Aumann and Serrano :810–836, 2008) introduce the axiom of duality, which ensures that risk measures respect comparative risk aversion. This paper characterizes all dual risk measures by a simple equivalent condition. This equivalence provides a decomposition result and a construction method, which is used to analyze concrete dual measures. Moreover, this paper aims to extend this characterization to the most general setting. Compared with Aumann and Serrano, it, therefore, relaxes the axiom of positive homogeneity, and allows for risk-neutral and risk-seeking (...) agents, as well as for all integrable gambles. (shrink)

God is traditionally taken to be a necessarily existing being who is unsurpassably powerful, knowledgeable, and good. The familiar problem of actual evil claims that the presence of gratuitous suffering in the actual world constitutes evidence against the existence of such a being. In contrast, the problem of possible evil claims that the possibility of bad worlds constitutes evidence against theism. How? It seems plausible to suppose that there are very bad possible worlds. But if God exists in every world, (...) then God exists in those, too. And if God exists in very bad worlds, some say, God is culpable for not ensuring that they are better. In what follows, I consider this argument, survey some responses, and offer a novel solution. Along the way, I argue that theists should maintain that the actual world is a multiverse featuring all and only universes worthy of being created and sustained by God, and – more controversially – I suggest that theists should embrace modal collapse: the claim that this multiverse is the only possible world. (shrink)

God is traditionally taken to be a perfect being, and the creator and sustainer of all that is. So, if theism is true, what sort of world should we expect? To answer this question, we need an account of the array of possible worlds from which God is said to choose. It seems that either there is (a) exactly one best possible world; or (b) more than one unsurpassable world; or (c) an infinite hierarchy of increasingly better worlds. Influential arguments (...) for atheism have been advanced on each hierarchy, and these jointly comprise a daunting trilemma for theism. In this paper, I argue that if theism is true, we should expect the actual world to be a multiverse comprised of all and only those universes which are worthy of creation and sustenance. I further argue that this multiverse is the unique best of all possible worlds. Finally, I explain how his unconventional view bears on the trilemma for theism. (shrink)

This book studies the foundations of quantum theory through its relationship to classical physics. This idea goes back to the Copenhagen Interpretation (in the original version due to Bohr and Heisenberg), which the author relates to the mathematical formalism of operator algebras originally created by von Neumann. The book therefore includes comprehensive appendices on functional analysis and C*-algebras, as well as a briefer one on logic, category theory, and topos theory. Matters of foundational as well as mathematical interest that are (...) covered in detail include symmetry (and its "spontaneous" breaking), the measurement problem, the Kochen-Specker, Free Will, and Bell Theorems, the Kadison-Singer conjecture, quantization, indistinguishable particles, the quantum theory of large systems, and quantum logic, the latter in connection with the topos approach to quantum theory. This book is Open Access under a CC BY licence. (shrink)

Theism is the view that God exists; naturalism is the view that there are no supernatural beings, processes, mechanisms, or forces. This Element explores whether things are better, worse, or neither on theism relative to naturalism. It introduces readers to the central philosophical issues that bear on this question, and it distinguishes a wide range of ways it can be answered. It critically examines four views, three of which hold that things are better on theism than on naturalism, and one (...) of which holds just the opposite. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag konzentriert sich auf eine starke und auf eine schwache Seite von Bayers Zugang zu Luthers Theologie. So wird als Stärke angesehen, dass das Thema der Rechtfertigung in Luthers Theologie als allumfassend angesetzt wird. Dagegen besteht eine Schwäche in der Art und Weise, wie Bayer durch Luthers Dialektik der zwei Arten, in denen Gott sich verbirgt – also verborgen »unter dem Gegenteil« und absolut verborgen – hindurch bricht, indem er die beiden trennt und diese Aufteilung als Kriterium verwendet, um (...) zwischen einer Periode, in der Luther die reformatorische Einsicht vollständig ausarbeitet, und einem vor-reformatorischen Luther zu unterscheiden. Diese Luther-Interpretation sollte nochmals überdacht werden, denn sie verneint die Entsprechung und die kontrapunktisch zu verstehende Beziehung zwischen dieser doppelten Verborgenheit im Lichte des »offenbaren Gottes«. Ein ähnliches Problem taucht dann auf, wenn Bayer die Rede vom dreieinigen Gott, die ausschließlich am Evangelium orientiert ist, unterscheidet von einer allgemeinen Art und Weise, von Gott zu reden, die allein auf dem Gesetz basiert. Luthers Vorstellung, dass die Unterscheidung zwischen Gesetz und Evangelium vollständig in Gottes Offenbarung des Evangeliums integriert ist, widerspricht einer solchen Unterscheidung. Dieser Beitrag betrachtet nicht nur die Unterscheidung zwischen einem unreifen und einem reifen Luther, der alle Implikationen der reformatorischen Einsicht ausgearbeitet hat, als unnötig, sondern er würdigt den jungen Luther als einen Theologen, der in der Lage ist, dasjenige zusammen zu halten, was beim späten Luther auseinander zu fallen droht. Glücklicherweise beinhaltet Bayers Studie auch Anknüpfungsmöglichkeiten für eine solche Interpretation Luthers, die die positiven ebenso wie die negativen Aspekte beider Arten der Verborgenheit ebenso wie Gesetz und Evangelium in einem einzigen kontinuierlichen Prozess integriert.SummaryThis contribution concentrates on one strong and one weak side of Bayer's approach to Luther's theology. It finds a strength in the universally implemented theme of justification in Luther's theological thought. A weakness is however found in the way Bayer breaks through Luther's dialectics concerning the dual way God hides himself – i. e. hidden ‘under the opposite’ and absolutely hidden – by separating them and using this division as a criterion to distinguish between the period where Luther had fully worked out the insight of the Reformation and the pre-Reformation Luther. Such an interpretation of Luther needs to be reconsidered because it neglects the correspondence and the contrapuntal relation between this double hiddeness in the light of the ‘revealed God’.A similar problem arises when Bayer divides speaking about the triune God, which is exclusively orientated towards the Gospel, from a general way of speaking about God, which is only based on the Law. Luther's idea that the distinction between Law and Gospel is fully integrated into God's revelation of the Gospel contradicts such a division.This contribution considers not only a distinction between an immature and a mature Luther who has worked out all the implications of the reformation insight unnecessary, but appreciates the young Luther as a theologian who is capable of holding together what the later Luther is in danger of letting fall apart. Fortunately, in Bayer's study there are also openings for a Luther interpretation that includes the positive as well as the negative aspect of both kinds of hiddeness and of Law and Gospel in a single continuous process. (shrink)

Most epistemologists hold that knowledge entails belief. However, proponents of this claim rarely offer a positive argument in support of it. Rather, they tend to treat the view as obvious and assert that there are no convincing counterexamples. We find this strategy to be problematic. We do not find the standard view obvious, and moreover, we think there are cases in which it is intuitively plausible that a subject knows some proposition P without—or at least without determinately—believing that P. Accordingly, (...) we present five plausible examples of knowledge without (determinate) belief, and we present empirical evidence suggesting that our intuitions about these scenarios are not atypical. (shrink)

In a recent article (Kraay 2013), I argued that some prominent responses to two important arguments for atheism invoke divine satisficing – and that the coherence and propriety of this notion have not been established. Chris Tucker (2016) agrees with my evaluation of divine satisficing, but disagrees with my exegesis of these responses. He argues that they should be understood as invoking motivated submaximization instead. After reviewing the dialectical situation to date, I assess whether motivated submaximization can be deployed in (...) such a way as to defeat these argument for atheism. I argue that it’s far from clear that it can. (shrink)

I argue that Bohmian mechanics cannot reasonably be claimed to be a deterministic theory. If one assumes the “quantum equilibrium distribution” provided by the wave function of the universe, Bohmian mechanics requires an external random oracle in order to describe the algorithmic randomness properties of typical outcome sequences of long runs of repeated identical experiments. This oracle lies beyond the scope of Bohmian mechanics, including the impossibility of explaining the randomness property in question from “random” initial conditions. Thus the advantages (...) of Bohmian mechanics over other interpretations of quantum mechanics, if any, must lie at an ontological level, and in its potential to derive the quantum equilibrium distribution and hence the Born rule. (shrink)

Moritz Schulz explores counterfactual thought and language: what would have happened if things had gone a different way. Counterfactual questions may concern large scale derivations or small scale evaluations of minor derivations. A common impression, which receives a thorough defence in the book, is that oftentimes we find it impossible to know what would have happened. However, this does not mean that we are completely at a loss: we are typically capable of evaluating counterfactual questions probabilistically: we can say what (...) would have been likely or unlikely to happen. Schulz describes these probabilistic ways of evaluating counterfactual questions and turns the data into a novel account of the workings of counterfactual thought. (shrink)

In recent decades, there has been astonishing growth in scientific theorizing about multiverses. Once considered outré or absurd, multiple universe theories appear to be gaining considerable scientific respectability. There are, of course, many such theories, including (i) Everett’s (1957) many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, defended by Deutsch (1997) and others; (ii) Linde’s (1986) eternal inflation view, which suggests that universes form like bubbles in a chaotically inflating sea; (iii) Smolin’s (1997) fecund universe theory, which proposes that universes are generated (...) through black holes; (iv) the cyclic model, recently defended using string/M theory by Steinhardt and Turok (2007), which holds that distinct universes are formed in a never-ending sequence of Big Bangs and Big Crunches; and (v) Tegmark’s (2007) “Level IV” multiverse, which contains many universes governed by distinct mathematical and scientific laws. While not all of these preclude each other, the details and implications of each one are hotly contested. In one area within the philosophy of religion (the debate concerning the “fine-tuning” argument), scientific multiverse theories are widely held to be hostile to theism. This is because such theories appear to account for the relevant data – the biophilic parameters of the universe we inhabit – without appeal to an intelligent designer. Yet, in recent years, several philosophers and one physicist have offered reasons for thinking that if theism is true, the actual world comprises (or probably comprises) many universes. I first set out some requirements – both scientific and otherwise – for such a theory. I then survey some problems such theories are held to face, and some prospects they are thought to have. Finally, I examine arguments both for and against the claim that multiverse theories can help theists respond to the problem of evil. I conclude that such theories advantage neither the theist or the atheist in the debate about evil: they merely require reframing arguments from evil. (shrink)

I defend the first premise of William Rowe’s well-known arguments from evil against influential criticisms due to William Alston. I next suggest that the central inference in Rowe’s arguments is best understood to move from the claim that we have an absence of evidence of a satisfactory theodicy to the claim that we have evidence of absence of such a theodicy. I endorse the view which holds that this move succeeds only if it is reasonable to believe that (roughly) if (...) there were such a theodicy, we would probably know it. After conceding that there may be modest prima facie support for this latter claim via the Principle of Credulity, I consider and reject four more ambitious arguments in its favour. I conclude that this necessary condition on Rowe’s crucial inference has not been shown to be satisfied. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the problem of evil refers to a family of arguments that attempt to show, by appeal to evil, that God does not exist. Some very important arguments in this family focus on gratuitous evil. Most participants in the relevant discussions, including theists and atheists, agree that God is able to prevent all gratuitous evil and that God would do so. On this view, of course, the occurrence of even a single instance of gratuitous evil falsifies theism. (...) The most common response to such arguments attempts to cast doubt on the claim that gratuitous evil really occurs. The focus of these two survey papers will be a different response—one that has received less attention in the literature. This response attempts to show that God and gratuitous evil are compatible. If it succeeds, then the occurrence of gratuitous evil does not, after all, count against theism. After introducing some key terms, I survey the literature surrounding the attempts by Michael Peterson and John Hick to execute this strategy. In a follow-up paper, I discuss the attempts of William Hasker, Peter van Inwagen, and Michael Almeida, respectively. (shrink)

Many philosophers appeal to intuitions to support some philosophical views. However, there is reason to be concerned about this practice as scientific evidence has documented systematic bias in philosophically relevant intuitions as a function of seemingly irrelevant features (e.g., personality). One popular defense used to insulate philosophers from these concerns holds that philosophical expertise eliminates the influence of these extraneous factors. Here, we test this assumption. We present data suggesting that verifiable philosophical expertise in the free will debate-as measured by (...) a reliable and validated test of expert knowledge-does not eliminate the influence of one important extraneous feature (i.e., the heritable personality trait extraversion) on judgments concerning freedom and moral responsibility. These results suggest that, in at least some important cases, the expertise defense fails. Implications for the practice of philosophy, experimental philosophy, and applied ethics are discussed. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal, Jason Megill (2011) offers an innovative meta-argument which deploys considerations about multiple universes in an effort to block all arguments from evil. In what follows, I contend that Megill has failed to establish a key premise in his meta-argument. I also offer a rival account of the effect of multiverse models on the debate about evil.

Using side-by-side Sacks forcing, it is shown that it is consistent that $2^\omega$ be large and that there be many types of ultrafilters of character $\omega_1$.

The volume is published on the occasion of the birth centennial of Eugenio Coseriu (1921–2002). It is the first collective volume to appear in English in which various scholars present a variety of perspectives on Coseriu’s scholarly work and discuss its continuing relevance for the language sciences. Coseriu’s international reputation has suffered from his commitment to publish in languages such as Spanish, German, French, Italian, Romanian and Portuguese, to the detriment of English. As a consequence, his work is less well-known (...) outside Romance and German linguistics. The volume aims to raise the general awareness of Coseriu’s work among linguists around the world, in accordance with Coseriu’s own adage that it takes a constructive mindset (acknowledging "accomplishments and limitations") to do justice to all scholarly work in the humanities. The articles are organized into three major thematic clusters: 1) philosophy of language, 2) history of the language sciences and 3) theory and practice of "Integral Linguistics". The volume is essential reading for anyone working in these fields and for those seeking to gain deeper understanding of Coseriu’s goal to develop a unitary approach to language which takes as its point of departure the "activity of speaking". (shrink)

If one formulates Helmholtz’s ideas about perception in terms of modern-day theories one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. Using constructs from statistical physics it can be shown that the problems of inferring what cause our sensory inputs and learning causal regularities in the sensorium can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests on (...) Empirical Bayes and hierarchical models of how sensory information is generated. The use of hierarchical models enables the brain to construct prior expectations in a dynamic and context-sensitive fashion. This scheme provides a principled way to understand many aspects of the brain’s organisation and responses. In this paper, we suggest that these perceptual processes are just one emergent property of systems that conform to a free-energy principle. The free-energy considered here represents a bound on the surprise inherent in any exchange with the environment, under expectations encoded by its state or configuration. A system can minimise free-energy by changing its configuration to change the way it samples the environment, or to change its expectations. These changes correspond to action and perception, respectively, and lead to an adaptive exchange with the environment that is characteristic of biological systems. This treatment implies that the system’s state and structure encode an implicit and probabilistic model of the environment. We will look at models entailed by the brain and how minimisation of free-energy can explain its dynamics and structure. (shrink)

Recently, Yalcin (Epistemic modals. Mind, 116 , 983–1026, 2007) put forward a novel account of epistemic modals. It is based on the observation that sentences of the form ‘ & Might ’ do not embed under ‘suppose’ and ‘if’. Yalcin concludes that such sentences must be contradictory and develops a notion of informational consequence which validates this idea. I will show that informational consequence is inadequate as an account of the logic of epistemic modals: it cannot deal with reasoning from (...) uncertain premises. Finally, I offer an alternative way of explaining the relevant linguistic data. (shrink)

During much of the past century, it was widely believed that phonemes--the human speech sounds that constitute words--have no inherent semantic meaning, and that the relationship between a combination of phonemes (a word) and its referent is simply arbitrary. Although recent work has challenged this picture by revealing psychological associations between certain phonemes and particular semantic contents, the precise mechanisms underlying these associations have not been fully elucidated. Here we provide novel evidence that certain phonemes have an inherent, non-arbitrary emotional (...) quality. Moreover, we show that the perceived emotional valence of certain phoneme combinations depends on a specific acoustic feature--namely, the dynamic shift within the phonemes' first two frequency components. These data suggest a phoneme-relevant acoustic property influencing the communication of emotion in humans, and provide further evidence against previously held assumptions regarding the structure of human language. This finding has potential applications for a variety of social, educational, clinical, and marketing contexts. (shrink)

This paper studies degrees of doxastic justification. Dependency relations among different beliefs are represented in terms of causal models. Doxastic justification, on this picture, is taken to run causally downstream along appropriate causal chains. A theory is offered which accounts for the strength of a derivative belief in terms of (i) the strength of the beliefs on which it is based, and (ii) the epistemic quality of the belief-forming mechanisms involved. It is shown that the structure of degrees of justification (...) converges to ranking theory under ideal conditions. (shrink)

In this paper an approach to the exhaustive interpretation of answers is developed. It builds on a proposal brought forward by Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984). We will use the close connection between their approach and McCarthy's (1980, 1986) predicate circumscription and describe exhaustive interpretation as an instance of interpretation in minimal models, well-known from work on counterfactuals (see for instance Lewis (1973)). It is shown that by combining this approach with independent developments in semantics/pragmatics one can overcome certain limitations of (...) Groenenedijk and Stokhof's (1984) proposal. In the last part of the paper we will provide a Gricean motivation for exhaustive interpretation building on work of Schulz (to appear) and van Rooij and Schulz (2004). (shrink)

William Rowe’s a posteriori arguments for the non-existence of God are well-known. Rather less attention has been given, however, to Rowe’s intriguing a priori argument for atheism. In this paper, I examine the three published responses to Rowe’s a priori argument (due to Bruce Langtry, William Morris, and Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder, respectively). I conclude that none is decisive, but I show that Rowe’s argument nevertheless requires more defence than he provides.

Michael Almeida once told me that he thought we were just a couple of hours of conversation away from reaching deep agreement about some important topics in the philosophy of religion pertaining to God, multiverses, and modality. This paper represents my attempt to move this conversation forward and to seek this common ground. Specifically, I respond to Almeida’s paper entitled “The Multiverse and Divine Creation”. In the first four sections, I record my disagreement with him concerning some smaller matters. In (...) Section 5, I try to persuade him that what he considers a ‘bug’ in the theistic multiverse is actually a feature—and a desirable one at that. In Section 6, I close by identifying some points at which our views seem to converge. (shrink)

Anselmian theism holds that there necessarily exists a being, God, who is essentially unsurpassable in power, knowledge, goodness, and wisdom. This being is also understood to be the creator and sustainer of all that is. In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, this role is generally understood as follows: God surveys the array of possible worlds, and in his wisdom selects exactly one for actualization, based on its axiological properties. In this paper, I discuss an under-appreciated challenge for this account of (...) the Anselmian God's selection of a world. In particular, I urge that there are failures of comparability between various possible worlds, and I argue that, given certain assumptions, these failures threaten the rationality of God's choice of a world. To the extent that rationality is deemed necessary for unsurpassability, this result also challenges the core Anselmian notion that God is an unsurpassable being. (shrink)

English summary: German linguistics, formerly internationally inspiring, fell into a deep crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since the First World War, those in the field have been looking for ways to regain its lost scientific and social recognition. This desire for relevance was particularly clear when practitioners of the different approaches to linguistic innovation competed for the scarce resources of public research funding. The remaining funding documents of the German Research Foundation demonstrate which specific linguistic approaches were (...) proclaimed as critical by researchers, and which were honored by outside funders during changing political contexts. Thus, the history of German philology and the development of its dynamics is here - for the first time - traced from the perspective of public support for research, from the time of the Weimar Republic until the first decades of the Federal Republic. German text. German description: Die ehemals international impulsgebende deutsche Sprachwissenschaft geriet am Anfang des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts in eine tiefe Krise. Seit dem Ersten Weltkrieg suchte das Fach nach Wegen, die verlorene wissenschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Anerkennung wieder zu erlangen.Dieser Wille zur Relevanz zeigte sich besonders deutlich, wo die verschiedenen Neuerungsansatze der Sprachforschung um die knappen Mittel der staatlichen Forschungsforderung konkurrierten. An den erhaltenen Forderakten der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft ist abzulesen, welche spezifischen Aufgabenstellungen die Sprachwissenschaft in wechselnden politischen Kontexten jeweils 'nach aussen' proklamierte und 'von aussen' honoriert bekam.So wird hier aus der Perspektive der staatlichen Forschungsforderung die Geschichte der deutschen Sprachforschung in ihrer Entwicklungsdynamik erstmals von der Weimarer Republik bis in die ersten Jahrzehnte der Bundesrepublik nachgezeichnet. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDer vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt das Gefühl der Gier als die misslungene Antwort auf die existenzielle Grundangst und Grundsorge des Menschen. Literatur deutet der Autor als Archiv der Gefühle, hier der Gier. Im zweiten Teil diskutiert der Essay die Deutung von Goethes Faust durch den Wirtschaftswissenschaftler Hans Christoph Binswanger, der die magische Struktur des Wirtschaftens und damit die Habgier als Motor einer auf Wachstum ausgerichteten Wirtschaft entdeckt. Über das Gleichnis vom reichen Kornbauern erschließt der Autor den biblischen Phänomenbestand der Gier: Die (...) Gier dokumentiert ein falsches Selbstverständnis. Ziel kann heute nur ein Selbstverständnis sein, das dem magischen Kern des Wirtschaftens entkommt.SUMMARYThis article describes the feeling of greed as an unsuccessful response to the existential fear and worry inherent to human existence. The author interprets literature as an archive of emotions, including that of greed. The second part of the essay discusses the economist Christoph Binswanger's interpretation of Goethe's ‘Faust’. He discovers the magical structure of the economy and thus describes greed as the impetus for a growth-directed economy. Interacting with the Parable of the Rich Fool , the author deduces the biblical understanding of the phenomenon of greed: greed documents a false understanding of the self. Our contemporary aim, then, should be reaching a conception of the self which escapes the magical core of the economy. (shrink)

Key Terms in Logic offers the ideal introduction to this core area in the study of philosophy, providing detailed summaries of the important concepts in the study of logic and the application of logic to the rest of philosophy. A brief introduction provides context and background, while the following chapters offer detailed definitions of key terms and concepts, introductions to the work of key thinkers and lists of key texts. Designed specifically to meet the needs of students and assuming no (...) prior knowledge of the subject, this is the ideal reference tool for those coming to Logic for the first time. (shrink)

“The Problem of Divine Hiddenness” is an infelicitous phrase for two reasons. First, while it suggests that God both exists and hides, this phrase actually refers to a strategy of arguing that various forms of nonbelief in God constitute evidence for God’s nonexistence. Second, it suggests that there is only one problem for theistic belief here, while in fact this phrase refers to a family of arguments for atheism. This entry focuses on contemporary arguments from nonbelief to atheism. The most (...) important of these is defended by J. L. Schellenberg. Schellenberg claims that a loving God would ensure that there is no reasonable or inculpable nonbelief in his existence, since this belief is required for human beings to enter into a relationship with God, and since (according to theism) having such a relationship with creatures is a great good, and indeed is one of God’s most important goals. But, Schellenberg argues, since such nonbelief occurs among those capable of belief in God, theism should be rejected. The citations collected under General Overviews all concern Schellenberg’s argument. Other authors have independently constructed different arguments from nonbelief to atheism, and these are surveyed under Other Arguments from Nonbelief. The final five sections of this bibliography survey responses to arguments from hiddenness to atheism. Most of this literature explicitly concerns Schellenberg’s argument, but many of these replies could also be directed against the other arguments surveyed here. There are important connections between the problem of divine hiddenness and the problem of evil, and the relevant literature is discussed in a preliminary section entitled Divine Hiddenness in the Context of the Problem of Evil. (shrink)

Wat is toeval? Bestaat het? Hoe moeten we toeval interpreteren? Is alles logisch te verklaren, of is er meer tussen hemel en aarde? In dit boek kijken we naar een vakantieganger die op Bali onverwacht zijn buurman tegenkomt, de Shakespeare-onderzoeker die per toeval de sleutel tot de ware identiteit van de bard in diens teksten denkt te ontwaren, de man die altijd gezond leefde maar plotseling een ongeneeslijke vorm van kanker krijgt, gelovigen die de hand van God denken te zien (...) in het perfecte samenspel van de natuurconstanten dat leven mogelijk maakt, fysici die de grondslagen van de kwantummechanica of de richting van de tijd onderzoeken, biologen die Darwins evolutietheorie proberen te doorgronden, de filosofie van de vrije wil, en ten slotte Jezus als een toevallig of een noodzakelijk fenomeen. In zijn nieuwste boek geeft mathematisch fysicus Klaas Landsman zowel een inleiding als een visie op al deze onderwerpen, die iedereen met belangstelling voor de combinatie van wetenschap en levensbeschouwing zal raken en op nieuwe gedachten zal brengen. (shrink)

For many centuries, philosophers have debated this question: “Does God exist?” Surprisingly, they have paid rather less attention to this distinct – but also very important – question: “Would God’s existence be a good thing?” The latter is an axiological question about the difference in value that God’s existence would make (or does make) in the actual world. Perhaps the most natural position to take, whether or not one believes in God, is to hold that it would be a very (...) good thing if such a being were to exist. After all, God is traditionally thought to be perfectly powerful and good, and it might seem obvious that such a being’s existence would make things better than they would otherwise be. But this judgment has been contested: some philosophers have held that God’s existence would make things worse, and that, on this basis, one can reasonably prefer God’s non-existence. We first distinguish a wide array of axiological positions concerning the value of God’s existence which might be held by theists, atheists, and agnostics alike. We next construe these positions as comparative judgments about the axiological status of various possible worlds. We then criticize an important recent attempt to show that God’s existence would make things worse, in various ways, than they would otherwise be. (shrink)

According to a suggestion by Williamson, outright belief comes in degrees: one has a high/low degree of belief iff one is willing to rely on the content of one’s belief in high/low-stakes practical reasoning. This paper develops an epistemic norm for degrees of outright belief so construed. Starting from the assumption that outright belief aims at knowledge, it is argued that degrees of belief aim at various levels of strong knowledge, that is, knowledge which satisfies particularly high epistemic standards. This (...) account is contrasted with and shown to be superior to an alternative proposal according to which higher degrees of outright belief aim at higher-order knowledge. In an “Appendix”, it is indicated that the logic of degrees of outright belief is closely linked to ranking theory. (shrink)

The question of whether God exists has long preoccupied philosophers. Many accounts of God have been proposed, and many arguments for and against God’s existence have been offered and discussed. But while philosophers have been busy trying to determine whether or not God exists, they have generally neglected to ask this question: "Does it _matter _whether God exists?" _Does God Matter?_ features ten original essays written by prominent philosophers of religion that address this very important, yet surprisingly neglected, question. One (...) natural way to approach this question is to seek to understand what difference God’s existence would—or does—make to the value of the world and the well-being of its inhabitants. The three essays in Section I defend versions of _pro-theism_: the view that God’s existence would, or does, make things better than they would otherwise be. The three subsequent essays in Section II defend _anti-theism_: the view that God’s existence would, or does, make things worse than they would otherwise be. The final four essays in Section III consider the interplay between the existential and axiological debates concerning the existence of God. This book presents important research on a growing topic in philosophy of religion that will also be of keen interest to scholars working in other areas of philosophy, and in other disciplines. (shrink)

According to the knowledge norm of belief, one should believe p only if one knows p. However, it can easily seem that the ordinary notion of belief is much weaker than the knowledge norm would have it. It is possible to rationally believe things one knows to be unknown The aim of belief, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013). One response to this observation is to develop a technical notion of ‘outright’ belief. A challenge for this line of response is to (...) find a way of getting a grip on the targeted notion of belief. In order to meet this challenge, I characterize ‘outright’ belief in this paper as the strongest belief state implied by knowledge. I show that outright belief so construed allows this notion to play important theoretical roles in connection with knowledge, assertion and action. (shrink)

In the March 1927 number of this Journal Mr. Klaas, who is studying abroad, showed the lack of opposition between science and religion. In May he gave the reason. His newest contribution striking contribution striking points out their recognized relations. The Editor.

What the Emperor Built: Architecture and Empire in the Early Ming. By Aurelia Campbell. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 217. $65.