The Nature of Necessity by Alvin Plantinga

Michael Bergmann and Richard Otte each engage aspects of the problem of evil. Van Inwagen addresses Plantinga's critique of materialism by developing a stance on causation that makes it possible to respond to at least some of the most pressing objections to materialism. Plantinga is an unapologetic defender of dualism - the view that minds are immaterial substances - and he holds that materialism faces intractable problems accounting for consciousness and intentionality. In 'Causation and the Mental,' Peter van Inwagen engages Plantinga's longstanding interest in the philosophy of mind. If Sosa is correct, Descartes' epistemological approach bears affinities to Plantinga's own religious epistemology, a point nicely made by Ray VanArragon in his response to Sosa. Sosa offers a novel and intriguing argument that Descartes was not a Classical Foundationalist, but instead embraced a version of virtue epistemology. Merricks discusses a range of objections to the 'received view' on singular propositions, including the objections that belief in singular propositions is incompatible with another aspect of Plantinga's modal realism, serious actualism.Įrnest Sosa addresses an important aspect of Plantinga's epistemological work in 'Descartes and Virtue Epistemology.' Plantinga has famously argued that Descartes was one of the fountainheads of the meta-epistemological position known as Classical Foundationalism and that Classical Foundationalism is self-referentially incoherent. The brand of modal realism Plantinga defends includes a commitment to the idea that singular propositions have as constituents the objects to which they directly refer. In his essay, 'Singular Propositions,' Trenton Merricks critically engages metaphysical issues that emerge out of Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity. The topics addressed by the essays are as diverse as Plantinga's own work. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at that conference. They gathered not only because Plantinga is world-renowned for his contribution to the fields of epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion, but also because 'Al' - as most of the conference participants know him - is their friend, mentor, and/or former professor. On May 21-23, 2010, nearly three hundred people gathered to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga.

But some retirement celebrations require a little something extra - like an academic conference and a book.

The culmination of a long and fruitful career is always something worth celebrating.

The Nature of Necessity by Alvin Plantinga