The Ontological argument The Question(and framework for answers) Does God exist? (We will be assuming a philosophical/theological conception of God as a perfect being-this god's perfections include: omnipotence, omniscience, and perfect goodness. Theist: Yes. God exists

ral questions that might arise concerning personal identity. When we ask\Who am I? we might be being we are, what our possiblities are, under what conditions\I\would continue to exist. We'll begin our discussionon n wonder what\makes us tick\, what we ultimately value, what matters to us. We might also be asking what sort personal identity with the latter set of questions Consider a parallel set of questions (Id) Under what conditions are baseball-events events in the same game? E. g, under what conditions are a

24.00: Problems of Philosophy Prof. Sally Haslanger November 7, 2001 Freewill IlI: Libertarianism I. Recap: Compatibilism v. Incompatibilism Hard determinism is the view that determinis is true and that because of this freedom is an illusion. The libertarian agrees with the hard determinist that freewill is incompatible with determinism, but disagrees about which claim should be rejected. The libertarian holds that we have free will, but this is only because determinism is false-free acts occur and are undetermined. The hard determinist and the libertarian are both incompatibilists. Soft determinism, also known as compatibilism, maintains that determinism is true, but also that determinism is

Moral Luck One of the important themes in the freewill debate is the idea that freedom is necessary for moral responsibility. In effect, if hard determinism is the correct view, then we should not hold ourselves or others morally responsible. Libertarians, in particular, seem to hold that in order to be responsible for an act, we must be its \sole author. Here is the principle at issue: Control Principle: You are only responsible for what you have control over. If you steal an axe from my garage and use it to break into a gas station, there's no point in holding me responsible, I didn't

October 22, 2001 Personal IdentityⅢ . Review soul criterion and body criterion Soul criterion: x is the same person as y iff and y have the same soul. Problems: i)There is no way to establish body-soul correlations; and no way to establish personality correlations. So soul criterion doesn't make sense of our practices of recognizing and identifying people ii)We have no special access to souls, so even in our own case we can't be sure it's the same soul \inside\ us whenever we are conscious. ii) The problem of identity is \pushed back\: what is it for person-stage x to have the same soul as person-stage y? What makes for sameness of souls? Body criterion: x is the same person as y iff x and y have the same living human body

Evidentialism(Clifford): \It is wrong abways, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence\ (p.113) Pragmatism(James): Faced with a genuine choice about what to believe, and where evidence does not decide the matter, we are free to decide it however we want. Oour passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds. (127) In the relevant cases, we are not

24.00: Problems of Philosophy Prof. Sally Haslanger September 19, 2001 Evil and the Free Will Defense Review of the Problem 1)If God exists, she'd be OOG. [By hypothesis] )If an OOG being exists, there would be no evil. [from 1] 3)God exists. [Suppose]

September 12, 2001 The Problem of Evil Last time we considered the ontological argument for the existence of God. If the argument is cogent, then we have reason to be rational theists, i.e., to maintain that there are justifying reasons for belief in God's existence. Today we're going to consider an argument for atheism which purports to show that theism is incoherent, i.e., that theism entails a contradiction. If the argument works, then the only option available to the theist would be irrational theism: belief in God's existence in spite of justifying reasons supporting