Combo with Midterms and 1 other

Accepting your opponents argument then disproving by contradiction

• P1: a good god would not make me in a way that I am perpetually mistaken• P2: a good god wouldn't make me in a way that I am occasionally mistaken either• P3: I am occasionally mistaken• C1: therefore, I cannot be sure that a good (honest) god is charge• C2: therefore (without assurance of a good god in charge) I cannot be sure that some less-than-good higher being has not made me such that I am deceived about 2+3

He is the wisest person in Athens because he knows his limits and knows that he does not know everything. He is not worried about being perceived as wise, rather he wants to seek truth and promote virtue.

P1: Here is one hand. [gesture]P2: Here is another hand. [gesture]C: External things existEnthymeme valid argument

They are inductive arguments.Inductive arguments make general conclusions based on observed particulars and are always falsifiable.Inductive reasoning is speculative, never valid, and always susceptible to revision.

God is greater than any other being that is conceivable, God must be greater than any being who exists only as an idea, so God must exist in reality.

Every effect has a cause. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes. There must be an uncaused cause. A necessary being. This being is God.

Given the beauty, perfection, complexity of the universe, it must have a creator (a first cause). He must be greater than His creation

Prove God's existence based on the way the world/universe is

God would resemble a father who allowed his son to break his arm (though he could have prevented it) just so that he could display his skill at cast-making to the neighbors. Or God would be like a king who permitted a deadly uprising just so he could demonstrate his ability to quell it.

Evil in the world does not mean that God is not good. Evil exists in this world because it is needed to make this world the best possible one

evil was the result of God's compromise of two aims: producing the best possible world, and using the best possible means to do so. Therefore, evil in the world was merely a foreseen but unintended consequence of God's creation.

consider a mother who sends her daughters into a situation where she knows they will succumb to temptation, while nevertheless encouraging them to be virtuous. In such a case it is clear that the inevitable failing of the daughters was not something the mother intended, even though she foresaw it. Yet clearly the mother is at fault in this case, since it was within her power to prevent the failing. God has it within his power to prevent evil, yet does not do so out of considerations of simplicity in means. Such considerations hardly appear to exonerate God, and so Malebranche offers no true solution to the difficulty.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened

P1: You do what you do in the circumstances in which you find yourself because of the way you areP2: So if you're going to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you are going to be ultimately responsible for the way you are at least in certain mental respectsP3: But you can't be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at allC: Therefore, you can't be ultimately responsible for what you do

Like cause makes life effect.

There are explanations to occurrences in life. People's motives can be found in their past.

Hypothetical Freedom is not true freedom:(a) He could have done otherwiseReally means:(b) If he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise.But since (b) is compatible with determinism, then determinism is compatible with responsibility, because you can have determinism and the ability to do otherwise.

BUT (b) is not equivalent to (a), because (b) is true and (a) is false if determinism is true

Neither Determinism nor indeterminism is compatible with freedomAction is either already determined to happen or will happen by chanceNo choice=no freedom

"Apology"

"Meditations on First Philosophy in Which the the Existence of God and the Distinction between Mind and Body are Demonstrated"

"Bad Dreams, Evil Demons, and the Experience Machine: Philosophy and The Matrix"

"Proof of the External World"

"Skeptical Doubts Concerning the operation of the Understanding""On Liberty and Necessity"

"Paulicians"

"Freedom of Man in the Prigin of Evil, Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments"

"Pascal's Wager"

Wrote New York Times opinionater blog

"Human Freedom and the Self"

"The Mystery of Metaphysical Freedom"