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 »

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 »

‘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 »

Here’s a nice short piece by Frank Pastore. It’s entitled “Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs”. The four problems, posed somewhat more precisely than Pastore himself does, are: How did the universe come about given that it’s non-eternal? How could life have emerged from non-living matter? How could mind and self-consciousness have emerged from… Read More »

Suppose that free will theism is true. Free will theism entails theism, the thesis that God exists, where ‘God’ is understood to denote a necessary being essentially possessing the greatest possible set of compossible great-making properties, including maximal power, knowledge, and goodness. Free will theism also entails that God has created a world of creatures… Read More »

What philosophers call ‘propositions’ are useful theoretical entities. They are useful because they help to unify a range of otherwise disparate mental and linguistic phenomena. Thus, propositions are often thought to be (a) the contents of our mental representations, (b) the objects of intentional attitudes, (c) the meanings of sentences, and (d) the primary bearers… Read More »

It is commonly held among philosophers that events are the kinds of things that can most properly be said to serve as causes and effects. On this view, the event of the rock’s hitting the window causes the event of the window’s breaking. Some, however, prefer to analyze causation in terms of states (or states-of-affairs).… Read More »

Just got a paper accepted for publication in Religious Studies. Entitled “Generic Open Theism and Some Varieties Thereof,” it will probably come out in early 2008. Here’s the almost final version. I’ll be reading a somewhat shortened version of this paper at the upcoming Pacific APA in early April.

My recent post on the problem of evil stirred up quite a bit of discussion. One issue that I brushed over in my post, but which came up repeatedly in the comments, was that theism is no better than atheistic materialism at explaining how there can be objective moral standards due to the infamous “Euthyphro… Read More »

Brilliant satire. Enjoy. (HT: Uncommon Descent)