Two New Critiques of Plantinga's Proper Functionalism

Both address Plantinga's proper functionalism, as well as Michael Bergmann's more recent version of it. Also, both are accessible (and currently free!) in the Online First sections of the relevant journal sites.

Johnson, Daniel M. "Proper Function and Defeating Experiences", Synthese (forthcoming).

Long, Todd R. "Mentalist Evidentialism Vindicated (and a Super-Blooper
Epistemic Design Problem for Proper Function Justification)", Phil. Studies (forthcoming)
.

Plantinga's New Paper on Naturalism, Theism, and Morality

In 2008, Alvin Plantinga got a research grant from the Ammonius Foundation to write a paper on naturalism and objective morality. The paper ("Naturalism, Theism, Obligation, and Supervenience") is now out in of Faith & Philosophy (vol. 27, no. 3 (2010)). Here is a link to the paper.

I'm too busy at the moment to give it a careful read, but it looks as though it employs the Common Apologetic Strategy, and thus falls prey to the problems inherent in such arguments.

4th Anniversary

Never thought I'd be blogging this long, but I've enjoyed it thoroughly. Thanks for making it a worthwhile project, folks!

All the best,
EA

Super Crazy Busy

Hi folks,

Sorry for the slow posting lately, but I have a lot on my plate at the moment (new philosophy job stuff, house buying stuff, family stuff, etc.). I hope to get back soon. In the meantime, play nice.

Also: I'll probably re-post some stuff to make it look like someone's home.

All the best,
EA

Tyler Wunder Interview Podcast

Luke Muehlauser interviews Tyler Wunder on his podcast, Conversations From the Pale Blue Dot. The topic is Alvin Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology (it touches on both the pre-warrant and warrant phases). What a treat!

Michael Della Rocca's New Defense of the Principle of Sufficient Reason


ABSTRACT: This paper presents an argument for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the PSR, the principle according to which each thing that exists has an explanation. I begin with several widespread and extremely plausible arguments that I call explicability arguments in which a certain situation is rejected precisely because it would be arbitrary. Building on these plausible cases, I construct a series of explicability arguments that culminates in an explicability argument concerning existence itself. This argument amounts to the claim that the PSR is true. The plausibility of the initial cases in the series provides the basis of an argument for the PSR, an argument that can be rebutted only by drawing a line between the plausible early cases in the series and the apparently unacceptable later cases. I argue that no principled reason for drawing this line has been found and that one cannot draw an unprincipled or arbitrary line without begging the question. The paper concludes that, therefore, this defense of the PSR remains unrebutted and that we have a powerful, new reason to embrace the PSR.

Here's the link to the downloadable version.

Ricki Bliss's Cambridge Element on Grounding, Fundamentality, and Ultimate Explanations

 ...is now out , and available for free download for a limited time. Required reading.