57 found
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  1. Three conceptions of states of affairs.William F. Vallicella - 2000 - Noûs 34 (2):237–259.
  2. Relations, monism, and the vindication of Bradley's regress.William F. Vallicella - 2002 - Dialectica 56 (1):3–35.
    This article articulates and defends F. H. Bradley's regress argument against external relations using contemporary analytic techniques and conceptuality. Bradley's argument is usually quickly dismissed as if it were beneath serious consideration. But I shall maintain that Bradley's argument, suitably reconstructed, is a powerful argument, plausibly premised, and free of such obvious fallacies as petitio principii. Thus it does not rest on the question‐begging assumption that all relations are internal, as Russell, and more recently van Inwagen, maintain. Bradley does not (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Divine Simplicity.William F. Vallicella - 1992 - Faith and Philosophy 9 (4):508-525.
    The doctrine of divine simplicity, according to which God is devoid of physical or metaphysical complexity, is widely believed to be incoherent. I argue that although two prominent recent attempts to defend it fail, it can be defended against the charge of obvious incoherence. The defense rests on the isolation and rejection of a crucial assumption, namely, that no property is an individual. I argue that there is nothing in our ordinary concepts of property and individual to warrant the assumption, (...)
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  4. Bundles and indiscernibility: A reply to o’leary-Hawthorne.William F. Vallicella - 1997 - Analysis 57 (1):91–94.
  5. Does God Exist Because He Ought To Exist?William F. Vallicella - 2018 - In Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Theistic Beliefs: Meta-Ontological Perspectives. De Gruyter. pp. 205-212.
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  6. Does the Cosmological Argument Depend on the Ontological?William F. Vallicella - 2000 - Faith and Philosophy 17 (4):441-458.
    Does the cosmological argument (CA) depend on the ontological (OA)? That depends. If the OA is an argument “from mere concepts,” then no; if the OA is an argument from possibility, then yes. That is my main thesis. Along the way, I explore a number of subsidiary themes, among them, the nature of proof in metaphysics, and what Kant calls the “mystery of absolute necessity.”.
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  7. Gaskin on the unity of the proposition.William F. Vallicella - 2010 - Dialectica 64 (2):265-277.
  8. Is the Quality of Life Objectively Evaluable on Naturalism?William F. Vallicella - 2023 - Perichoresis 21 (1):70-83.
    This article examines one of the sources of David Benatar’s anti-natalism. This is the view that ‘all procreation is [morally] wrong.’ (Benatar and Wasserman, 2015:12) One of its sources is the claim that each of our lives is objectively bad, hence bad whether we think so or not. The question I will pose is whether the constraints of metaphysical naturalism allow for an objective devaluation of human life sufficiently negative to justify anti-natalism. My thesis is that metaphysical naturalism does not (...)
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  9. Facts: An Essay in Aporetics.William F. Vallicella - 2016 - In Francesco Federico Calemi (ed.), Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong. Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 105-132.
  10. Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis.William F. Vallicella - 2013 - In Daniel Novotny & Lukáš Novák (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics. London: Routledge. pp. 45-75.
    Analytic philosophy of existence in the 20th century and beyond has been dominated by two central claims. One is that existence is instantiation. The other is that there are no modes of existence. This article attempts to refute both claims.
     
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  11.  77
    Heidegger’s Reduction of Being to Truth.William F. Vallicella - 1985 - New Scholasticism 59 (2):156-176.
  12. Kant, Heidegger, and the Problem of the Thing in Itself.William F. Vallicella - 1983 - International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1):35-43.
  13.  95
    On an insufficient argument against sufficient reason.William F. Vallicella - 1997 - Ratio 10 (1):76–81.
    In one of its versions, the principle of sufficient reason maintains that every true proposition has a sufficient reason for its truth. Recently, a number of philosophers have argued against the principle on the ground that there are propositions such as the conjunction of all truths that are ‘too big’ to have a sufficient reason. The task of this article is to show that such maximal propositions pose no threat to the principle. According to what is perhaps the most ‘popular’ (...)
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  14.  44
    Reply to Zimmerman.William F. Vallicella - 1990 - International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (2):245-254.
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  15. From Democrat to Dissident.William F. Vallicella - 2021 - In T. Allan Hillman & Tully Borland (eds.), Dissident Philosophers: Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 261-277.
    Recounts the author's experiences and reasons that led him to reject the Democratic Party and become a conservative.
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  16. Arianna Betti: Against Facts.William F. Vallicella - 2016 - Metaphysica 17 (2).
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  17. No Self?: A Look at a Buddhist Argument.William F. Vallicella - 2002 - International Philosophical Quarterly 42 (4):453-466.
    Central to Buddhist thought and practice is the anattā doctrine. In its unrestricted form the doctrine amounts to the claim that nothing at all possesses self-nature. This article examines an early Buddhist argument for the doctrine. The argument, roughly, is that (i) if anything were a self, it would be both unchanging and self-determining; (ii) nothing has both of these properties; therefore, (iii) nothing is a self. The thesis of this article is that, despite the appearance of formal validity, the (...)
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  18. The Hume-Edwards Objection to the Cosmological Argument.William F. Vallicella - 1997 - Journal of Philosophical Research 22:423-443.
    One sort of cosmological argument for the existence of God starts from the fact that the universe exists and argues to a transcendent cause of this fact. According to the Hume-Edwards objection to this sort of cosmological argument, if every member of the universe is caused by a preceding member, then the universe has an intemal causal explanation in such a way as to obviate the need for a transcendent cause. The Hume-Edwards objection has recently come under attack by atheists (...)
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  19. God, causation and occasionalism.William F. Vallicella - 1999 - Religious Studies 35 (1):3-18.
    The doctrine that there are no logically necessary connections in nature can be used to support both occasionalism, according to which God alone can be a cause, and 'anti-occasionalism', according to which God cannot be a cause. Quentin Smith has recently invoked the 'no logically necessary connections in nature' doctrine in support of the latter. I bring two main objections against his thesis that God (logically) cannot be a cause. The first is that there are good reasons to think that (...)
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  20.  58
    Brentano on Existence.William F. Vallicella - 2001 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (3):311-327.
  21.  40
    On Property Self-Exemplification.William F. Vallicella - 1994 - Faith and Philosophy 11 (3):478-481.
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  22. Incarnation and Identity.William F. Vallicella - 2002 - Philo 5 (1):84-93.
    The characteristic claim of Christianity, as codified at Chalcedon, is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, is numerically the same person as Jesus of Nazareth. This article raises three questions that appear to threaten the coherence of orthodox Chalcedonian incarnationalism. First, how can one person exemplify seemingly incompatible natures? Second, how can one person exemplify seemingly incompatible non-nature properties? Third, how can there be one person if the concept of incarnation implies that one person incarnates himself (...)
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  23.  94
    The creation–conservation dilemma and presentist four-dimensionalism.William F. Vallicella - 2002 - Religious Studies 38 (2):187-200.
    On traditional theism, God is not only a creator but also a conserver. The doctrine of conservation, however, appears to face a dilemma. Either conservation is continuous re-creation with consequences inimical to diachronic identity, or conservation is an operation upon a pre-existent entity, which, because it is pre-existent, is in no clear need of conservation. This article first makes a case for the dilemma, and then proposes a way between its horns. Safe passage is possible if we adopt presentist four-dimensionalism, (...)
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  24. Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty.William F. Vallicella - 2014 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (1):149-161.
    This review article summarizes and in part criticizes Hugh J. McCann’s detailed elaboration of the consequences of the idea that God is absolutely sovereign and thus unlimited in knowledge and power in his 2012 Creation and the Sovereignty of God. While there is much to agree with in McCann’s treatment, it is argued that divine sovereignty cannot extend as far as he would like to extend it. The absolute lord of the natural and moral orders cannot be absolutely sovereign over (...)
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  25. Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method.William F. Vallicella - 2015 - Studia Neoaristotelica 12 (2):99-125.
    This paper is a review of the book "Existence: Essays in Ontology" by Peter Van Inwagen.
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  26. Butchvarov on the Dehumanization of Philosophy.William F. Vallicella - 2016 - Studia Neoaristotelica 13 (2):181-196.
    This review article examines Panayot Butchvarov’s claim that philosophy in its three main branches, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics, needs to be freed from anthropocentrism.
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  27. Can the Chariot Take Us to the Land of No Self?William F. Vallicella - 2006 - The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 9:29-33.
    This paper examines a famous argument for the Buddhist doctrine of anatta ("no self) according to which nothing possesses self-nature or substantial reality. The argument unfolds during a debate between the monk Nagasena and King Milinda (Menandros). Nagasena's challenge to the King is that he demonstrate the substantial reality of the chariot in which he arrived at their meeting when said chariot is (i) not identical to any one of its proper parts, (ii) not identical to the mereological sum of (...)
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  28. A Critique of the Quantificational Account of Existence.William F. Vallicella - 1983 - The Thomist 47 (2):242.
     
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  29.  71
    Relativism, Truth and the Symmetry Thesis.William F. Vallicella - 1984 - The Monist 67 (3):452-466.
    The interest and longevity of philosophical positions and arguments often seem to be an inverse function of the clarity with which these positions and arguments are articulated. Frequently, the most interesting positions are those pregnant with ambiguity and ever teetering on the brink of incoherence. Examples are not hard to find in the history of philosophy. Kant’s philosophy is full of them: the role and status of the Ding an sich; the proof-structure of the transcendental deduction of the categories; the (...)
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  30. The Problem of Being in the Early Heidegger.William F. Vallicella - 1981 - The Thomist 45 (3):388.
     
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  31.  45
    Meinertsen on Non-Substantial Change, Trope Bundle Theory, and States of Affairs.William F. Vallicella - 2022 - Philosophia 51 (1):425-429.
    In my (2020), I criticize how Meinertsen in Metaphysics of States of Affairs treats the main ‘internal’ problem of his state of affairs ontology: the problem of unity. In this note, I consider instead some questions about Meinertsen’s approach to one of his important ‘external’ problems: the problem of non-substantial change.
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  32. Constituent versus Relational Ontology (a review of Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic).William F. Vallicella - 2013 - Studia Neoaristotelica 10 (1):99-115.
    This review article explores in a critical spirit the differences between constituent and relational ontology as practiced by four contemporary Aristotelian philosophers, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Lukáš Novák, and Stanislav Sousedík.
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  33.  77
    The Moreland-Willard-Lotze Thesis on Being.William F. Vallicella - 2004 - Philosophia Christi 6 (1):27-58.
  34. Could the universe cause itself to exist?William F. Vallicella - 2000 - Philosophy 75 (4):604-612.
    This article responds to Quentin Smith's, ‘The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist’, Philosophy 74 (1999), 579–586. My rejoinder makes three main points. The first is that Smith's argument for a finitely old, but causally self-explanatory, universe fails from probative overkill: if sound, it also shows that all manner of paltry event-sequences are causally self-explanatory.The second point is that the refutation of Smith's argument extends to Hume's argument for an infinitely old causally self-explanatory universe, as (...)
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  35.  17
    Seeing and Reading.William F. Vallicella - 1986 - Noûs 20 (3):437-441.
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  36.  60
    A Note on Hintikka’s Refutation of the Ontological Argument.William F. Vallicella - 1989 - Faith and Philosophy 6 (2):215-217.
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  37. A Tension in Quine’s Theory of Existence.William F. Vallicella - 2003 - Philo 6 (2):193-204.
    According to Quine, the ontological question can be posed in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: “What is there?” But if we call this the ontological question, what shall we call the logically prior question: “What is it for an item to be there?” Peter van Inwagen has recently suggested that this be called the meta-ontological question, and more importantly, has endorsed Quine’s answer to it. Ingredient in this Quinean answer to the meta-ontological question are several theses, among them, “Being is the same (...)
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  38. Could a Classical Theist Be a Physicalist?William F. Vallicella - 1998 - Faith and Philosophy 15 (2):160-180.
    Since physicalism is fashionable nowadays, one should perhaps not be too surprised to find a growing number of theistic philosophers bent on combining theism with physicalism. I shall be arguing that this is an innovation we have good reason to resist. I begin by distinguishing global physicalism (physicalism about everything) from local physicalism (physicalism about human beings). I then present the theist who would be a physicalist with a challenge: Articulate a version of local physicalism that allows some minds to (...)
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  39.  25
    Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism.William F. Vallicella - 1998 - The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 36:203-208.
    Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this question may seem obvious, it turns out that a case can be made for the consistency of a variant of classical theism and global supervenience physicalism. Although intriguing, the case ultimately fails due to the weakness of global supervenience as an account of the dependence of mental on physical properties.
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  40.  66
    Do Individuals Exist?William F. Vallicella - 1995 - Journal of Philosophical Research 20:195-220.
    Is there room for a metaphysics of existence above and beyond the logic of ‘exists’? This paper defends an affirmative answer. It takes its point of departure from a recent polemic of Paul Edwards against Heidegger. According to Edwards, following Frege and Russell, Heidegger mistakenly assumes that existence belongs to individuals. I argue that although Heidegger does indeed make this assumption, he is not mistaken in so doing. My main concern, however, is neither to defend Heidegger nor to reply to (...)
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  41.  53
    Existence and Indefinite Identifiability.William F. Vallicella - 1995 - Southwest Philosophy Review 11 (2):171-186.
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  42.  76
    Has the Ontological Argument Been Refuted?William F. Vallicella - 1993 - Religious Studies 29 (1):97 - 110.
    Suppose we say that a deductive argument is probative just in case it is valid in point of logical form, possesses true premises, and is free of informal fallacy. We can then say that an argument is normatively persuasive for a person if and only if it is both probative and has premises that can be accepted, without any breach of epistemic propriety, by the person in question. If the premises of a probative argument would be accepted by any reasonable (...)
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  43.  83
    Kant Chastened But Vindicated: Rejoinder to Forgie.William F. Vallicella - 2004 - Faith and Philosophy 21 (1):98-104.
  44. Kant, Subjectivity and Facticity.William F. Vallicella - 1978 - Dissertation, Boston College
  45.  67
    Letters to the Editor.William F. Vallicella, Keith Burgess-Jackson, Philip E. Devine, John Pepple & Michael Kelly - 2003 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 77 (2):85 - 87.
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  46. Does Existence Itself Exist? Transcendental Nihilism Meets the Paradigm Theory.William F. Vallicella - 2005 - In Larry Lee Blackman (ed.), The philosophy of Panayot Butchvarov: a collegial evaluation. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press. pp. 57-78.
     
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  47.  19
    Reply to Davies: Creation and Existence.William F. Vallicella - 1991 - International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (2):213-225.
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  48.  22
    Reply to Smith: The Question of Idealism.William F. Vallicella - 1991 - International Philosophical Quarterly 31 (3):343-348.
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  49.  51
    Two Faces of Theism.William F. Vallicella - 1990 - Idealistic Studies 20 (3):238-257.
    Current debates in the analytic mainstream about the existence of God have often an air of the fantastic about them. Discussions of the God question typically begin with an inventory of properties definitive of the disputed entity and then proceed to a consideration of the question whether there is anything that answers to the definition. The theist adduces arguments to show, not so much that God actually exists—an enterprise much to bold for anyone laboring in the shadow of the Kantian (...)
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  50.  48
    The Problem of Existence by Arthur Witherall.William F. Vallicella - 2003 - Philo 6 (1):176-188.
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