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Logic

Debating Dale Starter Pack

Want to debate (or just refute) me? Here are some things you should study.

Is every Orwell an Orwell?

Can we justify a distinction between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication

Do we need identity?

Sommers questions the doctrine of ‘relationism’, i.e. the view that identity is a relation…

Venus was her name

Can we get from ‘a=b’ to ‘necessarily a=b’ in a simple step?

Can Kant refer to God?

I am plodding on with Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, which I strongly recommend. He is committed to the Christian (and Jewish and Muslim) belief that not only that there is such a being as God, but also that we are able to address him in prayer, refer to him, think and talk about him, and predicate properties of him. This means using unique descriptions like… Read More »Can Kant refer to God?

the apologetics blind-spot on numerical identity

Here’s part of a conversation I had recently with a guy in a Facebook group who when it comes to theology consumes almost only evangelical apologetics sources. I’m going to call him “Tim” here. The conversation illustrates a blind spot that I often run into, a blind spot which results from people who study apologetics being insufficiently trained in logic. All the non-theological points I… Read More »the apologetics blind-spot on numerical identity

Necessarily so?

It ain’t necessarily so It ain’t necessarily so The t’ings dat yo’ li’ble To read in de Bible, It ain’t necessarily so In God as Biblical Character and as Divine Reality, the Maverick makes the curious distinction between a Biblical character, and the external reality corresponding to the character. The two philosophers [Aquinas and Spinoza] are clearly referring to the same Biblical character when they… Read More »Necessarily so?

God and Deus

Bill Vallicella, the famous Maverick Philosopher, just dropped me a line asking whether, when Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza use the term ‘Deus’, they are referring to the same being. This is a difficult and interesting question. Bill uses the Latin name ‘Deus’, alluding to the fact that both men wrote in Latin. Latin was the choice of the ‘scholastic’ theologians of the 13th century,… Read More »God and Deus