Van Inwagen Research Articles

Memory in Philosophy of Religion

This article analyzes the notion of memory in the philosophy of religion. The area of this problematic is defined by Descartes, who, in a thought experiment, postulates an all-powerful, evil demon capable of falsifying human perception. The problem of solipsism raised here also implies doubt about claims based on memory. Descartes’ assumptions are taken up constructively by Alvin Plantinga in his attempt to solve problems in the epistemology of religion by raising the following new question: is belief in God rational, and, if so, is it justified? Peter van Inwagen, for his part, uses memory analysis to construct arguments in support of theodicy. In considering these issues, other key topics within the philosophy of religion, such as the afterlife and the existence of the soul, which are closely related to the analysis of personal identity, inevitably arise.

Thomist Libertarianism is Committed to Mysterianism

Abstract In recent years, a large amount of scholarship has been written about St Thomas Aquinas’s views on free will and determinism. This paper is an attempt to bring some Thomist views of libertarian free will into dialogue with analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen and his ‘mysterianism’ about free will. The thesis of this paper is that Thomist libertarians about free will are committed to Peter van Inwagen’s mysterianism about free will. The paper intends to accomplish this aim by showing how recent accounts of Thomist libertarianism cannot defeat the intuitive strength of van Inwagen’s ‘Replay argument’. The significance of this conclusion is that some Thomists are committed to mysterianism and that mysterianism is a legitimate position a Thomist can hold. This also provides evidence that the Thomist tradition can grow and be nourished by engagement with contemporary analytic philosophy.

There are More, or Fewer, Things than Most of us Think

Abstract In Chapter 12 of his book Material Beings (Van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press) van Inwagen argues that there are no artefacts, or very few, certainly fewer than most people believe. Artisans very rarely create, at least in the sense of causing things to come into existence. The argument in Chapter 12 is a very powerful one. I do not think that it establishes van Inwagen’s conclusion, but it does, I think, given its (plausible) premise, establish that if there are not far fewer material things in the world than we ordinarily believe, then there are far more. In this sense it establishes, as Russell once said, ‘the truth about physical objects must be strange’. Furthermore, I argue at the end, we cannot avoid this conclusion even if we reject van Inwagen’s premise. Thus the defender of our common sense ontology is caught on the horns of a dilemma. So our commonsense ontology is indefensible.

Surviving Death, Again

The paper begins by briefly engaging critically—on theological grounds—with Dean Zimmerman’s defense of Peter van Inwagen’s Christian Materialist idea that we are identical with our bodies, and so survive bodily death by not actually undergoing bodily death. Next, I consider the view of the mind-body relation that Dean himself is tempted by, namely Emergent Substance Dualism, arguing that it is best seen as a fig leaf that at most works to avoid offending contemporary anti-theistic “traducian” sensibilities. In displacing Emergent Substance Dualism, I set out a Neo-Aristotelian account of essence and embodiment that allows for—indeed entails—the possibility of our surviving the death of our bodies. Along the way a characterization of ontological reductionism is given, which avoids the incoherent thought that reduction goes by way of identity. The characterization makes evident why mental events and states are not reducible to physical events. Finally, two non-reductive relations between mental and physical events, namely subserving and implementing, are defined, and then used to characterize the relation of embodiment, and explain how certain mental acts can be “difference-makers” in the physical realm. I only aim to show that given the manifest failure of psycho-physical ontological reduction, this new account of survival adds no further mystery to the mind-body problem.

Skeptical Theism: A Panoramic Overview (Part I)

AbstractSkeptical theism, broadly construed, is an attempt to leverage our limited cognitive powers, in some specified sense, against “evidential” and “explanatory” arguments from evil. Since there are different versions of these kinds of arguments, there are correspondingly different versions of skeptical theism. In this paper, I briefly explain three versions of these arguments from evil (two from William Rowe and one from Paul Draper) and the three versions of skeptical theism tailor‐made to block them (from Stephen Wykstra, Michael Bergmann, and Peter van Inwagen).

Defending the Hypothesis of Indifference

The problem of evil is the philosophical question regarding how to reconcile the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God with the pain and suffering in the world. The Hypothesis of Indifference is Paul Draper’s proposal considering that question. His claim is that the pain and pleasure we experience in our lifetimes has nothing to do with God or some other supernatural force acting as an agent of good or evil. In this paper, I argue that Draper’s Hypothesis of Indifference is a better explanation for why we experience pain and pleasure than theism is and that it survives major contemporary criticisms posed by Peter van Inwagen and William Alston.

Vasubandhu’s Refutation of the Aggregate of Atoms: a Reading Inspired by Van Inwagen’s Objection to Series-Style Answers to the Special Composition Question

Vasubandhu’s Refutation of the Aggregate of Atoms: a Reading Inspired by Van Inwagen’s Objection to Series-Style Answers to the Special Composition Question

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theistic Arguments from Horrendous Evils

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Theistic Arguments from Horrendous Evils

Sentences Apparently About Composite Objects: True Even Without Composite Objects

Abstract A compositional nihilist believes that the only objects that exist are simples. However, a non-nihilist believes in the existence of composite objects and challenges the nihilist to explain why there are true sentences about chairs, tables, etc., if composite objects do not exist. Different nihilist views have been suggested to explain this (the paraphrase strategy and the truthmaker theory), but I believe that they are unsuccessful (either they do not successfully paraphrase every sentence apparently about composite objects, or they are not precise about the truthmakers of those sentences). I will suggest that a new truthmaker theory, which uses resources from Cameron’s truthmaker theory and van Inwagen’s paraphrase strategy, can give such an explanation and does not face the problems of other theories. Therefore, we have a good reason to accept this truthmaker theory as the best nihilist way to accommodate sentences apparently about composite objects.

Thomist Libertarianism is Committed to Mysterianism

AbstractIn recent years, a large amount of scholarship has been written about St Thomas Aquinas's views on free will and determinism. This paper is an attempt to bring some Thomist views of libertarian free will into dialogue with analytic philosopher Peter van Inwagen and his ‘mysterianism’ about free will. The thesis of this paper is that Thomist libertarians about free will are committed to Peter van Inwagen's mysterianism about free will. The paper intends to accomplish this aim by showing how recent accounts of Thomist libertarianism cannot defeat the intuitive strength of van Inwagen's ‘Replay argument’. The significance of this conclusion is that some Thomists are committed to mysterianism and that mysterianism is a legitimate position a Thomist can hold. This also provides evidence that the Thomist tradition can grow and be nourished by engagement with contemporary analytic philosophy.

C. S. Lewis’s Argument against Naturalism Revisited

In this article, I critically assess Peter van Inwagen’s rejection of C. S. Lewis’s argument against Naturalism. Van Inwagen argues that Lewis (1960) errs on two fronts. First, he falsely assumes that Naturalism implies Spinozism: that the only way the world could be is the way it is. Second, the central premise of Lewis’s argument is asserted without proof. I argue that van Inwagen is mistaken on both counts.

«Метаонтология» Питера ван ИнвагенаПредисловие переводчиков

Peter van Inwagen (b. 1942) is one of the living metaphysicians who has made a substantial contribution to both theoretical (ontology and metaphysics of material Objects) and special metaphysics (in discussions on the problem of free will and the personal identity problem). With rare exceptions there are no works of van Inwagen in Russian. This publication is intended to correct this shortcoming to a certain extent. We present to the Russian-speaking reader a translation of one of his classical works – the paper Meta-Ontology (1998), which constitutes a significant milestone in the development of analytical ontology: in it the so-called “Standard View” in ontology is summarized and for the first time the concept of “Meta-Ontology” is given in as name for the section of analytical metaphysics, which has as its subject the meaning and the sense of the very being, or existence.

Introduction

Introduction

Hyperintensionality and Ontological Categories

In this paper, I discuss how to distinguish between ontological categories and ordinary categories. Using an argument against van Inwagen’s proposed account of what makes a category ontological as a springboard, I argue that if ontological categories are modally robust, then ontological categories need to be understood hyperintensionally. This conclusion opens up a wide range of new ways to define ‘ontological category’, and I close by briefly outlining one such way in order to illustrate the advantages of embracing hyperintensionality in this debate.

From the Meinongian Point of View

In this paper, I discuss one of Peter van Inwagen’s charges against the Meinongian thesis, which states that some objects do not exist. The charges aimed to show that the thesis either leads to a contradiction or that it is obscure. Both consequences support the opposite Quinean thesis, which states that every object exists. As opposed to the former, the latter ought to be consistent and clear. I argue why there is no contradiction in the Meinongian thesis and why the Quinean thesis is not clear.

Are we free to work miracles? On Peter van Inwagen's concept of the miraculous

AbstractTo bolster his consequence argument against David Lewis's rejoinder, Peter van Inwagen uses the concept of miracle. He claims that the Lewisian compatibilist must admit that under determinism, we possess the ability to work miracles par excellence, that is, not just in some purely technical sense of the term. The article argues that van Inwagen's definition of a ‘miracle’ is too broad even if it is interpreted merely as an explication of one component often thought to be inherent in the religious concept of miracle, namely the concept of an event that breaks the laws of nature. Nomological effects of miracles are not miracles themselves.

‘Truth in Fiction’ Reprised

AbstractThe paper surveys recent appraisals of David Lewis’s seminal paper on truth in fiction. It examines variations on standard criticisms of Lewis’s account, aiming to show that, if developed as Lewis suggests in his 1983 Postscript A, his proposals on the topic are—as Hanley puts it—‘as good as it gets’. Thus elaborated, Lewis’s account can resist the objections, and it offers a better picture of fictional discourse than recent resurrections of other classic works of the 1970s by Kripke, van Inwagen and Searle. The turn that Lewis suggests and the paper recommends draws on the remaining outstanding contribution from that time: Walton’s.

The semantics of fiction

The paper reviews proposals by Abell, Predelli, and others on the semantics of fiction, focusing on the discourse through which fictions are created. Predelli develops the radical fictionalism of former writers like Kripke and van Inwagen, according to which that discourse is contentless and does not express propositions. This paper offers reasons to doubt these claims. It then explores realist proposals like Abell's in which singular terms in fictions refer to fictional characters, understood as socially created representational artifacts, and irrealist alternatives in which the discourse is fully meaningful even though those terms fail to refer.

No Choice for Incompatibilism

P. van Inwagen famously offered three precise versions of the so-called Consequence Argument for incompatibilism. The third of these essentially employs the notion of an agent’s having a choice with respect to a proposition. In this paper, I offer two intuitively attractive accounts of this notion in terms of the explanatory connective ‘because’ and explore the prospects of the third argument once they are in play. Under either account, the argument fails.

Deification as a Philosophical Problem: A Lutheran Reconstruction

AbstractIn the most general terms, deification means participation in the divine nature, which starts the process where the believer is supposed to transform into the likeness of Christ. This article applies analytic tools to Lutheran theology in order to make sense of its central features. I aim to construct a model for the anthropology of deification which aims to function within these parameters to provide an account which satisfies the desiderata Lutheran theology has for the idea of deification and which does not commit itself to views that are obviously philosophically problematic. I offer arguments for a particular metaphysical construal of Luther’s idea of deification, while acknowledging that it leaves some questions unanswered. Finally, I make a suggestion for Lutherans as well as theologians from other traditions, to consider a metaphysical model developed by Peter van Inwagen as a possible parsimonious way of thinking about deification.