The article is an evaluation of Pollock’s anti-existentialist argument and its place in the contemporary debates about Existentialism. We demonstrate that the main contemporary objections to Pollock’s Anti-Existentialism can be grouped into two argumentative directions: (1) Pollock’s supposed confusion of inner and outer truth (Fine, Speaks); (2) Pollock’s assumption that there is such state of affairs as Socrates’s not existing (Kroon). We also introduce an argument against Pollock`s crucial argumentative step against existentialism.
In the book “Freedom of the Will”, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) put forward a strong ar-gument for theological fatalism. This argument, I suppose, can be considered as the universal basis for discussion between Fatalists and Anti-Fatalists in the 20th century, especially in the context of the most powerful argument for fatalism, introduced by Nelson Pike. The argument of Edwards rests upon the following principles: (a) if something has been the case in the past, it has been the case necessarily (Necessity of the past); (b) if God knows something (say A), it is not the case that ~A is possible (Infallibility of God`s knowledge). Hence, Edwards infers that if God had foreknowledge that A, then A is necessary, and it is not the case that someone could voluntarily choose ~A. The article argues that (i) the Edwards` inference Kgp → □p rests upon the modal fallacy; (ii) the inference „God had a knowledge that p will happen, therefore „God had a knowledge that p will happen” is the proposition about the past, and hence, the necessarily true proposition“ is ambiguous; thus, it is not the case that this proposition necessarily entails the impossibility of ~p; (iii) it is not the case that p, being known by God, turns out to be necessary. Thus, we can avoid the inference of Edwards that if Kgp is a fact of the past, then we cannot freely choose ~p. It has also been shown that the main provisions of the argument of Edwards remain significant in the context of contemporary debates about free will and foreknowledge (Theories of soft facts, Anti-Ockhamism, theories of temporal modal asymmetry, „Timeless solution”). Additionally, I introduce a new challenge for fatalism – argument from Brouwerian axiom.
The article is devoted to the question of whether unknowable obligations are possible. According to the popular view (known as Access), an act is obligatory only if its agent can know that this act is obligatory. Sorensen (1995) argues against Access, and Sider and Wieland both defend Access by suggesting (S) – For any obligation O, individual X must refrain from making O unknowable. We consider various difficulties concerning the possibility of (S) – an infinite regress, self-referential nature of (S), unprovability of (S). It is argued that (S), from a certain perspective, is itself the unknowable obligation. Keywords: Obligations, access, regress, self-reference.
Mark Jago has introduced a short Fitch-style argument for truthmaker maximalism – the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. In response to Jago, Trueman argues that the Fitch-style reasoning allows us to prove the opposite – no truth has a truthmaker. In the article, we consider the debates between Jago’s truthmaker maximalism and Trueman’s truthmaker nihilism. Also, we introduce a short Grim-style argument against Jago’s truthmaker maximalism.
The article is dedicated to the argument against the Existence Requirement provided by Takashi Yagisawa. We argue that the core of Yagisawa s argument – the Strong Iterability – cannot be inferred from the idea of contingent apriori (Kripke), and is incompatible with the idea of @-transform (Plantinga). Thus, these ideas, contrary to Yagisawa, cannot serve as a methodological basis of the Strong Iterability. We also argue that the Strong Iterability is incompatible with the Constituent Principle. Finally, we show that the concept of world-indexed properties (the argument of Yagisawa relies on the idea of world-indexed properties) is inconsistent, and even if the defender of Strong Iterability can resist this objection, the Strong Iterability must be given up.
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