The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Foundational Grounding and the Argument from Contingency
Open accessAbstract
The argument from contingency for the existence of God is best understood as a request for an explanation of the total sequence of causes and effects in the universe (‘History’ for short). Many puzzles about how there could be such an explanation arise from the assumption that God is being introduced as one more cause prepended to the sequence of causes that (allegedly) needed explaining. In response to this difficulty, this chapter defends three theses. First, it argues that, if the argument from contingency is to succeed, the explanation of History in terms of God must not be a causal explanation; second, that a particular hypothesis about God’s relation to History—that God is what I call the foundational ground of History—is intelligible and explanatory; third and finally, that the explanatory advantages of this hypothesis cannot be had within the confines of naturalism.
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“But this is problematic given that many theists do affirm the Grounding Thesis.”
From Grounding panentheism (2026) · cites this paper as Pearce (2017)
Citations
Cites
Epistemological Foundations for the Cosmological Argument
Koons, R. (2008) · Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion · doi:10.1093/oso/9780199542659.003.0005 · Cited by 8
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Oberle, T. (2026) · Religious Studies · doi:10.1017/s0034412525100978 · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Pearce, K. L.
- Affiliations
- Trinity College Dublin (IE)
- Corresponding author
- Pearce, Kenneth L.
- ORCID
- Pearce, Kenneth L.
- Venue
- Oxford Scholarship Online
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Published
- 2017-09-21
- OpenAlex
- W2531717418
- Cited by
- 28
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 4.21
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Oxford University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Trinity's Access to Research Output (TARA) (Trinity College Dublin) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Theology and Philosophy of Evil
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics
- Keywords
- argument from contingency, existence of God, causal explanation, naturalism, cosmological argument, divine causation, philosophy of religion
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