Alexander Pruss's Blog

Unger famously argues that he doesn’t exist, by claiming a contradiction between three claims (I am quoting (1) and (2) verbatim, but simpl...

One classic critique of Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum” is that perhaps there can be thought without a subject. Perhaps the right thing to say ...

I’ve been thinking about how well Descartes’ cogito argument works given the following plausisble thesis: Every perception, including intr...

Imagine an agent for whom being certain that a proposition p is true has infinite value if p is in fact true. This could be a general Cart...

Cartesian-style ontological arguments run like this: God has all perfections. Existence is a perfection. So, God exists. These argumen...

Roughly, Aquinas thinks of a substance as something that: is existentially independent of other things, and is complete in its nature. ...

Recently, I’ve been worried about arguments like this: It is always more perfect to be able to do more things. Being able to do impossibl...

One way to think of the beatific vision is as a conscious experience whose quale is God himself. Not a representation of God, but the infin...

The rationalism of Leibniz and Spinoza worked like this: We figure out fundamental necessary metaphysical principles, and these principles d...

Let’s assume two theses: Humean view of causation. Mental causalism: mental activity requires some mental states to stand in causal relat...

The philosophical tradition contains two conceptions of matter. One kind, associated with Descartes, connects matter with space: matter is w...

We like being sure. No matter how high our confidence, we have a desire to be more sure, which taken to an extreme becomes a Cart...

In The Impiety of Deists, etc. , Mersenne also gives this theistic argument: And if there is no God, no independent being, it wou...

Here are three things I would like: Not to be kidnapped by aliens today for medical experiments. To own the Hope Diamond . To own a m...

"I think therefore I am." It's hard to dispute either the argument or the conclusion. But while I undoubtedly exist, do I ha...

A standard solution to general sceptical problems is to move to an externalist account of content. Grossly oversimplifying, if what makes a...

I've never heard the following version of the ontological argument put quite in this way, though there may be things in Anselm an...

We think thoughts that are about F ness. There is no good naturalistic explanation of how our F -thoughts manage to make claims abou...

Consider the concept of a judging . A judging is a believing operating occurrently and consciously (this is stipulative). Someti...

Contemporary American philosophers tend to encounter the distinction between confused and distinct concepts in Descartes, and th...