Ordinal polytheism is motivated by the cosmological and design arguments. It is also motivated by Leibnizian–Lewisian modal realism. Just as there are many universes, so there are many gods. Gods are necessary concrete grounds of universes. The god-universe relation is one-to-one. Ordinal polytheism argues for a hierarchy of ranks of ever more perfect gods, one rank for every ordinal number. Since there are no maximally perfect gods, ordinal polytheism avoids many of the familiar problems of monotheism. It links theology with (...) counterpart theory, mathematics and computer science. And it entails that the system of universes has an attractive axiological structure. (shrink)

The concept of the best of all possible worlds is widely considered to be incoherent on the grounds that, for any world that might be termed the best, there is always another that is better. I note that underlying this argument is a conviction that the goodness of a world is determined by a single kind of good, the most plausible candidates for which are not maximizable. Against this I suggest that several goods may have to combine to determine the (...) goodness of a world, and because of logical conflicts between them, the goods can be optimized to give a genuine best of all possible worlds. (shrink)

Never shall this be proved, that things that are not are. ParmenidesTo say that something does not exist, or that there is something which is not, is clearly a contradiction in terms; hence “ ” must be true. Moreover, we should certainly expect leave to put any primitive name of our language for the “x” of any matrix “ … x … ”, and to infer the resulting singular statement from “ ”; it is difficult to contemplate any alternative logical (...) rule for reasoning with names. (shrink)

This article introduces three princesses: Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680); her sister, Princess Sophie who became the Electress of Hanover (1630-1714); and Sophie's daughter, Sophie Charlotte, who became the first Queen of Prussia (1668-1705). After summarizing their common family background, the article presents, for each in turn, her biography and a discussion of her relation to philosophy. In each case their philosophical involvement stems from their friendships with the leading philosophers of their day; Princess Elizabeth was a friend of Descartes (...) while the Electress Sophie and Sophie Charlotte were friends of Leibniz. The article concludes that anyone who has made the acquaintance of the three princesses and has studied their interaction with their philosopher-friends will always see them as part of the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

This article examines the rift in Leibniz’s conception of determinism after being rebuffed by the Parisian theologian Antoine Arnauld in their correspondence of 1686. As, in addition, his study of surds infracted his confidence in the “complete concept,” Leibniz embarked on a new, dynamic doctrine of substance or “law of the series.” In the literature, this strategy has been widely understood as “tweaking” the system to allow some self-assertion of free will. But as this article will show, it amounts to (...) a revolutionary conception that culminates in the unmasking of determinism as an insupportable, indeed incoherent doctrine. As all forms of determinism are profoundly entangled with human self-perception, the Leibnizian Kehre invites us to a new engagement with human freedom and autonomy and the disentanglement from a philosophical position for which neither a metaphysical nor an empirical proof can be given. (shrink)