What an Omnipotent Agent Can Do

ludging from the recent literature, the problem of defining or analyzing the concept of omnipotence is a formidable one. One author has claimed to have proved the impossibility of defining omnipotencer and of those who have recently made the attempt, none has succeeded in providing a definition which is not subject to refutation by counter-example.' The leading and novel idea of our paper is that if one is sensitive to the essential temporal propertes of states of affairs, then one can construct an adequate definition of omnipotence. Working from this insight, we formulate an informative and consistent analysis of omnipotence which incorporates the following two principles: first, that what an agent brings about can be "cashed out" ir~ terms of his bringing it about that an unrestrictedly repeatable state of affairs obtains; second, that by making use of the notion of unrestricted repeatability, one can single out a class of states of affairs, S, such that necessarily, an agent, A, is omnipotent just in case for any member, e, of S, A has the ability to bring it about that e obtains.