Ultimate Considerations

Additionally to my other projects I plan on giving chapter by chapter notes for the books I'm reading. It helps me in understanding the arguments of the author and it gives the opportunity spreading novel arguments of books that haven't been read as widely. And it's a great list for future references. I won't make arguments, I will write out the key points of each chapter.  On the list: William Vallicella- A Paradigm Theory of Existence Gaven Kerr- Aquinas Way to God & Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation David Braine- The Reality of Time and the Existence of God Martin Heidegger- Sein und Zeit Immanuel Kant- Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, Critique of Judgment Bernard Lonergan- Insight; A Study in Human Understanding David Oderberg- The Metaphysics of Good and Evil Alasdair MacIntyre- Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry I won't guarantee the order nor that this will certainly be the only or even primary ones I'm focusing on. But ...

In this post I will turn my tides to William Lane Craigs' review of Timothy O'Connors book "Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency". In my last post I explained and defended O'Connors arguments about the nature of a necessary being. In this post I'll defend him against the objections of Craig. His review can be found here: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/the-existence-of-god/timothy-oconnor-on-contingency-a-review-essay Of course I won't answer the whole essay, I'm currently not interested in arguing about the ontological status of possible worlds or abstract objects. Hence I'll begin my quotations from more in the middle of the text, the passages that concern the exact paragraph of O'Connor, which I treated, as well as additional thoughts of Craig on necessary beings. "In O’Connor’s view the essential properties of a necessary being must form a tight unity: They must be so bound...

In his book " Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency " Timothy O'Connor provided some original insights on the constitution of an absolutely necessary being. Even though he himself didn't drew the implications out, what resulted was a highly interesting analysis of what accounts for the necessity of said existence, as well as a new argument for divine simplicity (DS), which didn't rely on specific metaphysics but came from an analysis of necessary existence itself. I will quote the key passage at length and then will take on the criticisms made by William Lane Craig in the review of that work. I will take Craig to be representative of most analytic philosophers here and show how simple misunderstandings and the lack of openness to the topic of existence resulted in egregious mistakes and misrepresentations. What we will be left with is a new way to look at the topic and progress in the debate surrounding necessary beings, so that the l...