Christopher Hughes

Negative existentials, omniscience, and cosmic luck

Suppose there are possible worlds in which God exists but Anselm does not. Then (I argue) there are possible worlds in which Anselm does not exist, but God cannot even entertain the thought that he does not. In such worlds Anselm does not exist, but God does not know that. This, I argue, is incompatible with (a straightforward construal of) the doctrine of Gods essential omniscience. Considerations involving negative existentials also call into question a certain picture of creation, on which God chooses which particular (possible) individuals to create. They suggest that there is an element of brute contingency about which individuals exist.

Augustine on will, freedom, and foreknowledge: De libero arbitrio , III, 1–3

Towards the beginning of the third book of De libero arbitrio, Augustine defends the compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge. His defence appears to involve the idea that the will is essentially free. I discuss and evaluate Augustines reasons for thinking that the will is essentially free, and the way that Augustine moves from the essential freedom of the will to the compatibility of human freedom and divine foreknowledge.

Three Cosmological Arguments

I set out three (modal) cosmological arguments - one for the existence of a necessary fact, one for the existence of a necessary event, and one for the existence of a necessary individual. Although the arguments do not have the same premisses or conclusions, they have the same structure. Moreover, I argue, given some plausible ancillary assumptions, any one of the arguments can be made to do the work of any of the others. I then suggest that the arguments are inconclusive, because they depend on a doubtful principle linking contingency and explicability.