Author Archives: Alan Rhoda

Can a Timeless God Freely Create?

I don’t think so. Let me explain. To say that God freely creates is to say that he could have refrained from creating and that he could have created a different sort of world, one with different initial and boundary conditions. To say that God is timeless is to say that he undergoes no change… Read More »

The Meaning of Life – Part III

Fourth, there must a social afterlife. Consider a conscious afterlife in which a person is completely isolated from anyone else, like being in eternal solitary confinement. Such a fate seems unimaginably horrible. If that were my destiny right now, then I’d say that my life has no meaning in the specified sense. But what if… Read More »

The Meaning of Life – Part II

In my previous post, I concluded that when people ask about the meaning of life what they normally want to know is whether an individual person’s life can have an ultimate and objective meaning of a sort that could matter to that individual. In this post I want to consider what that meaning might consist… Read More »

The Meaning of Life – Part I

To ask “What is the meaning of life?” presupposes an affirmative answer to the question “Does life have a meaning?” Asking that question, in turn, presupposes that one has some idea of what the phrase “the meaning of life” could mean. What would it mean for life to have a meaning, if it has one?… Read More »

Fumerton on Inferential Justification and Skepticism

I’ve been busy the last few weeks vacationing, wrapping up my summer projects, and getting ready for the Fall semester. Below is a link to one of my recently finished projects. Entitled “Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification, Skepticism, and the Nature of Inference”, it’s a revision and expansion of some parts of chapter 3 of… Read More »

Presentism, Truthmakers, and God

I’ve just finished revising my paper “Presentism, Truthmakers, and God” and have sent it off to a journal. I made quite a few changes from the earlier version. For those who might be interested, here’s the abstract: Abstract: The truthmaker objection to presentism (the view that what exists simpliciter is coextensive with what exists now)… Read More »

Going to Maui

Faithful readers, My wife and I are leaving tomorrow morning for a week in Maui to celebrate our third anniversary. So no more blogging until I get back. Alan PS: I’ve decided to try turning off comment moderation. So your comments will now appear immediately after you post them.

Further Thoughts on Excluded Middle

In my previous post I raised some questions about the “Law of Excluded Middle” (LEM), which states that (LEM) For any proposition p, either p is true or p is not-true. The gist of my concern was that if LEM applies across the board then this implies that reality is discrete all the way down,… Read More »

Is the “Law of Excluded Middle” Really a Law?

The so-called “Law of Excluded Middle” (LEM) is often taken to be one of the most fundamental laws of logic. It may be expressed as follows: (LEM) For any proposition p, either p is true or p is not-true. LEM is to be distinguished from the Principle of Bivalence (BV), which states: (BV) For any… Read More »