SYLLABUS
Reading. Anselm, Proslogion (selection); Gaunilo, ‘A reply on behalf of the fool.’
Anselm’s argument that the fact that we can conceive of God shows that God exists; a reply to the argument by one of Anselm’s contemporaries.
Reading. Paley, Natural Theology (selection); Hume, Dialogues on Natural Religion (selection).
Paley’s argument that the complexity and design of the world can only be explained by the existence of God; Hume’s argument that the observed design of the world provides no evidence for the existence of God.
Reading. Aquinas, ‘Whether God exists?’ from Summa Theologica; Leibniz, ‘On the Ultimate Origination of Things.’
Several different versions of the argument that the existence of a universe of contingent things requires explanation in terms of creation by God.
Reading. Pascal, ‘The Miracles’ (section XIII, §§803-56 of the Pensées); Hume, ‘Of Miracles’ (§10 of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).
Pascal’s statement of the importance of miracles for religious belief, and Hume’s argument that we are not rationally justified in believing in God on the basis of miracles.
Reading. Mackie, ‘Evil and omnipotence’; Swinburne, ‘Why God allows evil.’
The most prominent argument against the existence of God is the ‘argument from evil’: the argument that the existence of God is incompatible with the kind of evil we observe in the world. We will read one contemporary proponent, and one opponent, of the argument.
Reading. Pascal, Pensées, §233 (‘The Wager’).
Pascal’s argument that it is rational to believe in God on the basis of the knowledge that if God exists, belief in God yields an infinite reward.
Reading. Aquinas, ‘Whether the knowledge of God is of future contingent things?’ (from the Summa Theologica); Jonathan Edwards, Free Will (selections).
We have seen in our discussion of the existence of God that human free will seems necessary to reconcile the existence of God with the existence of evil in the world. But free will has seemed to many to be incompatible with one of the traditional attributes of God: omniscience.
Reading. Laplace, ‘A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities’; Holbach, ‘The Illusion of Free Will.’
A second challenge to free will comes from the thesis of determinism: the view, roughly, that future events are necessitated by past events along with the laws of nature.
Reading. Frankfurt, ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’ and ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.’
Frankfurt argues that many cases where someone could not have acted otherwise are clear cases of free action, and develops a theory of free action on which we can act freely whether or not determinism is true.
Reading. van Inwagen, ‘The Powers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will’ (ch. 12 of his Metaphysics).
van Inwagen argues, contra Frankfurt, that free will is incompatible with determinism; but agrees with Frankfurt that we have free will.
Reading. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section IV, ‘Sceptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding.’
Much of what we ordinarily take ourselves to know, in both science and every day life, rests on inductive inferences. We will discuss Hume’s argument for the conclusion that, in a sense to be explained, those inferences rest on mere faith.
Readings. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (selection).
Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’ presents another challenge to the rationality of our ordinary scientific practice of drawing general conclusions from limited perceptual evidence.
Readings. John Hawthorne, Knowledge and Lotteries (selection); Hart and McGinn, ‘Knowledge and Necessity’; Ned Hall, ‘How to set a surprise exam’ (selections).
The concept of knowledge has been thought by many not only to be open to skeptical doubts, but also to engender paradox. We will discuss three paradoxes of knowledge: the lottery paradox, the paradox of knowability, and the surprise exam paradox.