Alexander Pruss's Blog

Consider this initially plausible thesis: If x has a proper part, and all of x ’s proper parts depend on y , then x depends on y . Add...

I just realized that there is a difficulty in Aquinas’ First Way that I think hasn’t been noted, which builds on the difficulty noted yester...

Suppose a substantivalist view of spacetime on which points of spacetime really exist. Suppose I had taken a different path to my office to...

Assume classical mereology with arbitrary fusions. Further assume two plausible theses: If each of the y s is caused by at least one of t...

Can there be an infinite sequence of efficient causes? Famously, Aquinas says both “No” and “Yes”, and makes a distinction between a per se ...

On the Thomistic primary/secondary causation model of meticulous divine providence, when we act wrongly, God fully determines the positive a...

In debates about free will and foreknowledge as well as about compatibility and incompatibilism, fixity-of-history theses come up. Here is s...

Linda Zagzebski proposes the plausible principle that one is able to ϕ only if ϕ ing is compatible with one’s causal history relevant to ϕ...

Consider this strong meaning-permanence thesis: There being a permanent end to all humanly relevant events would render all of our present...

Suppose random quantum processes result in deep marks on a stone that spell out: Thou shalt not eat goat. – God What would need to be tr...

The past-grounding problem for presentism is of explaining what grounds facts about the past. The tensed-property solution is that presently...

Some open future views rely on the concept of a nomically possible branch—a complete sequence of how things might go given the laws of natur...

Suppose that causation across temporal gaps is possible: that an object x can have a direct effect in a future time, with no intermediate c...

The Principle of Proportionate Causality (PPC) defended by Aquinas and other scholastics says that a perfection P can only be caused by som...

Let’s assume for the sake of argument: Aquinas’ Principle of Proportionate Causality: Anything that causes something to have a perfection ...

I want to argue for this thesis: For a punishment P for a fault F to be right, P must stand in a causal-like relation to P . What is ...

Suppose that an extremely reliable cannon is loaded with a rock, and pointed at a window, and the extremely reliable timer on the cannon is ...

The causal exclusion argument requires us to deny that there is systematic overdetermination between mental and physical causes. But it is...

In my previous two posts I focused on the difficulty of God creating an infinite causal regress of indeterministic causes as part of an argu...

Suppose that a dod is a critter that chancily, with probability 1/2 , causes one offspring during its life. The lifespan of a dod is one yea...