Truthmaking, resemblance, and divine simplicity
According to the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, if an intrinsic predication of the form ‘God is F’ is true, then God's F-ness exists and is identical with God. To avoid the absurdity of identifying God with a property, a number of philosophers have proposed that God's F-ness sh...
| Published in: | Religious studies |
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| Subtitles: | Special issue: "The Existence and Nature of Deities" |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2022
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| In: |
Religious studies
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Simplicity of God
/ Truth maker
/ Attributes of God
/ Similarity
/ Nominalism
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| RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism NBC Doctrine of God |
| Further subjects: | B
Divine Simplicity
B the truthmaker interpretation of divine simplicity B truthmaker theory B the objective similarity argument |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | According to the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, if an intrinsic predication of the form ‘God is F’ is true, then God's F-ness exists and is identical with God. To avoid the absurdity of identifying God with a property, a number of philosophers have proposed that God's F-ness should be interpreted, not as a property God possesses, but as the truthmaker for ‘God is F’, which is God himself. I shall argue that given some plausible assumptions, the truthmaker interpretation would undermine the highly plausible idea that there are ‘natural’ predicates which apply univocally or (at least) analogically to both God and some created beings. The only way in which the advocate of the truthmaker interpretation can avoid this problem is to embrace wholesale radical nominalism (with its own costs). That is to say, the truthmaker interpretation is far more constrained than it might initially appear to be. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-901X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religious studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0034412521000123 |