God and Gratuitous Evil (Part I)

In recent years, a large amount of scholarship has been written about St Thomas Aquinas’s views on free will and determinism. This paper is an attempt to bring some Thomist views of libertarian free will into dialogue with analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen and his ‘mysterianism’ about free will. The thesis of this paper is that Thomist libertarians about free will are committed to Peter van Inwagen’s mysterianism about free will. The paper intends to accomplish this aim by showing how recent accounts of Thomist libertarianism cannot defeat the intuitive strength of van Inwagen’s ‘Replay argument’. The significance of this conclusion is that some Thomists are committed to mysterianism and that mysterianism is a legitimate position a Thomist can hold. This also provides evidence that the Thomist tradition can grow and be nourished by engagement with contemporary analytic philosophy.

In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, it is widely held that if God exists, no gratuitous evil occurs. In an important series of papers, however, William Hasker has resisted this view. If Hasker’s argument were to succeed, this would have significant consequences for certain arguments from evil, and for the debate about the axiological effects of God’s existence. Chapter 3 sets out and evaluates Hasker’s argument—three objections to it are considered and rejected, but a fourth objection is developed in a way that places considerable pressure on his view.

In this paper, we will discuss Peter van Inwagen’s contribution to the epistemological debate about revealed peer disagreement. Roughly, this debate focuses on situations in which at least two participants disagree on a certain proposition based on the same evidence. This leads to the problem of how one should react rationally when peer disagreement is revealed. Van Inwagen, as we will show, discusses four possible reactions, all of which he rejects as unsatisfying. Our proposal will be to point to hidden assumptions in van Inwagen’s reasoning and ask whether he is willing to reject at least one of these to get rid of the problem. In short, our thesis amounts to the following: Of the two epistemological claims, which we call “Weak” and “Full-blown Fallibilism”, van Inwagen cannot simultaneously accept the first and reject the latter, while this is what he seems to suggest. Revealing this potential dilemma for van Inwagen’s position will lead to a more detailed discussion of how “rationality”, “truth”, “evidence” and “justification” interrelate and how a closer look at their relation might help solving the puzzle of revealed peer disagreement.

This chapter deals with fuzzy logic in Zadeh’s ‘narrow sense’ [27], pointing to t-norm based truth functional logics, where the truth values model ‘degrees of truth’, identified with reals from the unit interval [0,1]. In particular, we are interested in Łukasiewicz logic Ł and some of its variants, but also in Godel logic G, and in Product logic P. The literature on formal deduction systems for these and related many-valued logics is vast and even more has been written about their algebraic background. We refer to the monographs [23], [22], and [10] for more information and references. Most authors take the usefulness of these logics in the context of approximate reasoning, i.e., reasoning with vague and imprecise notions for granted. However the corresponding proof systems are hardly ever explicitly related to models of correct reasoning with vague information. In other words: the challenge to derive particular fuzzy logics from first principles about approximate reasoning is not addressed explicitly. The reference to general models of reasoning and to theories of vagueness – a prolific discourse in contemporary analytic philosophy – is only implicit, if not simply missing, in most presentations of inference systems for fuzzy logics. Some notable exceptions, where an explicit semantic foundation for particular fuzzy logics is aimed at, are: Ruspini’s similarity semantics [35]; voting semantics [25]; ‘re-randomizing semantics’ [24]; measurement-theoretic justifications [7]; the Ulam-Renyi game based interpretation of D. Mundici [29]; and ‘acceptability semantics’ of J. Paris [31]. As we have argued elsewhere [12], these formal semantics for various t-norm based logics (in particular Łukasiewicz logic) should be placed in the wider discourse about adequate theories of vagueness, a prolific subfield of analytic philosophy.

There is a in the air.' One argument in the family of new arguments for incompatibilism might be called the argument for incompatibilism. I have presented a version of the modal argument (following Carl Ginet), and Peter Van Inwagen has recently presented basically the same sort of argument.2 ( I shall also refer to the modal argument for incompatibilism as the Ginet/Van Inwagen argument.) Elsewhere, I argued that the Ginet/ Van Inwagen argument is importantly incomplete; there is no single interpretation of the premises of the argument on which it is uncontroversially sound.3 Both Ginet and Van Inwagen have defended the modal argument against the sort of criticism which I developed.4 In this paper, I propose to look again at the modal argument for incompatibilism. I shall present a simplified version of the argument, and I intend to show that the compatibilist can explain the examples adduced by Ginet and Van Inwagen in defense of their argument by narrower principles than those used in the argument, principles which don't support incompatibilism. Thus, I shall defend a version of my original claim that the incompatibilist's argument is incomplete. I do not here purport to defend compatibilism; rather, my project is to make clear where the gaps are in the modal argument for incompatibilism. Further, I shall point out that, whereas the incompatibilist's argument is not entirely convincing, it has an important virtue it exposes a commitment of certain compatibilists which appears to stand in need of some explanation and justification. In the course of this discussion, I hope to shed light on the relationship between human freedom and the laws of nature. I shall argue that the compatibilist has a distinctive and not obviously false view about this relationship.

Defenders of libertarian free will are generally of the view that the sort of freedom they uphold attends most, if not all, of our decisions and actions. Exceptions, if any, are apt to be claimed only for cases of duress or compulsion, in which it might be thought that the will is somehow bowled over by the strength of a particular motive. Recently, however, Peter van Inwagen has suggested that libertarian freedom is a rare condition at best, one that can obtain only in unusual circumstances (van Inwagen 1989).1 The reason is simply that in the great majority of situations of decision and action, what to do is absolutely clear to us; and, van Inwagen argues, when this is so we cannot do otherwise. This result is disheartening, the more so since it is also a common sense belief that most operations of the will are free. If, on an incom-patibilist account of freedom, this cannot be, prospects for a convincing defense of libertarianism are considerably diminished. Accordingly, it is worth considering whether the challenge presented by van Inwagen’s argument can be met. I shall try to argue that it can.

ABSTRACTJohn Laird was a Scottish philosopher associated with New British Realism. He held the position of Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen from 1924 to 1946. Among his notable works during this time was Recent Philosophy, a book published in 1936 that introduced current movements in philosophy. In this work, Laird included a chapter entitled “Analysis,” which introduced the term “new analytic philosophy.” Additionally, in the conclusion of this book, he used the term “contemporary analytical philosophy.” This article has two primary objectives. First, it seeks to reconsider Laird's contributions to philosophy. Second, it aims to elaborate on Laird's conception of “analytic philosophy” and compare it with the views of John Terence Wisdom, L. S. Stebbing and A. J. Ayer. In the article, it is also noted that Laird's book was published in the same year as Nagel's two‐part paper on analytic philosophy. It should be added that Nagel visited Cambridge in 1935. The article also endeavours to shed light on British philosophy and the development of the term “analytic philosophy” in the 1930s.

NoûsVolume 36, Issue s1 p. 176-196 The Number of Things Peter Van Inwagen, Peter Van Inwagen University of Notre DameSearch for more papers by this author Peter Van Inwagen, Peter Van Inwagen University of Notre DameSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 October 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0068.36.s1-1.8AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume36, Issues1December 2002Pages 176-196 RelatedInformation

The psychological reality of an inner awareness built into conscious experience has traditionally been a central element of philosophy of consciousness, from Aristotle, to Descartes, Brentano, the phenomenological tradition, and early and contemporary analytic philosophy. Its existence, however, has recently been called into question, especially by defenders of so-called transparency of experience and first-order representationalists about phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I put forward a defense of inner awareness based on an argument from memory. Roughly, the idea is that since we can only recall something if we were aware of it at the time of its occurrence, and since we can recall our own experiences, we must be aware of our own experiences at the time of their occurrence. The argument is far from new: it goes back to the Buddhist tradition and has been revived more recently in Buddhist Scholarship but also in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind, in particular by Uriah Kriegel. However, I believe that, since it is the best extant argument for inner awareness, it deserves more extensive treatment. My goal is to strengthen the memory argument by (i) making some conceptual distinctions as to the exact thesis about inner awareness that the argument is supposed to support, (ii) considering different ways the argument may be reconstructed depending on the exact thesis to be supported, and (iii) defending the argument from a new objection, raised very recently by Daniel Stoljar.

A divine command theory of morality contends that actions are morally required if and only if and because God commands those actions. An action is morally permissible if and only if and because God permits that action. An action is morally wrong if and only if and because God prohibits that action. The word “because” here refers to an immediate and direct dependence relationship. Defenders include John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Piere d’Ailly, Jean Gerson, Gabriel Biel, Francisco Suarez, Descartes, Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, George Berkeley, John Gay, William Paley, and John Austin. In the early twentieth century, most philosophers believed a line of argument pressed in Plato’s dialogue: the Euthyphro discredited divine command theories. However, they underwent a revival in the 20th-century analytic philosophy of religion due to the seminal works of Philip Quinn and Robert Adams. Their theories will be discussed in this article (see Formulating the Theory). The viability of divine command theories remains at the forefront of discussions about the relationship between religion and morality. This work will focus mainly on the development and debate around divine command theories in contemporary analytic philosophy, though some historical references will be discussed.

In recent analytic philosophy of religion, one hotly debated topic is the veridicality of religious experience. In this paper, I briefly trace how the argument from religious experience comes into prominence in the twentieth century. This is due to the able defense of this argument by Richard Swinburne, William Alston, and Jerome Gellman among others. I explain the argument's intuitive force and why the stock objections to religious experience are not entirely convincing. I expound Swinburne's approach and his application of the Principle of Credulity to religious experience. Then I critically examine four major objections to Swinburne. I conclude that the argument from religious experiences is not likely to be conclusive but it should not be dismissed either.

O autor estuda o impacto de Kant na filosofia analítica contemporânea e na respetiva historiografia, desde Frege, Russell e o positivismo lógico vienense, até a algumas reformulações mais recentes do problema kantiano sobre a distinção entre o analítico e o sintético, e a possibilidade do sintético a priori, como é o caso, entre outras, da de Quine e da de Kripke. Discute as razões que estão na origem do retorno a Kant na filosofia analítica desde os anos cinquenta do século passado até aos nossos dias (particularmente do que chama “rejeição versus aceitação de Kant”), e mostra que esse retorno se centrou (e em parte continua a centrar-‑se) na atualidade do problema referido e das respetivas implicações.

In this paper, the author argues that within the current philosophical debate, pragmatism has a distinct advantage over its rivals—on the one hand, Anglo-American analytic philosophy and, on the other hand, continental philosophy. By refusing to succumb to `naturalizing’ tendencies, pragmatism is able to overcome scientistic tendencies in contemporary analytic philosophy. At the same time, by emphasizing the `natural’, pragmatism provides a helpful correction to metaphysical tendencies in continental philosophy.

In this article, I critically assess Peter van Inwagen’s rejection of C. S. Lewis’s argument against Naturalism. Van Inwagen argues that Lewis (1960) errs on two fronts. First, he falsely assumes that Naturalism implies Spinozism: that the only way the world could be is the way it is. Second, the central premise of Lewis’s argument is asserted without proof. I argue that van Inwagen is mistaken on both counts.

Peter van Inwagen contends that nonresponsibility transfers across deterministic relations. Suppose it does. If the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every truth about what one does, and no one is even in part morally responsible for the past and the laws, then no one is even in part morally responsible for what one does. This argument, the Direct Argument, has drawn various critics, who have attempted to produce counterexamples to its core inference principle. This article considers two notable efforts, one by John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza and another by David Widerker. It shows that neither is sufficient to reject the Direct Argument. The article then proceeds to challenge the argument in a novel fashion. Van Inwagen has not given us good reason to think that the principle in question has an adequate anchor in our inferential practices, especially in light of the dialectical context with the compatibilist. Hence, it is not the compatibilists' burden to produce counterexamples to it. Rather, it is van Inwagen's burden to produce relevant confirming instances of it.