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"Davis, Richard Brian, 1963-"
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Disney and philosophy : truth, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust
Take a magic carpet ride through Disney's wonderful world of films and entertainment experiences, and discover the wisdom within its most popular and enduring stories Philosophy begins in wonder , and there's no question that Disney's immersive worlds and iconic characters have enchanted generations of children and adults alike, inviting us to.
eBook
The Dependence Problem: Theism, counterpossibles, and necessity
This dissertation explores various attempts to solve the Dependence Problem—the problem posed by the following question: How can necessary truths stand to God in a one-way relation of dependence, given that neither they nor God could have failed to exist? In chapter 1, I examine the possibility that the requisite asymmetry might be counterfactual in nature. I argue that this type of counterfactual solution requires a nonstandard account of counterpossibles. I survey a recent attempt by Linda Zagzebski to offer such an account, and conclude that (taken alone) it fails to solve the Dependence Problem, since it presupposes a thesis Zagzebski only gestures at: that propositions are causally related to God. In Chapter 2, therefore, I explore the question of whether necessary truths are asymmetrically (and causally) dependent on God. Here I discuss recent defenses of theistic activism—the view that all abstracta are the causal products of God's conceptual activity—by Brian Leftow and Thomas V. Morris. I argue that Leftowian theistic activism (and perhaps also its Morrisean compatriot) is committed to a nonstandard account of counterpossibles, but that this account is flawed in crucial respects. In chapter 3, I take up a different solution to the Dependence Problem, one that unlike the preceding solutions, does not assume that necessary truths are distinct from God. I contend that this approach to the problem presupposes the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity (whose general claim is that God has no properties distinct from himself). I examine three versions of this doctrine, and find that none (taken alone) succeeds in identifying every necessary truth with God, which is the crux of the present solution. In the final chapter, I propose a solution to the Dependence Problem that incorporates select elements from the previous solutions, and conclude that it is possible for all we know that necessary truths stand to God in an asymmetrical (causal) relation of dependence.
Dissertation