48 found
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  1. Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 8.
    The argument from contingency for the existence of God is best understood as a request for an explanation of the total sequence of causes and effects in the universe (‘History’ for short). Many puzzles about how there could be such an explanation arise from the assumption that God is being introduced as one more cause prepended to the sequence of causes that (allegedly) needed explaining. In response to this difficulty, this chapter defends three theses. First, it argues that, if the (...)
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  2. Is There a God?: A Debate.Kenneth L. Pearce & Graham Oppy - 2021 - Little Debates About Big Questions.
    Each author first presents his own side, and then they interact through two rounds of objections and replies. Pedagogical features include standard form arguments, section summaries, bolded key terms and principles, a glossary, and annotated reading lists.
  3. Understanding Omnipotence.Kenneth L. Pearce & Alexander R. Pruss - 2012 - Religious Studies 48 (3):403-414.
    An omnipotent being would be a being whose power was unlimited. The power of human beings is limited in two distinct ways: we are limited with respect to our freedom of will, and we are limited in our ability to execute what we have willed. These two distinct sources of limitation suggest a simple definition of omnipotence: an omnipotent being is one that has both perfect freedom of will and perfect efficacy of will. In this paper we further explicate this (...)
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  4.  97
    (1 other version)Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics.Tyron Goldschmidt & Kenneth L. Pearce (eds.) - 2017 - Oxford University Press.
    Idealism is the view that reality is fundamentally mental. Idealism has been influential historically, but it has been neglected in contemporary metaphysical debate. This volume of 17 essays by leading philosophers rectifies the situation.
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  5. Locke, Arnauld, and Abstract Ideas.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2019 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (1):75-94.
    A great deal of the criticism directed at Locke's theory of abstract ideas assumes that a Lockean abstract idea is a special kind of idea which by its very nature either represents many diverse particulars or represents separately things that cannot exist in separation. This interpretation of Locke has been challenged by scholars such as Kenneth Winkler and Michael Ayers who regard it as uncharitable in light of the obvious problems faced by this theory of abstraction. Winkler and Ayers argue (...)
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  6. (1 other version)Language and the Structure of Berkeley's World.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2014 - Dissertation, University of Southern California
    Berkeley's philosophy is meant to be a defense of commonsense. However, Berkeley's claim that the ultimate constituents of physical reality are fleeting, causally passive ideas appears to be radically at odds with commonsense. In particular, such a theory seems unable to account for the robust structure which commonsense (and Newtonian physics) takes the world to exhibit. The problem of structure, as I understand it, includes the problem of how qualities can be grouped by their co-occurrence in a single enduring object (...)
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  7. Mereological Idealism.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - In K. Pearce & T. Goldschmidt (eds.), Idealism: New Essays in Metaphysics. Oxford University Press. pp. 200-216.
    According to commonsense, some collections of objects compose wholes, and others do not. However, philosophers have found serious difficulties with attempts to preserve this thesis, and especially with attempts to preserve the existence of just those composite objects recognized by commonsense. In this paper, I defend a classical solution to this problem: "it is the mind that maketh each thing to be one" (Berkeley, Siris, sect. 356). According to this view, which I call 'mereological idealism,' it is when a plurality (...)
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  8.  25
    (1 other version)Peter Browne on the Metaphysics of Knowledge.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2020 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 88:215-237.
    The central unifying element in the philosophy of Peter Browne is his theory of analogy. Although Browne's theory was originally developed to deal with some problems about religious language, Browne regards analogy as a general purpose cognitive mechanism whereby we substitute an idea we have to stand for an object of which we, strictly speaking, have no idea. According to Browne, all of our ideas are ideas of sense, and ideas of sense are ideas of material things. Hence we can (...)
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  9.  70
    Thinking with the Cartesians and Speaking with the Vulgar: Extrinsic Denomination in the Philosophy of Antoine Arnauld.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2022 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (2):227-252.
    Arnauld follows Descartes in denying that sensible qualities like color are modes of external objects. Yet, unlike Malebranche, he resists the apparent implication that ordinary statements like ‘this marble is white’ are false. Arnauld also follows Descartes in saying that we perceive things by having ideas of them. Yet, unlike Malebranche, he denies that this sort of talk implies the existence of intermediaries standing between the mind and its external objects. How can Arnauld avoid these implications? I argue that the (...)
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  10. Infinite Power and Finite Powers.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2019 - In Benedikt Paul Goecke (ed.), The Infinity of God: Scientific, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives. Notre Dame University Press.
    Alexander Pruss and I have proposed an analysis of omnipotence which makes no use of the problematic terms 'power' and 'ability'. However, this raises an obvious worry: if our analysis is not related to the notion of power, then how can it count as an analysis of omnipotence, the property of being all-powerful, at all? In this paper, I show how omnipotence can be understood as the possession of infinite power (general, universal, or unlimited power) rather than the possession of (...)
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  11. Counterpossible Dependence and the Efficacy of the Divine Will.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Faith and Philosophy 34 (1):3-16.
    The will of an omnipotent being would be perfectly efficacious. Alexander Pruss and I have provided an analysis of perfect efficacy that relies on non-trivial counterpossible conditionals. Scott Hill has objected that not all of the required counterpossibles are true of God. Sarah Adams has objected that perfect efficacy of will (on any analysis) would be an extrinsic property and so is not suitable as a divine attribute. I argue that both of these objections can be answered if the divine (...)
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  12. Berkeley's Theory of Language.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2021 - In Samuel Charles Rickless (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press.
    In the Introduction to the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley attacks the “received opinion that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea” (PHK, Intro §19). How far does Berkeley go in rejecting this ‘received opinion’? Does he offer a general theory of language to replace it? If so, what is the nature of this theory? In this chapter, I consider three main interpretations of Berkeley's view: (...)
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  13. Ideas and Explanation in Early Modern Philosophy.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2021 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (2):252-280.
    Malebranche argues that ideas are representative beings existing in God. He defends this thesis by an inference to the best explanation of human perception. It is well known that Malebranche’s theory of vision in God was forcefully rejected by philosophers such as Arnauld, Locke, and Berkeley. However, the notion that ideas exist in God was not the only controversial aspect of Malebranche’s approach. Another controversy centered around Malebranche’s view that ideas are to be understood as posits in an explanatory theory. (...)
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  14. Matter, God, and Nonsense: Berkeley's Polemic Against the Freethinkers in the Three Dialogues.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2018 - In Stefan Storrie (ed.), Berkeley's Three Dialogues: New Essays. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    In the Preface to the Three Dialogues<, Berkeley says that one of his main aims is to refute the free-thinkers. Puzzlingly, however, we are then treated to a dialogue between two Christians in which the free-thinkers never reappear. This is related to a second, more general puzzle about Berkeley's religious polemics: although Berkeley says he is defending orthodox conclusions, he also reminds himself in his notebooks "To use the utmost Caution not to give the least Handle of offence to the (...)
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  15. Arnauld's Verbal Distinction between Ideas and Perceptions.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2016 - History and Philosophy of Logic 37 (4):375-390.
    In his dispute with Malebranche about the nature of ideas, Arnauld endorses a form of direct realism. This appears to conflict with views put forward by Arnauld and his collaborators in the Port-Royal Grammar and Logic where ideas are treated as objects in the mind. This tension can be resolved by a careful examination of Arnauld's remarks on the semantics of ‘perception’ and ‘idea’ in light of the Port-Royal theory of language. This examination leads to the conclusion that Arnauld's ideas (...)
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  16.  89
    Berkeley's Philosophy of Religion.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - In Richard Brook & Bertil Belfrage (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Berkeley. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 458-483.
    Traditionally, religious doctrines and practices have been divided into two categories. Those that purport to be justified by natural reason alone are said to be part of natural religion, while those which purport to be justified only by appeal to supernatural revelation are said to be part of revealed religion. One of the central aims of Berkeley's philosophy is to understand and defend both the doctrines and the practices of both natural and revealed (Christian) religion. This chapter will provide a (...)
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  17.  93
    William King on Free Will.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19.
    William King's De Origine Mali contains an interesting, sophisticated, and original account of free will. King finds 'necessitarian' theories of freedom, such as those advocated by Hobbes and Locke, inadequate, but argues that standard versions of libertarianism commit one to the claim that free will is a faculty for going wrong. On such views, free will is something we would be better off without. King argues that both problems can be avoided by holding that we confer value on objects by (...)
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  18. Counteressential Conditionals.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1):73-81.
    Making sense of our reasoning in disputes about necessary truths requires admitting nonvacuous counterpossibles. One class of these is the counteressentials, which ask us to make contrary to fact suppositions about essences. A popular strategy in accounting for nonvacuous counterpossibles is to extend the standard possible worlds semantics for subjunctive conditionals by the addition of impossible worlds. A conditional A □-> C is then taken to be true if all of the nearest A worlds are C worlds. I argue that (...)
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  19. How Berkeley's Gardener Knows his Cherry Tree.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (S1):553-576.
    The defense of common sense in Berkeley's Three Dialogues is, first and foremost, a defense of the gardener's claim to know this cherry tree, a claim threatened by both Cartesian and Lockean philosophy. Berkeley's defense of the gardener's knowledge depends on his claim that the being of a cherry tree consists in its being perceived. This is not something the gardener believes; rather, it is a philosophical analysis of the rules unreflectively followed by the gardener in his use of the (...)
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  20. Foundational Grounding and Creaturely Freedom.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2021 - Mind 131 (524):1108-1130.
    According to classical theism, the universe depends on God in a way that goes beyond mere (efficient) causation. I have previously argued that this ‘deep dependence’ of the universe on God is best understood as a type of grounding. In a recent paper in this journal, Aaron Segal argues that this doctrine of deep dependence causes problems for creaturely free will: if our choices are grounded in facts about God, and we have no control over these facts, then we do (...)
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  21.  94
    Are We Free to Break the Laws of Providence?Kenneth L. Pearce - 2020 - Faith and Philosophy 37 (2):158-180.
    Can I be free to perform an action if God has decided to ensure that I do not choose that action? I show that Molinists and simple foreknowledge theorists are committed to answering in the affirmative. This is problematic for their status as theological incompatibilists. I suggest that strategies for preserving their theological incompatibilism in light of this result should be based on sourcehood. However, the path is not easy here either, since Leibniz has shown how theological determinists can offer (...)
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  22. Leibniz and the Veridicality of Body Perceptions.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2016 - Philosophers' Imprint 16.
    According to Leibniz's late metaphysics, sensory perception represents to us as extended, colored, textured, etc., a world which fundamentally consists only of non-spatial, colorless entities, the monads. It is a short step from here to the conclusion that sensory perception radically misleads us about the true nature of reality. In this paper, I argue that this oft-repeated claim is false. Leibniz holds that in typical cases of body perception the bodies perceived really exist and have the qualities, both primary and (...)
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  23.  43
    Why Not? God.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2024 - In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Divinity. De Gruyter. pp. 249-266.
    It is widely agreed among broadly Anselmian theists that God is in some sense the 'delimiter of possibilities.' In other words, the scope of possibility is explained by the manner in which the universe emanates from God. However, existing accounts of God's role here—in terms of freedom, choice, or power—face serious difficulties. The present paper provides a new account of God's role as the delimiter of possibilities in terms of the different manner in which the non-actuality of non-actual states of (...)
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  24. Intentionality, Belief, and the Logical Problem of Evil.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2020 - Religious Studies 56 (3):419-435.
    This paper provides a new defence against the logical problem of evil, based on the naturalistic functional/teleological theory of mind (NFT). I argue that if the NFT is self-consistent then it is consistent with theism. Further, the NFT entails that it is not possible for created minds to exist in the absence of evil. It follows that if the NFT is self-consistent then the existence of God is consistent with the existence of evil.
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  25. The semantics of sense perception in Berkeley.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2008 - Religious Studies 44 (3):249-268.
    George Berkeley's linguistic account of sense perception is one of the most central tenets of his philosophy. It is intended as a solution to a wide range of critical issues in both metaphysics and theology. However, it is not clear from Berkeley's writings just how this ‘universal language of the Author of Nature’ is to be interpreted. This paper discusses the nature of the theory of sense perception as language, together with its metaphysical and theological motivations, then proceeds to develop (...)
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  26. Berkeley on Unperceived Objects and the Publicity of Language.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 34 (3):231-250.
    Berkeley's immaterialism aims to undermine Descartes's skeptical arguments by denying that the connection between sensory perception and reality is contingent. However, this seems to undermine Berkeley's (alleged) defense of commonsense by failing to recognize the existence of objects not presently perceived by humans. I argue that this problem can be solved by means of two neglected Berkeleian doctrines: the status of the world as "a most coherent, instructive, and entertaining Discourse" which is 'spoken' by God (Siris, sect. 254) and the (...)
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  27. Berkeley’s Lockean Religious Epistemology.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2014 - Journal of the History of Ideas 75 (3):417-438.
    Berkeley's main aim in his well-known early works was to identify and refute "the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and irreligion." This appears to place Berkeley within a well-established tradition of religious critics of Locke's epistemology, including, most famously, Stillingfleet. I argue that these appearances are deceiving. Berkeley is, in fact, in important respects an opponent of this tradition. According to Berkeley, Locke's earlier critics, including Stillingfleet, had misidentified the grounds of irreligion in Locke's philosophy while all the while endorsing the (...)
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  28.  41
    Omnipotence.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2011 - The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Omnipotence is the property of being all-powerful; it is one of the traditional divine attributes in Western conceptions of God. This notion of an all-powerful being is often claimed to be incoherent because a being who has the power to do anything would, for instance, have the power to draw a round square. However, it is absurd to suppose that any being, no matter how powerful, could draw a round square. A common response to this objection is to assert that (...)
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  29. What Descartes Doubted, Berkeley Denied, and Kant Endorsed.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2019 - Dialogue 58 (1):31-63.
    According to Kant, there is some doctrine, which he sometimes calls 'empirical realism,' such that it was doubted by Descartes, denied by Berkeley, and endorsed by Kant himself. It may be doubted whether there really is such a doctrine or, if there is, whether it takes the form Kant seems to say it does. For instance, if empirical realism is taken as the assertion that familiar objects like tables and chairs exist, then this doctrine was neither seriously doubted by Descartes, (...)
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  30. Thomas Reid on Character and Freedom.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2012 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 29 (2):159-176.
    According to Thomas Reid, an agent cannot be free unless she has the power to do otherwise. This claim is usually interpreted as a version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Against this interpretation, I argue that Reid is committed to the seemingly paradoxical position that an agent may have the power to do otherwise despite the fact that it is impossible that she do otherwise. Reid's claim about the power to do otherwise does not, therefore, entail the Principle of (...)
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  31. Astell and Masham on Epistemic Authority and Women's Individual Judgment in Religion.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 9:197–226.
    In 1705, Mary Astell and Damaris Masham both published works advocating for women's use of individual judgment in matters of religion. Although both philosophers advocate for women's education and intellectual autonomy, and both are adherents of the Church of England, they differ dramatically in their attitudes to religious authority. These differences are rooted in a deeper disagreement about the nature of epistemic authority in general. Astell defends an interpersonal model of epistemic authority on which we properly trust testimony when the (...)
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  32. The Epistemology of Testimony: Locke and His Critics.Kenneth L. Pearce - forthcoming - In Stephen Howard & Jack Stetter (eds.), The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press.
    Contemporary discussions of the epistemology of testimony are often framed in terms of the disagreement on this topic between Hume and Reid. However, it is widely assumed that, prior to Hume, philosophers in the grip of Enlightenment individualism neglected philosophical questions about testimony, simply treating testimony as ordinary empirical evidence. In fact, although the evidential model of testimony was popular in early modern philosophy, it was also the subject of vigorous debate. This chapter examines Locke's defence of the evidential model (...)
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  33.  91
    God’s Impossible Options.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2021 - Faith and Philosophy 38 (2):185-204.
    According to Michael Almeida, reflections on free will and possibility can be used to show that the existence of an Anselmian God is compatible with the existence of evil. These arguments depend on the assumption that an agent can be free with respect to an action only if it is possible that that agent performs that action. Although this principle enjoys some intuitive support, I argue that Anselmianism undermines these intuitions by introducing impossible options. If Anselmianism is true, I argue, (...)
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  34.  58
    Berkeley on religious truths: a reply to Keota Fields.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (6):1121-1131.
    ABSTRACT Berkeley admits that certain religious utterances involve words that do not stand for ideas. Nevertheless, he maintains, these utterances may express true beliefs. According to the use theory interpretation of Berkeley, these true beliefs consist in dispositions to follow certain rules. Keota Fields has objected that this interpretation is inconsistent with Berkeley’s commitment to the universal truth of the Christian revelation. On Fields’ alternative interpretation, the meanings of these utterances are ideas in the mind of God, and we assent (...)
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  35. God's Perfect Will: Remarks on Johnston and O'Connor.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2022 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 10:248-254.
    Why would God create a world at all? Further, why would God create a world like this one? The Neoplatonic framework of classical philosophical theology answers that God’s willing is an affirmation of God’s own goodness, and God creates to show forth God’s glory. Mark Johnston has recently argued that, in addition to explaining why God would create at all, this framework gives extremely wide scope to divine freedom. Timothy O’Connor objects that divine freedom, on this view, cannot be so (...)
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  36.  66
    Port-Royal.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2015 - Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online.
    Port-Royal-des-Champes was an abbey in France, initially located near Versailles, but later moved to Paris. Its importance to the history of philosophy is due primarily to a group of Augustinian-Cartesian thinkers who developed an influential theory of mental and linguistic representation.
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  37.  2
    Anthony Collins’s Non-Vindication of the Divine Attributes.Kenneth L. Pearce - forthcoming - Journal of Theological Studies.
    Anthony Collins’s 1710 pamphlet _A Vindication of the Divine Attributes_ is not a vindication of the divine attributes. But what precisely is it? I argue that Collins’s _Vindication_ is best interpreted as a kind of prelude to his later _Discourse of Free-Thinking_ (1713). The Vindication aims to show that our beliefs about the existence and nature of God cannot rest on the authority of the clergy. Instead we must, as Collins puts it, ‘impartially examine every thing (how Sacred soever it (...)
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  38.  36
    Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley: Volume 88.Kenneth L. Pearce & Takaharu Oda (eds.) - 2020 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    This volume presents a selection of new articles examining the state of Irish philosophy during the lifetime of Ireland's most famous philosopher, Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1753). The thinkers examined include Berkeley, Robert Boyle, William King, William Molyneux, Robert Molesworth, Peter Browne, Jonathan Swift, John Toland, Thomas Prior, Samuel Madden, Arthur Dobbs, Francis Hutcheson, Mary Barber, Constantia Grierson, Laetitia Pilkington, Elizabeth Sican, and John Austin. This interdisciplinary collection includes attention both to local Irish concerns and to Ireland's relation to the broader (...)
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  39.  15
    Preface.Kenneth L. Pearce & Takaharu Oda - 2020 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 88:1-6.
  40.  95
    Deism.Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - The Special Divine Action Project.
  41. A Leibnizian theory of miracles.Kenneth L. Pearce - manuscript
    Most accounts of miracles assume that a necessary condition for an event's being miraculous is that it be, as Hume put it, “a violation of the laws of nature.” However, any account of this sort will be ill-suited for defending the major Western religious traditions because, as I will argue, classical theists should not believe in violations of the laws of nature. In place of the rejected Humean accounts, this paper seeks to develop and defend a Leibnizian conception of miracles (...)
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  42.  73
    Berkeley's Meta-Ontology: Bodies, Forces, and the Semantics of 'Exists'.Kenneth L. Pearce - manuscript
    To the great puzzlement of his readers, Berkeley begins by arguing that nothing exists other than minds and ideas, but concludes by claiming to have defended the existence of bodies. How can Berkeley's idealism amount to such a defense? I introduce resources from Berkeley's philosophy of language, and especially his analysis of the discourse of physics, to defend a novel answer to this question. According to Berkeley, the technical terms of physics are meaningful despite failing to designate any reality; their (...)
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  43.  90
    Can Berkeley's God Raise the Same Body, Transformed?Kenneth L. Pearce - manuscript
    Orthodox Christianity affirms a bodily resurrection of the dead. That is, Christians believe that at some point in the eschatological future, possibly after a period of (conscious or unconscious) disembodied existence, we will once again live and animate our own bodies. However, our bodies will also undergo radical qualitative transformation. This creates a serious problem: how can a body persist across both temporal discontinuity and qualitative transformation? After discussing this problem as it appears in contemporary philosophical literature on the resurrection, (...)
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  44.  57
    Della Rocca, Michael, The Parmenidean Ascent, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, pages xxiii + 317, US$43.95 (hardback). [REVIEW]Kenneth L. Pearce - 2024 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (2):535-535.
    Michael Della Rocca’s 2010 paper ‘PSR’ (Philosophers’ Imprint 10: 1–13) opens with a plea: ‘Please don’t let me start. The beginning is so seductive that once I get going, it’s hard for me to stop’...
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  45.  75
    Idealism and Christian Theology, edited by Joshua R. Farris and S. Mark Hamilton. [REVIEW]Kenneth L. Pearce - 2017 - Faith and Philosophy 34 (3):365-369.
  46. Necessary Existence. By Alexander R. Pruss and Joshua L. Rasmussen. [REVIEW]Kenneth L. Pearce - 2019 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (4):763-767.
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  47. The Puzzle of Existence: Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, edited by Tyron Goldschmidt. [REVIEW]Kenneth L. Pearce - 2014 - Faith and Philosophy 31 (3):341-344.
  48. The Everlasting Check: Hume on Miracles. [REVIEW]Kenneth L. Pearce - 2016 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 54 (4):680-681.
    This book provides a concise treatment of David Hume’s “Of Miracles,” defending both an interpretation of Hume’s argument and an evaluation of its philosophical significance. The philosophical argumentation is consistently rigorous, and the interpretation of Hume is interesting and original.A distinctive aspect of George’s approach, which should have been highlighted in the introduction but was not, is his treatment of “Of Miracles” as a standalone essay. This approach serves to illuminate certain aspects of “Of Miracles,” especially the relationship between the (...)
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