Contents

Acknowledgements

A Guide to the Book: God, Truth, and other Enigmas

Part I (God’s) Existence/Non-Existence

Logical Necessity, Conceptual Necessity, and the Ontological Argument

1 What is Logical Necessity (Logical Modality)?

2 Conceptual Modality

3 Terse Formalization of a Hartshornian Modal Ontological Argument

4 A “Fitchy” Argument for Premise (2)

5 The Crucial Premise

Problem of the Origins of Ontotheology

1 Towards the Theologization of Being

2 “Craftsman” or “Creator”?

3 The Unnamed, and yet Named “the Being One”: the Premises of Ontotheology

4 God as Esse Absolutum

On the Anti-Ontological Doom Argument

Nothing Is Impossible

1 Preliminary Matters

1.1 A Miscellany of Terms, Concepts, Definitions, and Assumptions

1.2 Kinds

1.3 Explanation

1.4 Three Principles

1.5 A Premise about Kinds

2 The Arguments

2.1 The Arguments

2.2 A Possible Objection to the Arguments

3 “The Mystery of Existence”

God and Good: Does God’s Existence Imply that Anything is Good

Part II Omniscience

Gaps, Gluts and God

1 Gaps and Gluts

2 Milne’s Paradox

3 Strengthening the Milne Sentence

4 Conclusion

Fitch’s Paradox and the Existence of an Omniscient Being

1 The Knowability Principle and Fitch’s Paradox

2 An Argument for an Omniscient Being

3 How Plausible is the Knowability Principle?

4 Concluding Remarks

Vagueness and Omniscience

1 Introduction

2 Cooperation by an Omniscient Being: First Proposal

3 Cooperation by an Omniscient Being: Objection to the First Proposal

4 Cooperation by an Omniscient Being: Second Proposal

5 Cooperation by an Omniscient Being: Objection to the Second Proposal

6 Some Conclusive Remarks

God’s Omniscience and Logical Virtue

1 Introduction

2 Cantor’s Argument and the Complete Knowledge of God

3 The Liar and the Sound Knowledge of God

4 McTaggart’s Paradox, and Various Semantical Approaches to Time

5 Anderson-type Semantics Taking into Account the Time and the Knowledge of Truths

6 Conclusion

Part III Truth

Logic and Truth in Religious Belief

1 Introduction

2 Logic and Religious Belief

3 Faith Pragmatics and Truth

4 Appearance and Truth in Religious Belief (Semantics)

4.1 Logic QB Modified

4.2 Formal Analysis of John 3

Absolute Truth and Mathematics

The Divine Belief Theory of Truth: Might It Work?

1 The Theory

2 Statement and Some Merits

2.1 Beliefs by a Perfect Beings

2.2 Sentential Truth

2.3 Some Merits

3 Objections

3.1 The Euthyphro Objection

3.2 Knowledge

3.3 Epistemological Circularity

3.4 Atheists and Truth

3.5 The Liar Paradox

3.6 Similarity to Occasionalism

4 Conclusions

Makers and Models: Two Approaches to Truth, and their Merger

1 Introduction: Tarski and Nominalism

2 Truth, Consequence, and Models

3 Makers

4 Models

5 Multitudes

6 Models from Multitudes

7 Consequences for Nominalists

8 Open Questions and Conclusion

Part IV Metaphysical Enigmas

Agnosticism about Material Composition

1 Introduction

2 Agnosticism about Material Composition

3 Conceptual Analysis

4 Common Sense

5 Science

6 Simplicity

7 Philosophical Argument

8 Reflections and Recriminations

Existential Dependence and other Formal Relations

1 Formal Relations

2 Ontological Dependence

3 Existential Dependence

4 Existential Dependence and the Three-Categorial Ontology

5 Formal Relations and Their Possible Function in Philosophical Theology

Wittgenstein on Faith and Reason: The Influence of Newman

1 Introductory Remarks

2 Wittgenstein on the Structure of Reasons

3 Newman on Faith and Reason

4 On Certainty

5 Concluding Remarks

Necessity, Worlds, and God

1 Introduction

2 A Most Common Strategy

3 Necessity and Worlds

4 Necessity and God

5 Be Careful What You Wish For

6 How Not to Argue for the Plurality

7 Rods for Their Own Backs

8 God, Necessity, and Limits

9 Conclusion

The Explanatory Power of Topology in the Philosophy of God

1 Goal

2 Mathematical Theology

3 Mathematica Theologiae Ancilla

4 Topology – Basic Ideas and Concepts

5 Topological Explanations in the Philosophy of God

5.1 God’s Suffering vs. God’s Infinite Power. Is God a Topological Space?

5.2 God as a Closure of the World

5.3 God-Topology: Connected and not Metrizable?

5.4 Topological Analysis of Unity of God

6 The Explanatory Power and Limits of Topological Explanations

Authors of Contributed Papers

Author Index

Subject Index