Peter Furlong

Valencia College
  •  43
    Theological Determinism: New Perspectives (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    This volume unites established authors and rising young voices in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion to offer the single most wide-ranging examination of theological determinism-in terms of both authors represented and issues investigated-published to date. Fifteen contributors present discussions about theological determinism, the view that God determines everything that occurs in the world. Some authors provide arguments in favor of this position, while others provide considerat…Read more
  •  8
    Leigh Vicens and Simon Kittle, God and Human Freedom (review)
    Faith and Philosophy 37 (3): 390-394. 2020.
  •  11
    Thomas Aquinas on Moral Wrongdoing, by Colleen McCluskey
    Faith and Philosophy 36 (4): 555-560. 2019.
  •  35
    In this volume, Peter Furlong delves into the question of divine determinism - the view that God has determined everything that has ever happened or will ever happen. This view, which has a long history among multiple religious and philosophical traditions, faces a host of counterarguments. It seems to rob humans of their free will, absolving them of all the wrongs they commit. It seems to make God the author of sin and thus blameworthy for all human wrongdoing. Additionally, it seems to undermi…Read more
  • How Much Ontological Baggage Do Religious Practices Carry?
    with Michael Staron
    In John Mizzoni, Philip Pegan & Geoffrey Karabin (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe: Contributions to the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. pp. 161-177. 2016.
    In this paper we will examine a number of G.E.M. Anscombe’s claims about the human person after death in light of the practices of praying to and for the pre-resurrected dead. In particular, we will look at whether these practices commit one to weighty ontological beliefs. In order to evaluate the costs and benefits of Anscombe’s claims, we will weigh them against competing claims from other theories. In section 1, we will describe a number of views about the human person, noting whether they fa…Read more
  •  2
    Free Choice
    In M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Aquinas's Disputed Questions on Evil: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. pp. 56-74. 2015.
    This article examines Aquinas’s theory of free choice and moral responsibility throughout his De malo and provides a careful analysis of question 6 “on human choice.” We argue that Aquinas here proposes an account of free choice as incompatible with determinism. We also show briefly that Aquinas’s account of the fall of the angels in the De malo confirms our interpretation.
  •  103
    Libertarianism, the Rollback Argument, and the Objective Probability of Free Choices
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (4): 512-532. 2016.
    It is widely assumed that candidates for free, undetermined choices must have objective probabilities prior to their performance. Indeed although this premise figures prominently in a widely discussed argument against libertarianism, few libertarians have called it into question. In this article, I will investigate whether libertarians ought to reject it. I will conclude that doing so should not be tempting to event-causal libertarians or most agent-causal ones, because the added costs outweigh …Read more
  •  53
    Blameworthiness, Love, and Strong Divine Sovereignty
    Sophia 56 (3): 419-433. 2017.
    In this paper, I explore some problems faced by those who endorse what I will call strong divine sovereignty. According to this view, every worldly event is guaranteed by God’s causal activity. The first problem this view faces is that it seems to make God morally blameworthy. I explore several possible ways for defenders of SDS to avoid this conclusion. Unfortunately, however, each of these solutions leaves another problem intact: if SDS is true, then it appears that God is not much like a lovi…Read more
  •  39
    In his influential work, The Concept of Law, H. L. A. Hart levels several criticisms at the traditional natural law principle: lex iniusta non est lex. Although some of his criticisms have received a great deal of careful evaluation, others have not. In this paper I will focus on several ways in which Hart attempts to undermine the value of this principle. I will pay particularly close attention to his claims concerning the unfortunate effects that follow from either scholars’ or ordinary cit…Read more
  •  69
    Is God the Cause of Sin?
    Faith and Philosophy 31 (4): 422-434. 2014.
    In this paper I will investigate one way of resolving the apparent tension between the following three propositions, endorsed by some theists: Every worldly event is a consequence guaranteed by God’s unimpedible causal activity, People sin, God is not the cause of sin. In particular, I will examine what I will call the unadorned privation defense, which has roots in Aquinas and continues to find defenders. I will argue that although defenders of this view successfully rebut certain criticisms, t…Read more
  •  62
    Aquinas and the Epistemic Condition for Moral Responsibility
    Res Philosophica 94 (1): 43-65. 2017.
    Agents are morally responsible for their actions only if they understand what they are doing. This much seems clear, but it is unclear exactly what agents must understand in order to be morally responsible; in other words, the epistemic condition for moral responsibility is difficult to discover. In this paper, I will investigate Aquinas’s discussion of knowledge, voluntariness, and moral responsibility in order to discover his views on this condition. Although he never provides a formal express…Read more
  •  65
    The Latin Avicenna and Aquinas on the Relationship between God and the Subject of Metaphysics
    Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 83 129-140. 2009.
    This paper examines and compares the ways in which the Latin Avicenna, that is the Persian thinker’s work as known in Latin translation to medieval Christianthinkers, and Aquinas alter Aristotle’s conception of the breadth and scope of the subject of metaphysics. These two medieval philosophers inherited the problem that Aristotle posed in the Metaphysics concerning the relationship between the study of being as being and the natural study of God. Both thinkers reject the idea that God is the su…Read more
  •  57
    Aquinas, the Principle of Alternative Possibilities, and Augustine’s Axiom
    International Philosophical Quarterly 55 (2): 179-196. 2015.
    According to the highly controversial “Principle of Alternative Possibilities,” an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he could have done otherwise. In this paper, I will investigate whether Aquinas accepts this principle. I will begin by arguing that if one grants Aquinas’s theory of human action, Frankfurt-style counter-examples do not succeed. For this reason, it is necessary to investigate various texts in order to discover how Aquinas views this principle. Although he does no…Read more