Full size book cover of Necessary Existence}

Necessary Existence

Alexander R. Pruss, Joshua L. Rasmussen

4.44(25 readers)
Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever why is there anything? The classic answer is in terms of a necessary foundation. Yet, why think that is the correct answer? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defense of the hypothesis that there is a concrete necessary being capable of providing a foundation for the existence of things. They offer six main arguments, divided into six chapters. The first argument is an up-to-date presentation and assessment of a traditional causal-based argument from contingency. The next five arguments are new "possibility-based" arguments that make use of twentieth-century advances in modal logic. The arguments present possible pathways to an intriguing and far-reaching conclusion. The final chapter answers the most challenging objection to the existence of necessary things.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Publication Date

5/8/2018

ISBN

9780198746898

Pages

232

Categories

About the Author

Portrait of author Alexander R. Pruss
Alexander R. Pruss
Canadian philosopher, mathematician. Pruss's philosophical thought reflects Christian orthodoxy. He is a Roman Catholic and a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Pruss defends the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), claiming that it is self-evident, and arguing that the rejection of PSR creates problems in epistemology, modality, ethics, and even evolutionary theory.

Pruss is a critic of David Lewis's "extreme modal realism," and instead gives "a combined account" of Leibnizian and Aristotelian modality, which integrates the "this-worldly capacities" of the Aristotelian view and Leibniz's account of possible worlds as thoughts in the mind of God.

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