1,721,230 research outputs found
O organicismo de Peter van Inwagen: uma apresentação crítica
Get PDFO objetivo principal deste trabalho é oferecer uma introdução à teoria do Organicismo desenvolvida por Peter van Inwagen em seu livro Material Beings. O meio escolhido para realizar esta apresentação é a reconstrução minuciosa dos argumentos apresentados, enriquecendo o texto com críticas e outras produções posteriores à publicação do livro. São apresentadas as bases conceituais, os comprometimentos, os desafios e as principais críticas à teoria
Thinking about Free Will
No full textPeter van Inwagen, author of the classic book An Essay on Free Will (1983), has established himself over the last forty years as a leading figure in the philosophical debate about the problem of free will. This volume presents eleven influential essays from throughout his career, as well as two new and previously unpublished essays, &apos;The Problem of Fr** W*ll&apos; and &apos;Ability&apos;. The essays include discussions of determinism, moral responsibility, &apos;Frankfurt counterexamples&apos;, the meaning of &apos;the ability to do otherwise&apos;, and the very definition of free will, as well as critiques of writings on the topic by Daniel Dennett and David Lewis. An introduction by the author discusses the history of his thinking about free will. The volume will be a valuable resource for those looking to engage with van Inwagen&apos;s significant contributions to this perennially important topic.</jats:p
Peter van Inwagen
Get PDFPeter van Inwagen è un filosofo analitico statunitense che ha profondamente influenzato il panorama filosofico analitico mettendone in questione l’impostazione immanentista e i presupposti naturalistici. Dalla sua difesa della teoria platonista delle proprietà e delle relazioni, all’attenzione con la quale ha reinterpretato ed attualizzato le “prove” dell’esistenza di Dio, passando per una rinnovata riflessione critica sull’ontologia e sulla metafisica da essa derivabile, van Inwagen ha avviato ed impostato un’ampia e suggestiva riflessione filosofica che invita ad una rilettura dei temi appartenenti alla tradizione filosofica occidentale tramite gli strumenti logico-analitici contemporanei.Peter van Inwagen is an American analytical philosopher who has profoundly influenced the analytical philosophical panorama by questioning its immanentist approach and naturalistic assumptions. From his defense of the Platonist theory of properties and relationships, to the dedication with which he reinterpreted and updated the “proofs” of the existence of God, passing through a renewed critical reflection on ontology and metaphysics derived from it, van Inwagen has initiated and set up a wide and evocative philosophical reflection that invites a re-reading of the themes belonging to the Western philosophical tradition with the contemporary logical-analytical tools
Justification for Christian Beliefs: Peter van Inwagen and Fundamental Theology
No full textThe article is focused on Theological Philosophy constructed by Peter van Inwagen and modern Fundamental Theology which has been cultivated at KUL. Both disciplines try to present reasonable justification for Christian fundamental convictions. P. van Inwagen − specially in his book God, Knowledge, and Mystery: Essays in Philosophical Theology − knowing well modern philosophy and the mentality of people living today tries to legitimate the main Christian beliefs. He writes about how Christians can justify the existence of personal God, he legitimates the authority of the Bible (which is questionable according to some scientific theories) and he defends the specific position of the Christian Church among other religions. In conclusion he suggests that Christian beliefs are not certain for non-Christians but it does not mean that they are not reasonable and acceptable. Fundamental Theology cultivated at KUL is very similiar to P. van Inwagen's project in some points. But in some other aspects his position should be deepened
Peter van Inwagen, Substitutional Quantification, and Ontological Commitment
No full textPeter van Inwagen has long claimed that he doesn’t understand substitutional quantification and that the notion is, in fact, meaningless. Van Inwagen identifies the source of his bewilderment as an inability to understand the proposition expressed by a simple sentence like “(Σx role= presentation \u3eΣx) (x role= presentation \u3ex is a dog),” where “Σ role= presentation \u3eΣ” is the existential quantifier understood substitutionally. I should think that the proposition expressed by this sentence is the same as that expressed by “(∃x role= presentation \u3e∃x) (x role= presentation \u3ex is a dog).” So what’s the problem? The problem, I suggest, is that van Inwagen takes traditional existential quantification to be ontologically committing and substitutional quantification to be ontologically noncommitting, which requires that the two quantifiers have different meanings—but no different meaning for the substitutional quantifier is forthcoming. What van Inwagen fails to appreciate is that substitutional quantification is directed at a criterion of ontological commitment, namely, W. V. O. Quine’s, which is quite different from van Inwagen’s criterion. Substitutional quantification successfully avoids the commitments Quine’s criterion would engender but has the same commitments as existential quantification given van Inwagen’s criterion. The question, then, is whether the existential quantifier is ontologically committing, as van Inwagen believes. The answer to that question will depend on whether the ordinary language “there is/are,” which is codified by the existential quantifier, is ontologically committing. There are good reasons to doubt that it is
CAN LIFE BE A CRITERION OF PERSISTENCE THROUGH TIME? A DISCUSSION OF SOME ONTOLOGICAL THESIS BY PETER VAN INWAGEN
Get PDFThis work is centered upon some of the principal ontological topics to be found in the major texts by Peter van Inwagen. Almost all his philosophical works fall into about four general areas. 1. The problem of free will, 2. the philosophical theology, 3. the ontology or metaphysics and logic of material beings 4. topics about the philosophy of modality. After some introductive remarks about the ontological general positions assumed by van Inwagen, I’ll concentrate myself specifically about his conception of life and identity and the ways of changing and persisting through time of living beings
A Van Inwagenian Defense of Constitutionalism
No full textAccording to Peter van Inwagen, the claim that metaphysics is in the business of explaining the nature and existence of whatever inhabits mind-independent reality makes no sense. Likewise, according to van Inwagen, constitutionalism – the view that bundles of properties constitute charactered objects – is ‘not even false’ and concomitant notions like those of a ‘constituent’, an ‘immanent universal’, and a ‘trope’ are incomprehensible. In this paper, I investigate both of those claims. I argue that the first – that it makes no sense to understand metaphysics as in the business of explaining – makes sense (!) only if understood as a corollary to the claim that it makes no sense to say that the relations that (hierarchically) structure mind-independent reality are inherently explanatory. This latter claim is problematic, and could be what proponents of the explanatory approach have in mind when they claim that metaphysics is in the business of explaining (although it certainly doesn’t have to be). Suppose it is, and suppose the claim turns out to be unacceptable, perhaps even nonsensical. Then van Inwagen’s first claim is true. But this does not mean that we have to accept his second claim. For, constitutionalism can be formulated without the assumption that metaphysics – and hence the relations which structure reality – is explanatory. Nor does Quineanism, even in its distinctively van Inwagean variety, require that properties be understood as existing ‘apart’ from the objects they characterize. Therefore, it makes sense to say (although it may be false) that properties ‘make up’ objects, that properties exist ‘in’ the objects they constitute, and that properties are immanent universals or tropes
Peter van Inwagen sobre Causalidade e Determinação no Problema do Compatibilismo
Get PDFUm dos equívocos fundamentais da posição que argumenta pela compatibilidade entre livre-arbítrio e determinismo na resolução do problema do compatibilismo na modernidade é tomar causalidade por determinação. Essa confusão tem origem em Hume e na sua proposta de compatibilizar liberdade com necessidade na discussão desta querela. Entretanto, em An Essay on Free Will (1983), Peter van Inwagen, amparado na argumentação de Elizabeth Anscombe, demonstra que essa associação é equivocada à medida que determinismo e causalidade significam estados de coisas distintos, e o primeiro inviabiliza a existência do livre-arbítrio, enquanto o segundo, não. Diante desse quadro, este artigo tem dois objetivos: a) apresentar as distinções entre causalidade e determinação feitas por van Inwagen e Anscombe, a fim de auxiliar no entendimento da obra An Essay on Free Will (1983), uma vez que van Inwagen menciona a argumentação da filósofa britânica como fundamental para esclarecer essa confusão, sem apresentá-la diretamente nesse livro e, consequentemente, b) explicitar que esses dois estados de coisa não são o mesmo. Assim, o artigo será dividido em três partes centrais: na primeira delas apresentarei um breve panorama histórico de como Hume, considerado um dos mais influentes compatibilistas, estabeleceu uma conexão necessária entre causalidade e necessidade, dando origem à interpretação de que causalidade implica necessidade (determinação) – o que foi seguido na tradição compatibilista; na segunda parte vou expor os argumentos de Anscombe contrários a essa conexão; e, por fim, explicitarei o tratamento de van Inwagen acerca da tese determinista para esclarecer porque a determinação implica na não existência do livre-arbítrio, enquanto a causalidade, não
PHENOMENOLOGY TODAY: A GOOD TRAVEL MATE FOR ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY?
Get PDFOn the basis of a short summary of phenomenological aims and methods, this essay
describes the present state of relationships between phenomenology and analytic
philosophy, pointing out the progress done in the last years on the way of their
rapprochement, after a long time of reciprocal scorn and misunderstandings. In the way
of a presentation of the Phenomenology Lab and Center’s present and future research
program, it recalls some relevant chapters of past and present phenomenological
research in Europe, and quite particularly in Italy. After discussing some aspects
of contemporary debates in phenomenology and philosophy of mind, it attempts at
establishing a convergent line of argument toward the assessment of an anti-reductive
ontology of concreteness, or the life world
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