[SydPhil] [REMINDER] 3 DAYS TO GO - APRA KEYNOTE: PROFESSOR HERMAN PHILIPSE ‘THE CONFIRMING CAUSAL,COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT: 12 CHALLENGES’

[Nathan Everson]

KEYNOTE: PROFESSOR HERMAN PHILIPSE ‘THE CONFIRMING CAUSAL,COSMOLOGICAL 
ARGUMENT: 12 CHALLENGES’
WHERE: University of Sydney,
WHEN: Saurday June 22, 3:50pm-5:10pm
COST: Full Conference Fee (includes symposium): Waged $260.00 / 
full-time student or unwaged $150.00
            Day Fee (does not include symposium): Waged $150.00 / 
full-time student or unwaged $90.00

Abstract:
There are many different types of cosmological arguments for the 
existence of God/a
god. Some of them, such as purported deductive proofs (e.g. by Koons, or 
Gale and
Pruss), are ambitious, whereas others have more modest aspirations. The 
topic of the talk
is a modest cosmological argument, which merely aims at confirming to 
some extent the
view that God exists. That is, it holds that given the existence of the 
universe (e), theism
is more probable than it would be otherwise: P(theism | e & k) > 
P(theism | k). Such a
modest Confirming Causal Cosmological Argument (CCCA) has many 
advantages. For
example, it avoids the Prosecutor’s fallacy and the Bridge Player’s fallacy.
One might think, therefore, that the CCCA is promising because it is not 
daring or risky.
But that would be a mistake. The CCCA, as defended by Richard Swinburne, for
example, has to face at least twelve serious problems, which I shall 
present as challenges
to the audience.

ABOUT HERMAN PHILIPSE:
Herman Philipse (D Phil (Leiden) 1983) took up a Distinguished 
Professorship in
philosophy at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, in September 
2003. He was
previously Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leiden 
(1985-2003), Assistant
Professor in Philosophy at that university (1978-85), and Research 
Assistant at the
Husserl Archives, University of Louvain, Belgium (1977-78). He has been 
chairman of
the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Leiden several times, and 
lectured as a
guest professor at the University of Oxford during twelve Trinity Terms.
In February 2012 Oxford University Press published his book God in the 
Age of
Science? A Critique of Religious Reason.