Savage C. W. The Paradox of the Stone // Philosophical Review. Jan., 1967. — Vol. 76, No. 1. — P. 74—79. — Doi:10.2307/2182966
Mr. Mavrodes has offered a solution to the familiar paradox above; but it is erroneous. Mavrodes states that he assumes the existence of God, and then reasons (in pseudo-dilemma fashion) as follows. God is either omnipotent or He is not. If we assume that He is not omnipotent, the task of creating a stone which He cannot lift is not self-contradictory. And we can conclude that God is not omnipotent on the grounds that both His ability and His inability to perform this task imply that He is not omnipotent. But to prove His non-omnipotence in this way is trivial. «To be significant [the paradoxical argument] must derive this same conclusion from the assumption that God is omnipotent; that is, it must show that the assumption of the omnipotence of God leads to a reductio.» However, on the assumption that God is omnipotent, the task of creating a stone which God cannot lift is self-contradictory. Since inability to perform a self-contradictory task does not imply a limitation on the agent, one of the premises of the paradoxical argument—premise A(3)—is false. The argument is, in consequence, either insignificant or unsound.