[lit-ideas] Roweiana

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  • Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2015 17:23:28 -0400

Some say that the adjective for everything produced by a Rowe is Roweian.
And the plurality of such things Roweiana. And perhaps, since Rowe dealt
with so many topics, it may be opportune to summarise his career.

W. L. Rowe, for it is this Rowe we are talking about, "earned" (as the
Americans put it) his Ph.D. at the Michigan under W. P. Alston.

The use of 'under' here is colloquial. It means under the supervision, but
"the supervision", as Geary says, is otiose, hence the use of "under"
simpliciter.

Alston was well known to Grice and vice versa. In Alston's influential
"Philosophy of Language" Alston has the cheek (or moxie, as the Americans put
it) to class Grice as a proponent of the 'ideational' theory of meaning alla
Locke, and right he is, too!

But back to our topic: Roweiana.

Under Alston, then, Rowe wrote an essay — the basis for his first book,
typically —on Paul Tillich’s philosophical theology -- "if you heard of him,"
Geary adds. As Geary notes, the -ich in Tillich is pronounced as the -och
in "Loch Ness" ("if you've been there," he adds)

Rowe philosophised at Purdue and was President of the American
Philosophical Association’s Central Division -- there are three divisions that
correspond to the geography of the nation: the Eastern Division, the Pacific
Division, and the Central Division ("The word 'division,' Geary adds, "is not
figurative there").

Rowe wrote a second essay focusing mainly on Samuel Clarke’s version of
the cosmological argument for the existence of a necessary being.

Clarke thought that his self was "not necessary," while God's self was. He
was almost excomunicated by the monarch of Britain, but since a monarch
cannot excommunicate, he wasn't.

David Hume (his original surname was originally spelled "Home") had
attacked this sort of argument by means of a 'material conditional' (to use a
term introduced almost to British philosophy by Sir Karl Popper as he claims)
stating that if each member of an infinite series of dependent beings is
explained by another member of that series, the entire series is explained.

Rowe rejects Hume’s claim on the grounds that explaining each dependent
being in terms of another leaves unexplained why the collection of all
dependent beings has any members at all.

Rowe nevertheless and typically finds Clarke’s argument unpersuasive
because it depends on a dubious principle of sufficient reason -- which
incidentally, wasn't dubious one bit to Leibniz.

Beginning in with his famous essay "The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties
of Atheism," Rowe published numerous essays defending an argument from
evil against theism.

The argument from evil relates to Grice's obsession with 'good'. He once
asked Seth Bernadette, "Do you prefer to be good or nice?". "Good of course,"
was Bernadette's answer. The 'of course' irritated Grice, who then
reparteed: "Really?". Things were calmed down with the intervention of Rogers
Albritton (Hintikka was also there -- the Harvard cafeteria): "There are
people
like THAT, you know."

The antonym of 'good' is 'evil'.

Rowe denies that a logical incompatibility between God’s existence and
known facts about evil can be established.

Rather, Rowe maintains that theists face an evidential problem of evil.

-- while Grice faced a problem of 'nice'.

In Rowe’s distinctive argument, however, the crucial evidence is not that
our world contains horrendous evils, but that we cannot even conceive of any
goods that justify God’s allowing those evils.

A more recent essay by Rowe challenges the view that God is both free and
perfectly good.

This is an attack of A. J. P. Kenny (who was Oxford Wilde lecturer in
natural theology) in his "The god of the philosophers".

For either, Rowe claims, there is a best of all possible worlds or there
isn’t.

Rowe argues with material conditionals, to use Popper's jargon.

If there is, a perfectly good God must create it and so is not free.

If there is not, no matter which world God freely chooses to create, it is
possible to create a better one, which, Rowe argues, implies that God is
not perfectly good.

Grice thought that perhaps Rowe meant 'implicates', since this is more than
a matter of mere entailment, where 'mere' is used alla McEvoy.

Rowe was a genius.

He was also a warm and extraordinarily gracious man, a beautiful "soul"
(remember "The Souls", that élite club that took its name from the overuse of
'soul' in colloquial posh English? -- "She's such a nice soul"), who had a
gift for making others feel welcome and at ease.

Speranza

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