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29On the Absolute and Relative Pessimistic Inductions: A Reply to S. ParkProblemos 105 208-213. 2024.According to Seungbae Park, two versions of the pessimistic induction argument against scientific realism, what he calls the "absolute" and "relative" versions, each fail for the same reason. Depending on whether their respective premises refer to distant or recent past theories, either each premise is implausible, or the conclusion does not probably follow from them. I suggest that Park has misconstrued the sort of argument his pessimist interlocutors rely on. When properly recast, the absolute…Read more
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33Patrick Todd, The Open Future: Why Future Contingents are All False (review)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14 (4): 294-297. 2022.-
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47Is an Open Infinite Future Impossible? A Reply to PrussFaith and Philosophy 37 (3): 363-369. 2020.Alexander Pruss has recently argued on probabilistic grounds that Christian philosophers should reject Open Futurism—roughly, the thesis that there are no true future contingents—on account of this view’s alleged inability to handle certain statements about infinite futures in a mathematically or religiously adequate manner. We argue that, once the distinction between being true and becoming true is applied to such statements, it is evident that they pose no problem for Open Futurists.
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292The Neo-Molinist Square Stands Firm: A Rejoinder to Kirk MacGregorPhilosophia Christi 21 (2): 391-406. 2019.In a previous issue of Philosophia Christi, Kirk MacGregor responded to an essay of mine in which I argued for a neo-Molinist account of open theism. The argument demonstrated how, given standard counterfactual semantics, one could derive an “open future square of opposition,” that is, a depiction of the logical relations that hold between future-tense statements from an open theistic standpoint. Conceding the validity of the argument, MacGregor nevertheless sought to deny its soundness by criti…Read more
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82Contra Tooley: Divine Foreknowledge is PossibleInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 87 (2): 165-172. 2020.Michael Tooley’s latest argument against the possibility of divine foreknowledge trades on the idea that, whichever theory of time is true, the ontology of the future—or lack thereof—gives rise to special problems for God’s prescience. I argue that Tooley’s reasoning is predicated on two mischaracterizations and conclude that, on at least some theories of time, the possibility of divine foreknowledge appears secure.
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48T. Ryan Byerly,The Mechanics of Divine Foreknowledge and Providence: A Time-Ordering Account (review)Philosophia Christi 18 (1): 251-255. 2016.
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1474Arguing from Molinism to Neo-MolinismPhilosophia Christi 17 (2): 331-351. 2015.In a pair of recent essays, William Lane Craig has argued that certain open theist understandings of the nature of the future are both semantically and modally confused. I argue that this is not the case and show that, if consistently observed, the customary semantics for counterfactuals Craig relies on not only undermine the validity of his complaint against the open theist, they actually support an argument for the openness position.
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51Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (review)Journal of Analytic Theology 4 473-479. 2016._ _.
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159The Open Future Square of Opposition: A DefenseSophia 56 (4): 573-587. 2017.This essay explores the validity of Gregory Boyd’s open theistic account of the nature of the future. In particular, it is an investigation into whether Boyd’s logical square of opposition for future contingents provides a model of reality for free will theists that can preserve both bivalence and a classical conception of omniscience. In what follows, I argue that it can.
Elijah Hess
St. Louis Community College-Wildwood
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St. Louis Community College-WildwoodRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Religion |
Metaphysics |
The Passage of Time, Misc |