Christophe de Ray

Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) advanced a form of the ontological argument for theism that has gone largely unnoticed. The argument’s central contention is that an infinitely perfect being could not have a corresponding idea distinct from it, since no finite idea could ‘contain’ such a being. Thus, an infinitely perfect being could only be its own idea. Our awareness of the idea of infinite perfection, then, just is a direct awareness of an infinitely perfect being. I present and defend a reconstruction of the Malebranchean argument.

Berkeley famously accused the ‘Non-Naïve Realist’ theories popular in his day—which held the so-called ‘secondary qualities’ (e.g. colours, sounds and smells) to be mind-dependent in a way that the ‘primary qualities’ (e.g. shapes, sizes and motions) are not—of entailing radical scepticism. I present an argument against Non-Naïve Realism which takes Berkeley’s charge as its primary inspiration: I argue that, if sense-experience systematically misattributes mind-independence to the secondary qualities (as it does if Non-Naïve Realism is true), then we ought to distrust sense-experience when it presents any quality, whether primary or secondary, as being mind-independent. This implies that Non-Naïve realism is a self-undermining position, since its truth would entail that we cannot know it to be true.

Plato appears to have held that happiness (or well-being) consists in ‘knowing’ the Good in some way. I defend a view of this kind, arguing that well-being essentially involves the awareness of the Good. I do this, first by contending that great goods (e.g. friendship, knowledge etc.) can only contribute to our well-being if we appreciate them––that is, if we are aware of their value. This, I argue, amounts to being aware of the Good in them. I address the criticism that this kind of view over-intellectualizes well-being, before discussing its implications for the role of contemplation in well-being.

The so-called ‘Pauline Principle’ holds that ‘one may not do evil that good may come’. I take this to mean that it is immoral to intend intrinsically evil states of affairs as a means to good. I offer an argument in favour of this principle. My argument takes the immorality of malevolent attitudes as its starting point, and contends that these attitudes typically (and perhaps exclusively) involve what Aquinas calls the ‘accidental’ willing of evil. It is inferred from this that willing evil as a means to good shares the wrong-making features of malevolence, and is thus immoral for the same reason that malevolence is immoral.

Universals in the Platonic tradition were intended to play both metaphysical and epistemological roles. The contemporary debate around universals has focused overwhelmingly on the former, with even ‘platonists’ typically holding that our knowledge of universals is derived from our knowledge of particulars. In contrast, I wish to argue for the epistemological primacy of the universal: specifically, I defend the thesis that we perceive particulars as a result of knowing universals, and not the other way around. My argument draws from the work of Malebranche, who notoriously contended that we see ordinary objects through the immutable ‘ideas’. I conclude with the suggestion that the resulting account of the relationship between our knowledge of universals and our perception of particulars may be thought of as a kind of Platonic indirect realism.

The classic ‘privation theory’ of evil defines evil as an absence (or ‘privation’) of a good that ought to obtain. Despite its historical importance, privation theory is faced with a number of serious difficulties. I outline two of these difficulties and argue that they continue to pose a threat. I then present ‘corruption theory’, an alternative theory of evil reconstructed from some of Augustine's writings on the subject. I argue that this theory shares the strengths of privation theory, while evading its problems.

The opening chapters of Anselm's Monologion contain a ‘proof’ of a perfect being, which has received far less attention than the more famous Proslogion proof, and the ontological arguments derived from it. I wish to rectify this by developing an argument in defence of a crucial premise of the Monologion proof. This premise states that ‘the Good’, i.e. that in virtue of which numerically distinct things may all be good, must itself be a supremely good thing. I motivate the argument before considering objections to both premises, as well as putative ‘parodies’ of my argument. Part of the motivation of my argument will involve the claim that the Good, if it is good at all, must be a paradigm good thing. I conclude that theists have a second kind of ontological argument at their disposal.

Much of historic Christian philosophical theology has affirmed that God not only exists, but is Existence itself. Nowadays, this claim is widely rejected as unintelligible by theists and non-theists alike. I argue in contrast that if there is such a thing as Existence itself, that thing must be a maximally excellent being, which is what many philosophers call God. This is because Existence would itself need to exist, which is only possible if Existence exists in a paradigmatic way, that is, as a perfect instance of existence. My argument thus offers both a defence of the coherence of the claim that God is Existence itself, and a new way of arguing for theism.

Relying on inference to the best explanation requires one to hold the intuition that the world is ‘intelligible’, that is, such that states of affairs at least generally have explanations for their obtaining. I argue that metaphysical naturalists are rationally required to withhold this intuition, unless they cease to be naturalists. This is because all plausible naturalistic aetiologies of the intuition entail that the intuition and the state of affairs which it represents are not causally connected in an epistemically appropriate way. Given that one ought to rely on IBE, naturalists are forced to pick the latter and change their world-view. Traditional theists, in contrast, do not face this predicament. This, I argue, is strong grounds for preferring traditional theism to naturalism.

Evolutionary scepticism holds that the evolutionary account of the origins of the human cognitive apparatus has sceptical implications for at least some of our beliefs. A common target of evolutionary scepticism is moral realism. Scientific realism, on the other hand, is much less frequently targeted, though the idea that evolutionary theory should make us distrustful of science is by no means absent from the literature. This line of thought has received unduly little attention. I propose to remedy this by advancing what I will call an evolutionary sceptical challenge to scientific realism. I argue that, given standard evolutionary theory, our possession of sound innate metaphysical intuitions would have taken an epistemically problematic ‘lucky accident’. This, as I will show, entails that scientific realism is a self-undermining position. I discuss objections to my argument’s two premises, including ones that appeal to the success of the sciences and to the possibility that sound innate metaphysical intuitions evolved as an evolutionary ‘by-product’. I then draw out an advantage of my argument over a similar one recently put forward by Graber and Golemon. I finish by submitting that scientific realism, given the soundness of my argument, is faced with a new ‘Darwinian Dilemma’, and briefly address the significance of this for the debate between realists and anti-realists in the philosophy of science.

The question of the meaning of life has long been thought to be closely intertwined with that of the existence of God. I offer a new theistic, anti-naturalist argument from the meaning of life. It is argued that the desire for life is irrational on naturalism, since there would be no good reason to believe that life is worthwhile on the whole if naturalism were true. As I show, the same cannot be argued of theism. Since it is clear that the desire for life is not irrational, it is concluded that we have strong reason to prefer theism over naturalism.