In response to an earlier post of mine, Ian Spencer has continued to press me to clarify and defend an argument I make in a recent paper to the effect that unqualified claims about the future (i.e., ones which say that something “will” or “will not” happen) normally carry a high degree of “causal force”… Read More: Reply to Ian on Assertion and Probability »
Here’s my third and final recap on the 3-week “Open Theology & Science” conference that I attended in the Boston area. This is coming a few days late because my time is precious right now, so I’m going to ‘cheat’ a bit and link to a series of blog posts on the conference by my… Read More: Open Theology & Science – Week 3 Recap »
Ian Spencer, a philosophy Ph.D. grad student at UC Davis, has commented on my paper (coauthored with Greg Boyd and Tom Belt) “Open Theism, Omniscience, and the Nature of the Future”, which recently came out in Faith and Philosophy (Fall 2006 issue). In this post I’d like to address some of his concerns. I’ll take… Read More: Comments on a Recent Paper »
Continuing coverage of a 3-week “Open Theology and Science” conference being held in the Boston area. For my week 1 recap, see here. On Monday (6/25) we drove out to Concord, MA. We started out at the Concord Museum, which covers the life and work of the major figures of the Transcendentalist movement, including Emerson,… Read More: Open Theology & Science – Week 2 Recap »
I’m currently in Boston at a 3-week seminar entitled “Open Theology and Science”. The goal of the conference is to generate new research at the intersection of science, philosophy, and theology in light of the distinctive commitments of open theism (= broadly classical theism + real future contingency + epistemic openness of the future for… Read More: Open Theology & Science – Week 1 Recap »
Derek, a commentator on my blog, has asked me some about whether essential divine relationality (as implied in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity) entails essential divine temporality. In other words, would God’s being essentially an active, loving, multi-personal unity require that God experience continued change and hence divine temporality? In response, I submit “no”… Read More: Divine Relationality and Temporality »
Philosopher Elliott Sober thinks that design arguments against naturalism commit a fallacy that he calls ‘probabilistic modus tollens‘, which he takes to be an inference of the following form: Probably, (if p then q).Not-q.Therefore, probably, not-p. Thus, he construes the argument against naturalism from cosmic fine-tuning as follows: Probably, (if naturalism were true, then the… Read More: Probabilistic Modus Tollens and the Design Argument »
It is not uncommon in discussions over controversial topics for one side to accuse the other of fallaciously “arguing from ignorance” or from “personal incredulity”. In discussions of intelligent design versus Darwinian naturalism the closely related “God-of-the-gaps” objection is frequently leveled. I believe that most attributions of these fallacies are uncharitable and undeserved. Consider the… Read More: Ignorance, Incredulity, and God-of-the-Gaps »
The Special Theory of Relativity (STR) is one of the most well-confirmed theories in modern physics, or so I’ve been told by those I trust. It’s also widely regarded by metaphysicians as being of utmost significance for the metaphysics of time. In particular, it’s widely thought to have dealt a death blow to the tensed… Read More: STR and the Metaphysics of Time »
‘Maverick Philosopher‘ Bill Vallicella has written recently on the distinction between ‘de re‘ and ‘de dicto‘ beliefs. As he explains the distinction, a de dicto belief is a belief about a dictum (basically, a proposition). Thus, in “Sam believes that Cicero is a politician” the verb “believes” is followed by a ‘that’-clause which expresses a… Read More: Are There ‘De Re’ and ‘De Dicto’ Beliefs? »