A. Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift. If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent. If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, then He is not omnipotent. Therefore, God is not omnipotent.In a paper published in Analysis I tried to show that any attempt to find something wrong with all arguments of the general form of A (...) above, any attempt to resolve the “paradox,” must fail, that the reason these attempts must fail is that at least some arguments of this form are essentially sound, and that the only thing which makes these arguments seem paradoxical, their conclusion to the effect that God is not omnipotent, is, like at least some versions of the arguments to this conclusion, quite correct. (shrink)

We are witnessing at present a substantial efflorescence of the view that there are and must necessarily be fundamental differences between the methods—and especially the types of explanation—appropriate to the social sciences on the one hand and those appropriate to the natural sciences on the other. New and ever more subtle arguments seeking to re-establish a Geisteswissenschaften vs. Naturwissenschaften distinction are flowing from scholarly presses in ever greater volume. The works cited in footnote one are a mere sample just of (...) recent books which, while diverse to the point of contradiction in some respects, have as their common underlying theme the defense of such a methodological duality. (shrink)