Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Knowledge

  • Indexicality and Omniscience

    Patrick Grim gives something like the following argument for the impossibility of divine omniscience. What I know when I know that 1. I am making a mess is an indexical fact that no one else can know. At most, what someone else can know is that 2. BV is making a mess or perhaps, pointing…

  • Does Omniscience Require Incarnation? Pursuing Some Consequences

    Dr. Vito Caiati  occasioned in  me a new thought the other day: that divine omniscience might require divine incarnation.  The gist of the thought is as follows. If God is all-knowing, then he possesses not only all knowledge by description, but also all knowledge by acquaintance. But it is not easy to see how God…

  • God, the Cosmos, Other Minds: In the Same Epistemological Boat?

    Tony Flood has gone though many changes in his long search for truth. He seems to have finally settled down in Van Til's presuppositionalism.  Tony  writes, God, the cosmos, and a plurality of minds other than one’s own are in the same epistemological boat. [. . .] To be skeptical about one but not the…

  • If God Cannot Cause Himself, How Can He Know Himself?

    This from a reader: If we say God cannot create himself since this implies a contradiction (God existing prior to himself to act on himself), how can we say God does anything with regard to himself? For instance, we say God knows himself. But how is this possible, seeing as God would need to first…

  • How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?

    Chris M writes,  If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if…

  • Disagreement in Philosophy: Notes on Jiří Fuchs

    That philosophers disagree is a fact about which there is little disagreement, even among philosophers. But what this widespread and deep disagreement signifies is a topic of major disagreement. One issue is whether or not the fact of disagreement supplies a good reason to doubt the possibility of philosophical knowledge.   The contemporary Czech philosopher…

  • Dream and Reality

    Suppose I become aware of something while dreaming. Does the fact that I am dreaming invalidate the content of my awareness? Or are there cases in which I become veridically aware that p even while and despite dreaming?   In bed I am puzzling over a chess problem. The book drops from my hands and…

  • Again on Divine Simplicity and God’s Knowledge of Contingent Truths

    This entry continues yesterday's discussion.  The question was: How can an ontologically simple God know contingent truths?  Here again is yesterday's aporetic tetrad: 1. God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God. 2. God knows some contingent truths. 3. Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there…

  • Divine Simplicity: Is God Identical to His Thoughts?

    Theophilus inquires, I've been researching the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) recently and I've had a hard time figuring something out. On DDS, is it the case that God is identical with his thoughts? Surely on the view (as you say in your SEP article) God is identical with his omniscience. But does that also…

  • Anti-Pyrrhonian Haiku

    The truth we needWe cannot know.So we must believeThat it is so.

  • Which is More Certain, God or My Hands?

    A reader inquires, "I'm curious, if someone asked you what you were more certain of, your hands or belief in the existence of God, how would you respond?" The first thing a philosopher does when asked a question is examine the question.  (Would that ordinary folk, including TV pundits, would do likewise before launching into gaseous answers…

  • Our Knowledge of Sameness

    How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  A structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable.  How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper…

  • Could God Prove His Own Existence?

    In response to two recent posts, here and here, Jacques comments: I'm mostly persuaded by your recent posts about theism and knowledge, but I disagree about your claim that "Presumably God can prove the existence of God, if he exists, not that he needs to." Think of your condition 5 ["It is such that all…

  • Neither the Existence Nor the Nonexistence of God is Provable

    A post of mine ends like this: To theists, I say: go on being theists.  You are better off being a theist than not being one.  Your position is rationally defensible and the alternatives are rationally rejectable.  But don't fancy that you can prove the existence of God or the opposite.  In the end you…

  • Indexicality and an Argument against Omniscience

    Patrick Grim gives something like the following argument. What I know when I know that 1. I am making a mess is an indexical fact that no one else can know. At most, what someone else can know is that 2. BV is making a mess or perhaps, pointing to BV, that 3. He is…