scholarly journals Doing, Allowing, and Occasionalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Sümer Şen
Keyword(s):  
Alvin Plantinga

Abstract In ‘God, evil, and occasionalism’ Matthew Shea and C.P. Ragland appeal to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing to argue against Alvin Plantinga that occasionalism is morally worse than conservationism. In this article I critically examine their argument and conclude that it fails because it contains an equivocation or is unwarranted. I also offer a case against their position by, first, arguing that on none of three prominent accounts of doing and allowing God merely allows suffering. Second, I develop the ‘Epistemological-Equivalence Argument’ in order to show that even if we grant such a distinction for God's acts, they would be morally on a par.

Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil

1991 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Hunt
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Subjunctive Conditionals ◽  
Middle Knowledge ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Considerable Controversy

According to the thesis of divine ‘middle knowledge’, first propounded by the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina in the sixteenth century, subjunctive conditionals stating how free agents would freely respond under counter-factual conditions (call such expressions ‘counterfactuals of freedom’) may be straightforwardly true, and thus serve as the objects of divine knowledge. This thesis has provoked considerable controversy, and the recent revival of interest in middle knowledge, initiated by Anthony Kenny, Robert Adams and Alvin Plantinga in the 1970s, has led to two ongoing debates. One is a theoretical debate over the very intelligibility of middle knowledge;1 the other is a practical debate over its philosophical and theological utility.2

Jacob Klapwijk, Purpose in the living world? Cambridge 2008: Cambridge University Press. 322 pages. ISBN 978-0521729437

2010 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-85
Author(s):  
Roy Clouser
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Living World ◽  
Knowledge Of God

Book Reviews Jacob Klapwijk, Purpose in the living world? (R. Clouser) Bradley Monton, Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design (J. de Ridder) Alvin Plantinga and Michael Tooley, Knowledge of God (J. de Ridder) Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs (A. Soeteman)

Augustine's rejection of the free-will defence: an overview of the late Augustine's theodicy

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
JESSE COUENHOVEN
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Alvin Plantinga

AbstractAugustine is commonly considered the greatest early proponent of what we call the free-will defence, but this idea is deeply misleading, as Augustine grew increasingly dissatisfied with the view from an early point in his career, and his later explorations of the implications of his doctrines of sin and grace led him to reject free-will theodicies altogether. As a compatibilist, however, he continued to reject the idea that God is responsible for the advent of evil. His alternative was his often misunderstood claim that the primal sin had a ‘deficient’ cause, together with a version of what Alvin Plantinga has nominated the ‘felix culpa’ approach. Thus, Augustine was actually the free-will defence's first major Christian detractor, and by the end of his career he had become its greatest critic.

Plantinga on warrant

2001 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
RICHARD SWINBURNE
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Statistical Probability ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Design Plan ◽  
Cognitive Environment ◽  
The Way

Alvin PlantingaWarranted 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.

Faith and Goodness

1989 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 167-191
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Richard Swinburne ◽  
The Relationship

Recent work on the subject of faith has tended to focus on the epistemology of religious belief, considering such issues as whether beliefs held in faith are rational and how they may be justified. Richard Swinburne, for example, has developed an intricate explanation of the relationship between the propositions of faith and the evidence for them. Alvin Plantinga, on the other hand, has maintained that belief in God may be properly basic, that is, that a belief that God exists can be part of the foundation of a rational noetic structure. This sort of work has been useful in drawing attention to significant issues in the epistemology of religion, but these approaches to faith seem to me also to deepen some long-standing perplexities about traditional Christian views of faith.

The Crucial Disanalogies Between Properly Basic Belief and Belief in God

1990 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grigg
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Evidence ◽  
Basic Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
Basic Beliefs

The antifoundationalist defence of belief in God set forth by Alvin Plantinga has been widely discussed in recent years. Classical foundationalism assumes that there are two kinds of beliefs that we are justified in holding: beliefs supported by evidence, and basic beliefs. Our basic beliefs are those bedrock beliefs that need no evidence to support them and upon which our other beliefs must rest. For the foundationalist, the only beliefs that can be properly basic are either self-evident, or incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Belief in God is none of these. Thus, says the foundationalist, belief in God is justified only if there is sufficient evidence to back it up.

scholarly journals Plantinga e a justificação Bayesiana de crenças

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Agnaldo Cuoco Portugal
Keyword(s):  
Christian Belief ◽  
Alvin Plantinga

o artigo pretende mostrar que a crítica que Alvin Plantinga faz contra o bayesianismo como descrição do que está envolvido na noção de racionalidade não se aplica a toda forma de bayesianismo. A abordagem de Swinburne, baseada em uma teoria lógica da probabilidade, é um exemplo de bayesianismo não atingido pela crítica de Plantinga. Além disso, o artigo defende que, em uma abordagem bayesiana, desaparece o problema da probabilidade decrescente, apontado por Plantinga em Warranted Christian Belief (2000). Assim, mesmo que não seja uma descrição suficiente da noção de racionalidade, o bayesianismo ajuda a entender importantes elementos presentes no raciocínio indutivo, especialmente os relativos aos argumentos cumulativos.

Aquinas on the Foundations of Knowledge

1991 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 125-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Alvin Plantinga ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
The West ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Classical Foundationalism ◽  
The Middle Ages

Aquinas is sometimes taken to hold a foundationalist theory of knowledge. So, for example, Nicholas Wolterstorff says, “Foundationalism has been the reigning theory of theories in the West since the high Middle Ages. It can be traced back as far as Aristotle, and since the Middle Ages vast amounts of philosophical thought have been devoted to elaborating and defending it‥ ‥ Aquinas offers one classic version of foundationalism.” And Alvin Plantinga says, “we can get a better understanding of Aquinas … if we see [him] as accepting some version of classical foundationalism. This is a picture or total way of looking at faith, knowledge, justified belief, rationality, and allied topics. This picture has been enormously popular in Western thought; and despite a substantial opposing ground-swell, I think it remains the dominant way of thinking about these topics.”

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