Quentin Smith

Scheler's critique of Husserl's theory of the world of the natural standpoint may be understood as a decisive factor in the transition of phenomenological philosophy from the "rationalism" of Husserl to the 'existentialism" of Heidegger. Husserl's theory that the value characteristics of the world are founded on the natural characteristics signifies, as we will show, that the individual objects of the world are "logical individuals." By criticizing this view, and by showing that it is really the value characteristics which found the natural characteristics, Scheler demonstrated that the individual objects of the world are .'axiological individuals," which are prior to whatever logical structure the world may have. This viewpoint prepared the way for Heidegger's conception of the world as a system of referential relationships between different practical realities [seienden], which Heidegger conceived as being prior..

Vallicella argued that Heidegger's idealism is incoherent but that absolute idealism is coherent. I argue the reverse. There is no contradiction in the supposition that Being is dependent upon Dasein, that entities are dependent upon Being, and therefore that all entities are dependent upon Dasein. This may be false, but it is consistent. The absolute idealism of Fichte and the like is incoherent, however, because it supposes that all human minds are but representations in the Absolute Mind, and it is impossible for a mind to be nothing but a representation in another Mind

Discussions of the intersection of general relativity and thephilosophy of religion rarely take place on the technical levelthat involves the details of the mathematical physics of generalrelativity. John Earman's discussion of theism and generalrelativity in his recent book on spacetime singularities is anexception to this tendency. By virtue of his technical expertise,Earman is able to introduce novel arguments into the debatebetween theists and atheists. In this paper, I state and examineEarman's arguments that it is rationally acceptable to believethat theism and general relativity form a mutually consistent oreven mutually supportive pair. I conclude that each of hisarguments is unsound.

Some philosophers hold that the tenseless theory of time entails the "temporal parts" theory of personal identity, that a person is a succession of distinct particulars. Some philosophers also believe that the tensed theory of time entails the "substance" or "continuant" theory of personal identity, that a person is a single particular that endures through time. I argue that these philosophers are mistaken. Both the tensed and tenseless theories of time are compatible with both theories of personal identity

This paper extends the orthodox bounds of explanatory rationalism by showing there can be an explanation of why there are positive contingent truths. A positive contingent truth is a true proposition that entails that at least one contingent concrete object exists. It is widely thought that it is impossible to explain why there are positive contingent truths. For example, it is thought by Rowe that 'God created the universe' is a positive contingent truth and therefore cannot explain why there are positive contingent truths. I show, however, that the reasoning behind this orthodox view is unsound and that it is possible to explain why there are positive contingent truths.

I think that virtually all contemporary theists, agnostics and atheists believe this is logically possible. Indeed, the main philosophical tradition from Plato to the present has assumed that the sentence, "God is the originating cause of the universe", does not express a logical contradiction, even though many philosophers have argued that this sentence either is synthetic and meaningless (e.g., the logical positivists) or states a synthetic and a priori falsehood (e.g., Kant and Moore), or states a synthetic and a posteriori falsehood (e.g., contemporary defenders of the probabilistic argument from evil).

The big bang cosmological theory is relevant to Christian theism and other theist perspectives since it represents the universe as beginning to exist ex nihilo about 15 billion years ago. This paper addresses the question of whether it is reasonable to believe that God created the big bang. Some theists answer in the affirmative, but it is argued in this paper that this belief is not reasonable. In the course of this argument, there is a discussion of the metaphysical necessity of natural laws, of whether the law of causality is true a priori, and of other pertinent issues.

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called "the Big Bang." The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. Alternating chapters by the two philosophers criticize and attempt to refute preceding arguments. Their arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity and include a discussion of the new quantum cosmology recently developed by Stephen Hawking and popularized in A Brief History of Time.

There is sufficient evidence at present to justify the belief that the universe began to exist without being caused to do so. This evidence includes the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems that are based on Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and the recently introduced Quantum Cosmological Models of the early universe. The singularity theorems lead to an explication of the beginning of the universe that involves the notion of a Big Bang singularity, and the Quantum Cosmological Models represent the beginning largely in terms of the notion of a vacuum fluctuation. Theories that represent the universe as infinitely old or as caused to begin are shown to be at odds with or at least unsupported by these and other current cosmological notions

If big bang cosmology is true, then the universe began to exist about 15 billion years ago with a 'big bang', an explosion of matter, energy and space from a singular point. This singularity is spatially and temporally pointlike; that is, it has zero spatial dimensions and exists for an instant (at t=0) before exploding with a 'big bang'. The big bang singularity is also lawless; Stephen Hawking writes: A singularity is a place where the classical concepts of space and time break down as do all the known laws of physics because they are all formulated on a classical space time background. ... [T]his breakdown is not merely a result of our ignorance of the correct theory but represents a fundamental limitation to our ability to predict the future [of the singularity], a limitation that is analogous but additional to the limitation imposed by the normal quantum mechanical uncertainty principle. [1] The lawlessness of the singularity entails that it 'would thus emit all [possible] configurations of particles with equal probability' [2]. Paul Davies describes this vividly: 'Anything can come out of a naked singularity -in the case of the big bang the universe came out.' [3].

You can search this site: Note that this analysis of a beginning of time concerns intervals ’of the same length' ; if this qualifying phrase is not added, then the analysis would be invalid for a dense time. If time is dense and began, then for each interval of time there is another interval of a shorter length that is a part of that interval and which completely elapses before the interval of which it is a part completely elapses. Before the first hour completely elapses, the first minute does so, and before the first minute, the first second, and so on ad infinitum. This entails that there is no 'first moment' of time in the sense of an interval that precedes every other interval, but there is a 'first moment' in the sense that there is a first interval of each length of time : there is a first hour, a first minute, etc

This book is the first to provide a critical history of analytic philosophy from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the present day. Quentin Smith focuses on the connections between the four leading movements in analytic philosophy—logical realism, logical positivism, ordinary language analysis, and linguistic essentialism—and corresponding twentieth-century theories of ethics and of religion. Through a critical evaluation of each school’s theoretical positions, Smith counters the widespread view of analytic philosophy as indifferent to important questions about right and wrong and human meaning. He argues that analytic philosophy throughout its history has revolved around the central issues of existence, and he offers a new ethics and philosophy of religion. The author develops a positive ethical theory based on a method of ethics first formulated by Robert Adams. Smith’s theory belongs to the tradition of perfectionism or self-realization ethics and builds on Thomas Hurka’s recent theory of perfectionism. In his consideration of philosophy of religion, Smith concludes that there is a sound "logical argument from evil" that takes into account Alvin Plantinga’s free-will defense and undermines monotheism, paving the way to a naturalistic pantheism.