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Brian Leftow has written 4 work(s)
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Cover for 9780521807463 Cover for 9780521002059 Cover for 9780521821407 Cover for 9780521528924 Cover for 9780801424595 Cover for 9780801475221 Cover for 9780199263356 Cover for 9780198738961
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By Brian Davies (editor) and Brian Leftow (editor)

Hardcover:

9780521807463 | Cambridge Univ Pr, January 17, 2005, cover price $110.00

Paperback:

9780521002059 | Cambridge Univ Pr, January 17, 2005, cover price $39.99

cover image for 9780521821407
By Brian Davies (editor) and Brian Leftow (editor)

Hardcover:

9780521821407 | Cambridge Univ Pr, March 31, 2006, cover price $120.00

Paperback:

9780521528924, titled "Summa Theologiae: Questions on God" | Cambridge Univ Pr, March 31, 2006, cover price $54.99

cover image for 9780801475221

Hardcover:

9780801424595 | Cornell Univ Pr, May 1, 1991, cover price $55.00

Paperback:

9780801475221 | Cornell Univ Pr, September 30, 2009, cover price $39.95

cover image for 9780198738961
Brian Leftow offers a theory of the possible and the necessary in which God plays the chief role, and a new sort of argument for God's existence. It has become usual to say that a proposition is possible just in case it is true in some "possible world" (roughly, some complete history a universe might have) and necessary just if it is true in all. Thus much discussion of possibility and necessity since the 1960s has focused on the nature and existence (or not) of possible worlds. God and Necessity holds that there are no such things, nor any sort of abstract entity. It assigns the metaphysical 'work' such items usually do to God and events in God's mind, and reduces "broadly logical" modalities to causal modalities, replacing possible worlds in the semantics of modal logic with God and His mental events. Leftow argues that theists are committed to theist modal theories, and that the merits of a theist modal theory provide an argument for God's existence. Historically, almost all theist modal theories base all necessary truth on God's nature. Leftow disagrees: he argues that necessary truths about possible creatures and kinds of creatures are due ultimately to God's unconstrained imagination and choice. On his theory, it is in no sense part of the nature of God that normal zebras have stripes (if that is a necessary truth). Stripy zebras are simply things God thought up, and they have the nature they do simply because that is how God thought of them. Thus Leftow's essay in metaphysics takes a half-step toward Descartes' view of modal truth, and presents a compelling theist theory of necessity and possibility.

Hardcover:

9780199263356 | Oxford Univ Pr, November 8, 2012, cover price $110.00 | About this edition: Brian Leftow offers a theory of the possible and the necessary in which God plays the chief role, and a new sort of argument for God's existence.

Paperback:

9780198738961 | Oxford Univ Pr, June 16, 2015, cover price $45.00

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