Archive for December, 2006

Two Recommendations: Abraham’s Faith and a Debate

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

I recommend the following as pretty good philosophy audio files.  First, there is Eleonore Stump’s illuminating discussion of Abraham, the command to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham’s faith.  Stump’s insight and discussion is very good.

http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/425

Next, there is a debate between William Lane Craig and Austin Dacey.  Normally, Craig smashes his opponents, but I have to say that Dacey did a pretty good job in this one, and they discussed some substantive contemporary philosophical issues:

http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/talks/147

Posted in Philosophy of Religion | 209 Comments »

Contextualism in epistemology?

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

As a warm-up for McGrath’s seminar on contextualism next semester, I’m wondering what you, dear reader, think of DeRose’s bank cases.* I haven’t decided yet where I stand on contextualism—clearly that has to wait until after the seminar!—but I have to admit that the bank cases are fairly convincing. My (probably flawed) presentation of them after the jump. (more…)

Posted in Epistemology, Philosophy of Language | 60 Comments »

Global vs. Local Subjectivism about Value

Thursday, December 14th, 2006

Let subjectivism about value refer to either non-cognitivism (roughly, the view that statements about value instantiations have no truth value) or error theory (roughly, the view that 1st-order value claims are all false).  A subjectivism about value is either global or local.  Global subjectivists embrace subjectivism for all values.  Local subjectivists embrace subjectivism for one or more types of values.

My question: is mere local subjectivism tenable?  More below the fold. (more…)

Posted in Ethical Theory | 323 Comments »

Free will animation

Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_VxQuPBX1_U" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Check out this clip from the movie “Waking Life” — it’s David Sosa (Univ. of Texas) describing the problem of free will. Sweet animation, and Sosa does a great job. [HT: the metaphysician]

p.s., many thanks to Garrett for setting up the new video capabilities. I see some “Monty Python” clips in the future…

Posted in Action Theory, Frivolity | 69 Comments »

Duplication and Open Futures

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Hi all. I’m wondering if the presentist libertarian is committed to the following claim:

(C) For any world that duplicates ours with respect to what is and how things are at time T1, it is possible that the duplicate world may have a different future than our world.

Here’s the idea. The presentist libertarian seems committed to the notion that the objects and properties that exist in the present don’t determine which objects and properties will exist in the future. What this amount to seems to be that a world that duplicated ours with respect what is (what objects there are) and how things are (what relational properties hold between those objects) at some time could have a different future than the original world.

In other words, if you are a presentist and you deny that some world exactly identical to ours (with respect to what exists and how things are) could have a different future than ours, then you’ve abandoned the notion of alternative possibilities, and hence abandoned libertarianism.

Sound right?

Posted in Action Theory, Metaphysics | 2 Comments »

Summary of the free will debate

Sunday, December 10th, 2006

Now that we’ve all wrapped up our work (or at least our graded work) in free will, I thought it’d be a nice time to summarize things*:

Beta

* Okay, so this isn’t mine; it’s courtesy of Andrew Bailey, via the UCSB blog, where they ask us to identify these philosophers. I see van Inwagen, Warfield, and Fischer, but don’t recognize the rest. Anybody else?

Posted in Frivolity | 629 Comments »

Identity and Leibniz’s Law

Wednesday, December 6th, 2006

At dinner yesterday, I was very surprised to hear people denying the validity of the following argument schema:

1) at t, Clark Kent is identical to Superman

2) at t, Clark Kent is wearing glasses.

Therefore,

3) at t, Superman is wearing glasses. (1,2) (more…)

Posted in Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language | 79 Comments »