Robert C Koons | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)
Papers by Robert C Koons
The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, 2018
The so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics has been extant now for nearly sixt... more The so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics has been extant now for nearly sixty years, beginning as H. Everett III’s doctoral dissertation in 1957 [?], with further contributions by B. DeWitt and N. Graham in their 1973 book, The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [?]. The Everett approach takes quantum mechanics both realistically and as a stand-alone, autonomous theory of the world, not in need of a separate theory of measurement to bridge the apparent gap between the deterministic evolution of the wave-function in a highly abstract, probabilistic space and empirically observable statistics in the laboratory. Instead, Everett proposed that all of the apparently contradictory macroscopic results assigned some finite probability by the theory are equally real, coexisting in distinct sets of relative states. DeWitt and others later identified these clusters of mutually consistent relative states with distinct and co-existing worlds or branches of the w...
Whenever philosophers bother to offer a defense for philosophical naturalism, they typically appe... more Whenever philosophers bother to offer a defense for philosophical naturalism, they typically appeal to the authority of natural science. Science is supposed to provide us with a picture of the world so much more reliable and well-supported than that provided by any non-scientific source of information that we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to withhold belief in anything that is not an intrinsic part of our our best scientific picture of the world. This scientism is taken to support philosophical naturalism, since, at present, our best scientific picture of
The Kalam argument for God’s existence, which was pioneered by John Philoponus (490-570), develop... more The Kalam argument for God’s existence, which was pioneered by John Philoponus (490-570), developed by Islamic philosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Ghazali, and championed in recent years by William Lane Craig (Craig 1979) and by me (Koons 2014), is an attempt to prove that the universe must have had a cause, a role which God seems best suited to fit. The argument typically takes the following form:
Philosophical Studies, 2020
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
Argument Q, the seventeenth argument in Plantinga’s battery, concerns the problem of explaining h... more Argument Q, the seventeenth argument in Plantinga’s battery, concerns the problem of explaining how we can take seriously our capacity for intuition in such areas as logic, arithmetic, morality, and philosophy. This argument involves a comparison between theistic and non-theistic accounts of these cognitive capacities of human beings. The argument can take three forms: an inference to the best explanation, an appeal to something like the causal theory of knowledge, and an argument turning on the potential threat of undercutting epistemic defeaters concerning the reliability of intuition. All three support the conclusion that we can have intuitive knowledge only if the reliability of that intuition is adequately grounded, as it can be by God’s creation of us.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2018
Philosophia Christi, 2002
There are three accounts of divine providence: the Thomistic-Augustinian account, the Molinist ac... more There are three accounts of divine providence: the Thomistic-Augustinian account, the Molinist account, and the open theist account. Of the three, the Thomistic account has received relatively little attention in recent years, largely because it is been understood to be a form of theological compatibilism or soft determinism, and compatibilism has been subject to powerful objections, most notably those of van Inwagen. In fact, it is possible for a Thomistic account to be robustly incompatibilist and indeterministic, much more so than its Molinist rival. By combining recent developments in the metaphysics of causation with the fertile suggestions of Oxford theologian Austin Farrer, I develop a Thomistic account of providence and freedom that respects the reality of human freedom and provides an adequate foundation for a free will theodicy.
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
Functionalism in the theory of mind requires an account of function that has a normative componen... more Functionalism in the theory of mind requires an account of function that has a normative component—mere conditional connection (whether indicative or sub-junctive) is not enough. For instance, a component of a computing system isn’t an adder just in case its output is always or would always be the sum of the inputs, since any computing system in a world with as much indeterminism as ours can err or malfunction. Two general reductions of normative language have been proposed that one might wish to apply to the problem of defining proper function: the evolutionary reduction (Wright, Millikan) and the agential reduction (Plantinga). We argue that whatever the merits of the reductions in other contexts, a functionalist theory of mind that defines proper function in either of these ways must fail. The argument proceeds by first showing the agential reduction is viciously circular in the context of a functionalist theory of agency. Second, if functionalism about mind is true and proper fu...
The Atlas of Reality, 2017
I propose to give a solution to the sorites paradox with respect to monadic predicates expressing... more I propose to give a solution to the sorites paradox with respect to monadic predicates expressing sensible qualities that is squarely within the epistemicist camp of Williamson (1994, 1996), Sorenson (1988, 2001), and Rescher (2009). In particular, I will address what appears to be the Achilles’ heel of that account: namely, the problem of giving a plausible story about how an exact boundary around the extension of such predicates can be determined by the cooperation of the world and our linguistic practices. This solution will rely on recent work on the metaphysics of properties and thus will provide a metaphysical, rather than epistemological, defense of epistemicism. I will focus on the sorites paradox as the entrance point into the problem.
The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics
To understand the ethos of a people, examine their system of education. Educating the young is an... more To understand the ethos of a people, examine their system of education. Educating the young is an essential human act, and in the institutions of a society we can see most clearly the people’s aspirations, their conception of our ultimate end, and their fundamental beliefs about human nature and our place in the cosmos.
Faith and Philosophy, 2001
Faith and Philosophy, 1993
The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism, 2018
The so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics has been extant now for nearly sixt... more The so-called Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics has been extant now for nearly sixty years, beginning as H. Everett III’s doctoral dissertation in 1957 [?], with further contributions by B. DeWitt and N. Graham in their 1973 book, The Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics [?]. The Everett approach takes quantum mechanics both realistically and as a stand-alone, autonomous theory of the world, not in need of a separate theory of measurement to bridge the apparent gap between the deterministic evolution of the wave-function in a highly abstract, probabilistic space and empirically observable statistics in the laboratory. Instead, Everett proposed that all of the apparently contradictory macroscopic results assigned some finite probability by the theory are equally real, coexisting in distinct sets of relative states. DeWitt and others later identified these clusters of mutually consistent relative states with distinct and co-existing worlds or branches of the w...
Whenever philosophers bother to offer a defense for philosophical naturalism, they typically appe... more Whenever philosophers bother to offer a defense for philosophical naturalism, they typically appeal to the authority of natural science. Science is supposed to provide us with a picture of the world so much more reliable and well-supported than that provided by any non-scientific source of information that we are entitled, perhaps even obliged, to withhold belief in anything that is not an intrinsic part of our our best scientific picture of the world. This scientism is taken to support philosophical naturalism, since, at present, our best scientific picture of
The Kalam argument for God’s existence, which was pioneered by John Philoponus (490-570), develop... more The Kalam argument for God’s existence, which was pioneered by John Philoponus (490-570), developed by Islamic philosophers such as al-Kindi and al-Ghazali, and championed in recent years by William Lane Craig (Craig 1979) and by me (Koons 2014), is an attempt to prove that the universe must have had a cause, a role which God seems best suited to fit. The argument typically takes the following form:
Philosophical Studies, 2020
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018
Argument Q, the seventeenth argument in Plantinga’s battery, concerns the problem of explaining h... more Argument Q, the seventeenth argument in Plantinga’s battery, concerns the problem of explaining how we can take seriously our capacity for intuition in such areas as logic, arithmetic, morality, and philosophy. This argument involves a comparison between theistic and non-theistic accounts of these cognitive capacities of human beings. The argument can take three forms: an inference to the best explanation, an appeal to something like the causal theory of knowledge, and an argument turning on the potential threat of undercutting epistemic defeaters concerning the reliability of intuition. All three support the conclusion that we can have intuitive knowledge only if the reliability of that intuition is adequately grounded, as it can be by God’s creation of us.
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 2018
Philosophia Christi, 2002
There are three accounts of divine providence: the Thomistic-Augustinian account, the Molinist ac... more There are three accounts of divine providence: the Thomistic-Augustinian account, the Molinist account, and the open theist account. Of the three, the Thomistic account has received relatively little attention in recent years, largely because it is been understood to be a form of theological compatibilism or soft determinism, and compatibilism has been subject to powerful objections, most notably those of van Inwagen. In fact, it is possible for a Thomistic account to be robustly incompatibilist and indeterministic, much more so than its Molinist rival. By combining recent developments in the metaphysics of causation with the fertile suggestions of Oxford theologian Austin Farrer, I develop a Thomistic account of providence and freedom that respects the reality of human freedom and provides an adequate foundation for a free will theodicy.
Oxford Scholarship Online, 2017
Functionalism in the theory of mind requires an account of function that has a normative componen... more Functionalism in the theory of mind requires an account of function that has a normative component—mere conditional connection (whether indicative or sub-junctive) is not enough. For instance, a component of a computing system isn’t an adder just in case its output is always or would always be the sum of the inputs, since any computing system in a world with as much indeterminism as ours can err or malfunction. Two general reductions of normative language have been proposed that one might wish to apply to the problem of defining proper function: the evolutionary reduction (Wright, Millikan) and the agential reduction (Plantinga). We argue that whatever the merits of the reductions in other contexts, a functionalist theory of mind that defines proper function in either of these ways must fail. The argument proceeds by first showing the agential reduction is viciously circular in the context of a functionalist theory of agency. Second, if functionalism about mind is true and proper fu...
The Atlas of Reality, 2017
I propose to give a solution to the sorites paradox with respect to monadic predicates expressing... more I propose to give a solution to the sorites paradox with respect to monadic predicates expressing sensible qualities that is squarely within the epistemicist camp of Williamson (1994, 1996), Sorenson (1988, 2001), and Rescher (2009). In particular, I will address what appears to be the Achilles’ heel of that account: namely, the problem of giving a plausible story about how an exact boundary around the extension of such predicates can be determined by the cooperation of the world and our linguistic practices. This solution will rely on recent work on the metaphysics of properties and thus will provide a metaphysical, rather than epistemological, defense of epistemicism. I will focus on the sorites paradox as the entrance point into the problem.
The Culture of Immodesty in American Life and Politics
To understand the ethos of a people, examine their system of education. Educating the young is an... more To understand the ethos of a people, examine their system of education. Educating the young is an essential human act, and in the institutions of a society we can see most clearly the people’s aspirations, their conception of our ultimate end, and their fundamental beliefs about human nature and our place in the cosmos.
Faith and Philosophy, 2001
Faith and Philosophy, 1993
Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature (Routledge, forthcoming), 2021
The last two decades have witnessed a resurgence of ‘Aristotelian’ metaphysics within mainstream ... more The last two decades have witnessed a resurgence of ‘Aristotelian’ metaphysics within mainstream philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics and the philosophy of science. Few philosophers, however, have engaged directly with the question of how a neo-Aristotelian metaphysics of nature might change the landscape for theological discussion concerning the natural order that is being uncovered by the sciences, the place of human beings and other kinds of agents within the natural world, or God’s relation to nature. Our volume seeks to address this need by bringing together new and substantial articles that explore the intersection between a scientifically-updated ‘neo-Aristotelian’ philosophy of nature and a scientifically-engaged theology of nature.
Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science (Routledge), 2017
The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: ... more The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts―such as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"―and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science.
Aristotle's theory of nature offered a number of advantages from a Christian point of view. It al... more Aristotle's theory of nature offered a number of advantages from a Christian point of view. It allowed for a profound difference between human beings and other material entities based on a distinction between rationality and sub-rationality, which fit nicely with the Biblical conception of humans as the unique bearers of the divine image in the physical world. At the same time, Aristotelianism conceived of human desires and aspirations as continuous with the striving of all natural entities to their essence-determined ends, providing an objective and scientific basis for objective norms in ethics, aesthetics, and politics. The Scientific Revolution of the last three hundred years, while clearly enabling an amazing degree of progress in our understanding of the physical basis of the world (both at the very small and very large ends of the scale), occasioned the unnecessary loss of many metaphysical insights of Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, insights which remain essential to the understanding of middle-sized objects-like human beings. The quantum revolution of the last one hundred years has gradually transformed the imaginative landscape of natural science, creating new opportunities for the recovery of those same Aristotelian themes. (191)
Functionalism remains the most promising strategy for 'naturalizing' the mind. We argue that when... more Functionalism remains the most promising strategy for 'naturalizing' the mind. We argue that when functions are defined in terms of conditionals, whether indicative, probabilistic or counterfactual, the resulting version of functionalism is subject to devastating finkish counterexamples. Only functions defined within a powers ontology can provide the right account of normalcy, but the conception of powers must follow classical, Aristotelian lines, since the alternative (an evolutionary account of normativity as proposed by Ruth Garrett Millikan) is inconsistent with a plausible principle of the supervenience of the mind on local conditions.
Recent work on the cosmological argument within the neo-Aristotelian movement in metaphysics.
Standard treatments of the problem of evil assume that God aims at maximizing the surplus of good... more Standard treatments of the problem of evil assume that God aims at maximizing the surplus of good over evil. However, the God of the Bible loves particular creatures, not their sum. Hence, we must distinguish maximizing the good of each person from maximizing some sort of aggregate good. Given the incommensurability of the values involved, the very idea of maximizing the sum total of good is problematic. Moreover, given the deontic constraints involved in creation, there is no reason to believe that each beloved creature enjoys the best life possible for it, a fact relevant to our motivation for humane action.
There is clearly some intimate relation between Aristotelian form and the structure or organizati... more There is clearly some intimate relation between Aristotelian form and the structure or organization of a composite thing. In recent years, some neo-Aristotelian philosophers have proposed that this relation is simply identity: forms are structures. I will argue both that Aristotelian forms (especially substantial forms) are essential elements in an adequate ontology and that they form a sui generis category. Substantial forms are not identical to the structure of composite substances: instead, they are metaphysical components of substances that constitute the metaphysical ground of that structure, in a sense of ground that has been rehabilitated in recent years by Kit Fine, Jonathan Schaffer, Gideon Rosen, and others. Forms are that in virtue of which substances are structured internally as they are.
Since the Galilean Scientific Revolution in the 17 th century, and especially since the death of ... more Since the Galilean Scientific Revolution in the 17 th century, and especially since the death of vitalism and the rise of Darwinian evolutionary theory in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, biologists have treated the Aristotelian notion of 'teleology' (the existence of functions or purposes in nature) as utterly outdated or, at best, as a heuristic device or useful fiction. This is however an untenable position, since biological inquiry exists primarily for the sake of biological knowledge, and biological knowledge is inextricably bound up with teleological concepts, like that of gene or enzyme. Moreover, the very possibility of rational thought and knowledge depends upon a teleological foundation. Alexander Pruss and I have argued that the Functionalist theory of mental states can only work in a teleological setting. In 1 I would like to acknowledge the support during the 2014-15 academic year of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University (for a Visiting Fellowship) and the University of Texas at Austin (for a faculty research grant).
Standard treatments of the problem of evil assume that God aims at maximizing the surplus of good... more Standard treatments of the problem of evil assume that God aims at maximizing the surplus of good over evil. However, the God of the Bible loves particular creatures, not their sum. Hence, we must distinguish maximizing the good of each person from maximizing some sort of aggregate good. Given the incommensurability of the values involved, the very idea of maximizing the sum total of good is problematic. Moreover, given the deontic constraints involved in creation, there is no reason to believe that each beloved creature enjoys the best life possible for it, a fact relevant to our motivation for humane action.
Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature (Routledge), 2021