E.G.

What would something with "infinite value" be like?  Pekka’s comments to my recent post on theism got me thinking about this question.  I don’t have an informed answer, but I do have an uninformed one.  I’m putting this one below the fold.

It seems reasonable to suppose that if something has infinite value, then there is nothing of finite value one could add to it in order to make it more valuable.  (I take this to be a necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, condition for having infinite value.)  I think this necessary condition is enough to make it likely that no state of affairs occurring in time has, had, or ever will have infinite value.

Let’s let the state of affairs "being in heaven" stand in as the most likely candidate for a state of affairs with infinite value.  Assume, for the present purposes, that being in heaven is a state of affairs which occurs in time.  So we’re rejecting, for the sake of argument, the standard of picture of heaven as a place "outside time"; we’re thinking of heaven as a place you go after you die, and remain for the rest of time.  But we’re retaining all the other usual characteristics of heaven; for instance, in heaven you get to do whatever you want, all the time, for the rest of time.

What of finite value could you possibly add to being in heaven to increase its value?  It’s hard to think of anything.  You can’t add chocolate ice cream; they already have that in heaven.  In fact, they have just about anything you could possibly want in heaven.  Apparently, anything of finite value which could be added to heaven has already been added to it.  So you might think that, once you arrive in heaven, you will have achieved a state of affairs with infinite value.

But I think there are some things you could add to being in heaven to increase its value.  For one thing, you could arrive in heaven a little bit earlier.  Being in heaven is great, so it’s only natural to assign value to getting there sooner.  So, at least from our perspective here on earth, prior to our arrival in heaven, it seems reasonable to assume that our eventually being in heaven does not have infinite value, since there is something you can add to it to increase its value — namely, a sooner arrival.

But now suppose you’re already in heaven.  Once there, you might not care when you arrived; you’ll just be glad you got there.  So, even if before you get to heaven, arriving earlier increases its value, this might not be the case after you get to heaven.  However: I suppose that, once in heaven, I would prefer to have led a happy and productive life while on earth rather than an unfortunate and miserable one.  Having had a better life, rather than a worse one, would still, I think, be of some value to those in heaven; it would still be something which you could add to "being in heaven" to increase its value.  If so, then even once you’re in heaven, your present state of affairs may certainly have great value, but it does not have infinite value. 

It seems to me that the only state of affairs occurring in time which would have infinite value would be a state of affairs in which I am in heaven, have always been in heaven, and will always be in heaven.  But that state of affairs does not obtain.  Apparently, everybody spends some time on earth, and being on earth is not being in heaven.