Zaproszenie na Seminarium Logiczne: wykład dr. hab. Rafała Urbaniaka, IF UW, 16.03.2016, s.4

Serdecznie zapraszamy do udziału w kolejnym spotkaniu Seminarium Logicznego. Spotkanie odbędzie się 16 marca 2016 roku o godz. 18.30 w Instytucie Filozofii UW (ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 3) w sali nr. 4. Tym razem naszym gościem będzie dr hab. Rafał Urbaniak (IFSiD Uniwersytet Gdański, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Ghent), który wygłosi wykład pt. ,,Probabilistic Argument for Theism vs. Formal Constraints”.

It is our pleasure to invite everybody interested in logic to the next meeting of the Logical Seminar, which will take place on 16th February 2016 at 6.30 p.m. in the Institute of Philosophy (3, Krakowskie Przedmieście St.), room 4. Our guest will be dr hab. Rafał Urbaniak (IFSiD Uniwersytet Gdański, Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of Ghent) who will give a lecture „Probabilistic Argument for Theism vs. Formal Constraints”.

Abstract
Authors: Rafał Urbaniak, Michał T. Godziszewski
The talk is an application of some tools of contemporary formal epistemology to the philosophical problem of rationality of theism and metaphysical discussion concerning the existence of God.
We study mathematical features of the so-called probabilistic argument for theism, pointing out some methodological and conceptual issues as well.
A proponent of the probabilistic argument for the existence of God usually tries to point out a certain feature of the world E such that the probability that the world has E is low, but the existence of God (H) makes the world having E quite high. From these premises, the theist then concludes that the probability that God exists is quite high.
The main current proponent of the probabilistic argument for theism is Richard Swinburne. We briefly recapitulate his argument from The Existence of God and discuss some known philosophical challenges to it, arguing that some of the strains of the debate are blind alleys for methodological or conceptual reasons.
The main part of the talk consists of an analysis of different formal constraints that the argument is subjected to. We consider the interplay of upper and lower bounds on the credences c(E), c(H), c(E | H) and c(H | E) resulting from the axioms of probability and from the assumption that the updating part of the argument is supposed to convince an atheist.
We also study a variant of the argument in which one considers low c(E | ~ H) in contrast with high credence c(E | H) instead of considering low c(E) in contrast with high c(E | H). We argue that this version is slightly more favorable for the theist for technical reasons.