Download or read book Pascal s Wager written by Jeff Jordan and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-10-26 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there is no strong evidence that God exists? Is belief in God when faced with a lack of evidence illegitimate and improper? Evidentialism answers yes. According to Evidentialism, it is impermissible to believe any proposition lacking adequate evidence. And if any thesis enjoys the status of a dogma among philosophers, it is Evidentialism. Presenting a direct challenge to Evidentialism are pragmatic arguments for theism, which are designed to support belief in the absence of adequate evidence. Pascal's Wager is the most prominent theistic pragmatic argument, and issues in epistemology, the ethics of belief, and decision theory, as well as philosophical theology, all intersect at the Wager. Other prominent theistic pragmatic arguments include William James's celebrated essay, 'The Will to Believe'; a posthumously published and largely ignored pragmatic argument authored by J.S. Mill, supporting the propriety of hoping that quasi-theism is true; the eighteenth-century Scottish essayist James Beattie's argument that the consoling benefit of theistic belief is so great that theistic belief is permissible even when one thinks that the existence of God is less likely than not; and an argument championed by the nineteenth-century French philosopher Jules Lachelier, which based its case for theistic belief on the empirical benefits of believing as a theist, even if theism was very probably false. In Pascal's Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, Jeff Jordan explores various theistic pragmatic arguments, and the objections employed against them. Jordan presents a new version of the Wager, what he calls the 'Jamesian Wager', and argues that the Jamesian Wager survives the objections hurled against theistic pragmatic arguments and provides strong support for theistic belief. In addition to arguing for a sound version of the Wager, Jordan also argues that there is a version of Evidentialism compatible with a principled use of pragmatic arguments, and that the Argument from Divine Silence fails. Objections found in Voltaire, Hume, and Nietzsche against the Wager are scrutinized, as are objections issued by Richard Swinburne, Richard Gale, and other contemporary philosophers. The ethics of belief, the many-gods objection, the problem of infinite utilities, and the propriety of a hope based acceptance are also examined.
Download or read book European Performative Theatre written by Annamaria Cascetta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performative theatre is one of the most important trends of our time. It is emblematic of the work of many European theatrical artists in the early twenty-first century. Annamaria Cascetta does not propose a model or a historical overview, but rather strives to identify the salient features of a significant trend in the theatrical research and transformation of our time by analysing some crucial examples from outstanding works, of great international resonance. She draws on work by artists from different generations, all active between the late twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first, and in various European countries, performed in a number of European theatres in recent years. The aim is to apply a method of analysis in depth, bringing out the technical elements of contemporary "performative theatre" in the field, and above all to highlight the close links between it and the urgent and troubled issues and problems of history and society in the phase of cultural and anthropological transition we are experiencing.
Download or read book Infinity Faith and Time written by John Spencer Hill and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1997 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infinity, Faith, and Time is an exploration of Renaissance literature and the importance of a powerful tradition of Christian-Platonist rational spirituality derived from St Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa. John Spencer Hill argues that this tradition had
Download or read book The Polemics of Libertine Conversion in Pascal s Pens es written by John F. Boitano and published by Gunter Narr Verlag. This book was released on 2002 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Philosophy of the Unsayable written by William P. Franke and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Philosophy of the Unsayable, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt to deny or delimit it. In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabès. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy’s deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion—Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. A Philosophy of the Unsayable will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition.
Download or read book Philosophy of Religion written by William Lane Craig and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Philosophy of Religion is a combined anthology and guide intended for use as a textbook in courses on Philosophy of Religion. It aims to bring to the student the very best of cutting-edge work on important topics in the field. Presenting a sympathetic view of the topics it treats, Philosophy of Religion provides an ideal resource for studying the central questions raised by religious belief."--
Download or read book Pascal and Disbelief written by David Wetsel and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeks to answer a question that has puzzled readers since the Pensees -- a work conceived principally as an Apology for the Christian Religion -- first appeared in 1670: To whom is Pascal's call to Christian conversion really addressed?
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Argument written by Martin Warner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argument and imagination are often interdependent. Martin Warner explores how this relationship bears on argument's concern with truth, not just persuasion. He argues that the rationality of argument is not only a matter of deductive validity, but can be assessed in terms of criteria drawn from the study of imaginative literature.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion written by William Wainwright and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-16 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains newly commissioned chapters by 21 prominent experts who cover the field in a comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative of a distinctive viewpoint.
Download or read book Accident written by Ross Hamilton and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accidental glance at a newspaper notice causes Rousseau to collapse under the force of a vision. A car accidentally hits Giacometti, and he experiences an epiphany. Darwin introduces accident to the basic process of life, and Freud looks to accident as the expression of unconscious desire. Accident, Ross Hamilton claims, is the force that mak...
Download or read book The Christian remembrancer or The Churchman s Biblical ecclesiastical literary miscellany written by and published by . This book was released on 1847 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Seventeenth century Philosophy written by Daniel Garber and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Studies in Quantitative Philosophizing written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book brings together several case studies, dealing with relevant facets of the work of some of philosophy’s all-time greats. The subject-matter topic being addressed differs significantly, but in each case there is an attempt to apply mathematical methods and perspectives to the solution of a key philosophical issue in a way that throws instructive light upon it. On this basis it emerges that the question “Are mathematical methods useful in philosophy?” finds a suggestive response in the fact that over two millennia key figures in the history of the subject have indeed thought so. And they have substantiated this view not so much by abstract argumentation on the basis of general principles, but by making this point through actual practice.
Download or read book A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750 written by Anders Hald and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-02-25 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PAPERBACK SERIES The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. From the Reviews of History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750 "This is a marvelous book . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in the history of statistics, or in understanding how modern ideas have developed, will find this an invaluable resource." –Short Book Reviews of ISI
Download or read book The Problem of Atheism written by Augusto Del Noce and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2022-01-05 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1964, Augusto Del Noce assembled in a book some of his best works on Marxism, atheism, and the history of modern philosophy. The result was Il problema dell’ateismo, which he always regarded as foundational to his way of thinking. The book remains his best-known work and is still in print in Italy almost sixty years later. The Problem of Atheism offers the first English translation of this landmark book, one of the earliest works to recognize the new secularizing trends in Western culture following World War II. Del Noce situates atheism historically, reconstructing its philosophical trajectory through European modernity. Documenting the author’s entire intellectual experience, these essays explore the birth of modern philosophy, reckon with the great European crisis of 1917 to 1945 and the Cold War that followed, and mine the opposition between Marxism and the rise of the affluent society. The result is rich with premonitions of the cultural landscape that would take shape throughout the 1960s and the decades that followed. Proving its English translation to be long overdue, The Problem of Atheism remains relevant to contemporary debates about secularization, political theology, and modernity.
Download or read book Pascal s Apology for Religion written by Blaise Pascal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1942, this book constitutes the companion volume to The Heart of Pascal (1945); both volumes were formed using selections from Pascal's Pensées. The text gathers together a series of selections, presented in French, which illustrate Pascal's Christian faith and thoughts on the relationship between man and God. An appendix and preface by the editor are also provided. This is a highly informative book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in Pascal and his late thought.
