Jędrzej Gosiewski

This paper evaluates whether eliminativism – the thesis that the posits of folk psychology do not refer to anything real – can be employed by the naturalist to deflect Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN). I start by trotting out Plantinga’s argument. After that, I present the conditionalization problem and propose to treat eliminativism as a defeater-deflector against EAAN. I then argue that eliminativism does not fall prey to Plantinga’s response against other potential defeater-deflectors from philosophy of mind. The next part consists of showing why the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable on evolutionary naturalism combined with eliminativism is high. The last part of the article is aimed at arguing that despite the initial appeal, eliminativism is not a solution most naturalists would be happy to adopt – that is because eliminativism forces the naturalist to interpret naturalism as a methodological postulate.

The aim of the article is a reconstruction of the critique of ontological argument made by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason and an analysis of that critique in light of Alvin Plantinga’s modal ontological argument. The paper consists of three essential parts. In the first one I characterize four objections to ontological argument advanced by Kant and interpret them in light of contemporary discussions. In part two I present modal ontological argument in Alvin Plantinga’s interpretation. I then analyze the degree in which Kantian objections remain valid with respect to Plantinga’s argumentation. In part three I point to an inconsistency in Kant’s understanding of the idea of God which may be fruitfully used to defend a crucial premise of modal ontological argument. [Paper in Polish]

David Hume’s well known argument against miracles has its culmination in the so called Hume’s Maxim. According to the maxim “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish: And even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.” In this paper I present and give a critical assessment of the attempts at a formalization of Hume’s Maxim made by representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. On this basis I will put forward my own formalization of Hume’s Maxim. The formal analyses carried out I employ in an assessment of Hume’s argument against miracles as it is traditionally interpreted. I also point out four circumstances that favour credibility of a miracle’s testimony. The analysis leads to a conclusion, that the formalization of Hume’s Maxim allows us to reject Hume’s argument against miracles in its traditional interpretation as invalid and leaves open, under certain conditions, a possibility of accepting a testimony of a miracle.