Gisterenavond in Laren

Het was een mooie en drukbezochte avond gisteren in het Brinktheater in Laren. De lezing die ik gaf over de vraag of het lijden in de wereld geloof in een goede God onredelijk maakt, is inmiddels ook hier beschikbaar.

Lezing 'Is God goed?' op maandag 24 november

Op maandag 24 november geef ik in het Brinktheater in Laren een lezing met de titel 'Is God goed?'. Nadere informatie is hier beschikbaar. Iedereen van harte welkom!

The argument from factiality

In a recent talk at COIN I argued that Meillassoux's argument from ancestrality in his book After Finitude against strong correlationism fails. But later on in his book he presents another argument against strong correlationism. It is called the argument from factiality. Let me quote the crucial passage. In this passage Meillassoux addresses the strong correlationist directly: "When you think of [realism and idealism] as "possible", how are you able to access this possibility? How are you able to think this "possibility of ignorance" which leaves [both] eventualities open? The truth is that you are only able to think this possibility of ignorance because you have actually thought the absoluteness of this possibility, which is to say, its non-correlational character. Let me make myself clear, for this is the crux of the matter. So long as you maintain that your scepticism towards all knowledge of the absolute is based upon an argument, rather than upon mere belief or opinion, then you have to grant that the core of any such argument must be thinkable. But the core of your argument is that we can access everything's capacity-not-to-be, or capacity-to-be-other, our own as well as the world's. But once again, to say that one can think this is to say that one can think the absoluteness of the possibility of every thing" (After Finitude, p. 58).

This argument fails. For, indeed, the strong correlationist thinks the absoluteness of both possibilities. After all, the strong correlationist is thinking about a possibility with respect to the in-itself and not with respect to the correlation. But this absolute has to be understood correctly. What is the strong correlationist actually saying? For all we know, the strong correlationist says, realism about the in-itself is true. Similarly, as the strong correlationist has it, for all we know idealism about the in-itself is true. Now, as the 'for all we know' already indicates, both assertions of the strong correlationist about the in-itself are claims about the absence of knowledge of the in-itself. More specifically, the strong correlationist merely affirms that realism and idealism are epistemic possibilities. He or she is not affirming that these possibilities are ontological possibilities. For that would entail that he or she knows something about the in-itself, which contradicts strong correlationism. So the strong correlationist is affirming nothing more than possibilities of ignorance. He or she is thus not saying anything positive about the in-itself. No knowledge of the in-itself is claimed, which is entirely consistent with strong correlationism. Meillassoux has therefore not broken the circle. He has not regained access to the absolute.

Twintig wijsgerige boeken

Voor de aardigheid hieronder in alfabetische volgorde de twintig wijsgerige boeken die mij tot dusver het meest hebben beïnvloed. Ik ben benieuwd naar 'de twintig' van anderen.

1. Aristoteles, Metafysica
2. Augustinus, Belijdenissen
3. Bataille, De Erotiek
4. Bonjour, In Defense of Pure Reason
5. Craig, Reasonable Faith
6. De Kesel, Goden breken
7. Halmos, Naive Set Theory
8. Heidegger, Zijn en Tijd
9. Kant, Kritiek van de Zuivere Rede
10. Kierkegaard, Of/Of
11. Longinus, Het Sublieme
12. Meillassoux, After Finitude
13. Nagel, Newman, Hofstadter, Gödels Proof
14. Nussbaum, Wat liefde weet
15. Otto, Het Heilige
16. Plato, De Staat
17. Taylor, Sources of the Self
18. Wittgenstein, Tractatus
19. Schleiermacher, Over de Religie
20. Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life

Boek over Godsargumenten

Vandaag hebben Jeroen de Ridder en ik de laatste hand gelegd aan ons boek over Godsargumenten. We behandelen acht verschillende typen argumenten voor het bestaan van God. Ieder type in een eigen hoofdstuk. Voor elk type argument bespreken we zowel de klassieke als de hedendaagse argumenten. Mijn eigen argumenten uit mijn proefschrift, zoals het argument vanuit atomisme en causalisme, en mijn modaal-epistemisch argument, komen in het boek ook aan bod.