Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: God

  • Where in Logical Space is God?

    Milos the Serbian sends us to this sampling of correspondence by and to David Lewis assembled by his widow, Stephanie Lewis.

  • What Did You Do With Your Life, God?

    Thanksgiving evening, the post-prandial conversation was very good.  Christian Marty K. raised the question of what one would say were one to meet God after death and God asked, "What did you do with your life?" Atheist Peter L. shot back, "What did you do with your life, God?" In my judgment, and it is…

  • Woody Allen, Meet Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

    To repeat some of what I wrote yesterday, According to Woody Allen, we all know that human existence is meaningless and that it ends, utterly and meaninglessly, with death. We all know this, he thinks, but we hide the horrible reality from ourselves with all sorts of evasions and distractions.  Worldly people, for example, imagine…

  • Truth and God: How are they Related?

    Here are four combinatorially possible ways truth and God could be related. 1. There is truth, but there is no God. 2. There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth. 3. There is truth, there is God, and truth ultimately depends on the existence of God. 4.…

  • The Extremism of Simone Weil

    A longish essay of mine, Weil's Wager, ends like this: Although Weilian disinterest may appear morally superior to Pascalian self-interest, I would say that the former is merely an example of a perverse strain in Weil’s thinking. One mistake she makes is to drive a wedge between the question of the good and the question…

  • Dawkins Versus Swinburne

    Richard Dawkins reviews Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford, 1996) here. What follows are the meatiest excerpts from Dawkins' review together with my critical comments. I have bolded the passages to which I object. (show) Swinburne is ambitious. He will not shrink into those few remaining backwaters which scientific explanation has so far failed…

  • God, Simplicity, and Tropes

    A reader asks, In your Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy divine simplicity article you draw a helpful  comparison toward the end between trope theory and divine simplicity. However it left me wondering in what way the claim that 1) God is simple differs from the claim that 2) God is just a trope of divinity? Excellent…

  • Relational Ontology, Constituent Ontology, and Divine Simplicity

    A Sketch of the Difference between Two Ontological Styles What it is for a thing to have a property?  Ostrich nominalism aside, it is a Moorean fact that things have properties, but the nature of the having is a philosophical problem.  The ordinary language 'have' does not wear it correct ontological analysis on its sleeve. …

  • Reply to Ken Hochstetter on Divine Simplicity

    Ken Hochstetter of the College of Southern Nevada kindly sent me some comments on my SEP Divine Simplicity entry.  They are thoughtful and challenging and deserve a careful reply.  My remarks are in blue.  I have added some subheadings. Comments enabled.

  • The Politics of Impassibility

    This just over the transom:   I hope you don’t mind my seeking your help on an issue related to the history of philosophy. I and a few friends are have a disagreement re: the origin of belief in divine apatheia.   In Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective, Justo Gonzalez discusses the political motivations behind…

  • Infinite Regresses: Vicious and Benign

    A reader asks:     Are all infinite regresses (regressions?) vicious? Why the pejorative   label? Of the many things I don't understand, this must be near the   top of my list, and it's an ignorance that dates back to my undergrad   Intro to Philosophy days. When I first read the Thomistic cosmological   proofs, I found myself…

  • Schopenhauer: Causa Prima and Causa Sui as Contradictiones in Adjecto

    Schopenhauer, Über die vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde (1813), sec. 20:  . . . causa prima ist, eben so gut wie causa sui, eine contradictio in adjecto, obschon der erstere Ausdruck viel häufiger gebraucht wird, als der letztere, und auch mit ganz ernsthafter, sogar feierlicher Miene ausgesprochen zu werden pflegt, ja Manche, insonderheit…

  • Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty

    I have in my hands the Winter 2014 issue of American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly.  It contains (pp. 149-161) my review essay on McCann's 2012 Creation and the Sovereignty of God.  Many thanks to Peter Lupu and Hugh McCann for comments and discussion, and to the editors for allowing me to expand my review into a…

  • Deconstructing God: Gutting Interviews Caputo

    Another in the NYT Opiniator series.  This one is particularly bad and illustrates what is wrong with later Continental philosophy.  Earlier Continental philosophy is good: Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, early Heidegger, early Sartre, and a whole host of lesser lights including Stumpf, Twardowski, Ingarden, Scheler, von Hildebrand, Edith Stein, et al.  The later movement, however, peters…

  • Book Notice: Elmar J. Kremer, Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller’s Approach to God

    I recall a remark by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his Philosophische Lehrjahre to the effect that the harvest years of a scholar come late.  That  was certainly true in the case of the Australian philosopher Barry Miller (1923-2006).   His  philosophical career culminated in a burst of productivity.  In roughly the last decade of his long life…