John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of
topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws
of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a
solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is
that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our
experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling
influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. His second line of
argument focuses on the issue of what we should take such
necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them
at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster
puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the
causal imposing of a regularity on the universe as a regularity. With
this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an
argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for
explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially
assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of
the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the
existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by
a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevant law-yielding
way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory
solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory
solution. The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach,
and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the
most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum.
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Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191530555
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Clarendon Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter