Philosophy Club Meeting

Join us in Auerbach Hall 321 at the University of Hartford or online this Wednesday, April 2, from 1 p.m.–2 p.m. for our next meeting of the Philosophy Club as Clark Sexton presents on the "Problem of Evil."

To join meeting online, use this link.

The "Problem of Evil" is a perennial question of philosophy that pits the existence of evil in the world against the existence of God, the supreme being.

Here is Clark’s outline:

The Problem of Evil

1. The Phenomena to Be Explained

The existence of evil (i.e., the occurrence of less than ideal circumstances)

2. The Problem

Why is there evil?

The Classic Version of the Problem

Premise 1: If there were an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god, then there would be no evil in the world.

Premise 2: There is evil in the world. There is no omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent god.

3. Engaging With the Problem

Unlike other ("negative") arguments, The Problem of Evil does not merely undermine the merits of arguments for the existence of a god. Rather, it provides us with a "positive" argument, a reason for claiming there is no God. It is in that sense, not merely a skeptical argument for doubting whether there is a god, but rather a reason for thinking there is no such being.

4. Responses to the Problem

Reject Premise 2 = claim there actually is no evil in the world

Reject Premise 1 = claim that the conditional claim is false

5. The Standard Defense to the Problem

The Free-Will Defense

6. Logical Gaps in the Defense (Background: different kinds of evil)

Moral evil

Natural evil

Logical Gap 1: The Free Will Defense Does Not Explain Natural Evil

Logical Gap 2: The Free Will Defense Does Not Explain Degrees of Evil

7. Other Explanations for Evil?

No Good Without Evil Defense

8. The Seriousness of the Problem of Evil

Clark Sexton of Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, earned doctorates both in Computer Science from Kansas State University and in Philosophy from the University of Kansas. His research in Computer Science was in Artificial Intelligence, and, more specifically, Natural Language Processing. For this research, he implemented an NLP system that could parse a wide range of syntactic structures of English, perform type-checking to determine whether a sentence is meaningful, and disambiguate certain ambiguous expressions.

Clark continued his exploration of the relations of meanings in his dissertation in Philosophy, in which he presented a brief history of the analytic/synthetic distinction, replied to Quine's objections, and provided and presented arguments for his own account of the distinction.

The University of Hartford Philosophy Club has an informal, jovial atmosphere. It is a place where students, professors, and people from the community at large meet as peers. Sometimes presentations are given, followed by discussion. Other times, topics are hashed out by the whole group.

Presenters may be students, professors, or people from the community. Anyone can offer to present a topic. The mode of presentation may be as formal or informal as the presenter chooses.

Come and go as you wish. Bring friends. Suggest topics and activities. Take over the club! It belongs to you! Just show up! - Brian Skelly (bskelly@hartford.edu; 413.273.2273)