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1. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Scott A. Davison Privacy and Control
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In this paper, I explore several privacy issues as they arise with respect to the divine/human relationship. First, in section 1, I discuss the notion of privacy in a general way. Section 2 is devoted to the claim that privacy involves control over information about oneself. In section 3, I summarize the arguments offered recently by Margaret Falls-Corbitt and F. Michael McLain for the conclusion that God respects the privacy of human persons by refraining from knowing certain things about them. Finally, in section 4, I shall criticize Falls-Corbitt and McLain’s arguments and make some concluding remarks about God and privacy.
2. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Chris Eberle God’s Nature and the Rationality of Religious Belief
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If something like Reformed Epistemology is correct, an agent is innocent in regarding certain ways of forming beliefs to be reliable until those ways have been proven guilty. An important species of argument purporting to show guilt (1) identifies the ways of forming beliefs at the core of our cognitive activity, (2) isolates the features of our core practices which account for their reliability, and (3) determines whether or not peripheral practices which ought to have those features enjoy at least their functional equivalents. An example. Sense perception is at the heart of our cognitive activity; a feature of sense-perception which provides us with confidence in its reliability is that we can subject sense-perceptual beliefs to intersubjective criticism - others can check our beliefs. Beliefs about God formed on the basis of religious experience cannot be so checked and therefore lack positive epistemic status.An important response to such criticism consists of arguing that the difference between two ways of forming beliefs is just what we should expect given some relevant difference between the subject matters of those two ways of forming beliefs. This species of response employs what I call ‘the Ontological Principle,’ viz., that the nature or characteristics of an object constrain the way an agent ought to form beliefs about that object.In this paper, I attempt to provide a rationale for the Ontological Principle. I argue as follows. Any epistemic norm which requires of an agent that she enter into causal relations with an object which she cannot in the ‘nature’ of the case enter lacks epistemic merit - it violates the ought implies can dictum. Because the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are constrained by the causal relations possible between an agent and an object of belief, and because the causal relations possible between an object of belief and an agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief, the epistemic norms properly governing the cognitive activity of a given agent are determined in part by the characteristics of the object of belief. That is, the Ontological Principle is true.
3. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Evan Fales Divine Intervention
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Some philosophers deny that science can investigate the supernatural - specifically, the nature and actions of God. If a divine being is atemporal, then, indeed, this seems plausible - but only, I shall argue, because such a being could not causally interact with anything. Here I discuss in detail two major attempts, those of Stump and Kretzmann, and of Leftow, to make sense of theophysical causation on the supposition that God is eternal. These views are carefully worked out, and their failures are instructive for any attempt to reconcileeternality with causal efficacy. I conclude by arguing that if knowledge of God is possible, in virtue of His effects upon the world, then it is science that must play the preeminent role in producing that knowledge.
4. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Stewart Goetz Libertarian Choice
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In this paper, I develop a noncausal view of agency. I defend the thesis that choices are uncaused mental actions and maintain, contrary to causal theorists of action, that choices differ intrinsically or inherently from nonactions. I explain how they do by placing them in an ontology favored by causal agency theorists (agent-causationists). This ontology is one of powers and liabilities.After explicating how a choice is an uncaused event, I explain how an adequate account of freedom involves the concept of choosing for a reason. Choosing for a reason is a teleological notion, and I set forth what is involved in making a choice for a purpose.
5. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Donald Wayne Viney Jules Lequyer and the Openness of God
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Until recently the most prominent defender of the openness of God was Charles Hartshorne. Evangelical thinkers are now defending similar ideas while being careful to distance themselves from the less orthodox dimensions of process theology. An overlooked figure in the debate is Jules Lequyer. Although process thinkers have praised Lequyer as anticipating their views, he may be closer in spirit to the evangelicals because of the foundational nature of his Catholicism. Lequyer’s passionate defense of freedom conceived as a creative act as well as the theological implications he drew from this are examined for their relevance to the present discussion of the openness of God.
6. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
William Lane Craig In Defense of the Kalam Cosmological Argument
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Graham Oppy’s attempt to show that the critiques of the kalam cosmological argument offered by Griinbaum, Davies, and Hawking are successful is predicated upon a misunderstanding of the nature of defeaters in rational belief. Neither Grunbaum nor Oppy succeed in showing an incoherence in the Christian doctrine of creation. Oppy’s attempts to rehabilitate Davies’s critique founders on spurious counter-examples and unsubstantiated claims. Oppy’s defense of Hawking’s critique fails to allay suspicions about the reality of imaginary time and finally results in the denial of tense and temporal becoming.
book reviews
7. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Edward Wierenga The Openness of God
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8. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
James G. Hanink The Sources of Christian Ethics
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9. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
William P. Alston Faith and Criticism
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10. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Edward Pols Making Sense of Your Freedom: Philosophy for the Perplexed
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11. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Ted A. Warfield The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control
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12. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
David B. Burrell Is Christianity True?
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13. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Mary Beth Ingham Duns Scotus, Metaphysician
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notes and news
14. Faith and Philosophy: Volume > 14 > Issue: 2
Notes and News
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