Graham Oppy

In this chapter, I consider the Dialogues as a text that formulates and criticises a particular argument for design (‘the argument for design’). After presenting the relevant material from the Dialogues, I consider the strengths and weaknesses of the formulation of the argument that is the object of Hume’s criticisms, and set out what I take to be the full range of criticisms that Hume makes of it. I then assess the strength of these criticisms, paying particular attention to writers—e.g. Paley, Reid, Dawkins, and Hawthorne and Isaacs—who have claimed that Hume’s objections to ‘the argument for design’ are weak or ineffectual. Next, I consider the originality of Hume’s critique of ‘the argument for design’; I argue that, on the evidence that I have considered, Hume deserves most of the credit for the objections to ‘the argument for design’ in the Dialogues. I conclude with some brief remarks about the relative importance of the success of the criticisms of ‘the argument for design’ to the overall project of the Dialogues.

This second edition of the Companion now includes the following topics: Australian Aboriginal Philosophy; History and Philosophy of Science; and The Oxbridge Connection. Also, an Addendum has been added to the article on the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy. Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand has for some time now been experiencing something of a ‘golden age’. The richness of Australasia’s philosophical past, though less well known, should also not be forgotten. Australasian philosophy, although heavily indebted to overseas trends, includes much distinctive and highly original work. The Companion contains a wide range of articles contributed by prominent philosophers and scholars, and includes biographical essays on selected philosophers, topics and controversies, as well as shorter entries on associations, research centres, departments, journals, pedagogy, and international links. Important philosophical contributions made by those working outside of the academy are also included, along with philosophy’s recent inroads into the wider community—in primary and secondary schools, community-based forums and ‘philosophy cafés’. A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand will provide scholars and the wider community, in Australia, New Zealand and beyond, with a greater appreciation of the philosophical heritage of this region, and will be a standard work of reference for many years to come.

According to the common conception of argument, the virtues of arguments turn, in part, on the virtues of assertion of their premises. I suggest that, on plausible Gricean assumptions about cooperative conversation, the common conception yields the claim that it is never appropriate to advance arguments in cooperative conversations. But that claim is absurd! Holding on o the Gricean assumptions, I reject the common conception of argument in favour of an alternative conception, on which all that matters, as far as premises go, for the virtue of arguments, is whether those premises belong to the arguments’ targets: interlocutors’ beliefs, theories, etc.

I begin with a brief examination of early, subjunctive, formulations of conditions of reasonable epistemic access. I then turn my attention to Bayesian formulations. I suggest that, because of the many difficulties that attend Bayesian theorizing, it is worth considering an alternative framework for discussion of the relevant considerations. I argue that my favored alternative framework supports the general conclusion of Lara Buchak: we should not be quick to assume that, if naive theism is a failure, skeptical theism is somehow tarnished by that failure.

All major religions in history have offered hope of some kind of afterlife to answer the perennial interest in the question of life after death. This volume brings together renowned experts in the philosophy of religion, Graham Oppy, David Apolloni, Shyam Ranganathan, Joshua Farris and Steven B. Cowan, to present four key starting points in the life after death debate. Providing a lively and collaborative dialogue between leaders in the field, each thinker defends a particular view of the afterlife and critically interacts with the alternative perspectives. They focus on the positions of No Life After Death, the Immortality of the Soul, Reincarnation and Resurrection, with each chapter drawing on views from naturalism, antiquity, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism and Yoga. This engagement moves the current debate forward to consider global perspectives whilst the clear and accessible structure allows for a developed exploration of the central issues at stake. Incorporating views spanning secular and religious spheres in both the east and west, this comprehensive guide will be welcomed by students and scholars of contemporary philosophy of religion and comparative philosophy.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the nature and diversity of worldviews, and the proper ways to go about comparing and evaluating worldviews. Three stages of worldview assessment are delineated: articulation, internal evaluation, and comparative evaluation, with the latter stage consisting in the weighting of theoretical virtues. There follows a comparison of theistic worldviews with naturalistic worldviews. It is contended that naturalism is simpler than theism, and that, while considerations about evil may not lead to the internal defeat of either theism or naturalism, naturalism has an advantage over theism in that the distribution of suffering and flourishing in the universe is more difficult to account for on theism than on naturalism, at least if theistic explanations of evil incur no additional theoretical commitments.

'The History of Western Philosophy of Religion' brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, 'The History of Western Philosophy of Religion' is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. Together these volumes provide an indispensable resource for anyone conducting research or teaching in the philosophy of religion and related fields, such as theology, religious studies, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas.

An international team of over 100 leading scholars has been brought together to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - fron antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided, chronologically, into five volumes, _The History of Western Philosophy of Religion_ is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. It will become the standard reference in the field. Features: each volume opens with a general introduction, presenting an overview of philosophy of religion in the period each essay opens with a brief biography, then outlines and analyses that philosopher's contribution to thinking on religion, and concludes with key further reading essays are cross-referenced, highlighting the development of major ideas and influences across history each volume closes with a chronology, presenting a contextual guide to the main religious, political, cultural and artistic events of the period each volume contains its own bibliography and index.

In this paper, I examine Kant’s discussion of ‘the cosmological argument’ in The Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, Second Part, Second Division, Book 2, Chapter Three, Section Five (‘The Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God’). While there are other places where Kant provides related discussions of ‘the cosmological argument’—e.g. in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone—I do not attempt to consider any of these further works in this paper. In the first Critique, Kant discusses “the cosmological argument” which we may formulate as follows: 1. Necessarily, if there is experience, then an absolutely necessary being exists. 2. There is experience 3. (Therefore) The absolutely necessary being exists (From 1, 2) 4. (Therefore) The ens realissimum exists. (From 3) Kant thinks that the weak point of the argument is the move from 3 to 4. In his view, “the ontological argument” is “the argument” from 3 to 4; and, in his view, “the ontological argument” fails. Kant’s discussion is controversial in various respects. In particular: (1) Kant talks about "the cosmological argument". But there are many different cosmological arguments; and there are different critical things to say about different cosmological arguments. (Some people try to excuse Kant on the grounds that he is referring to a particular formulation by Wolff. But it is clear that Kant commits himself to the claim that there is just one cosmological argument.) (2) Kant’s reasons for thinking that the argument from 1 and 2 to 3 is good depend upon appeal to a principle of convertibility that is rejected in standard modern logic. There is no way to patch this problem by tinkering with the principle of convertibility. (3) There are good reasons for thinking that the argument from 1 and 2 to 3 is simply invalid. (Making this out requires careful consideration of what Kant means by “absolute necessity”.) (4) Kant talks about “the ontological argument”. But there are many different ontological arguments; and there are many different critical things to say about different ontological arguments. (Perhaps some may think that Kant is excused because he takes himself to be discussing the best ontological argument. But there are much better ontological arguments than the one that Kant discusses—consider, for example, Gödel’s ontological argument.) (5) Kant’s claim that “the cosmological argument” fails because it depends upon “the ontological argument” has puzzled many commentators. On my reconstruction, what Kant ought to have said—by his own lights—is that “the ontological argument” is part of the cosmological argument. (I make a case that there is no other plausible way of understanding what it would be for one argument to depend upon another argument.) (6) There are good reasons for thinking that the argument from 3 to 4 is invalid. However, I shall argue that Kant fails to provide an adequate defence of this claim. (Here, I shall be referring to his analysis of “the ontological argument”.)

The History of Western Philosophy of Religion brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, The History of Western Philosophy of Religion is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. Together these volumes provide an indispensable resource for anyone conducting research or teaching in the philosophy of religion and related fields, such as theology, religious studies, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas.

There are many different views that have been held about the content of the idea or concept of God, and many different suggestions that have been made about how to define or analyse the name ‘God’. In this paper, I defend the suggestion that to be God is just to be the one and only god, where to be a god is to be a superhuman being or entity who has and exercises power over the natural world [in circumstances in which one is not, in turn, under the power of any higher ranking or more powerful category of beings]. While many will take this to be a rather radical suggestion, it seems to me that there are many good reasons for adopting this proposal, and that there are no telling reasons that speak against it. Among the other controversial claims that are defended in this paper, I might mention in particular, the claim that there can be no more than one God, the claim that ‘God’ is not a title-term, and the claim that the use of the name ‘God’ by non-believers is not parasitic on the use of this name by believers. Thinking hard about the use of the name ‘God’ turns up all kinds of interesting consequences.

In _Theism and Explanation_, Tim O'Connor provides ‘an argument for the existence of a transcendent necessary being as the source and basis of the ultimate explanation of contingent beings and their interconnected histories’. This chapter argues that O'Connor's argument is unsuccessful: each of the three most plausible naturalistic views concerning ‘the ultimate explanation of contingent beings and their interconnected histories’ is more theoretically virtuous than any account that is committed to transcendent necessary beings. Thus, the chapter argues that naturalists can reasonably refuse to choose between ‘infinite regress’, ‘brute contingency’, and ‘immanent necessity’ (at least insofar as we are concerned with the ultimate explanation of contingent beings and their interconnected histories).

In this chapter, I sketch a general account of evidential arguments from evil, and then briefly indicate what I take to be the significance of this account for discussions of animal suffering. I begin with characterisations of religion, evil, and theism. I then discuss connections between religion and evil, and theism and evil. Next, I characterise Abrahamic theism, and discuss connections between it and evil. Then I characterise worldviews, logical consistency, probabilistic consistency, explanatory consistency, data, and arguments from evil against Abrahamic worldviews. After a brief discussion of logical arguments from evil against Abrahamic worldviews, I turn to a critical discussion of evidential arguments from evil against Abrahamic worldviews. I round out the chapter with a brief discussion of animal suffering and its bearing on choice between naturalistic worldviews and Abrahamic worldviews.

This paper provides a detailed examination of Michael Martin’s Atheism: A Philosophical Justification (1990). I argue that Martin’s project in this book is seriously damaged by his neglect of high-level theoretical considerations about rationality, justification, and argumentation. Furthermore, I suggest that this failing is endemic to recent discussions of arguments about the existence of God: there is no prospect of making progress in this area unless much more attention is paid to high-level theoretical questions about the connections between rationality, justification, and argumentation.

Lycan and Schlesinger (You Bet Your Life: Pascal’s Wager Defended. In J. Feinberg (Ed.), Reason and Responsibility, seventh edition. Encino: Dickenson, 1988) make the following two claims (among others): (1) it is misguided to object to Pascal’s wager (Pascal Pensées (A. Krailsheimer, Trans.). Penguin, 1670/2003) on the ground that belief is not immediately subject to will, and (2) it is misguided to object to Pascal’s wager on the ground that one assigns zero credence to the claim that there are sources of infinite utility. I shall argue that there is more to both of these objections that Lycan and Schlesinger supposed. In particular, I shall argue for the following three claims. First, the distinction between believing in God and wagering for God raises a serious obstacle to Pascal’s argument. Second, Pascalian calculation of ‘expected utility’ does not provide a good reason to reconsider credences and values. Third, if Pascalian calculation of ‘expected utility’ did provide a good reason to reconsider credences and values, it is unclear why that reconsideration should not yield more ‘zeroing out’ of the claim that God exists than might initially have been predicted.

'The History of Western Philosophy of Religion' brings together an international team of over 100 leading scholars to provide authoritative exposition of how history's most important philosophical thinkers - from antiquity to the present day - have sought to analyse the concepts and tenets central to Western religious belief, especially Christianity. Divided chronologically into five volumes, 'The History of Western Philosophy of Religion' is designed to be accessible to a wide range of readers, from the scholar looking for original insight and the latest research findings to the student wishing for a masterly encapsulation of a particular philosopher's views. Together these volumes provide an indispensable resource for anyone conducting research or teaching in the philosophy of religion and related fields, such as theology, religious studies, the history of philosophy, and the history of ideas.

The twentieth century saw religion challenged by the rise of science and secularism, a confrontation which resulted in an astonishingly diverse range of philosophical views about religion and religious belief. Many of the major philosophers of the twentieth century - James, Bergson, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Heidegger, and Derrida - significantly engaged with religious thought. Idiosyncratic thinkers, such as Whitehead, Levinas and Weil, further contributed to the extraordinary diversity of philosophical investigation of religion across the century. In their turn, leading theologians and religious philosophers - notably Buber, Tillich and Barth - directly engaged with the philosophy of religion. Later, philosophy of religion became a distinct field of study, led by the work of Hick, Alston, Plantinga, and Swinburne. "Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Religion" provides an accessible overview of the major strands in the rich tapestry of twentieth-century thought about religion and will be an indispensible resource for any interested in contemporary philosophy of religion.

The nineteenth century was a turbulent period in the history of the philosophical scrutiny of religion. Major scholars - such as Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Newman, Caird and Royce - sought to construct systematic responses to the Enlightenment critiques of religion carried out by Spinoza and Hume. At the same time, new critiques of religion were launched by philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and by scholars engaged in textual criticism, such as Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Over the course of the century, the work of Marx, Freud, Darwin and Durkheim brought the revolutionary perspectives of political economy, psychoanalysis, evolutionary theory and anthropology to bear on both religion and its study. These challenges played a major role in the shaping of twentieth-century philosophical thought about religion. "Nineteenth-Century Philosophy of Religion" will be of interest to scholars and students of Philosophy and Religion, and will serve as an authoritative guide for all who are interested in the debates that took place in this seminal period in the history of philosophical thinking about religion.

The Medieval period was one of the richest eras for the philosophical study of religion. Covering the period from the 6th to the 16th century, reaching into the Renaissance, "The History of Western Philosophy of Religion 2" shows how Christian, Islamic and Jewish thinkers explicated and defended their religious faith in light of the philosophical traditions they inherited from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The enterprise of 'faith seeking understanding', as it was dubbed by the medievals themselves, emerges as a vibrant encounter between - and a complex synthesis of - the Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic traditions of antiquity on the one hand, and the scholastic and monastic religious schools of the medieval West, on the other. "Medieval Philosophy of Religion" will be of interest to scholars and students of Philosophy, Medieval Studies, the History of Ideas, and Religion, while remaining accessible to any interested in the rich cultural heritage of medieval religious thought.

In this second volume of The Antipodean Philosopher, Graham Oppy and N.N. Trakakis have brought together fourteen leading Australasian philosophers, inviting them to speak in a frank and accessible way about their philosophical lives: for example, what drew them to a career in philosophy, what philosophy means to them, and their perceptions and criticisms of the ways in which philosophy is studied and taught in Australia and New Zealand. The philosophers interviewed include Brian Ellis, Frank Jackson, Jeff Malpas, Alan Musgrave, Philip Pettit, Graham Priest, Peter Singer and Michael Smith – philosophers who have distinguished themselves in the discipline, both nationally and internationally, over many years and in various branches of philosophy. What emerges from the discussion with these philosophers is a distinctive and engaging narrative of the history of philosophy in Australasia, its recent successes and flourishing, and the problems and prospects facing it in the twenty-first century. These interviews will challenge and entertain anyone with an interest in contemporary philosophy and the challenges of living out the examined life today.

Philosophy in both Australia and New Zealand has been has been experiencing, for some time now, something of a 'golden age', exercising an influence in the global arena that is disproportionate to the population of the two countries. To capture the distinctive and internationally recognised contributions Australasian philosophers have made to their discipline, a series of public talks by leading Australasian philosophers was convened at various literary events and festivals across Australia and New Zealand from 2006 to 2009. These engaging and often entertaining talks attracted large audiences, and covered diverse themes ranging from local histories of philosophy (in particular, the fortunes of philosophy in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, and New Zealand); to discussions of specific topics (including love, free will, religion, ecology, feminism, and civilisation), especially as these have featured in the Australasian philosophy; and to examinations of the intellectual state of universities in Australasia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. These talks are now collected here for the first time, to provide not only students and scholars, but also the wider community with a deeper appreciation of the philosophical heritage of Australia and New Zealand.

Koons (2014) claims that Benardete’s Grim Reaper Scenario affords grounds for denying that there can be bounded non-well-founded sequences of time intervals. Pruss (2018) claims that Benardete’s Grim Reaper Scenario affords grounds for affirming causal finitism. I shall argue that what you take to be a minimal response to the Benardete scenario is not something that you can arrive at independently from making a determination about whether causal finitism is true and whether there can be bounded non-well-founded sequences of time intervals. In particular, whether you think that the specification of the dispositions of the reapers in Benardete’s scenario is complete depends upon whether or not you think that causal finitism is true.

This is a brief review of Yujin Nagasawa's book *The Problem of Evil for Atheists*. After briefly reviewing the contents of the work, I make a couple of critical observations. First, it is not helpful to think of 'the problem of evil' as a problem of axiological mismatch. Second, it is not at all clear that naturalists are committed to the 'modest optimism" that Nagasawa proposes. I am undecided about whether, overall, and fundamentally, the environment in which we exist is not bad. However, I am prepared to accept that, overall, and fundamentally, the environment in which we exist is not too bad. There is no mismatch of axiological expectation in my view: the world is not too bad, and I expect it to be not too bad.I conclude with some quibbling about Nagasawa's formulation of claims about pain and suffering in nature.