Monthly Archives: March 2008

Philosophy of Religion 5: Incarnation

Posted on March 31, 2008

The concluding part of Chapter 3 of Michael Murray and Michael Rea’s An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion concerns the incarnation. Just two very quick comments on these pages, one on how the authors approach the issue, and one … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Religion | 2 Comments

Philosophy of Religion 4: Lord, Liar, Lunatic

Posted on March 30, 2008

Pp. 75–80 of the Murray/Rea Introduction contain a rather extraordinary episode which I can’t forbear from commenting on. They consider the following argument — they call it the “Lord-Liar-Lunatic” argument — for believing the Jesus of Nazereth was divine. Jesus … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Religion | 33 Comments

Absolute Generality 25: Indefinitely extensible concepts, "big" and "small"

Posted on March 30, 2008

The Shapiro/Wright paper is a high point in the Absolute Generality collection. For a start, First, they focus on Dummettian considerations. I’ve already urged here that considerations against the possibility of absolutely general quantification based on Skolemite worries, or on … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Logic | 1 Comment

Three Cheers for Gambero Rosso Italian Wines 2008

Posted on March 28, 2008

Looking through the last however-many posts, things have been getting a bit wordy and serious here. So time for a quick bit of light relief — though in the form, I’m afraid, of recommending another weighty tome. But what a … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Italian matters | Leave a comment

Philosophy of Religion 3: The Trinity

Posted on March 28, 2008

The first part of the Murray/Rea book, ‘The Nature of God’, has a couple of chapters on God’s attributes which I’ve just said just a bit about: and now there’s a chapter on more specifically Christian characterizations of God. I’ll … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Religion | Leave a comment

Philosophy of Religion 2: Eternity

Posted on March 27, 2008

The second chapter of the Murray/Rea Introduction is on “Attributes of God: eternity, knowledge and providence”. It has to be said, again, that the discussion seems to be pretty remote from engaging with the religious meaning of talk of seeking … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Religion | 4 Comments

Spluttering into my coffee again

Posted on March 27, 2008

Earlier than usual coffee this morning, waiting for the new Cambridge Apple Store to open for the first time around the corner. (I foolishly thought I’d be able to wander in to take a look at a real-world MacBook Air. … Continue reading →

Posted in Geek stuff, Religion | Leave a comment

Absolute Generality 24: Parsons concluded

Posted on March 27, 2008

I’ve commented at length on the central, load-bearing, section of Parson’s paper. The concluding five and a bit pages I found less engaging. There are some comments on a paper by Rayo and Williamson which I might take up when … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Logic | Leave a comment

Absolute Generality 23: Parsons on the Williamson argument again

Posted on March 26, 2008

Let’s start by presenting a Williamson-style argument in a slightly different way. On an interpretative truth-theory for a language L, as we said, we’ll have a clause for a monadic L-predicate P along the lines of ‘for all o, P … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Logic | Leave a comment

Absolute Generality 22: Parsons on varieties of Russell’s paradox

Posted on March 26, 2008

Parsons, however, doesn’t think that the principal problems about quantifying over everything arise from a supposed commitment to metaphysical realism but are “logical difficulties … [which] arise from considering how sentences or discourses containing quantifiers are interpreted. This apparently innocent … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Logic | Leave a comment