This Semester

Currently reading: Overcoming Onto-Theology
by Merold Westphal
and
Naming and Necessity by Saul Kripke

What I'm doing this semester:

• TAing for Intro to Philosophy
  1. An interesting class - it's an intro based mainly on Kant, interpreting philosophy through motifs common in his work. I'm getting to know the professor through the job; he's a stereotypical philosophy prof in a lot of ways (eternally befuddled and unorganized, for example), though he's a cool guy. Considers everything philosophical to come back to Kant (hence the focus of the course).
• Reading course on Duns Scotus
  1. Understudied medieval philosopher, when he's on I think he's even more brilliant than Aquinas. However, he doesn't have a systematic work which makes him more difficult to read, he's more willing to stop with an appeal to authority, and he tends to be more Catholic than Aquinas on the issues which divide Catholics and Protestants.
• Reading course on Japanese Religion
  1. Shinto, Zen, and Pure Land, mainly; currently I'm researching Shinran, founder of the True Pure Land school of Buddhism. A note on certain Zen writers (such as Abe or Nishitani): Zen is hard to understand. German idealism is hard to understand. The combination somehow succeeds in breaking through most of the boundaries that helped one understand either of the parts at all.
• Courses on Theism and Ethical Theories (haven't had a class for these yet, I'll have more to report later.)

One issue I've been struggling with philosophically as of late is how we can speak of God. One the one hand, it seems good to emphasize his otherness, his transcendence, his, well, God-ness, and certain approaches to theology do this well (negative theology, see Pseudo-Dionysius and Eastern Orthodoxy). However, at the same time, if what we say of God has any meaning at all (or, at least, any meaning of which we can be aware; I guess not quite the same thing, but it might as well be), and also if we take seriously the fact that God has revealed himself to us at least in part through language, there must be something positive that we can say about God, some concept (however basic) which we can apply to both God and creatures. Scotus is a proponent of the latter view, and is currently being trounced by certain groups (i.e. Radical Orthodoxy) because of it. While I still have no clue about where to stay in the balancing act, I will present 2 of his arguments for being able to postively predicate things of God univocally (that is, in the same way we do of creatures):

1. If we can only apply negative statments to God, then every such statement equally can be predicated of nothing. In the end, there is no way to separate God from nothing, and we seem to be crypto-atheists (similar to the problem with John Hick in his theory of religious pluralism).
2. There can be no theory of analogical language unless at some point there can be a common term applying to both God and creatures. If there is no such term, then any term used of God must be used entirely differently then it is used of creatures; analogy breaks down into either a form of univocation or equivocation (this is a summary of the argument; if there is more interest, I can present the full thing later).

Scotus' New and Improved Onto-Cosmological Argument

Edit: This argument is being left up mainly for historical purposes. Even the pared down version which I present below leaves out an important step, and even without this flaw doesn't have the force of the argument which I initially thought I had.

*Danger: Modal Logic Warning*

I've been reading through Scotus' argument for the existence of God, and given the strong modal tendencies of it, I figured I would try to find a version amenable to modern modal logic (not that medieval and modern modal logic are the same, though possible world semantics may be able to be traced back to Scotus' thought). His argument goes essentially like this (greatly simplified - Scotus was always one for details):

1. The are orders of causes in which A causes B to cause anything (essentially ordered causes, as opposed to accidentally ordered causes in which A may cause B in some way but then B can act on its own).
2. It is possible that there is a primary essential cause (there is no contradiction in asserting this).
3. Such a cause would be uncaused.
4. Anything that is uncaused and possible must exist.
5. This primary essential cause must exist.

That at least is the short version. Based on the above, and inspired by Plantinga's version of the ontological argument, I have developed the following

1. It is logically possible that if p is contingent, the contingency of p could imply that necessarily p could (materially) imply G. That is, it is logically possible that given a contingent thing, it would not exist when God does not.
2. If p exists actually and is contingent, then G exists actually.

It seems to have ever so slightly more force than Plantinga's argument. At very least, the main premise here is more confusing and thus provides more stalling time in searching for another argument. However, it still suffers from the defect of not saying much about God. I'll most likely work on a stronger version of the argument to supplement this.

For those who want to see the inner workings (where P indicates possibility, N indicates necessity, and -> indicates material implication):

By reductio:
1) P( (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G) ),0 (that is, at world 0) (by hypothesis; though I'm working on an argument for it. I thought I had something, but I had mixed up a P with an N. I wonder how God feels about falling prey to a typo?)
2) p, 0 (by hypothesis)
3) P-p, 0 (by hypothesis)
4) (Pp & P-p) -> N(p -> G), 1 (by possiblity of 1)
5) -G, 0 (reductio hypothesis)
Now, either (N-p v Np), or N(p -> G). If N(p -> G) = N(-p v G), then:
6a) N(-p v G), 1
7a) -p v G, 0
both of which lead to contradictions (by 2 and 5). Next, let us look at (N-p v Np). First, N-p:
6b) N-p, 1
7b) -p, 0
which leads to a contradiction by 2. Finally, Np:
6c) Np, 1
7c) -p, 2 (by 3)
8c) p, 2
Another contradiction. Therefore, if there is anything which exists and is contingent, and it is logically possible that there could be something which always exists when something contingent exists, then that thing actually exists. Put more strongly, if it is logically possible that God would exist whenever something contingent exists, then God exists.