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Of Miracles
"Of Miracles" is the title of Section X of David Hume's '' An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding'' (1748). Overview Put simply, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of a law of nature (understood as a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases) and argues that the evidence for a miracle is never sufficient for rational belief because it is more likely that a report of a miracle is false as a result of misperception, mistransmission, or deception ("that this person should either deceive or be deceived"), than that a violation of a regularity of experience has actually occurred. For obvious reasons, the argument has infuriated some Christians, especially given the reference to the Resurrection: When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened.... If the fals ...
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David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume argued against the existence of innate ideas, positing that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an Empiricist. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event caus ...
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George Campbell (Presbyterian Minister)
George Campbell FRSE (25 December 1719 – 6 April 1796) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, minister, and professor of divinity. Campbell was primarily interested in rhetoric, since he believed that its study would enable his students to become better preachers. He became a philosopher of rhetoric because he took it that the philosophical changes of the Age of Enlightenment would have implications for rhetoric. Life, times, and influences Campbell was born on 25 December 1719 in Aberdeen. At the age of fifteen, Campbell attended Marischal College where he studied logic, metaphysics, pneumatology (philosophy of mind and/or spirit), ethics, and natural philosophy. After graduating with his M.A. in 1738, Campbell decided to study law and served as an apprentice to a writer to the Signet in Edinburgh. He began gravitating towards theology after attending lectures at the University of Edinburgh. After serving out his term as an apprentice, he returned to Aberdeen and enroll ...
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1748 Works
Events January–March * January 12 – Ahmad Shah Durrani captures Lahore. * January 27 – A fire at the prison and barracks at Kinsale, in Ireland, kills 54 of the prisoners of war housed there. An estimated 500 prisoners are safely conducted to another prison."Fires, Great", in ''The Insurance Cyclopeadia: Being an Historical Treasury of Events and Circumstances Connected with the Origin and Progress of Insurance'', Cornelius Walford, ed. (C. and E. Layton, 1876) p51 * February 7 – The San Gabriel mission project begins with the founding of the first Roman Catholic missions further northward in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in what is now central Texas. On orders of the Viceroy, Juan Francisco de Güemes, Friar Mariano Marti establish the San Francisco Xavier mission at a location on the San Gabriel River in what is now Milam County. The mission, located northeast of the future site of Austin, Texas, is attacked by 60 Apache Indians on May ...
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Richard Swinburne
Richard Granville Swinburne (IPA ) (born December 26, 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of ''The Coherence of Theism'', ''The Existence of God'', and ''Faith and Reason''. Early life Swinburne was born in Smethwick, Staffordshire, England, on 26 December 1934. His father was a school music teacher, who was himself the son of an off-licence owner in Shoreditch. His mother was a secretary, the daughter of an optician. He is an only child. Swinburne attended a preparatory school and then Charterhouse School. Academic career Swinburne received an open scholarship to study classics at Exeter College, ...
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American Philosophical Quarterly
The ''American Philosophical Quarterly'' (APQ) is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering philosophy. It was established in 1964 by Nicholas Rescher and is published quarterly by University of Illinois Press under license with North American Philosophical Publications. Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: Notable articles * "Causes and Conditions" (1965) - J. L. Mackie * "Indicators and Quasi-indicators" (1967) - Hector-Neri Castañeda * "Truth in fiction" (1978) - David Lewis * "Supervenience and Nomological Incommensurables" (1978) - Jaegwon Kim * "The Corporation as a Moral Person" (1979) - Peter A French * "On Reasoning about Values" (1980) - Wilfred Sellars * "From Exasperating Virtues to Civic Virtues" (1996) - Amélie Oksenberg Rorty * "The Enforcement of Morality" (2000) - John Kekes See also * List of philosophy journals This is a list of academic journals pertaining to the field of philosophy. Journals in Catalan * '' Filo ...
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Begging The Question
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ') is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. For example: * "Green is the best color because it is the greenest of all colors" This statement claims that the color green is the best because it is the greenest – which it presupposes is the best. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy's presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent.Herrick (2000) 248. History The original phrase used by Aristotle from which ''begging the question'' descends is: τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς (or sometimes ἐν ἀρχῇ) αἰτεῖν, "asking for the initial thing". Aristotle's intended meaning is closely tied to the type of dialectical argument he discusses in his '' Topics'', book VIII: a formalized ...
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A Preliminary Study
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ...
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William Lane Craig
William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, author and Wesleyan theologian who upholds the view of Molinism and neo-Apollinarianism. He is Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University and research professor of philosophy at Biola University's Talbot School of Theology. Craig has updated and defended the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. He has also published work where he argues in favor of the historical plausibility of the resurrection of Jesus. His study of divine aseity and Platonism culminated with his book ''God Over All''. Early life and education Craig was born August 23, 1949, in Peoria, Illinois, to Mallory and Doris Craig. While a student at East Peoria Community High School (1963–1967), Craig competed in debate and won the state championship in oratory. In September 1965, his junior year, he became a Christian, and after graduating from high school, attended Wheaton College, m ...
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John Earman
John Earman (born 1942) is an American philosopher of physics. He is an emeritus professor in the History and Philosophy of Science department at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, and was president of the Philosophy of Science Association. Life and career John Earman was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942. Earman received his PhD at Princeton University in 1968 with a dissertation on temporal asymmetry (titled ''Some Aspects of Temporal Asymmetry'') and it was directed by Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Benacerraf. After holding professorships at UCLA, the Rockefeller University, and the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty of the History and Philosophy of Science department of the University of Pittsburgh in 1985. He remained at Pittsburgh for the rest of his career. Earman is a former president of the Philosophy of Science Association and a fellow of the Am ...
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Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their name from the presbyterian form of church government by representative assemblies of elders. Many Reformed churches are organised this way, but the word ''Presbyterian'', when capitalized, is often applied to churches that trace their roots to the Church of Scotland or to English Dissenter groups that formed during the English Civil War. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures, and the necessity of grace through faith in Christ. Presbyterian church government was ensured in Scotland by the Acts of Union in 1707, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. In fact, most Presbyterians found in England can trace a Scottish connection, and the Presbyterian denomination was also taken ...
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Teleological Argument
The teleological argument (from ; also known as physico-theological argument, argument from design, or intelligent design argument) is an argument for the existence of God or, more generally, that complex functionality in the natural world which looks designed is evidence of an intelligent creator. The earliest recorded versions of this argument are associated with Socrates in ancient Greece, although it has been argued that he was taking up an older argument.Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and R. Kamtekar. 2009. ''A Companion to Socrates''. John Wiley & Sons. p. 45. "Xenophon attributes to Socrates what is probably the earliest known natural theology, an argument for the existence of the gods from observations of design in the physical world." Plato and Aristotle developed complex approaches to the proposal that the cosmos has an intelligent cause, but it was the Stoics who, under their influence, "developed the battery of creationist arguments broadly known under the label 'The Argument ...
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