May 20, 2013
Omnipotence and the 'Delimiter of Possibilities' View
Aquinas notes that some analyses of omnipotence have a serious problem: they reduce the apparently substantive claim "God is omnipotent" to the trivial claim that God "can do all that He is able to do." Now, perhaps it is true that to be omnipotent is to be able to do everything God is able to do (or at least that omnipotence entails this), but this is hardly an illuminating analysis. In several places in his Anselmian Explorations, Thomas Morris defends the view that the Anselmian God is the 'delimiter of possibilities.' This view has been endorsed by other Anselmians, and...
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Topic(s):
Alexander R. Pruss
,
Alfred J. Freddoso
,
Alvin Plantinga
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Divine Attributes
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Divine Necessity
,
Historical Thinkers
,
James F. Ross
,
Metaphysics
,
Modality
,
Omnipotence
,
Philosophical Theology
,
Philosophy
,
Thomas Aquinas
,
Thomas P. Flint
,
Thomas V. Morris
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January 29, 2013
A Theistic Argument for Compatibilism
One often hears it asserted that most theists are metaphysical libertarians. This seems to be supported, at least in the case of theistic philosophers, by the PhilPapers survey where target faculty specializing in philosophy of religion, who were overwhelmingly more likely to be theists than their peers in other specializations (72.3% for religion specialists vs. 14.6% overall), were also overwhelmingly more likely to be libertarians (57.4% vs. 13.7%). (Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to compare theists to non-theists across the board, so we just have this correlation among religion specialists.) Now, I suppose there are some reasons...
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Topic(s):
Agent Causation
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Causation
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Divine Attributes
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Divine Freedom
,
Divine Necessity
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Free Will
,
G. W. Leibniz
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Metaphysics
,
Philosophical Theology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Mind
,
Thomas Aquinas
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March 10, 2011
Two Bad Footnotes
I found two rather bad footnotes in student editions of early modern texts this week. Both texts are from the Oxford Philosophical Texts (OPT) series. The first makes a rather contentious historical/interpretive claim, and doesn't seem to recognize that it is doing so; the second is an outright error. The first footnote is in the OPT edition of Hume's first Enquiry. In the course of a critique of occasionalism, Hume writes, It argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabric of the world with such perfect foresight that, of itself, and by its proper operation, it may serve all...
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Topic(s):
David Hume
,
Deism
,
Divine Attributes
,
Divine Necessity
,
Existence of God
,
G. W. Leibniz
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Historiography of Philosophy
,
Ontological Argument
,
Philosophical Theology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
The Church
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