Blog Archive

  • Middle knowledge or Molinism?

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    [UPDATE: I’ve actually modified the related post since I wrote this one. I’m leaving this post here, though, because I still think it’s got an interesting thought in it] In my recent post on God’s providence I discussed a view which I called “middle knowledge”. To some this might have been confusing, for this position is also sometimes called “Molinism”, after the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina. Molina is responsible for introducing the doctrine of middle knowledge to reconcile libertarian free will with a strong view of divine providence, and as such the term Molinism is often used to designate the position…

  • Divine simplicity and constituent ontologies

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    I’ve recently begun reading about Aristotelean-Thomistic philosophy. In A-T metaphysics, the doctrine of divine simplicity has a central place. This is the doctrine that God has no parts, be they physical or metaphysical. From this it follows that he is identical to his nature, to his existence, and to each of the divine attributes. Now this may sound really strange to some, but I recently read the SEP article on Divine Simplicity, and the distinction between constituent and non-constituent ontologies is both informative and helpful in making sense of divine simplicity. Worth a read.

  • God’s control and our free will

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    This is the second post in a series of posts on God’s providence. Last time we looked at a bunch of passages from Scripture which weigh in on the question. This time, as the title suggests, we’re going to talk about the relationship between God’s control and our free will. In our first post, we asked two questions: Does God have the ability to control or direct human choices and actions? How often does God exercise this ability? I think it was plain from last time that God does have the ability of directing human actions (cf. Gen 50:20, 1…

  • What’s a negative property?

    In discussing the Gödelian ontological argument recently articulated by Alexander Pruss[1] (here and here) there was a need to define what we mean by “positive property”. In the first post, we defined a positive property (in a very Anselmian way) as a property that is better or greater to have than not. In his second paper, Pruss suggests a different route: define “negative property” first, and then define “positive property” from that. That’s what we’re going to do here. If people don’t like the Anselmian intuitions behind our first definition, this should be a more acceptable route. Note what our goal…

  • The gap problem

    In the previous two posts (here and here) we looked at a Gödelian ontological argument from Alexander Pruss, which we’ll use a bit in this post. The gap problem Right, so what is the gap problem? Simply put, solving the gap problem involves bridging the gap between (i) the first cause or necessary being that we arrive at in cosmological arguments and (ii) the God of classical theism. Different philosophers have approached this problem in different ways and here I hope to survey and briefly discuss some of those. I haven’t read nearly enough to give any sort of comprehensive…

  • Regent nomadic educated oligarchy

    My brother studies politics and economic history, so sometimes we get into discussions about how governments should be structured. Yesterday we had an interesting discussion, so I thought I’d write something about it. Anarchism and the problem of greed We started by discussing anarchism. Now if you didn’t already know, anarchists aren’t proponents of chaos, they’re just not fans of some people having power over others. Rather, the goal is to have a community where everyone has equal power. Unfortunately, I think the idea of anarchism appeals to us western people mainly because we have been taught to worship at the…

  • Fitch, Humberstone, and an omniscient being

    I just read the paper “Omnificence” by John Bigelow[1]. In the preamble he recounts the following argument for an omniscient being Any fact (true proposition) is knowable by someone. (Premise) Therefore, every fact is known. Therefore, someone knows every fact. Fitch[2] was responsible for showing that (2) follows from (1). One way to see this is a follows: for reductio assume, contrary to (2), that there is some fact p that is not known by someone. Then, p and no-one knows p is a fact, and by (1) is therefore knowable. Therefore, it is possible that someone knows p, and at the same time…

  • Argument from love for objective moral value

    Consider the following argument: Love involves appreciation. Appreciation of something is irrational if it has no value. It is rational to love other persons. Now, I suppose value comes in different forms, and what we really need is objective intrinsic value. Well, people usually don’t love other people because of what they can do for them (extrinsic value). After all, to appreciate another person as simply a means isn’t really loving them, is it? So, we have the following: 4. Love for other persons involves appreciation of their intrinsic value. From which it follows that, 5. Therefore, other persons have…

  • Atheism is self-defeating

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    I was thinking about the short argument I gave here and was wondering if it could be turned into a positive argument for theism. I came up with this: If God doesn’t exist, then our cognitive faculties arose from non-purposive processes. No purposive system can arise from non-purposive processes. Therefore, if God doesn’t exist, then our cognitive faculties are non-purposive. Rationality is purposive. Therefore, if God doesn’t exist we aren’t rational. Therefore, atheism is self-defeating. It seems promising. Although, I suspect I should read JP Moreland, Alvin Plantinga and Victor Reppert to get a better idea of the contemporary debate around…

  • Modality and the ontological argument

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    Previously, I outlined what I find to be a compelling ontological argument from Alexander Pruss. In the post, we dispelled the idea that there is a single ontological argument and distinguished between a number of families on such arguments. The one we focussed on is a so-called Gödelian ontological argument, named after the famous mathematician Kurt Gödel. Gödelian ontological arguments construct an axiomatic system and use this to prove, as a theorem in the system, that something like God exists; and this is exactly what we did. If you’ll recall, we proved the following theorem: Theorem 2 There exists a…

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