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Gale on God: The Return of Philo?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Extract
Richard Gale, noting the “startling resurgence of theism within philosophy during the past thirty years or so” (p. 2) led by William Alston, Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne, concludes that “there is need for a return visit from Hume's Philo.” But fans of Philo may be disappointed with the present version. To be sure, Gale as Philo possesses both the wit and the critical acumen to make him a worthy successor to the original. What is lacking, however, is the animus and the scornful rejection of biblical religion which so notably motivated both the original Philo and his creator.
- Type
- Critical Notices/Études critiques
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Fall 1994 , pp. 685 - 692
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1994
References
Notes
1 Plantinga, Alvin, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 221.Google Scholar
2 See Plantinga, Alvin, “Self-Profile,” in Tomberlin, James E. and Van Inwagen, Peter, eds., Alvin Plantinga (Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 1985), p. 52. Plantinga does not endorse the denial of middle knowledge as such, but he does present a version of the free-will defence which is compatible with this denial.Google Scholar
3 For the record, I would like to say that I agree with all of the modifications of classical theism suggested by Gale—that God's existence is logically contingent, that God is temporal and in certain respects changeable, and that God's knowledge of the future is limited. I do not, however, endorse all of the arguments by which he reaches these conclusions.
4 See Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” p. 51.
5 Ibid., p. 52. God “weakly actualizes” a world w just in case (a) God “strongly actualizes” some state of affairs s (that is, he causes s to be actual), and (b) there is a true (non-causal) counterfactual saying that, if God were to cause s, w would be actual. Thus the existence of such counterfactuals is essential for “weak actualization” to occur.