VAGUENESS AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: A NEW REPLY TO VAN INWAGEN

Abstract One of the few points of agreement between most theists and non-theists working on the problem of evil is that the existence of a perfect God is incompatible with the existence of pointless evil. In a series of influential papers, however, Peter van Inwagen has argued that careful attention to the reasoning behind this claim reveals fatal difficulties related to the Sorites Paradox. In this paper, I explain van Inwagen’s appeal to sorites reasoning, distinguish between two different arguments in his work, and argue that they both commit the same so-far-unnoticed mistake.

摘要：在研究恶之问题的学者群体中，绝大多数有神论者与非有神论者之间为数不多的共识之一，便是完美上帝的存在与无意义恶的存在无法兼容。然而，彼得·范·因瓦根（Peter van Inwagen）在一系列具有影响力的论文中提出，若仔细审视这一主张背后的推理逻辑，便会发现其中存在与堆垛悖论（Sorites Paradox）相关的致命缺陷。本文将阐释范·因瓦根对连锁推理的援引，区分其论著中的两种不同论证，并指出二者均犯下了迄今尚未被学界注意到的同一错误。