Skeptical Theism Unscathed: Why Skeptical Objections to Skeptical Theism Fail

Arguments from evil purport to show that some fact about evil makes it (at least) probable that God does not exist. Skeptical theism is held to undermine many versions of the argument from evil: it is thought to undermine a crucial inference that such arguments often rely on. Skeptical objections to skeptical theism claim that it (skeptical theism) entails an excessive amount of skepticism and therefore should be rejected. In this article, I show that skeptical objections to skeptical theism have a very limited scope: only those who reject certain (apparently) popular epistemological theories will be threatened by them.     

On the Possibility of Sacrifice

Abstract

The following study seeks to explicate, by a close reading of §§ 34 to 53 in Being and Time, the development the idea of sacrifice in Heidegger's early thought.     

Skeptical Conclusions

For a putative knower S and a proposition P, two types of skepticism can be distinguished, depending on the conclusions they draw: outer skepticism, which concludes that S does not know that P, and inner skepticism, which concludes that S does not know whether P. This paper begins by showing that outer skepticism has undesirable consequences because that S does not know that P presupposes P, and inner skepticism does not have this undesirable consequence since that S does not know whether P does not presuppose P. We indicate that the two types of skepticism aim to different loci of doubts: while outer skepticism doubts whether we can gain an epistemic warrant for the actuality, inner skepticism doubts whether we can gain epistemic identification of the actuality. It is further indicated that responses to skepticism from externalist theories, as well as from fallibilist internalist theories, can only respond to outer skepticism but not to inner skepticism.     

Skeptical rationalism

To improve our methods of rational inquiry and decision‐making we need to recognize that such methods should guide but not fully determine the choices of individuals. Failure to acknowledge the essential incompleteness of rational methods made the methods of Classical Rationalism quite impractical and opened them to skeptical refutation. Mitigated Skepticism and Fideism failed to correct the error, and as a result put undesirable limits on rational inquiry. When the guiding character of rational methods is recognized, existing methods of scientific research of personal and social decision‐making can themselves be rationally assessed and improved. Viewing rational methods as guides thus opens a whole field of inquiry, the inquiry into what rational methods are most useful for specific purposes and in specific situations.     

On the Possibility of Feminist Philosophy

This paper was originally presented as part of a panel entitled “Feminist Philosophy After Twenty Years” at the 1993 meeting of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA). It is a discussion of the conditions that needed to be—and were—present in the United States in the 1970s in order for feminist philosophy to take root and flourish.     

法律的道德审视的可能性

法律与道德的关系问题是个亘古常新的问题.在法律的领域内道德的位置何在,对法律的道德审视何以可能?这是建构法伦理学要思考的基础性问题.对这一问题的解答既是解决法律与道德冲突的需要,也是解答法律的合法性的重要参照.     

On the Possibility of Rational Free Action

Philosophical Studies -     

On the Possibility of Presentism with Occurrents

Philosophia - This paper defends the possibility of admitting occurrents in a presentist ontology. Two ways of doing so are proposed, the first one involves Meinongian presentism. By using the...     

Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument

Abstract: Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do; we would be “insulated” from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the Continuity Argument), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta‐argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half‐true theorists.     

Skeptical theism and the challenge of atheism

Skeptical theists hold that we should be skeptical about our ability to know the reasons that God would have for permitting evil, at least in particular cases. They argue for their view by setting aside actions that are wrong in themselves and focusing their attention on actions that are purportedly right or wrong simply in terms of their consequences. However, I argue in this paper that once skeptical theists are led to take into account actions that are wrong in themselves, as they must, they cannot escape the conclusion that there is a logical contradiction between the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God and what would have to be God’s permission of the significant and horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions found in our world.

     

怀疑探索与宗教

当代怀疑论运动(包括CSICOP组织)历来关注的焦点在于超常现象的声称上,并对此类现象的解释取得了长足的进步。怀疑论者同样需要应用怀疑的探索对宗教的声称———我称之为超自然声称———进行检验。在最近的几年里,我们已经从自然的观点解释了有关当前流行的不可思议现象的报告。我认为,怀疑的探索者们还需要对宗教的历史性声称再次进行检验。当然有人对于宗教声称进行科学检验的想法提出了道德上的异议,但是这种异议不应该妨碍对它们(宗教声称)的详查。况且,科学经常能够提供自然的道德的选择。     

Yet Another Skeptical Solution

Philosophia - The paper puts forward a new skeptical solution to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, a solution which revolves around the idea that human communication does...     

A Refutation of Skeptical Theism

Skeptical theists argue that no seemingly unjustified evil (SUE) could ever lower the probability of God's existence at all. Why? Because God might have justifying reasons for allowing such evils (JuffREs) that are undetectable. However, skeptical theists are unclear regarding whether or not God's existence is relevant to the existence of JuffREs, and whether or not God's existence is relevant to their detectability. But I will argue that, no matter how the skeptical theist answers these questions, it is undeniable that the skeptical theist is wrong; SUEs lower the probability of God's existence. To establish this, I will consider the four scenarios regarding the relevance of God's existence to the existence and detectability of JuffREs, and show that in each—after we establish our initial probabilities, and then update them given the evidence of a SUE—the probability of God's existence drops.     

On the Possibility of Inference to the Best Explanation

Various proposals have suggested that an adequate explanatory theory should reduce the number or the cardinality of the set of logically independent claims that need be accepted in order to entail a body of data. A (and perhaps the only) well-formed proposal of this kind is William Kneale’s: an explanatory theory should be finitely axiomatizable but it’s set of logical consequences in the data language should not be finitely axiomatizable. Craig and Vaught showed that Kneale theories (almost) always exist for any recursively enumerable but not finitely axiomatizable set of data sentences in a first order language with identity. Kneale’s criterion underdetermines explanation even given all possible data in the data language; gratuitous axioms may be “tacked on.” Define a Kneale theory, T, to be logically minimal if it is deducible from every Kneale theory (in the vocabulary of T) that entails the same statements in the data language as does T. If they exist, minimal Kneale theories are candidates for best explanations: they are “bold” in a sense close to Popper’s; some minimal Kneale theory is true if any Kneale theory is true; the minimal Kneale theory that is data equivalent to any given Kneale theory is unique; and no Kneale theory is more probable than some minimal Kneale theory. I show that under the Craig-Vaught conditions, no minimal Kneale theories exist.     

Skeptical hypotheses and moral skepticism

Moral skeptics maintain that we do not have moral knowledge. Traditionally they haven't argued via skeptical hypotheses like those provided by perceptual skeptics about the external world, such as Descartes' deceiving demon. But some believe this can be done by appealing to hypotheses like moral nihilism. Moreover, some claim that skeptical hypotheses have special force in the moral case. But I argue that skeptics have failed to specify an adequate skeptical scenario, which reveals a general lesson: such arguments are not a promising avenue for moral skeptics to take. They're ultimately weaker when applied to morality compared to perception.     

A Dilemma For Skeptical Theists

Philosophia - The aim of this paper is to defend the evidential Argument from Evil from the challenge brought against it by skeptical theists. That challenge is rooted in skeptical theism's...     

On the Possibility of Naturalistic and of Pure Epistemology

This paper deals with two opposite metaphilosophical doctrines concerning the nature of philosophy. More specifically, it is a study of the naturalistic view that philosophical, hence also epistemological, knowledge cannot be distinguished from empirical knowledge, and of the antinaturalistic view that philosophical, hence also epistemological, knowledge, is pure, that is, independent of empirical knowledge and particularly of the special sciences. The conditions of the possibility of naturalistic and of pure epistemology are studied in terms of phenomenological philosophy. It is concluded that pure epistemology is possible under relatively strong conditions but that the version of naturalistic epistemology which denies the pure basis leads to contradiction. That, however, does not shake the possibility of cognitive science. Following Husserl, we may argue that studies of human cognition are possible on the condition that a first basis is assumed which is not naturalized.