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 (...) discusses the work of a wide array of philosophers, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Hume and, more recently, Plantinga, Dembski, White, Dawkins, Bergman, Gale and Pruss. (shrink)

This edition features reliable, accessible translations; useful editorial materials; and a straightforward presentation of the Objections and Replies, including the objections from Caterus, Arnauld, and Hobbes, accompanied by Descartes' replies, in their entirety. The letter serving as a reply to Gassendi--in which several of Descartes' associates present Gassendi's best arguments and Descartes' replies--conveys the highlights and important issues of their notoriously extended exchange. Roger Ariew's illuminating Introduction discusses the Meditations and the intellectual environment surrounding its reception.

The book Ontological Proofs Today, apart from the introduction, consists of six parts. Part II comprises papers each of which pertains either to historical ontological arguments, or to some other, rather new, ontological arguments, but what makes them stand out from the other papers in this volume, is the fact that they all treat of the omniscience or the omnipotence of God. Part III includes papers which introduce new ontological arguments for the existence of God, without referring to omniscience and (...) omnipotence as the transparent attributes of God. The issue of the type of necessity with which ontological proofs work or may work is raised in the articles of Part IV. In Part V the semantics for some ontological proofs are defined. Part VI consists of papers which, although quite different from each other in terms of content, all explore some ontological issues, and formal ontology may be considered the link between them. Part VII comprises two articles, by R. E. Maydole and G. Oppy, mutually controversial and different in their assessment of some ontological proofs. (shrink)

Kirsten Besheer has recently considered Descartes’ doubting appropriately in the context of his physiological theories in the spirit of recent important re-appraisals of his natural philosophy. However, Besheer does not address the notorious indubitability and its source that Descartes claims to have discovered. David Cunning has remarked that Descartes’ insistence on the indubitability of his existence presents “an intractable problem of interpretation” in the light of passages that suggest his existence is “just as dubitable as anything else”. However, although the (...) cogito argument is widely thought to be central to the force of Descartes’ indubitability, for his part, Cunning does not consider its relevance and force. Accordingly, this article is concerned with the cogito argument and the question central to Hintikka’s seminal contribution, described by Cottingham as “Perhaps the most debated question,” namely, whether or not the cogito can be construed as a logical inference. Clearly, an inferential account has the potential to explain the certainty of Descartes’ conclusion that he exists. Recently, Sarkar offers what he characterizes as “novel and fairly conclusive reasons why the cogito cannot be construed as an argument,” asserting “the discovery of the cogito can only be an intuition not a deduction.” Obviously, it would greatly support the opposing inferential construal if a remotely plausible logical argument could be proposed. Toward this end, I defend the virtues of my ‘Diagonal’ account of Descartes’ cogito Above all, I show how my analysis meets the requirement that any satisfactory solution to the problem of the cogito would reconcile Descartes’ claim that the cogito is a certain inference with his claim that it is an intuitive kind of knowledge. Through a critical discussion of analyses such as that of Gallois , I show that it is possible to provide a textually faithful analysis that permits seeing the cogito as both inference and intuition because it may be seen as an exercise in the mathematical method of Analysis. Above all, as Feldman requires, I show that the Diagonal account is not only textually elegant, but permits crediting Descartes with a worthy insight, thereby resolving the tension between what Howell has termed the Humean and Cartesian problems, namely, the elusiveness and the certainty of the self. (shrink)

By a `denoting phrase' I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. We may distinguish (...) three cases: (1) A phrase may be denoting, and yet not denote anything; e.g., `the present King of France'. (2) A phrase may denote one definite object; e.g., `the present King of England' denotes a certain man. (3) A phrase may denote ambiguously; e.g. `a man' denotes not many men, but an ambiguous man. The interpretation of such phrases is a matter of considerably difficulty; indeed, it is very hard to frame any theory not susceptible of formal refutation. All the difficulties with which I am acquainted are met, so far as I can discover, by the theory which I am about to explain. (shrink)

I argue that George Nakhnikian's analysis of the logic of cogito propositions (roughly, Descartes's 'cogito' and 'sum') is incomplete. The incompleteness is rectified by showing that disjunctions of cogito propositions with contingent, non-cogito propositions satisfy conditions of incorrigibility, self-certifyingness, and pragmatic consistency; hence, they belong to the class of propositions with whose help a complete characterization of cogito propositions is made possible.

Simon L. Frank (1877-1950) ist nach dem Urteil des Philosophiehistorikers und Theologen W.W. Senkowski "der größte russische Philosoph überhaupt". Frank hatte um die Jahrhundertwende Vorlesungen Georg Simmels in Berlin gehört und sich mit der Philosophie des Neukantianismus, mit Fichtes Idealismus, mit Schleiermacher, Spinoza und dem Pragmatismus auseinandergesetzt. Er rezipierte die Phänomenologie Husserls und den Personalismus. Als seinen "in gewissem Sinne einzigen Lehrer der Philosophie" aber bezeichnete er Nikolaus von Kues. Peter Ehlen geht den Einflüssen nach, die Frank verarbeitet hat. Er (...) zeigt, wie Frank ausgehend von der personalistischen Phänomenologie eine Seinslehre begründet, in der die Problematik von Transzendenz und Immanenz im Sinne der subtilen Cusanischen Lehre der coincidentia oppositorum gelöst wird. Die Welt wird als Symbol der unergründlichen göttlichen Realität, der Mensch wird als "Gottmensch" begriffen. Der Begriff der "religiösen Erfahrung" findet durch Frank eine tragfähige Begründung. Ehlen zeigt, dass Franks Gedanken der gegenwärtigen Religionsphilosophie fruchtbare Impulse geben können. (shrink)