Insufficient reason in the ‘new cosmological argument’

Davey, Kevin; Clifton, Rob

doi:10.1017/s0034412501005819

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Surely, a conjunction of this mammoth proportion is altogether incoherent (Davey and Clifton 2001;Sobel 2004)! Let us assume with Kevin Davey and Rob Clifton that by the phrase "E(p)," we mean p has an explanation.…”

Section: The Bccf?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanation, Entailment, and Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments

Weaver

2009

Int Ontology Metaphysics

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I argue that there are Leibnizian-style cosmological arguments for the existence of God which start from very mild premises which affirm the mere possibility of a principle of sufficient reason. The utilization of such premises gives a great deal of plausibility to such types of argumentation. I spend the majority of the paper defending three major objections to such "mild" premises viz., a reductio argument from Peter van Inwagen and William Rowe, which proffers and defends the idea that a necessary proposition cannot explain a contingent one. I, then, turn to an amelioration of the Rowe/van Inwagen argument which attempts to appeal to an entailment relation between explanans and explanandum that is fettered out in terms of relevance logic. Subsequent to dispelling with that worry, I tackle objections to the utilization of weak principles of sufficient reason that depend essentially upon agglomerative accounts of explanation.There are new cosmological arguments for the existence of God. The newer formulations of the cosmological argument often contain restatements of the Int Ontology Metaphysics (

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Section: The Bccf?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanation, Entailment, and Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments

Weaver

2009

Int Ontology Metaphysics

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“…Forming the BCCF may present set-theoretic concerns. Not every conjunction of propositions makes sense, as was shown by Davey and Clifton (2001). Modifying their construction slightly, let p be conjunction of all true propositions that do not contain themselves as proper subformulas.…”

Section: Objection 2: Can We Form the Bccf?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

Pruss

2009

The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology

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Arguing about Gods

Oppy

2006

171

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In this book, Graham Oppy examines arguments for and against the existence of God. He shows that none of these arguments is powerful enough to change the minds of reasonable participants in debates on the question of the existence of God. His conclusion is supported by detailed analyses of the arguments as well as by the development of a theory about the purpose of arguments and the criteria that should be used in judging whether or not arguments are successful. Oppy discusses the work of a wide array of philosophers, including Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Hume and, more recently, Plantinga, Dembski, White, Dawkins, Bergman, Gale and Pruss.

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Insufficient reason in the ‘new cosmological argument’

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Explanation, Entailment, and Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments

Explanation, Entailment, and Leibnizian Cosmological Arguments

The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument

Arguing about Gods

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