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Scott A. Davison: Petitionary prayer: a philosophical investigation

Oxford University Press, 2017, $ 75.00, vi+189 pp

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Notes

  1. The reason Davison thinks this counterfactual holds only typically has to do with cases where if the petitioner hadn’t prayed, someone else would have and God would have still provided the object of the prayer. In part because of cases like this, Davison rejects a counterfactual dependence account of answered prayer (where a prayer is answered when it is true that had the petitioner not offered the prayer, God would not have provided the object of the prayer) (27–28). More or less, for Davison’s account counterfactual dependence holds when a prayer is answered except in the types of cases that serve as counterexamples to the counterfactual dependence account of answered prayer.

  2. The terminology of reason rendering options eligible is important in the work of Joseph Raz. See for example Raz (1998). I should note that it seems perfectly commonplace for reason to render options eligible for human beings. Davison (misleadingly in my view) seems to characterize such cases as cases of one’s reasons producing a tie regarding what one should do. He says he finds it hard to see how the sum total of God’s reasons could produce such ties (56). God’s reasons rendering options eligible does not seem to me to be an unlikely occurrence. Indeed, God’s freedom would seem to require it in important instances (e.g., at creation).

  3. Davison defines safety as follows: a belief is safe if and only if in most nearby possible worlds in which the agent forms her belief on the same basis as she does in the actual world, her belief continues to be true (70).

References

  • Raz, J. (1998). Incommensurability and agency. In Engaging reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Stetson University, 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8250, Deland, FL, 32723, USA

    David M. DiQuattro

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  1. David M. DiQuattro
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Correspondence to David M. DiQuattro.

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DiQuattro, D.M. Scott A. Davison: Petitionary prayer: a philosophical investigation. Int J Philos Relig 83, 315–319 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-017-9650-1

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