Organized by our own Jon Kvanvig, the third Annual Philosophy of Religion Conference kicks off this afternoon in San Antonio, TX. (I'd gladly trade my foot of snow to be out on the river walk today.) While many of us can't be there in person, you can still enjoy some of the excellent work going on at the conference by reading the posted papers. Perhaps we'll get lucky and some intrepid attendee will post some updates here.
Hi Matt,
Jon chose an excellent venue at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel (though they tried to charge me $15 to park). I gave a paper on how Lewisian realism + counterparts represents and manages some classical Anselmain problems, such as the modal argument from evil. The questions went for an hour and something mainly, I thought, about the unintuitive representation of an all perfect necessary being under Lewis's modal picture. Anyway, lots of tough questions from Greco, Kvanvig, Johnson, Beaty and others whose names I don't know. I'm sure that Jon will be posting someting more substantial as the conference unfolds.
Thanks for the update Mike. I have to confess that I too find the conjunction of an Anselmian being and modal realism not only unintuitive but discomfiting. (Of course those aren't substantial objections.) My worry is that if the account is true it would seem to have negative consequences with regards to theological fatalism. Here I'm, in part, thinking of Adams' ethical argument against modal realism.
If you end up at Dirty Nellies or Howl At The Moon we want pictures. :)
Matt,
Adam's objections actually cut the other way for an Anselmian being. It provides a basis for showing that an Anselmian being may allow preventable suffering (since He must prevent as much as He can in every world He can, and it is not possible to prevent all suffering in all worlds). The objections I ran into focused on Lewis's insistence that worlds do not overlap. So no Anselmian being is in more than one world, and yet it is true that the Anselmian God necessarily exists. As I urged then, this is just a matter of making peace with (or getting more fluent in) Lewisian reduction of modal talk. But that didn't make anyone less uncomfortable. You'll be happy to learn that they are--yet again--expanding and lengthening the Riverwalk. It's going to be unwalkable soon. It's becoming the Rivertrek or something. But still plenty of places to stop if you get a little parched.