The Logical Problem of Evil from a Paraconsistent Perspective

After a brief discussion on the presence of paraconsistent approaches in the history of Western thought, in special in ancient and medieval times, we will characterize paraconsistent logic, created only during the 20th century. Recently, Bertato (2021) presented a proposal for a Formal Natural Theology through a first-order logical theory, by formally introducing fundamental concepts such as divine, necessary, and supreme. In this presentation, based on Bertato’s system, we propose a paraconsistent underlying approach to deal with the Logical Problem of Evil, such that the presence of contradictions does not lead to logical triviality

[@WolfLeib]

Bertato’s system is interesting, but I find it too weak. The definition of omnipotence he gives seems insufficient: if I understand it correctly, it doesn’t mean that an omnipotent being has all powers, only that its powers are perfectly effective. I’m not sure if the formalism is sufficiently powerful to get the notion of possible powers, given the lack of modality. It would also be interesting to add a new definition of another divine attribute: providence. We could say that x is provident if, and only if, for any good situation p, x is willing p. And then, to be divine, x must also be provident. I don’t know if the logical problem of evil can hold with this new attribute and the new characterization of omnipotence.