Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Miller, Barry

  • Defending Barry Miller against Herman Philipse: Existence as a First-Level Property, Part III

    This is the third in a series.  First installment, second, Philipse's review. Herman Philipse's strongest argument against Barry Miller's claim that existence is a a first-level property, a property of individuals, is the absurdity objection. According to this objection, if existence is an accidental real first-order property of individual entities, so must non-existence be, but…

  • Defending Barry Miller against Herman Philipse: Existence as a First-Level Property, Part II

    This is the second in a series. Here is the first installment. Read it for context and references. We are still examining only the first premise of Barry Miller's cosmological argument, as sketched by Philipse: 1) Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals. Philipse gave two arguments contra. In my first entry…

  • Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

    In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God: 1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals. 2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from…

  • Review of Barry Miller, A Most Unlikely God

    I reviewed A Most Unlikely God in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (vol. XXXVIII, no. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 614-617).  Prof. N.M.L Nathan  expressed an interest in reading it, so here it is. A Most Unlikely God: A Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature of God. By Barry Miller. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,…

  • 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…

  • A Review of Barry Miller’s From Existence to God

    I have reviewed two of Barry Miller's books. My review of A Most Unlikely God appeared in Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (vol. XXXVIII, no. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 614-617). My review of From Existence to God appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (Summer 1993), pp. 390-394, I post a version of the latter here. Barry…

  • Honoring Barry Miller

    I honor him in the best way a philosopher can be honored — by carefully studying his works,  thinking his thoughts, and building upon them.

  • Are There Logically Simple Propositions?

    Leo Carton Mollica e-mails:   Your most recent post (for which many thanks) inspired the below-expressed argument, and I was curious as to your opinion of it . . . . I think it has something behind it, but right now I feel uncertain about my examples in (2).   0. There is something curious…