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  1. (1 other version)Graham Oppy on the Kalam Cosmological Argument.William Lane Craig - 2011 - International Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3):303-330.
    Graham Oppy has emerged as one of the kalam cosmological argument’s most formidable opponents. He rejects all four of the arguments drawn from metaphysics and physics for the second premiss that the universe began to exist. He also thinks that we have no good reason to accept the first premiss that everything that begins to exist has a cause. In this response, I hope to show that the kalam cosmological argument is, in fact, considerably stronger than Oppy claims, surviving even (...)
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  • Epistemological Foundations for Koons' Cosmological Argument?Graham Oppy - 2010 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 2 (1):107 - 125.
    Some people -- including the present author -- have proposed and defended alternative restricted causal principles that block Robert Koons’s ’new’ cosmological argument without undermining the intuition that causation is very close to ubiquitous. In "Epistemological Foundations for the Cosmological Argument", Koons argues that any restricted causal principles that are insufficient for the purposes of his cosmological argument cause epistemological collapse into general scepticism. In this paper I argue, against Koons, that there is no reason to suppose that my favourite (...)
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  • Craig, Mackie, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument.Graham Oppy - 1991 - Religious Studies 27 (2):189 - 197.
    In ‘Professor Mackie and the Kalam Cosmological Argument’ , 367–75), Professor William Lane Craig undertakes to demonstrate that J. L. Mackie's analysis of the kalam cosmological argument in The Miracle of Theism is ‘superficial’, and that Mackie ‘has failed to provide any compelling or even intuitively appealing objection against the argument’ . I disagree with Craig's judgement; for it seems to me that the considerations which Mackie advances do serve to refute the kalam cosmological argument. Consequently, the purpose of this (...)
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  • Must the Past Have a Beginning?Wes Morriston - 1999 - Philo 2 (1):5-19.
    In defense of his claim that the universe must have been created, William Lane Craig gives two distinct philosophical arguments against the possibility of an infinite past. The first appeals to various paradoxes allegedly generated by the idea of an actual infinite. The second appeals to a dynamic theory of the nature of time, and tries to show on that basis that an infinite series of events could not have been “formed by successive addition.” The present paper is concerned with (...)
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  • Van Inwagen on the Cosmological Argument.Anthony Brueckner - 2001 - Philosophical Papers 30 (1):31-40.
    Abstract In his book Metaphysics, Peter van Inwagen constructs a version of the Cosmological Argument which does not depend on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He goes on to reject the argument. In this paper, I construct an alternative version of the Cosmological Argument that uses some of van Inwagen's insights and yet is immune to his criticisms. If we suppose that for each contingent truth, there is some at least partial explanation, then it follows that there is some necessary (...)
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  • Philosophical theology.James F. Ross - 1969 - Indianapolis,: Bobbs-Merrill.
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  • A new look at the cosmological argument.Robert C. Koons - 1997 - American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (2):193 - 211.
    The cosmological argument for God’s existence has a long history, but perhaps the most influential version of it has been the argument from contingency. This is the version that Frederick Copleston pressed upon Bertrand Russell in their famous debate about God’s existence in 1948 (printed in Russell’s 1957 Why I am not a Christian). Russell’s lodges three objections to the Thomistic argument.
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  • (1 other version)Cosmological arguments.Graham Oppy - 2009 - Noûs 43 (1):31-48.
    This paper provides a taxonomy of cosmological arguments and givesgeneral reasons for thinking that arguments that belong to a given category do not succeed.
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  • (2 other versions)Dialogues concerning natural religion.David Hume - 2007 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Late modern philosophy: essential readings with commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 338-339.
    How do we know that God exists? One of Britain's greatest 18th-century philosophers addresses the age-old question in this timeless dialogue. Equally captivating as a philosophical argument and as a work of literature, this classic is particularly relevant in terms of its criticism of the reasoning behind Intelligent Design.
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  • (2 other versions)Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 2007 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Late modern philosophy: essential readings with commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 449-451.
    One of the cornerstone books of Western philosophy, Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's seminal treatise, where he seeks to define the nature of reason itself and builds his own unique system of philosophical thought with an approach known as transcendental idealism. He argues that human knowledge is limited by the capacity for perception and attempts a logical designation of two varieties of knowledge: a posteriori, the knowledge acquired through experience; and a priori, knowledge not derived through experience. This accurate (...)
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  • The existence of God.Richard Swinburne - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Richard Swinburne presents a substantially rewritten and updated edition of his most celebrated book. No other work has made a more powerful case for the probability of the existence of God. Swinburne gives a rigorous and penetrating analysis of the most important arguments for theism: the cosmological argument; arguments from the existence of laws of nature and the 'fine-tuning' of the universe; from the occurrence of consciousness and moral awareness; and from miracles and religious experience. He claims that while none (...)
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  • Time, Tense, and Causation.Michael Tooley - 1997 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Michael Tooley presents a major new philosophical theory of the nature of time, offering a powerful alternative to the traditional "tensed" and recent "tenseless" accounts of time. He argues for a dynamic conception of the universe, in which past, present, and future are not merely subjective features of experience. He claims that the past and the present are real, while the future is not. Tooley's approach accounts for time in terms of causation. He therefore claims that the key to understanding (...)
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  • The Nature of Necessity.Alvin Plantinga - 1974 - Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
    This book, one of the first full-length studies of the modalities to emerge from the debate to which Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Ruth Marcus, and others are contributing, is an exploration and defense of the notion of modality de re, the idea that objects have both essential and accidental properties. Plantinga develops his argument by means of the notion of possible worlds and ranges over such key problems as the nature of essence, transworld identity, negative existential propositions, and the existence (...)
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  • From states of affairs to a necessary being.Joshua Rasmussen - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (2):183 - 200.
    I develop new paths to the existence of a concrete necessary being. These paths assume a metaphysical framework in which there are abstract states of affairs that can obtain or fail to obtain. One path begins with the following causal principle: necessarily, any contingent concrete object possibly has a cause. I mark out steps from that principle to a more complex causal principle and from there to the existence of a concrete necessary being. I offer a couple alternative causal principles (...)
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  • The Hume-Edwards principle and the cosmological argument.Alexander R. Pruss - 1998 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (3):149-165.
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  • Defeasible reasoning.Robert C. Koons - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • Dov Hugh Mellor, the facts of causation. [REVIEW]Max Urchs - 1997 - Erkenntnis 46 (2):277-279.
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  • (1 other version)Causal and metaphysical necessity.Sydney Shoemaker - 1998 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1):59–77.
    Any property has two sorts of causal features: “forward-looking” ones, having to do with what its instantiation can contribute to causing, and ldquo;backward-looking” ones, having to do with how its instantiation can be caused. Such features of a property are essential to it, and properties sharing all of their causal features are identical. Causal necessity is thus a special case of metaphysical necessity. Appeals to imaginability have no more force against this view than they do against the Kripkean view that (...)
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  • (7 other versions)The cosmological argument.William L. Rowe - 1971 - Noûs 5 (1):49-61.
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  • A new cosmological argument.Richard M. Gale & Alexander R. Pruss - 1999 - Religious Studies 35 (4):461-476.
    We will give a new cosmological argument for the existence of a being who, although not proved to be the absolutely perfect God of the great Medieval theists, also is capable of playing the role in the lives of working theists of a being that is a suitable object of worship, adoration, love, respect, and obedience. Unlike the absolutely perfect God, the God whose necessary existence is established by our argument will not be shown to essentially have the divine perfections (...)
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  • (1 other version)An Essay on Free Will.Peter van Inwagen - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    "This is an important book, and no one interested in issues which touch on the free will will want to ignore it."--Ethics. In this stimulating and thought-provoking book, the author defends the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. He disputes the view that determinism is necessary for moral responsbility. Finding no good reason for accepting determinism, but believing moral responsiblity to be indubitable, he concludes that determinism should be rejected.
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  • Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will.Timothy O'Connor (ed.) - 1995 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...)
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  • (1 other version)Causal and Metaphysical Necessity.Shoemaker Sydney - 1998 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1):59-77.
    Any property has two sorts of causal features: “forward‐looking” ones, having to do with what its instantiation can contribute to causing, and ldquo;backward‐looking” ones, having to do with how its instantiation can be caused. Such features of a property are essential to it, and properties sharing all of their causal features are identical. Causal necessity is thus a special case of metaphysical necessity. Appeals to imaginability have no more force against this view than they do against the Kripkean view that (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Why Is There Anything At All?Peter van Inwagen & E. J. Lowe - 1996 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 70 (Supplementary):95-120.
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  • (2 other versions)Why Is There Anything At All?Peter van Inwagen & E. J. Lowe - 1996 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 70 (1):95-120.
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  • Explaining Explanation.David-Hillel Ruben - 1990 - Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
    This book introduces readers to the topic of explanation. The insights of Plato, Aristotle, J.S. Mill and Carl Hempel are examined, and are used to argue against the view that explanation is merely a problem for the philosophy of science. Having established its importance for understanding knowledge in general, the book concludes with a bold and original explanation of explanation.
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  • The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment.Alexander R. Pruss - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    The Principle of Sufficient Reason says that all contingent facts must have explanation. In this 2006 volume, which was the first on the topic in the English language in nearly half a century, Alexander Pruss examines the substantive philosophical issues raised by the Principle Reason. Discussing various forms of the PSR and selected historical episodes, from Parmenides, Leibnez, and Hume, Pruss defends the claim that every true contingent proposition must have an explanation against major objections, including Hume's imaginability argument and (...)
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  • Philosophical Perspectives on Infinity.Graham Robert Oppy - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book is an exploration of philosophical questions about infinity. Graham Oppy examines how the infinite lurks everywhere, both in science and in our ordinary thoughts about the world. He also analyses the many puzzles and paradoxes that follow in the train of the infinite. Even simple notions, such as counting, adding and maximising present serious difficulties. Other topics examined include the nature of space and time, infinities in physical science, infinities in theories of probability and decision, the nature of (...)
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  • From a necessary being to god.Joshua Rasmussen - 2009 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 66 (1):1-13.
    Not a lot of work on theistic arguments has been devoted to drawing connections between a necessary being and theistic properties. In this paper, I identify novel paths from a necessary being to certain theistic properties: volition, infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite goodness. The steps in those paths are an outline for future work on what William Rowe (The Cosmological Argument, 1975, p. 6) has called “stage II” of the cosmological argument.
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  • Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency.Timothy O'Connor - 2008 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
    An expansive, yet succinct, analysis of the Philosophy of Religion – from metaphysics through theology. Organized into two sections, the text first examines truths concerning what is possible and what is necessary. These chapters lay the foundation for the book’s second part – the search for a metaphysical framework that permits the possibility of an ultimate explanation that is correct and complete. A cutting-edge scholarly work which engages with the traditional metaphysician’s quest for a true ultimate explanation of the most (...)
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  • Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will.Timothy O'Connor - 2000 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.
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  • The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument.Alexander R. Pruss - 2009 - In William Lane Craig & J. P. Moreland (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 24–100.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The PSR Nonlocal CPs Toward a First Cause The Gap Problem Conclusions and Further Research References.
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  • God, Reason and Theistic Proof.Stephen T. Davis - 1997 - Edinburgh University Press.
    How do we prove the existence of God? This book tackles head-on this fundamental question. It examines a cross-section of theistic proofs, explaining in clear terms what they are and what they try to accomplish.
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  • Must Metaphysical Time Have a Beginning?Wes Morriston - 2003 - Faith and Philosophy 20 (3):288-306.
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  • And This All Men Call God.Timothy O’Connor - 2004 - Faith and Philosophy 21 (4):417-435.
    Philosophical discussion of theistic arguments mainly focus on their first (existence) stage, which argues for the existence of something having some very general, if suggestive, feature. I shall instead consider only the second (identification) stage of one such argument, the cosmologic al argument from contingency. Taking for granted the existence of an absolutely necessary being, I develop an extended line of argument that supports the..
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  • (2 other versions)Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 2007 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Late modern philosophy: essential readings with commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
    One of the cornerstone books of Western philosophy, Critique of Pure Reason is Kant's seminal treatise, where he seeks to define the nature of reason itself and builds his own unique system of philosophical thought with an approach known as transcendental idealism. He argues that human knowledge is limited by the capacity for perception and attempts a logical designation of two varieties of knowledge: a posteriori, the knowledge acquired through experience; and a priori, knowledge not derived through experience. This accurate (...)
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  • Faulty Reasoning About Default Principles in Cosmological Arguments.Graham Oppy - 2004 - Faith and Philosophy 21 (2):242-249.
    Robert Koons claims that my previous critique of his “new” cosmological argument is vitiated by confusion about the nature of defeasible argumentation.In response, I claim that Koons misrepresents—and perhaps misunderstands—the nature of my objections to his “new” cosmological argument. The main claims which I defend are: (1) that the move from a non-defeasible to a defeasible causal principle makes absolutely no difference to the success of the cosmological argument in which it is contained; and (2) that, since it is perfectly (...)
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  • Prospects for a sound stage 3 of cosmological arguments.Jerome Gellman - 2000 - Religious Studies 36 (2):195-201.
    Recently, "Religious Studies" published an article by Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss, arguing that there exists a necessary being who is a creator of the world. Building on their argument, I argue that, assuming that there is exactly one creator, that creator is essentially omnipotent.
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  • Conceivability and the cartesian argument for dualism.James Van Cleve - 1983 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64 (January):35-45.
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  • Arguing About Gods.Graham Robert Oppy - 2006 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    In this book, Graham Oppy examines arguments for and against the existence of God. He shows that none of these arguments is powerful enough to change the minds of reasonable participants in debates on the question of the existence of God. His conclusion is supported by detailed analyses of the arguments as well as by the development of a theory about the purpose of arguments and the criteria that should be used in judging whether or not arguments are successful. Oppy (...)
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  • (1 other version)Graham Oppy on the kalām cosmological argument.William Lane Craig - 1993 - Sophia 32 (1):1-11.
    In conclusion, then, I think that the refutations proffered by Mackie of thekalām cosmological argument were all too quick and easy. Nor do I think Oppy has succeeded in rehabilitating those refutations.
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  • “Die” philosophischen Schriften.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz & C. I. Gerhardt - 1882 - Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung.
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  • Bertrand Russell on God and religion.Bertrand Russell - 1986 - Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. Edited by Al Seckel.
    Al Seckel has rescued many of Bertrand Russell's best essays on religion, free thought, and nationalism from their resting places in obscure pamphlets, hard-to-find books, and out-of print periodicals to form a superb compilation.
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  • Theism and Ultimate Explanation.Timothy O’Connor - 2010 - Philosophia Christi 12 (2):265-272.
    Twentieth-century analytic philosophy was dominated by positivist antimetaphysics and neo-Humean deflationary metaphysics, and the nature of explanation was reconceived in order to fit these agendas. Unsurprisingly, the explanatory value of theist was widely discredited. I argue that the long-overdue revival of moralized, broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics and an improved perspective on modal knowledge dramatically changes the landscape. In this enriched context, there is no sharp divide between physics and metaphysics, and the natural end of the theoretician’s quest for a unified explanation (...)
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  • Epistemological Foundations for the Cosmological Argument.Robert Koons - 2013 - In L. Kvanvig Jonathan (ed.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion. Oxford University Press. pp. 105-133.
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  • Sensibility and Possibilia.Charles Taliaferro - 2001 - Philosophia Christi 3 (2):403-420.
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  • The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment.Alexander Pruss - 2007 - Religious Studies 43 (4):500-503.
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  • (1 other version)A Scotistic Argument For The Existence Of A First Cause.Michael J. Loux - 1984 - American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (2):157-166.
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