of truth. I argue that the permissible norm faces an analogous problem of the incompatible triad. (shrink)

RésuméÉtant donné un ensemble de données D, les tenants de l'unicité épistémique soutiennent qu'une seule réponse doxastique est rationnelle, tandis que les tenants du permissivisme épistémique soutiennent que plusieurs réponses doxastiques peuvent être rationnelles. Comme certains auteurs l'ont signalé, l'un des attraits de la position permissiviste est qu'elle nous permet de comprendre le désaccord philosophique comme un désaccord dans lequel aucune des parties ne commet de faute rationnelle, et donc de respecter le statut épistémique de chacune d'elles. Je soutiens au (...) contraire que la position permissiviste ne parvient pas à offrir un tel avantage dans de nombreux désaccords philosophiques. (shrink)

Input/output logics are abstract structures designed to represent conditional obligations and goals. In this paper we use them to study conditional permission. This perspective provides a clear separation of the familiar notion of negative permission from the more elusive one of positive permission. Moreover, it reveals that there are at least two kinds of positive permission. Although indistinguishable in the unconditional case, they are quite different in conditional contexts. One of them, which we call static positive (...) permission, guides the citizen and law enforcement authorities in the assessment of specific actions under current norms, and it behaves like a weakened obligation. Another, which we call dynamic positive permission, guides the legislator. It describes the limits on the prohibitions that may be introduced into a code, and under suitable conditions behaves like a strengthened negative permission. (shrink)

In "Epistemic Permissiveness", Roger White presents several arguments against Extreme Permissivism, the view that there are possible cases where, given one's total evidence, it would be rational to either believe P, or to believe ~P. In this paper, we carefully reconstruct White's arguments and then argue that they do not succeed.

Citing recent examples including Enron, Arthur Andersen, and WorldCom, _Permission to Steal_ explores what went wrong and advocates a universal reassessment of what is considered “good” in corporate America. A fascinating exploration of the recent corporate scandals which have rocked the global business community. Written with sharp and compelling style, suitable for students, professionals, and general readers. Companion website offers discussion points for the book as well as an up-to-date chronology of ongoing corporate scandals.

A rational person doesn’t believe just anything. There are limits on what it is rational to believe. How wide are these limits? That’s the main question that interests me here. But a secondary question immediately arises: What factors impose these limits? A first stab is to say that one’s evidence determines what it is epistemically permissible for one to believe. Many will claim that there are further, non-evidentiary factors relevant to the epistemic rationality of belief. I will be ignoring the (...) details of alternative answers in order to focus on the question of what kind of rational constraints one’s evidence puts on belief. Our main question concerns how far epistemic permission and obligation can come apart.1 Suppose I am epistemically permitted to believe P, i.e., it would not be irrational for me to believe it. Am I thereby obliged to believe P, or are other options rationally available to me?2 Might I be equally rational in remaining agnostic about P, or even believing not-P? Or could even a slightly stronger or weaker degree of confidence be just as reasonable? (shrink)

This paper proposes a semantics for free choice permission that explains both the non-classical behavior of modals and disjunction in sentences used to grant permission, and their classical behavior under negation. It also explains why permissions can expire when new information comes in and why free choice arises even when modals scope under disjunction. On the proposed approach, deontic modals update preference orderings, and connectives operate on these updates rather than propositions. The success of this approach stems from (...) its capacity to capture the difference between expressing the preferences that give rise to permissions and conveying propositions about those preferences. (shrink)

Nominal terms extend first-order terms with binding. They lack some properties of first- and higher-order terms: Terms must be reasoned about in a context of ‘freshness assumptions’; it is not always possible to ‘choose a fresh variable symbol’ for a nominal term; it is not always possible to ‘α-convert a bound variable symbol’ or to ‘quotient by α-equivalence’; the notion of unifier is not based just on substitution.Permissive nominal terms closely resemble nominal terms but they recover these properties, and in (...) particular the ‘always fresh’ and ‘always rename’ properties. In the permissive world, freshness contexts are elided, equality is fixed, and the notion of unifier is based on substitution alone rather than on nominal terms’ notion of unification based on substitution plus extra freshness conditions.We prove that expressivity is not lost moving to the permissive case and provide an injection of nominal terms unification problems and their solutions into permissive nominal terms problems and their solutions.We investigate the relation between permissive nominal unification and higher-order pattern unification. We show how to translate permissive nominal unification problems and solutions in a sound, complete, and optimal manner, in suitable senses which we make formal. (shrink)

There is a moral phenomenon of “Secondary Permissibility” in which an otherwise morally impermissible option is made morally permissible by the presence of another option. In this paper I explain how this phenomenon works and argue that understanding how it works suggests a new model for the structure of the ethics of harming.

Paul Silva has recently argued that doxastic justification does not have a basing requirement. An important part of his argument depends on the assumption that doxastic and moral permissibility have a parallel structure. I here reply to Silva's argument by challenging this assumption. I claim that moral permissibility is an agential notion, while doxastic permissibility is not. I then briefly explore the nature of these notions and briefly consider their implications for praise and blame.

From a logical point of view, permissibility can be reduced to possibility by introducing demands which can be met. The alleged reduction is circular from a philosophical perspective, however, because demands are fundamentally deontic. This paper solves this problem by replacing demands which can be met with rules which can be satisfied and violated.

This is a review essay of Jeff McMahan's recent book The Ethics of Killing : Problems at the Margins of Life. In the first part, I lay out the central features of McMahan's account of the wrongness of killing and its implications for when it is permissible to kill. In the second part of the essay, I argue that we ought not to accept McMahan's rejection of species membership as having any bearing on whether it is permissible to kill a (...) particular individual, as there are ways of understanding its relevance that are more plausible than McMahan allows. (shrink)

I attempt to argue that if statements of permission are to serve as a guide to action then no possible worlds account of their truth-conditions can be correct.

This paper examines whether an agent becomes liable to defensive harm by engaging in a morally permissible but foreseeably risk-imposing activity that subsequently threatens objectively unjustified harm. It first clarifies the notion of a foreseeably risk-imposing activity by proposing that an activity should count as foreseeably risk-imposing if an agent may morally permissibly perform it only if she abides by certain duties of care. Those who argue that engaging in such an activity can render an agent liable to defensive harm (...) ground this liability in the luck egalitarian thought that we may justly hold individuals responsible for the consequences of their voluntary choices. Against this, I argue that a luck egalitarian commitment to holding people responsible cannot, by itself, ground liability to defensive harm. It can help ground such liability only against the backdrop of a distributively just society, and only if further considerations speak morally in favour of attaching certain well-defined costs to individuals’ risk-imposing choices. I conclude by suggesting that if an account of liability applies robustly across distributively just and unjust contexts alike, then what grounds an agent’s liability is plausibly not her responsibility for threatening objectively unjustified harm, but her culpability for doing so. (shrink)

If Kant’s theory of justice is known for one thing, it is for offering a vision of a perfectly just society that is utterly disconnected from the imperfect societies that we occupy. The purity of Kant’s account has attracted criticism from those who claim that if a theory of justice is to be practical, it must offer more than a vision of a perfectly just society. It must also explain how existing societies mired in injustice are to be brought into (...) ever-closer conformity with the ideal that justice prescribes. In this essay, I will argue that this is exactly what Kant’s mature legal and political theory offers. To discern this feature of Kant’s theory, a neglected component must be integrated into his broader framework. This component is what Kant refers to in Toward Perpetual Peace as a permissive law of public right. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a personal and professional narrative of how Canada went from prohibition to permission for medical assistance in dying. I describe the legal developments to date and flag what might be coming in the near future. I also offer some personal observations and reflections on the role and impact of bioethics and bioethicists, on what it was like to be a participant in Canada's law reform process, and on lessons that readers in other jurisdictions might (...) take from Canada's experience. (shrink)

How far can the argument against the Extreme Demand be extended? If living one kind of life, or pursuing one kind of good, is better than the alternatives in a significant enough way to ground requirements of beneficence on others to help me, it cannot be wrong for me to refuse to forgo it to help others. Moreover, there are some kinds of lives, and some kinds of goods, that are morally defensible even when there are alternatives that would be (...) no worse for me. This generates neither an ultra-permissive nor an ultra-ascetic view. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent rejections of epistemic consequentialism, like those from Firth, Jenkins, Berker, and Greaves, have argued that consequentialism is committed to objectionable trade-offs and suggest...

In his book Moral Dimensions. Permissibility, Meaning, Blame , T.M. Scanlon proposes a new account of permissibility, and argues, against the doctrine of double effect (DDE), that intentions do not matter for permissibility. I argue that Scanlon's account of permissibility as based on what the agent should have known at the time of action does not sufficiently take into account Scanlon's own emphasis on permissibility as a question for the deliberating agent. A proper account of permissibility, based on the agent's (...) actual beliefs, will allow us to revise the principle Scanlon proposes for regulating the use of violence in war, and to show that, while the DDE as such might be invalid, its focus on intentions does point toward an important element which Scanlon's proposal lacks, viz. the requirement that the agent believes that her actions will have certain consequences and can be justified for that reason. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper the authors analyze how the distinction between mandatory rules, principles in the strict sense and policies can be understood in structural terms and in terms of reason for action. In the second part, they attempt to clarify which kind of legal provisions embrace constitutional statements recognizing liberty rights are.

Many epistemologists defend the so-called Uniqueness Thesis, according to which no body of evidence permits more than one doxastic attitude. I present two counterexamples to Uniqueness and defend them against objections. The first example involves a case where you know that what you believe determines what is the case, the second a case where you know that the credence you assign to a proposition P determines the objective chance that P. Together with a bridge principle connecting knowledge of whether your (...) doxastic attitudes will be correct and the permissibility of having those attitudes, these cases imply that Uniqueness is false. (shrink)

This brief paper discusses the complexities of permissions.

I outline four conditions on permissible promise-making: the promise must be for a morally permissible end, must not be deceptive, must be in good faith, and must involve a realistic assessment of oneself. I then address whether promises that you are uncertain you can keep can meet these four criteria, with a focus on campaign promises as an illustrative example. I argue that uncertain promises can meet the first two criteria, but that whether they can meet the second two depends (...) on the source of the promisor's uncertainty. External uncertainty stemming from outside factors is unproblematic, but internal uncertainty stemming from the promisor's doubts about her own strength leads to promises that are in bad faith or unrealistic. I conclude that campaign promises are often subject to internal uncertainty and are therefore morally impermissible to make, all else being equal. (shrink)

It is often assumed that morally permissible acts are morally better than impermissible acts. We call this claim Betterness of Permissibility. Yet, we show that some striking counterexamples show that the claim’s truth cannot be taken for granted. Furthermore, even if Betterness of Permissibility is true, it is unclear why. Apart from appeals to its intuitive plausibility, no arguments in favour of the condition exist. We fill this lacuna by identifying two fundamental conditions that jointly entail betterness of permissibility: ‘reasons (...) monotonicity of permissibility’ and the ‘weak classical view’. We then argue that there are good reasons for accepting both of the fundamental conditions. We note that there exist plausible moral theories that reject one of the fundamental conditions. However, the way in which those theories reject the fundamental conditions does not allow them to endorse the counterexamples that motivate the belief that Betterness of Permissibility might be false. (shrink)

According to what I will call ‘the disanalogy thesis,’ beliefs differ from actions in at least the following important way: while cognitively healthy people often exhibit direct control over their actions, there is no possible scenario where a cognitively healthy person exhibits direct control over her beliefs. Recent arguments against the disanalogy thesis maintain that, if you find yourself in what I will call a ‘permissive situation’ with respect to p, then you can have direct control over whether you believe (...) p, and you can do so without manifesting any cognitive defect. These arguments focus primarily on the idea that we can have direct doxastic control in permissive situations, but they provide insufficient reason for thinking that permissive situations are actually possible, since they pay inadequate attention to the following worries: permissive situations seem inconsistent with the uniqueness thesis, permissive situations seem inconsistent with natural thoughts about epistemic akrasia, and vagueness threatens even if we push these worries aside. In this paper I argue that, on the understanding of permissive situations that is most useful for evaluating the disanalogy thesis, permissive situations clearly are possible. (shrink)

Since children are considered incapable ofgiving informed consent to participate inresearch, regulations require that bothparental permission and the assent of thepotential child subject be obtained. Assent andpermission are uniquely bound together, eachserving a different purpose. Parentalpermission protects the child from assumingunreasonable risks. Assent demonstrates respectfor the child and his developing autonomy. Inorder to give meaningful assent, the child mustunderstand that procedures will be performed,voluntarily choose to undergo the procedures,and communicate this choice. Understanding theelements of informed consent has been theparadigm (...) for assessing capacity to give assent.This method leaves the youngest, leastcognitively mature children vulnerable towaiver of assent and forced researchparticipation. Voluntariness can also becompromised by the influence of authorityfigures who can exert undue influence andcoerce children to participate in research. This paper discusses factors that may influencethe decision to give assent/permission,potential parent-child conflict in theassent/permission process and how it isresolved, and potential parental undueinfluence on research participation. Theseissues are illustrated with quotations drawnfrom a larger qualitative study of parentalpermission and child assent (data notpresented). We suggest a developmentalapproach, viewing assent as a continuum rangingfrom mere affirmation in the youngest childrento the equivalent of the informed consentprocess in the mature adolescent. (shrink)

This paper provides a defence of the thesis that responsible belief is permissible rather than obliged belief. On the Uniqueness Thesis (UT), our evidence is always such that there is a unique doxastic attitude that we are obliged to have given that evidence, whereas the Permissibility Thesis (PT) denies this. After distinguishing several varieties of UT and PT, we argue that the main arguments that have been levied against PT fail. Next, two arguments in favour of PT are provided. Finally, (...) two motivations for PT are put forward by showing that PT is entailed by two views that are quite popular among theorists working on doxastic responsibility. If the arguments in this paper are successful, we not only have good reasons to prefer PT over UT, but also good reasons to think that the gap between the ways in which we are meant to normatively assess belief and action may not be as wide as has been thought. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that is morally objectionable in principle to punish people in order to deter others from committing crimes. Such punishment is said to treat the offender simply as a means to benefit others. This Kantian argument rests on a certain reading of the Formula of Humanity. However, the central concept in that formula is not ‘treating a person simply as a means’, but rather ‘treating a person as an end’. This conclusion speaks against the moral principle that Victor (...) Tadros uses to support his non-consequentialist theory of punishment. Furthermore, a plausible way of interpreting the injunction to treat people as ends—Rawls’ original position—does not rule out seeking deterrence. Therefore, Kantianism and consequentialism do not differ in a fundamental way on the permissibility of deterrence. But Rawls’ Kantianism sets an implausible ceiling on the severity of punishments, and consequentialism does not. (shrink)

This article offers an account of the information condition on morally valid consent in the context of sexual relations. The account is grounded in rights. It holds that a person has a sufficient amount of information to give morally valid consent if, and only if, she has all the information to which she has a claim-right. A person has a claim-right to a piece of information if, and only if, a. it concerns a deal-breaker for her; b. it does not (...) concern something that her partner has a strong interest in protecting from scrutiny, sufficient to generate a privilege-right; c.i. her partner is aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; or c.ii. her partner ought to be held responsible for the fact that he is not aware of the information to which her deal-breaker applies; and finally, d. she has not waived or forfeited her claim-right. Although we present this account in the context of sexual relations, we believe a virtue of the account is that it can be easily translated into other contexts. (shrink)

I distinguish restrictive and permissive multiverse solutions to the problems of evil and no best world. Restrictive multiverses do not admit a single instance of gratuitous evil and they are not improvable. I show that restrictive multiverses unacceptably entail that all modal distinctions collapse. I consider Timothy O’Connor’s permissive multiverse. I show that a perfect creator minimizes aggregative suffering in permissive multiverses only if the actual universe is not included in any actualizable multiverse. I conclude that permissive multiverses do not (...) offer a credible solution to the problems of evil and no best world. (shrink)

Certain theorists argue that intention cannot be a wrong-making feature of actions because (a) it is morally impermissible to encourage morally impermissible actions; (b) there are certain putatively impermissible actions that seem to be impermissible because of the intention with which they are performed; and (c) at least some of these actions can permissibly be encouraged. If one accepts (a) and (c), then one should conclude that these actions cannot really be impermissible. This paper rejects the premise that it is (...) always impermissible to encourage impermissible acts. The argument explores three ways one could encourage an act that would be permissible but for its being performed with a wrong-making intention. It argues that there is at most a strong but defeasible presumption against encouraging the performance of impermissible actions. (shrink)

Giving permission to embodied knowing to inform nursing research methodology: die poetics of voice(s)This paper originated from my experience of trying to find an authentic way to research women's experience of the pre‐menstruum. I describe how personal change informed an evolving methodological approach. This change occurred when I felt tension between two strong voices. Conflict and insecurities originated from the pressure of my academic voice to conform to the dominant culture in what often seemed a disempowering way; a way (...) that denied my body voice by emphasizing theory over experience. The construction of a poetic of voice (s) to illustrate how I eventually found an embodied voice is used to provide space for the reader's own interpretive process. The evolving embodied voice integrates my experience as a woman/nurse/researcher, validating my knowing bodily, practically, experientially and academically that I was able to help the participants to disclose their embodied knowing. This approach has wider implications when considering the value nurse researchers and academics give to embodied wisdom. (shrink)

Within collective epistemology, there is a class of theories that understand the epistemic status of collective attitude ascriptions, such as ‘the college union knows that the industrial action is going to plan’, or ‘the jury justifiedly believes that the suspect is guilty’, as saying that a sufficient subset of group member attitudes have the relevant epistemic status. In this paper, I will demonstrate that these summativist approaches to collective epistemology are incompatible with epistemic permissivism, the doctrine that a single body (...) of evidence may rationalize multiple doxastic attitudes. In particular, I will make use of epistemic permissivism to provide a general recipe for generating so-called divergence cases, which demonstrate situations in which rationality requires group-level and member-level attitudes to diverge. I will call this class of cases permissive divergence cases. While other divergence cases have been discussed in the literature, permissive divergence cases prove themselves to be less susceptible to many of the worries raised against their competitors, while being directly built on an often-defended epistemological thesis. (shrink)

David Lewis asked in “A problem about permission” about the effects on context, specifically on the “sphere of permissibility,” of allowing behavior that had previously been forbidden. The framework of truthmaker semantics sheds useful light on this problem. Update procedures are definable in the truthmaker framework that capture more than Lewis was able to just with worlds. Connections are drawn with epistemic modals, belief revision and the semantics of exceptives. We consider how a truthmaker account of permissive update might (...) be integrated into a larger semantic/pragmatic account of deontic language. Bridge principles are articulated associating types of deontic act with distinct update rules. Distinct forms of permission trigger distinct procedures because they aim at spheres more or less strongly verifying ◊φ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\Diamond \varphi $$\end{document}, the claim that φ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\varphi $$\end{document} is permissible. (shrink)

In response to arguments against the existence of God, and in response to perceived conflicts between divine attributes, theists often face pressure to give up some pretheoretically attractive thesis about the divine attributes. One wonders: when does this unacceptably water down our concept of God, and when is it, as van Inwagen says, ‘permissible tinkering’ with the concept of God? A natural and widely deployed answer is that it is permissible tinkering iff it is does not violate the claim that (...) God is the greatest possible being. Call this the ’perfect being defense.’ In this paper I lay out some influential uses of the perfect being defense, and then argue that this strategy for defending theism fails. (shrink)