Monthly Archives: February 2012

Coherentism vs. Infinite Regress

By hoff6002 | February 28, 2012

The basics of Coherentism are as follows:
(C) S is justified in believing P if and only if P cohere’s with S’s belief system.
One of the guiding arguments for the above conclusion is the nature of belief.
(P1) Beliefs are justified based on prior beliefs
(P2) If beliefs are justified by prior beliefs, there are no basic beliefs
(C1) [...]

Posted in Theory of Knowledge | Tagged | 1 Comment

Writing a Short Philosophy Paper

By Andrew Cullison | February 28, 2012

Here’s that video I made about writing a short 3-5 page philosophy paper. It will be useful for any writing assignment in this class – including the short blog posts that I have you write.

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Contingentness proving God?

By and1243 | February 25, 2012
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Contingent vs. Necessary

By schu0565 | February 24, 2012

Leibniz’s Modal Version of the cosmological model tells us that contingent beings exist.  This makes clear sense because humans exist, and we are very much contingent beings.  So how did we come into existence?  Leibniz says that to have contingent beings we must also have necessary beings, such as something/someone that is God-like.  This states [...]

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Is God really “good” and do we have freewill?

By lato1268 | February 24, 2012

     Someone wrote in his or her post that God allows evil, but never commits it. I see this as problematic. Is not allowing the occurrence of evil a form of evil in and of itself? Maybe not the purest form of evil that we all think of, but allowing such things to occur is [...]

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What are the origins of human emotion?

By lanf4604 | February 24, 2012

This past week I had a very interesting conversation with what one might consider some typical “Christians” on the street. They were discussing what they believe to be true of God based on experiences they have had being active in reading scripture, going to church and submitting to “God’s will” when they felt the Holy [...]

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Logic and the Divine

By dean5604 | February 24, 2012

This is just something to think about regarding Anselm’s ontological argument.  I’ve always found that divinity is incapable of being understood or proven with logic (or rather, that words cannot effectively define the divine,) therefore to bolster this sentiment (and to be a total troll) I’ve created a simple argument that I hope holds up [...]

Posted in First Graded Post, Philosophy of Religion | 7 Comments

Ontological Argument

By land8135 | February 24, 2012

When I first read Alvin Plantinga’s ontological argument it appeared very confusing and complicated to me. In fact I found myself constantly retracing my steps back to what I had already read. But after I was able to understand the idea behind the theory i realized that it was a very stable argument. The argument [...]

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Omnipotence – In relation to what?

By bola1095 | February 24, 2012

In our most recent class, we discussed the ability for God to be three beings, and one at once. The Trinity. In trying to figure out how this could be, we came up with the time travel theory in which God is one being, and when he exists as his various modes (for lack of [...]

Posted in First Graded Post, Philosophical Theology | 6 Comments

Anselm’s Argument

By mill1778 | February 24, 2012

We discussed Anselm’s ontological argument in class on Thursday. Though I’m not sure I understand it as well as I would like to, I am of the opinion that it’s too vague to be a sound argument. The idea behind it is that there can exist no greater being than God. However, if God exists [...]

Posted in Philosophy of Religion | 5 Comments

Possible Options to Discovering Basic Beliefs- First Graded Post

By Cline | February 24, 2012

Beliefs- Things we hold to be true without the support of immediate empirical evidence.
Coherentism – a coherent system of beliefs that justify a belief based on the system’s relevance to that particular belief. (Circular reasoning) = Rejected.
Infinitism- An infinite regress of beliefs. ( I believe 2+2=4. Understanding of this basic concept shows a limited regress [...]

Posted in First Graded Post, Theory of Knowledge | 1 Comment

Philosophy of Religion: The Ontological Argument

By barr4267 | February 24, 2012

We just began discussing the ontological argument in class on Thursday. We quickly went over Anselm’s version which says:
1. God, (a being than which none greater is possible) exists in the understanding
– So far this is a decent argument. We can agree that God would have [...]

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Reductio of PSR-C

By payn7449 | February 24, 2012

PSR-C states that for every contingently true proposition P, there is some explanation or reason for the truth of P. According to the Reductio of PSR-C however, it is impossible to find an explanation. The Reductio of PSR-C says that if we assume every contingent fact has a cause or explanation then C [...]

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TIF argument response

By Wisdumb | February 23, 2012

The Truth indicative feature (TIF) argument tries to show why modest foundationalism is flawed. The argument is as follows.
1)If B is a justified belief based on R, then either R has a TIF or R does not have a TIF
2) If R has a TIF that S is justified in believing, then B is not [...]

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Problems with Anselm’s Ontological Argument

By cham7182 | February 23, 2012

A major problem with Anselm’s ontological argument is that the premises he uses are necessarily true, if true at all. How can a being be greater than that being which nothing is greater than it? This is where reduction absurdum comes into play. Premise (3) is false because a being greater than the [...]

Posted in Philosophy of Religion, Uncategorized | 1 Comment