A premise of the Leibnizian cosmological argument from contingency says that no contingent fact can explain why there are any contingent facts at all. David Hume and Paul Edwards famously denied this premise, arguing that if every fact has an explanation in terms of further facts ad infinitum, then they all do. This is known as the Hume–Edwards Principle (HEP). In this paper, I examine the cosmological argument from contingency within a framework of metaphysical explanation or ground and defend a (...) ground-theoretic version of HEP which says, roughly, that the plurality of contingent facts is grounded in its members. (shrink)

En el siguiente artículo se estudiarán tres estrategias argumentativas para abordar un tópico reciente de debate en la filosofía de la religión conocido como el "Gap Problem". En él se procura estudiar la "fase II" de los argumentos cosmológicos, en la que se busca establecer propiedades o atributos teístas que identifiquen a la primera causa o ser necesario con el concepto de Dios. La contribución única de este estudio consiste en la presentación formalizada y sistemática de las distintas soluciones propuestas (...) por autores del ámbito filosófico, sintetizando sus ideas centrales y presentándolas en forma de argumentos. (shrink)

The following article will examine three argumentative strategies to address a recent topic of debate in the philosophy of religion known as the "Gap Problem." It aims to study the "Stage II" of cosmological arguments, where the goal is to establish the theistic properties or attributes that identify the first cause or necessary being with the concept of God. The unique contribution of this study lies in the formalized and systematic presentation of the various solutions proposed by authors in the (...) philosophical field, synthesizing their central ideas and presenting them in the form of arguments. (shrink)

Divine Foundationalism is the thesis that God is the source of all things (apart from God hirself). I clarify and defend the thesis, before I consider the main arguments for and against it.

In this article, I present a Leibnizian cosmological argument to the conclusion that either the totality of physical beings has a non-physical cause, or a necessary being exists. The crucial premise of the argument is a restricted version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, namely the claim that every contingent physical phenomenon has a sufficient cause (PSR-P). I defend this principle by comparing it with a causal principle that is fundamental for physicalism, namely the Causal Closure of Physics, which says (...) that every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause (CC). I find that the evidence for Causal Closure is weaker than the evidence for PSR-P, which means that physicalists who take CC to be justified must concede that PSR-P is also justified, and to a higher degree. Since my Leibnizian cosmological argument succeeds if PSR-P is granted, I conclude that physicalists must either give up CC and thereby physicalism, or accept that a necessary being exists. (shrink)

Metaphysical foundationalists argue that without fundamental facts, we cannot explain why there exist any dependent facts at all. Thus, metaphysical infinitism, the view that chains of ground can descend indefinitely without ever terminating in a level of fundamental facts, allegedly exhibits a kind of explanatory failure. I examine this argument and conclude that foundationalists have failed to show that infinitism exhibits explanatory failure. I argue that explaining the existence of dependent facts in terms of further dependent facts ad infinitum is (...) unproblematic by arguing for the plausibility of a ground-theoretic version of the Hume-Edwards Principle, which states that if each fact in a plurality of facts has a ground, then the plurality itself has a ground. (shrink)

Divine necessity is the thesis that God must exist. In this paper, I give a brief survey of what the thesis is more exactly, the main arguments for it, and the main arguments against it.

Ovaj rad odgovara na argument modalnog kolapsa protiv božanske jednostavnosti ili klasičnog teizma koji nude neoklasični ili kompleksni teisti. Argument modalnog kolapsa tvrdi da ako je Bog apsolutno jednostavan i apsolutno neophodan, tada je Božji čin stvaranja apsolutno neophodan, pa je stoga postojanje stvorenog svijeta također apsolutno neophodno. To znači da se Bog i njegova kreacija urušavaju u jednu modalnu kategoriju apsolutne nužnosti bez ikakvih kontingentnih bića. Moj odgovor je utemeljen na islamskoj neoplatonstičkoj filozofiji Ibn Sine i islamskoj tradiciji. Nudim (...) četiri argumenta koji dopuštaju muslimanskom neoplatoničaru da apsorbira modalni kolaps u modalitetu mogućih svjetova koji istovremeno može negira modalni kolaps unutar avicenovskog modaliteta: Prvo, prigovor modalnog kolapsa temelji se na okviru mogućih svjetova čiji je pojam nužnosti preširok; ovaj okvir ne uspijeva napraviti razliku između Boga kao ontološki nužnog po sebi, stvorenog bića kao nužno ovisnog o drugome i puke logičke nužnosti, kao što to čine Ibn Sina i islamski mislioci. Drugo, argumenti modalnog kolapsa samo pokazuju da je kreacija neophodna kroz drugost, ali ne uspijevaju dokazati da kreacija ima ontološku nužnost ili aseity––što se odnosi samo na Boga; prema tome, ne dolazi do posljedičnog modalnog kolapsa kada nečiji modalitet prepozna kreaciju kao "ovisno nužno biće" unatoč tome što je modalno nužno. Treće, islamski filozofi imaju nelibertarijanski pojam Božje volje i slobode koji je imun na prigovore modalnog kolapsa. Konačno, tvrdim da svi klasični i neoklasični teisti moraju prihvatiti modalno nužnu kreaciju jer libertarijanski modeli Božje volje za sobom povlače neuzrokovane i primitivno kontingentne učinke. (shrink)

Although it is very often taken for granted that there is something fundamental, the literature appears to have developed with little to no careful consideration of what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are supposed to do. If we are to have a good reason to believe that there is something fundamental, we need not only to know what exactly it is that the fundamentalia are invoked for, but why it is that nothing else is available for the task to (...) hand. A good argument in defense of fundamentality, then, will contain an assumption that stipulates an explanatory target; along with a second, crucial, assumption that tells us that no dependent entity is available to do the work that needs to be done. In this paper, I explore both of these assumptions. (shrink)