SYLLABUS
Reading. Anselm, Proslogion (selections); 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. Aquinas, ‘Whether God exists?’ from Summa Theologica.
Aquinas’s five ways of showing that God exists on the basis of observable facts about the world.
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. 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, Pensees, §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. van Inwagen, “It is wrong, everywhere, always, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
We will discuss the question of what the rational requirements on belief are in cases which do not admit of proof one way or the other.
Reading. Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality; Locke, Essay on Human Understanding (II.xxvii.9-29).
We will discuss the question of what persons are. We will consider, among others, the views that persons are material objects, that they are immaterial souls, and that personal identity is a matter of a kind of continuity of conscious experience.
Reading. Parfit, “Personal identity”; Lewis, “Survival and identity.”
An argument that personal identity should matter less to us in our practical reasoning than it in fact does, and a reply.
Reading. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section IV, ‘Sceptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding’; Strawson, “The justification of induction.”
Hume’s discussion of the difficulty in explaining our justification for inductive reasoning; Strawson’s attempt to dissolve the problem.
Readings. Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (selection).
Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’ as a challenge to the rationality of our ordinary scientific practice of drawing general conclusions from limited perceptual evidence.
Readings. Nagel, “Moral luck.”
An argument that possession of many of the properties which we use in moral evaluation is based, in many cases, on luck; how this leads to skepticism about moral evaluation and attributions of moral responsibility.