Theism and Ultimate Explanation

Timothy O'Connor is Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington. He has published widely in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, and philosophy of religion. He is the author of Persons and Causes (2000) and the editor of Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will (1995), Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings (2003), Downward Causation And The Neurobiology Of Free Will (2009), Emergence in Science and Philosophy (2010) and A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (2010).

• Preface ix Part I The Explanatory Role of Necessity 11. Modality and Explanation 3Relative and Absolute Necessity 3Scientifically Established Necessities 5An Epistemological Worry about Modality: Causal Contact with Modal Facts 7Modal Nihilism 10Modal Reductionism and Defl ationism 15Modal Anti-Realism and Quasi-Realism 27Conclusion 302. Modal Knowledge 32Conceivability As Our Guide? 32Modality a Matter of Principle? 36The Theoretical Roles of Modal Claims: Towards a Modal Epistemology 41The Spheres of Possibility 60Part II The Necessary Shape of Contingency 633. Ultimate Explanation and Necessary Being: The Existence Stage of the Cosmological Argument 65Necessary Being 68Two Objections to the Traditional Answer 73Necessary Being As the Explanatory Ground of Contingency? 794. The Identification Stage 86From Necessary Being to God, I: Transcendent, Not Immanent 86Two Models of Transcendent Necessary Being: Logos and Chaos 93Varieties of Chaos 93Interlude: The Fine-Tuning Argument 97From Necessary Being to God, II: Logos, Not Random Chaos 1095. The Scope of Contingency 111How Many Universes Would Perfection Realize? 111Perfection and Freedom 121Some Applications of the Many-Universe-Creation Hypothesis 122Necessary Being and the Scope of Possibility 125Necessary Being and the Many Necessary Truths 1286. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Anselm? 130The Unity of the Divine Nature and Its Consequences 132Natural Theology in the Understanding of Revealed Theology 140Coda 143Notes 145Bibliography 162Index 172

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