Do humans have a free choice of which actions to perform? Three recent developments of modern science can help us to answer this question. First, new investigative tools have enabled us to study the processes in our brains which accompanying our decisions. The pioneer work of Benjamin Libet has led many neuroscientists to hold the view that our conscious intentions do not cause our bodily movements but merely accompany them. Then, Quantum Theory suggests that not all physical events are fully (...) determined by their causes, and so opens the possibility that not all brain events may be fully determined by their causes, and so maybe - if neuroscience does not rule this out - there is a role for intentions after all. Finally, a theorem of mathematics, Godel's theory, has been interpreted to suggest that the initial conditions and laws of development of a mathematician's brain could not fully determine which mathematical conjectures he sees to be true. Papers by Patrick Haggard, Tim Bayne, Harald Atmanspacher and Stefan Rotter, Solomon Feferman, and John Lucas investigate these issues. The extent to which human behaviour is determined by brain events may well depend on whether conscious events, such as intentions, are themselves merely brain events, or whether they are separate events which interact with brain events (perhaps in the radical form that intentions are events in our soul, and not in our body). The papers of Frank Jackson, Richard Swinburne, and Howard Robinson investigate these issues. The remaining papers, of Galen Strawson, Helen Steward, and R.A. Duff, consider what kind of free will we need in order to be morally responsible for our actions or to be held guilty in a court of law. Is it sufficient merely that our actions are uncaused by brain events, or what? (shrink)
Jeremy Gwiazda made two criticisms of my formulation in terms of Bayes’s theorem of my probabilistic argument for the existence of God. The first criticism depends on his assumption that I claim that the intrinsic probabilities of all propositions depend almost entirely on their simplicity; however, my claim is that that holds only insofar as those propositions are explanatory hypotheses. The second criticism depends on a claim that the intrinsic probabilities of exclusive and exhaustive explanatory hypotheses of a phenomenon must (...) sum to 1; however it is only those probabilities plus the intrinsic probability of the non-occurrence of the phenomenon which must sum to 1. (shrink)
Inanimate explanation is to be analysed in terms of substances having powers and liabilities to exercise their powers under certain conditions; while personal explanation is to be analysed in terms of persons, their beliefs, powers, and purposes. A crucial criterion for an explanation being probably true is that it is (among explanations leading us to expect the data) the simplest one. Simplicity is a matter of few substances, few kinds of substances, few properties (including powers and liabilities), few kinds of (...) properties, and mathematically simple relations between properties. Explanation of the existence of the universe by the agency of God provides the simplest kind of personal explanation there can be, and one simpler than any inanimate explanation. I defend this view more thoroughly than previously in light of recent challenges. (shrink)
This paper defends (especially in response to Brian Leftow’s recent attack) logical nominalism, the thesis that logically necessary truth belongs primarily to sentences and depends solely on the conventions of human language. A sentence is logically necessary (that is, a priori metaphysically necessary) iff its negation entails a contradiction. A sentence is a posteriori metaphysically necessary iff it reduces to a logical necessity when we substitute for rigid designators of objects or properties canonical descriptions of the essential properties of those (...) objects or properties. The truth-conditions of necessary sentences are not to be found in any transcendent reality, such as God’s thoughts. "There is a God" is neither a priori nor a posteriori metaphysically necessary; God is necessary in the sense that His existence is not causally contingent on anything else. (shrink)
Argumento neste artigo que embora existam muitas maneiras diferentes de descrever o mundo ou algum segmento dele, qualquer maneira que deixe de acarretar logicamente uma separabilidade do corpo e da alma como os dois componentes de cada ser humano conhecido (o corpo sendo uma parte contingente e a alma a parte essencial do homem) deixará de fornecer uma descriçáo completa do mundo. T ítulo original do artigo: “ What makes me me? A Defense os Substance Dualism ”. Apresentado no I (...) Seminário Internacional de Filosofia Analítica Contemporânea, realizado em Natal de 19 a 21 de novembro de 2007. Traduçáo provisória de Jaimir Conte.]. (shrink)
The orderliness of the universe and the existence of human beings already provides some reason for believing that there is a God - as argued in Richard Swinburne's earlier book Is There a God ? Swinburne now claims that it is probable that the main Christian doctrines about the nature of God and his actions in the world are true. In virtue of his omnipotence and perfect goodness, God must be a Trinity, live a human life in order to share (...) our suffering, and found a church which would enable him to tell all humans about this. It is also quite probable that he would provide his human life as an atonement for our wrongdoing, teach us how we should live and tell us his plans for our future after death. Among founders of religions, Jesus satisfies uniquely well the requirement of living the sort of human life which God would need to have lived. But to give us adequate reason to believe that Jesus was God, God would need to put his 'signature' on the life of Jesus by an act which he alone could do, for example raise him from the dead. There is adequate historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. The church which he founded gave plausible interpretations of his basic message. Therefore Christian doctrines are probably true. (shrink)
Jeremy Gwiazda has criticized my claim that God, understood as an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly free person is a person ’of the simplest possible kind’ on the grounds that omnipotence, etc., as spelled out by me are omnipotence, etc., of restricted kinds, and so less simple forms of these properties than maximal forms would be. However, the account which I gave of these properties in ’The Christian God’ (although not in ’The Coherence of Theism’) shows that, when they are defined (...) in certain ways, they all follow from one property of ’pure, limitless, intentional power’. I argue here that a person who has these properties so defined is a person ’of the simplest possible kind’. (shrink)
The great religions often claim that their books or creeds contain truths revealed by God. How could we know that they do? In the second edition of Revelation, renowned philosopher of religion Richard Swinburne addresses this central question. But since the books of great religions often contain much poetry and parable, Swinburne begins by investigating how eternal truth can be conveyed in unfamiliar genres, by analogy and metaphor, within false presuppositions about science and history. In the final part of the (...) book, Swinburne then applies the results of Parts I and II to assessing the evidence that the teaching of the Christian Church constitutes a revelation from God. -/- In the course of his philosophical exploration, Swinburne considers how the church which Jesus founded is to be identified today and presents a sustained discussion of which passages in the Bible should be understood literally and which should be understood metaphorically. -/- This is a fuller and entirely rewritten second edition of Revelation, the most notable new feature of which is a long chapter examining whether traditional Christian claims about personal morality (divorce, homosexuality, abortion, etc.) can be regarded as revealed truths. A formal appendix shows how the structure of evidence supporting the Christian revelation can be articulated in terms of the probability calculus (and shows that Plantinga's well-known argument from 'dwindling probabilities' against probabilistic arguments of this kind is not cogent). (shrink)
Events are the instantiations of properties in substances at times. A full history of the world must include, as well as physical events, mental events (ones to which the substance involved has privileged access) and mental substances (ones to the existence of which the substance has privileged access), and, among the latter, pure mental substances (ones which do not include a physical substance as an essential part). Humans are pure mental substances. An argument for this is that it seems conceivable (...) that I could exist without my body. An objection to this argument is that ’I’ refers to my body, and so what seems conceivable is not metaphysically possible. My response to this objection is that ’I’ is an informative designator and so necessarily we know to what it refers, and it does not refer to my body. (shrink)
In introducing the papers of the symposiasts, I distinguish between statistical, physical, and evidential probability. The axioms of the probability calculus and so Bayes’s theorem can be expressed in terms of any of these kinds of probability. Sober questions the general utility of the theorem. Howson, Dawid, and Earman agree that it applies to the fields they discuss--statistics, assessment of guilt by juries, and miracles. Dawid and Earman consider that prior probabilities need to be supplied by empirical evidence, while Howson (...) considers that there are no objective constraints on prior probabilities. I argue that simplicity is a crucial determinant of prior probability. Miller discussed how Bayes’s theorem can be interpreted so as to apply to physical probability. (shrink)
In response to Michael Bradley, I summarize my account of the criteria by which the various data of natural theology increase the probability of theism and together make it probable. I explain the sense in which a simpler theory leaves less to be explained, justify my claim that God’s perfect goodness is entailed by his other divine properties, and show that not merely is theism simpler than Bradley’s ’Epicurean hypothesis’, but that the ’mixed’ data of natural theology are more to (...) be expected given theism than given the ’Epicurean hypothesis’. (shrink)
Armstrong's theory of laws of nature as relations between universals gives an initially plausible account of why the causal powers of substances are bound together only in certain ways, so that the world is a very regular place. But its resulting theory of causation cannot account for intentional causation, since this involves an agent trying to do something, and trying is causing. This kind of causation is thus a state of an agent and does not involve the operation of a (...) law. It is simpler to suppose that non-intentional causing is also causing by substances (and not events) in virtue of their powers to act. That raises again the question of why their powers are bound together only in certain ways. The most probable answer is that God, the simplest kind of person there could be, brings this about because it is necessary for the existence of finite rational creatures such as ourselves. (shrink)
In his ’Logic and Theism’ Sobel claims that the allocation of prior probabilities to theories is a purely subjective matter. I claim that there are objective criteria for determining prior probabilities of theories (dependent on their simplicity and scope); and if there were not, science would be a totally irrational activity. I reject Sobel’s main criticism of my own cumulative argument for the existence of God that I argue illegitimately from each datum raising the probability of theism to the conjunction (...) of all data raising that probability, since I explicitly adopted a procedure which does not commit that fallacy. (shrink)
Theism is a far simpler hypothesis, and so a priori more probably true, than naturalism, understood as the hypothesis that the existence of this law-governed universe has no explanation. Theism postulates only one entity (God) with very simple properties, whereas naturalism has to postulate either innumerable entities all having the same properties, or one very complicated entity with the power to produce the former. If theism is true, it is moderately probable that God would create humanoid beings and so humanoid (...) bodies; but laws of nature would have to have very special properties if they are to bring about the existence of humanoid bodies. Given laws of the present form, the constants of the laws and variables of the boundary conditions of the universe would need to be extremely fine-tuned. So the evidence of the existence of humanoid bodies adds further to the probability of theism as against naturalism. (edited). (shrink)
I give a detailed defence against Grunbaum’s 2004 attack on my Bayesian argument for the existence of God from various features of the universe (its conformity to simple laws, the laws being such as to lead to the evolution of humans, etc.). Theism postulates the simplest possible stopping point for explanation of the various features which I mention, and is such that it makes the accounts of those features more probable than they would be otherwise.
The hypothesis that Jesus rose bodily from the dead is rendered probable in so far as: (1) evidence makes it probable that there is a God, (2) God has reason to become incarnate - to provide atonement for our sins, to identify with our suffering, and to reveal teaching (and so to lead a particular kind of human life, including teaching that he was divine and making atonement, a life culminated by a super-miracle such as his resurrection from the dead), (...) (3) there is evidence of a modest degree of probability to be expected if Jesus was the only prophet in human history who led a life of the above kind, which was culminated in the right sort of way. So, given other evidence that there is a God (and a priori reason to suppose that he would become incarnate),and other evidence about the life of Jesus and other prophets, only a modest amount of historical witness testimony to the Resurrection is necessary in order to show that it occurred. (shrink)
This paper responds to a number of articles critical of my paper, "Arguments from Design" in the first issue of ’Think’, by Norman, Bostrom, Dawkins, and Schick. It claims that the hypothesis that God sustains the laws of nature remains the simplest and so most probably true explanation of the existence and character of laws of nature.
This paper comments on the other papers in this special issue of ’Faith and Philosophy’ on natural theology. It claims that most people today need both bare natural theology (to show that there is a God) and ramified natural theology (to establish detailed doctrinal claims), and that Christian tradition has generally claimed that cogent arguments of natural theology (of both kinds) are available. Plantinga’s "dwindling probabilities" objection against ramified natural theology is shown to have no force when different pieces of (...) evidence are fed into the arguments at different stages. But showing the cogency of arguments of natural theology involves the lengthy process of helping people to see the correctness of certain moral views. (shrink)
I analyze different accounts of laws of nature: the Hume-Lewis regularity account, the Armstrong-Tooley relations between universals account, and my preferred account in terms of the powers and liabilities of individual substances. On any account it is most unlikely a priori that a universe would be governed by simple laws of nature. But if there is a God, it is quite probable that he will choose to create free agents of limited power, and to put them in a universe governed (...) by simple laws of nature, in order that their purposes may have their intended effects. Hence, the operation of simple laws of nature confirms the existence of God. (shrink)
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 (...) of these arguments are deductively valid, they do give inductive support to theism and that, even when the argument from evil is weighed against them, taken together they offer good grounds to support the probability that there is a God. The overall structure of the discussion and its conclusion have been retained for this new edition, but much has been changed in order to strengthen the argumentation and to take account of Swinburne's subsequent work on the nature of consciousness and the problem of evil, and of the latest philosophical and scientific writing, especially in respect of the laws of nature and the argument from fine-tuning. This is now the definitive version of a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)
Hard materialism claims that the only events are physical events, involving the instantiation of physical properties in physical substances. This however omits all the mental events to which we have privileged access. Soft materialism claims that the only events are physical events and mental events involving the instantiation of mental properties in physical substances. But a list of such events would not tell us which persons had which bodies. Only dualism, which holds that the essential part of each person is (...) a mental substance, a soul, enables us to say which person occupies which body, and so to give a full description of the world. (shrink)
In this interview of me by Julian Baggini, I defend my view that the existence of evil (bad actions and bad states of affairs) does not count against the existence of God iff it is only by God allowing the evil that a certain good can be achieved; God does everything else he can to bring about that good; God has the right to allow the evil; and the outcome is sufficiently good. I argue that God as our creator has (...) the requisite right and I suggest reasons why the various evils of our world make possible great goods. (shrink)
All particular moral truths depend on necessary moral truths. Among these necessary moral truths are the duty (within limits) to conform to the commands of benefactors; hence, our duty to obey God, our supreme benefactor. In virtue of his perfect goodness, God will not issue commands beyond the limits of his right to issue them. Necessary moral truths hold in virtue of the concepts designated by expressions such as ’morally obligatory’, and so it is not logically possible for God to (...) change the necessary moral truths. He will issue commands in order to make us very good people, coordinate our actions with each other, and give us special vocations. (shrink)
It is most improbable a priori that laws of nature should have a form, and their constants have values, and the variables of the boundary conditions of our universe should have values, of such a kind as to lead to the evolution of human bodies. If there is a God it is quite probable that there would be human bodies. Our only grounds for believing that there are other universes, are grounds for believing that those universes are governed by the (...) same laws and have the same boundary conditions as our own. Hence, the existence of our universe is evidence for the existence of God. (shrink)
I distinguish between the argument to the existence of God from the operation of laws of nature and the argument from the laws being of such a kind as (together with the boundary conditions of the universe) to lead to the evolution of humans. There could not be a ’scientific’ explanation of these data, but there could be a ’personal’ explanation that they were caused by a person in virtue of his powers and purposes. The simplest and so most probably (...) true explanation is that they were brought about by God. (shrink)
This is an introduction to a collected volume. It distinguishes between evidential, statistical, and physical probability, and between objective and subjective understandings of evidential probability, in the use of Bayes’s theorem. If Bayes’s theorem is to be used to assess an objective evidential probability, a priori criteria--mainly the criterion of simplicity--are required to determine prior probability. The five main contributors to the volume discuss the use of Bayes’s theorem to assess the evidential probability of scientific theories, statistical hypotheses, criminal guilt, (...) and miracles; and also its value for assessing physical probability. (shrink)
This is my response to the critical commentaries by Hasker, McNaughton and Schellenberg on my tetralogy on Christian doctrine. I dispute the moral principles invoked by McNaughton and Schellenberg in criticism of my theodicy and theory of atonement. I claim, contrary to Hasker, that I have taken proper account of the ‘existential dimension' of Christianity. I agree that whether it is rational to pursue the Christian way depends not only on how probable it is that the Christian creed is true (...) and so that the way leads to the Christian goals, but (in part) on how strongly one wants those goals. Hasker is correct to say that I need to give arguments in favour of the historical claims of Christianity, and I outline how I hope to do that. (shrink)
Richard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief rational, or justified in holding? He maps the rival accounts of philosophers on epistemic justification ("internalist" and "externalist"), arguing that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation)--both internalist and externalist. He also argues that most kinds of justification are worth having because they are indicative (...) of truth; however, it is only justification of internalist kinds that can guide a believer's actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true. (shrink)
Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2000). In the two previous volumes of his trilogy on ‘warrant’, Alvin Plantinga developed his general theory of warrant, defined as that characteristic enough of which terms a true belief into knowledge. A belief B has warrant if and only if: (1) it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly, (2) in a cognitive environment sufficiently similar to that for which the faculties were designed, (3) according to a design (...) plan aimed at the production of true beliefs, when (4) there is a high statistical probability of such beliefs being true. Thus my belief that there is a table in front of me has warrant if in the first place, in producing it, my cognitive faculties were functioning properly, the way they were meant to function. Plantinga holds that just as our heart or liver may function properly or not, so may our cognitive faculties. And he also holds that if God made us, our faculties function properly if they function in the way God designed them to function; whereas if evolution (uncaused by God) made us, then our faculties function properly if they function in the way that (in some sense) evolution designed them to function. (shrink)
Plantinga defines S's belief as ‘privately rational if and only if it is probable on S's evidence’, and ‘publicly rational if and only if it is probable with respect to public evidence’, and he claims that ‘it is an immediate consequence of these definitions that all my basic beliefs are privately rational’. I made it explicitly clear in my review that on my account of a person's evidence (quoted and used by Plantinga) as ‘the content of his basic beliefs (weighted (...) by his degree of confidence in them)’, that is not the case. I emphasize ‘weighted by his degree of confidence in them’. I wrote explicitly: ‘for more or less any belief, however convinced you are of it initially, other evidence of which you are equally convinced could rend it overall improbable’. Put technically, in probabilistic terms, basic beliefs come to us with different degrees of prior probability varying with our degree of confidence in them, but a belief with a high prior probability can in the light of other beliefs of our current set have a lower posterior probability. If you continue to hold on to a basic belief when its probability on the total evidence is below half, that belief is not privately rational. Footnotes1 Note: This brief discussion arises out of Richard Swinburne's critical notice of Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Plantinga's reply in Religious Studies, 37 (2001), 203–214, 215–222. (shrink)
After a discussion of several concepts of explanation, in which the criterion of simplicity is emphasized and some interesting historical examples are used as illustration, this paper presents the cosmological and teleological arguments. The central claim is that the hypothesis of theism is more simple and elegant and so more rational than any of its alternatives.
Contrary to Grunbaum’s BJPS 2000 criticism of my natural theology, there are objective a priori criteria for how far evidence renders a hypothesis probable. These include the simplicity of the hypothesis and how far it makes probable the evidence. Theism is a simple hypothesis and, in virtue of God’s perfect goodness, we have some reason to suppose that he will bring about an orderly world in which there are humans. Hence, the existence of such a world is evidence for the (...) existence of God. (shrink)
After a discussion of several concepts of explanation, in which the criterion of simplicity is emphasized and some interesting historical examples are used as illustration, this paper presents the cosmological and teleological arguments. The central claim is that the hypothesis of theism is more simple and elegant and so more rational than any of its alternatives.
Hasker’s claim that my modal argument for substance dualism is epistemically circular is implausible. Someone can accept Premise 2 (which, Hasker claims, is the premise which generates the circularity) without ever understanding the conclusion, or without accepting Premise 3.
Empiricists have sought to follow Hume in claiming that causality is a relation between events reducible to something more basic, e.g., regularities or counterfactuals. But all such attempts fail through their inability to distinguish cause from effect. The alternative is that causation is irreducible. Regularities are evidence of causation but do not constitute it. We understand what causation is through performing intentional actions which necessarily involve trying, which in turn just is exercising causal power.
I have argued in many places that a carefully articulated version of Descartes’s argument to show that he is essentially an immaterial soul is sound. It is conceivable that I who am currently conscious continue to exist without my body, and that can only be if there is currently a nonbodily part of me which alone is essential for me. Recent counterarguments of Alston and Smythe, Moser and van der Nat, Zimmerman, and Shoemaker are rejected.
At least since Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859, it has increasingly become accepted that the existence of God is, intellectually, a lost cause, and that religious faith is an entirely non-rational matter--the province of those who willingly refuse to accept the dramatic advances of modern cosmology. Are belief in God and belief in science really mutually exclusive? Or, as noted philosopher of science and religion Richard Swinburne puts forth, can the very same criteria which scientists use to (...) reach theories about everything from DNA to the Big Bang be used to argue for the existence of God? In Is There a God? Swinburne presents a powerful and approachable case for the existence of God. Using the methods of scientific reasoning, Swinburne rigorously argues that science, far from replacing God, provides good grounds for belief in God. With each new discovery and advance, from black holes to quarks, superstrings to continuing evolution, science brings us closer to a complete understanding of how things work--but science can only go so far. Though it can explain much of how the universe works, science doesn't tell us why there is a universe at all. We can understand much of how life evolved, but why is there any life on earth? We can name and explicate scientific laws, but how is it that they operate in the universe? The Darwinian theory holds that the complex animal and human bodies that are here today exist because, ages ago, there were certain chemicals on earth, and given the laws of evolution, it was probable that complex organisms would emerge. But why those laws rather than any other? Why those chemicals? In Swinburne's view, the ultimate grand unifying theory is possible only by a belief in what he calls theism, acknowledging the existence of God: it was God who brought about the natural laws so that humans and animals would evolve. The watch may have been made, Swinburne asserts in reference to Richard Dawkins, with the aid of some blind screwdrivers (or even a blind watchmaking machine), but they were guided by a watchmaker with some very clear sight. At the heart of his argument is Swinburne's belief that the very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing there is an even deeper cause of that order. By embracing a belief in God that acknowledges the truth in science, Swinburne's elegant argument supplies an essential spiritual element to our understanding of order and beauty, the structure beneath the chaos of the natural world. This informed and provocative volume will be essential reading for all readers of popular science, philosophy, and religion. (shrink)
Stump and Kretzmann object to my argument for substance dualism on the ground that its statement involves an implausibly stringent understanding of a hard fact about a time as one whose truth conditions lie solely at that time. I am, however, entitled to my own definitions and there is a simple reason why the "standard examples" of hard facts which they provide do not satisfy my definition--they all concern instants and not periods of time.
Theodicy would be an impossible task if the only good states were pleasures and the only bad states were pains. This paper lists many other and greater goods, and shows that many of these cannot be had without corresponding bad states. These goods include the satisfaction of persistent desires, desires for incompatible good states, compassion with people in serious trouble, free choice of the good despite temptation, and being of use to others in providing knowledge and opportunities of certain sorts (...) for them. (shrink)
Given four modest verificationist theses, tying the meaning of talk about instants and periods to the events which (physically) could occur during, before or after them, the only content to the claim the Universe had a beginning (applicable equally to chaotic or orderly universes) is in terms of it being preceded by empty time. It follows that time cannot have a beginning. The Universe, however, could have a beginning--even if it has lasted for an infinite time.
The principle of the identity of indiscernibles holds that two individuals are the same individual if they have all the same properties. There are different forms of the principle, varying with what is allowed to count as a property. An individual has thisness if the weakest form of the principle does not apply to it. Abstract objects, places and times do not have thisness. Inanimate material objects probably do not. Animate beings, and the conscious events which involve them do have (...) thisness, and probably other events do as well. (shrink)
Theodicy needs to show, for all actual evils e, that 1) in allowing e, a God would bring about a necessary condition of a good g not achievable in any other morally permissible way, 2) if e occurs, g occurs, 3) it is morally permissible for God to allow e, and 4) g is at least as good as e is bad. This article contributes to a full-scale theodicy by showing that A being of use (e.g., by suffering) to B (...) is a great good for A, and that in consequence, if 1) and 2) are satisfied, 3) and 4) are also likely to be satisfied. (shrink)
What is it for there to be a God, and what reason is there for supposing him to conform to the claims of Christian doctrine? In this pivotal volume of his tetralogy, Richard Swinburne builds a rigorous metaphysical system for describing the world, and applies this to assessing the worth of the Christian tenets of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Part I is dedicated to analyzing the categories needed to address accounts of the divine nature--substance, cause, time, and necessity. Part (...) II begins by setting out, in terms of these categories, the fundamental doctrine of Western religions--that there is a God. After pointing out some of the different ways in which this doctrine can be developed, Swinburne spells out the simplest possible account of divine nature. He then goes on to clarify the implications of this account for the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity (that God is "three persons in one substance") and of the Incarnation (that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ). Swinburne finds that there are good reasons to believe the Christian additions to the core Western idea of God. The Christian God builds upon Swinburne's acclaimed previous work to form a self-contained text which will no doubt become a classic in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)
I outlined my academic career, and my reasons for writing the books which I did --to analyze the meaning and bring out the justification of the central claims of the Christian religion. For the first ten years of my academic career I wrote on the philosophy of science. Having developed a view about what confirms what, I applied it first to the claim that there is a God, in my trilogy on "The Philosophy of Theism"; and then to the specific (...) claims of Christianity. (shrink)
Richard Swinburne is one of the most distinguished philosophers of religion of our day. In this volume, many notable British and American philosophers unite to honor him and to discuss various topics to which he has contributed significantly. These include general topics in the philosophy of religion such as revelation, and faith and reason, and the specifically Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and atonement. In the spirit of the movement which Swinburne spearheaded, the essays use analytic philosophical methods (...) to examine doctrines in particular religious traditions, expanding upon traditional discussions of theism. As such, this volume represents a field-report on the interaction of philosophy and Christian thought in the English-speaking world. Swinburne has himself contributed an individual and personal Intellectual Autobiography. (shrink)
EVENTS CONSIST IN THE INSTANTIATION OF PROPERTIES IN SUBSTANCES. TWO WORDS WHICH RIGIDLY DESIGNATE PROPERTIES, PICK OUT THE SAME PROPERTIES, NOT JUST BECAUSE THE TWO PROPERTIES HAVE THE SAME CAUSES OR EFFECTS, BUT IF AND ONLY IF THE WORDS MEAN THE SAME. IT FOLLOWS THAT HAVING A RED AFTER IMAGE AND HAVING C-FIBRES FIRE ARE DIFFERENT PROPERTIES. ALTHOUGH THE INSTANTIATION OF TWO DIFFERENT PROPERTIES IN A SUBSTANCE MAY CONSTITUTE THE SAME EVENT, THAT WILL BE SO ONLY IF (IN GOLDMAN’S TERMINOLOGY) (...) THE INSTANTIATION OF THE ONE LEVEL-GENERATES THE INSTANTIATION OF THE OTHER. THIS DOES NOT HOLD IN THE CASE OF MENTAL AND BRAIN EVENTS. (shrink)
Four principles about Time have the consequence that God must be everlasting, and not timeless. These are 1) events occur over periods of time, never at instants, 2) Time has a metric if and only if there is a unified system of laws of nature, 3) The past is the realm of the causally unaffectible, the future of the causally affectible, 4) Some truths can only be known at certain periods. Yet God is not Time’s prisoner’, for the unwelcome features (...) of Time--the increase of unaffectible events, the cosmic clock’ ticking away--only occur if God so chooses. (shrink)
In response to Peter Byrne’s critical notice of my book "Revelation", I argue that if God is to put us in a position freely to choose to seek Him, we need some propositional revelation (about what he is like and how to worship him), but also some scope for sorting out the implications of that revelation. Both of these aims are satisfied if the Christian Bible with the normal tradition of how to interpret it are the vehicle of revelation.
If there is a God who wants us to become saints worthy of the beatific vision, he will provide us with information how to do so -- that is, with a propositional revelation. The revelation will not be too evident -- in order that we may choose whether or not to search it out and tell others about it -- and its interpretation for new centuries and cultures will require a church. The tests of a genuine revelation are its consonance (...) with our knowledge of God obtained by other routes, and some sort of miraculous foundation. (shrink)
If there is a God who wants us to become saints worthy of the beatific vision, he will provide us with information how to do so -- that is, with a propositional revelation. The revelation will not be too evident -- in order that we may choose whether or not to search it out and tell others about it -- and its interpretation for new centuries and cultures will require a church. The tests of a genuine revelation are its consonance (...) with our knowledge of God obtained by other routes, and some sort of miraculous foundation. (shrink)
Two sentences express the same proposition if they are synonymous; they express the same statement if they attribute the same properties to the same objects at the same time (however objects and times are picked out). Neither propositions nor statements are necessary a posteriori. Suggested examples of the necessary a posteriori, such as "Hesperus is Phosphorus", or "water is H2O", only appear to be such because of a confusion between proposition and statement.
I defend the A Theory of Time that there are tensed (and other indexical) facts, e.g., about what has happened, as well as tenseless facts, e.g., about what happened in the nineteenth century. I reject arguments of McTaggart and Grunbaum, but concentrate on Mellor’s argument that tenseless truth-conditions can be given for the truth of every tensed sentence. My rebuttal of this argument depends on a distinction between the ’proposition’ and the ’statement’ expressed by a sentence. Statements have changeless truth-value, (...) while propositions may change truth-value; but there is more to be known than knowledge of true statements can capture. (shrink)
Scientific explanation in terms of laws and initial conditions (or better, in terms of objects with powers and liabilities) is contrasted with personal explanation in terms of agents with powers and purposes. In each case the factors involved in explanation may themselves be explained, and infinite regress of explanation is logically possible. There can be no absolute explanation of phenomena, which is explanation in terms of the logically necessary; but there can be ultimate explanation which is explanation in terms of (...) factors which themselves have no explanation. Our normal criteria of explanation suggest that the explanation of the universe lies in the action of God. (shrink)
