Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Elements in the Philosophy of Religion

**Posted by Calhoun** 8/29/2018 8:44 am

Hi , How is everyone doing?

This place has been a little quite lately, I plan to maybe discuss topic of brute facts later. If you guys haven't already I would recommend checking out this series , some quite interesting work is available including Michael Almeida's new book on Cosmological argument I was discussing with Daniel on the blog some time ago and also WLC on Atonement.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/series/elements-in-the-philosophy-of-religion/6DB49122CD407CF5E4CB65DE7BCC052E#

**Posted by DanielCC** 8/29/2018 12:01 pm

Yours truly is still busy slogging through hundreds of pages of Scotus commentary. There will be blog posts on that eventually.

Almeida’s theistic modal concretism came up in conversation on Vallicella’s blog, specifically using it as a way of getting round the modal collapse issue. Actually as it’s Cambridge I can probably get the text of it through online access. Will try that later.

I’ll keep an eye on the Divine Attributes book if only for the possibility of new work on Divine Simplicity or even a modern overview of it. It would be of immense help to have a compendium of different views on simplicity (even if one thinks the Thomist solution is best it should at least be acknowledged that there are other takes on it).

**Posted by Calhoun** 8/29/2018 1:03 pm

Always interesting to read the blog posts.

Cosmological arguments can be accessed here but Divine Attributes can not.

And also there is a new paper by Matthew James Collier on Modal realism and Classical theism, says their combination is either incompatible or lead to Modal collapse , among other things..

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11841-018-0659-4

Heaven't read this one yet though..

Last edited by Calhoun (8/29/2018 1:04 pm)

**Posted by DanielCC** 8/29/2018 1:31 pm

Calhoun wrote:
Always interesting to read the blog posts.And also there is a new paper by Matthew James Collier on Modal realism and Classical theism, says their combination is either incompatible or lead to Modal collapse , among other things..

Ultimately I think any form of modal realism faces modal collapse because every being, or at least every worldbound being, is essentially the way it is. The indexical takes of existence and actual are just semantic ways of sugaring the pill.

Interestingly Almeida comes close to admitting this in his chapter on the cosmological argument and modal realism: 'Of course it is also true that the actual world and everything in it necessarily exists, since the actual world is one region of a necessarily existing pluriverse' (p79)

**Posted by Ouros** 8/29/2018 4:54 pm

DanielCC wrote:
Calhoun wrote:
Always interesting to read the blog posts.And also there is a new paper by Matthew James Collier on Modal realism and Classical theism, says their combination is either incompatible or lead to Modal collapse , among other things..
Ultimately I think any form of modal realism faces modal collapse because every being, or at least every worldbound being, is essentially the way it is. The indexical takes of existence and actual are just semantic ways of sugaring the pill.

Interestingly Almeida comes close to admitting this in his chapter on the cosmological argument and modal realism: 'Of course it is also true that the actual world and everything in it necessarily exists, since the actual world is one region of a necessarily existing pluriverse' (p79)

Something which seems very strange to me is to reconcile omnipotence and modal collapse: if God couldn't have done otherwise, in what sense can we say he's omnipotent?

**Posted by John West** 9/06/2018 7:52 pm

Bring on the brute facts!
Activity always dips around this time of year. (I've always chalked it up to busyness at the start of the academic year.) I wouldn't worry too much.