May 19, 2015
Molinism and Circularity
Yesterday, I discussed Thomas Flint's response to the grounding objection in chapter 5 of Divine Providence: The Molinist Account. Today, I want to discuss his response to Robert Adams in chapter 7. Adams' objection turns on a notion of explanatory priority which, Flint complains, is not adequately defined. Flint argues that there is an equivocation in the argument, and that Adams relies on a transitivity assumption which is not plausible when applied across the different sorts of priority involved. I think, however, that Flint is mistaken on both counts: first, the notion in question is not equivocal. Rather, it is...
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Topic(s):
Action Theory
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Divine Attributes
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Explanation
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Free Will
,
Metaphysics
,
Molinism
,
Philosophical Theology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Mind
,
Providence and Sovereignty
,
Robert Merrihew Adams
,
Thomas P. Flint
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May 18, 2015
Future Contingents and the Grounding Objection to Molinism
In chapter 5 of Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (1998), Thomas Flint defends a response to the grounding objection which he attributes to Alfred Freddoso. According to the Flint-Freddoso line, there are difficulties about future contingents which are exactly parallel to the difficulties about counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, and solutions to the problems about future contingents can be adapted to provide equally plausible solutions to the problems about counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. This claim is false. The exact formulation of the grounding objection is a little tricky. Some philosophers take it to be based on the (questionable) assumption of some...
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May 11, 2015
Some Reflections on Teaching Modern Philosophy
I have just finished teaching the survey of early modern philosophy for the first time. Here at Valpo, this course is required for philosophy majors and minors and is offered at the 200 (sophomore) level. There are a lot of ways to teach a class like this, and a lot of opinions about which ways are better, so I wanted to offer here a description of what I did and how I think it worked. (If there's anything really surprising in my evaluations when I get them at the end of this week, I may come back and revisit some...
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