When faced with the charge that a given concept of God is contradictory, the standard move among philosophers and theologians has been to try to explain away the contradiction and show that the concept of God in question is consistent. This has to do, of course, with the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Another option, which has recently generated interest among logicians and analytic philosophers of religion, is to reject such a move as unnecessary and defend what might be called the (...) contradictory God thesis. To be sure, something close to that can be found in philosophers such as Pseudo-Dionysius, Thomas Aquinas and Nicolaus de Cusa. However, it is only recently that this approach has gained momentum, certainly driven by the contemporary advance of dialetheism and glut theoretic approaches in general, and paraconsistent logic. Needless to say, a standard move among defenders of the contradictory God thesis is to challenge the LNC. The argumentation, however, is seldomly framed in conceptual terms. Instead, it is mostly framed in ontological terms, as God being a contradictory entity. From this perspective, the contradictory God thesis is the thesis that God is a contradictory object. My goal in this paper is to provide a conceptual assessment of the discussion surrounding the contradictory God thesis. To achieve this, I make use of a general and hopefully non-controversial meta-theory of concepts and adopt a semantic approach rather than a metaphysical one. Within this framework, I address the following questions: What are the different ways we can understand the contradictory God thesis? What grounds are there for rejecting a contradictory concept of God? What standard moves are available to defend oneself from such criticisms and how do they relate to the LNC? What challenges do they present? As a secondary goal, the paper introduces a novel defense of the contradictory God thesis, drawing on a specific interpretation of the theology of the 16th-century Indian thinker Jīva Gosvāmī, which avoids the need to challenge the LNC. I term this approach ‘non-dialetheic mystical contradictory theism.’. (shrink)

Neste artigo, abordo algumas questões de ordem superior envolvendo o conceito de Deus que surgem dentro de um contexto pluralista: o problema da unidade conceitual, o problema da unicidade de extensão e o problema da homogeneidade/heterogeneidade. Minha proposta para resolver essas questões envolve uma teoria especial híbrida de conceitos, chamada de teoria de conceitos ideais. Argumento que, quando adicionada a uma visão pluralista de conceitos, e formalizada dentro de uma estrutura de mundos possíveis, tal teoria fornece uma resposta satisfatória a (...) esses problemas. A formalização é feita a partir de uma versão específica da Lógica Modal Quantificada Mais Simples (SQML, do inglês Simplest Quantified Modal Logic), e sua apresentação é exclusivamente semântica, mantendo detalhes técnicos a um nível mínimo. (shrink)