Philosophy

Philosophy Professor Dr. Klaas Kraay awarded Templeton Research Fellowship

 FEBRUARY 2011

Dr. Klaas Kraay of the Department of Philosophy has been awarded a prestigious Templeton Research Fellowship at Oxford University for the academic year 2011-2012. Klaas’s project is titled “God, Possible Worlds, and the Multiverse”. A central theistic doctrine holds that God is the creator and sustainer of all that is. In the contemporary philosophical literature, God’s choice of a world is typically construed as follows: God surveys the set of all possible worlds, and then freely chooses exactly one for actualization, based on its axiological status. The world so selected by God is the actual world. Klaas hopes to develop and defend the view that if theism is true, the world God selects for actualization is a multiverse comprising all and only those universes worthy of being created and sustained by God. He further hopes to show that, if theism is true, this multiverse is the only possible world. He will explore the consequences of these views for theism, and will consider the connections between these views and various multiverse theories in contemporary physics and cosmology.

Please see the official announcement at http://www.oxfordtempletonfellows.com/winners201112.html.