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Handbook of the 1St World Congress on Logic and Religion 2 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 3 HANDBOOK OF THE 1ST WORLD CONGRESS ON LOGIC AND RELIGION João Pessoa, Abril 1-5. 2015, Brazil EDITED BY RICARDO SOUSA SILVESTRE JEAN-YVES BÉZIAU 4 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 5 CONTENTS 1. The 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 6 1.1. Aim of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 6 1.2. Call for Papers 1 1.3. Organizers 9 1.3.1. Organizing Committee 9 1.3.2. Scientific Committee 9 1.4. Realization 11 1.5. Sponsors 11 2. Abstracts 12 2.1 Keynote Talks 12 2.2 Contributed Talks 31 3. Index of names 183 3.1. Keynote Speakers 183 3.2. Contributed Speakers 183 6 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 1. THE 1ST WORLD CONGRESS ON LOGIC AND RELIGION 1.1. Aim of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion Although logic, symbol of rationality, may appear as opposed to religion, both have a long history of cooperation. Philosophical theology, ranging from Anselm to Gödel, has provided many famous proofs for the existence of God. On the other side, many atheologians, such as Hume, for example, have developed powerful arguments meant to disproof God’s existence. These arguments have been scrutinized and developed in many interesting ways by twentieth century analytic philosophy of religion. Moreover, in the Bible the logos is assimilated to God, which has been reflected in western philosophy in different ways by philosophers such as Leibniz and Hegel. Other religions, such as Buddhism, Islam and many hindu orthodox schools such as Nyaya and Vedanta are strongly connected to reasoning. Despite of this, it seems that as an academic research field the area of logic and religion has still to be consolidated. The aim of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion is to fill in his gap, providing a place where logicians from all fields, as well as theologians from all religions, can get together to hear from each other on the late developments of the relations between logic and religion. The 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 7 1.2. Call for Papers This will be the first world congress on logic and religion. Relations between logic in all its dimensions – philosophical, mathematical, computational and linguistic – and the different religions will be examined. To submit a contribution send a one page abstract to: [email protected]. All talks dealing with the relation between logic and religion are welcome, in particular those falling into the categories below. Peer-reviewed papers will be published after the congress in a book and/or a special issue of a journal with publishers of international recognition. Logic and the Main Religions buddhism christianism talmudism islamism taoism zoroastrianism hinduism jainism Arguments for or against God's Existence ontological arguments (Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, etc) cosmological arguments teleological and design arguments arguments from religious experiences arguments from evil foreknowledge and free-will divine hiddenness Gödel's proof and other formal proofs Logic and Belief doxastic logic 8 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion belief and truth belief and knowledge possible worlds agnosticism skepticism atheism epistemic paradoxes Logic and the Concept of God perfection, eternity, infinity holiness omnipotence, omniscience goodness pantheism compossibility of divine attributes Scientific Conceptualization And Religion evolution and creation life and death chance, causality, determinism The 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 9 1.3. Organizers 1.3.1 Organizing Committee Ricardo Silvestre (Co-Chair), Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil Jean-Yves Béziau (Co-Chair), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Giovanni da Silva de Queiroz, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil Cândida Jaci de Sousa Melo, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil Maria Lewtchuk Espindola, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil Itala D'Ottaviano, UNICAMP, Brazil Daniel Durante, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil Tâmara Mirely Silveira, State University of Paraíba, Brazil Frank Sautter, Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil Ísis Andrade, Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil Thiago Almeida, Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil 1.3.2 Scientific Committee Fabio Bertato, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil Frode Bjørdal, UFRN, Brazil and University of Oslo, Norway Walter Carnielli, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil Jonardon Ganeri, New York University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Brendan Gillon, McGill University, Canada Laurent Lafforgue, IHÉS, Bures-sur-Yvette, France Philip Larrey, Pontifical Lateran University, Vatican Dilip Loundo, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil Fabien Schang, Moscow State University, Russia Eleonore Stump, Saint Louis University, USA Agnaldo Cuoco Portugal, University of Brasília, Brazil Flavio Augusto Senra Ribeiro, Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Rob van der Sandt, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands 10 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion Anand Jayprakash Vaidya, San José State University, USA The 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 11 1.4. Realization The 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion is realized by Federal University of Campina Grande, Federal University of Paraíba, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy. 1.5. Sponsors The event is sponsored by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the State Government of Paraíba, the Formation and Education Institute (IFE), Campinas, and the Graduate Program in Philosophy of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). 12 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion 2. ABSTRACTS 2.1. Keynote Talks BENEDIKT PAUL GÖCKE DID GOD KNOW IT? GOD'S RELATION TO A WORLD OF CHANCE AND RANDOMNESS Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, UK [email protected] A common type of argument against the existence of God is to argue that certain essential features associated with the existence of God are inconsistent with certain other features to be found in the actual world. A recent example of this type of argument against the existence of God is based on the assumption that there are random processes or chancy states of affairs in the actual world that contradict that God is the absolute sovereign over his creation: Chancy states of affairs are said to entail a denial of divine providence or omniscience. However, more often than not this apparent conflict is formulated only intuitively and lacks sufficient conceptual clarification of the crucial terms involved. As a consequence, it is seldom clear where the conflict really lies. In what follows, I firstly provide a brief analysis of chance and randomness before I turn to cosmological and evolutionary arguments against the existence of God that in some way or other are based on chance and randomness. I end by way of comparing three popular conceptions of God as regards their ability to deal with God’s relation to a world of chance and randomness. Neither classical theism, nor open theism, nor indeed process panentheism has difficulties to account for God’s relation to a world of chance and randomness. Abstracts 13 CHRISTOPH BENZMÜLLER GÖDEL'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT REVISITED Findings from a Computer-Supported Analysis Freie Universität Berlin, Germany [email protected] Gödel’s ontological argument has been analysed for the first-time with an unprecedent degree of detail and formality with the help of higher-order automated theorem provers. From Gödel's premises, the computer proved: necessarily, there exists God. On the other hand, the theorem provers have also confirmed prominent criticism on Gödel's ontological argument, and they found some new results about it. In this talk I will present and discuss the main findings of our ongoing computer-supported analysis of variants of Gödel's ontological argument. The background theory of the presented work offers a novel perspective towards a computational metaphysics. 14 Handbook of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion DANIEL VANDERVEKEN ILLOCUTIONARY LOGIC, PRINCIPIA ETHICA AND THE DEONTIC LOGIC INTRINSIC TO ANY RELIGION Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada [email protected] Illocutionary logic contains a new logic of action, attitudes and directives which can interpret sentences of any type (declarative or not) and formalize the principles of practical as well as theoretical valid inferences. Any religion deals with what is good and bad. Any assertion that it is good (or bad) to carry out an action commits the speaker to giving the directive “Carry out (or do not carry out) that action!” Thanks to illocutionary logic one can formulate a new and more adequate deontic logic stating the universal ethical principles intrinsic to any religion. I will formulate and explain this new deontic logic and show that it eliminates well known paradoxes. Abstracts 15 DANIEL VON WACHTER IS THERE ROOM FOR MIRACLES IN THE CAUSAL ORDER OF THE WORLD? Internationale Akademie für Philosophie im Fürstentum, Liechtenstein [email protected] In 1655 Thomas Hobbes published the claim that all events are determined by preceding events. He held that this claim, determinism, is true a priori, as a matter of logic. Similarly, Immanuel Kant claimed that his principle of causality is true a priori. In the 19th century many theologians came to believe in determinism and therefore rejected the existence of divine interventions. In this talk, I shall argue that the a priori reasoning behind determinism is mistaken and also that Newton‘s laws do not entail determinism. We need to abandon entirely the Hobbesian-Humean view of the causal structure of the world. It turns out that there is no problem of whether there is room for miracles, even if, as quantum mechanics suggests, the laws of nature are not probabilistic.
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