Brian A

Philosophy can become more meaningful if you combine it with meditation practice. Seek out the noblest and most sublime ideas and meditate on them. St...

I don't know how moral facts are discovered by reason. But they are. And yes, "moral laws are...part of the rational/epistemic enterprise itself". Ins...

Morality can be grounded in rational autonomy/free will (cf. Kant's Groundwork): autonomy is the condition for human reason, and the moral law is deli...

The Apology by Plato describes Socrates' adherence to truth despite external difficulties and betrayals. He was unjustly given the penalty of death (d...

We agree that a 'finite chain of causes' is to be preferred. And this premise leads to the conclusion that the first cause is beyond space and time. N...

I agree. My aim is to show that the universe must have a cause. Perhaps I can change P1 to, "All contingent things have a cause/explanation." Since th...

My intuition is that actions are evil, either intrinsically or due to their consequences. But mere existence, unchanging, cannot be evil, since it is ...

This post made me stop and think a lot. (I am not familiar with philosophy of language). I am not able to see the conflict between (1) the retention o...

I concede that if causality is not assumed, the cosmological argument dissolves. So I will just assume the existence of causality. This seems reasonab...

1. God is beyond space and time. 2. Therefore, existing at all times is an essential property of God. Precisely, "at all times" is a matter of speakin...

It seems there are two separate issues here. The first is whether God exists. But the second is that supposing he does exist, is it possible for him t...

I agree with your last post: I see that the view that the cosmological argument proves the existence of God is begging the question, since a conceptio...

"Last Thursdayism" I am not smart enough to even follow or understand. I will agree that it fails. :). The second argument, the "Unnumbered Now," seem...

I concede that the statement "before the big-bang" is nonsensical because time arises precisely with the big-bang. But surely one can acknowledge of a...

I see that my argument was ill-constructed. Now I understand that space and time are essentially associated with the universe: that is, before the uni...

I understand better your original argument. But I still disagree that it is possible for God to categorically not exist. The definition for "omnipoten...

I don't understand your argument about why the causal chain cannot be infinite. I don't know what you mean by the universe "traversing" the infinite. ...

There is a faulty premise here, namely that it is possible for God not to exist. This is a contradiction in terms, according to Aquinas' definition of...

That seems unintelligible, for how can a first cause be simultaneously a final cause? Perhaps you mean that the final cause of the universe, viz. its ...

Nation-states are, in a sense, the natural form of human organization since they preserve a unified tribal identity alongside enduring bureaucratic st...

I think the question that concludes the post operates on a faulty premise. To "deprive" the "machines" presupposes that the machines have the dignity ...

Here is an objection that occurs to me: the Kalam cosmological argument does not necessarily lead to an omni-benevolent and personal God. Granting the...

As response to the original post: Minimalism is inadequate to serve as one's worldview, since once a person rids herself of all her extraneous possess...

There is certainly a place for it in contemporary philosophy; but whether it can be confidently placed within a tradition is a problematic question. F...