Paper Topics (WOO-HOO)

Ok, random start to my post, I went home Thursday night b/c I was struggling w/ depression. When I got home I noticed that my sister had opened my brother's Christmas present (one that he never came home to open for Christmas 03) and it's Barney (the drunk from the Simpsons) and Homer drinking Duff beer together and every hour they toast their beers - it's really cool. (My brother was a HUGE Simpsons fan.)

Ok, back to the scheduled topic - Papers.
This semester I'll have to write 4 papers that are 10 pages or longer (double-spaced) which is not a problem because in seminary I frequently had to write 25 page papers that were single-spaced.
(1) Paper for metaphysics, (12-15 pp.) I am going to defend an inflationist view of language. Take the sentence: "Santa Claus doesn't exist." An inflationist claims that what this sentence means is that though Santa Claus is not in existence he could be actualized. I suppose that God could every year stop time and allow Santa Claus' sleigh to fly around the world delivering presents. Anyway, it's possible for Santa Claus to exist, he just doesn't. This is the kind of viewpoint that an inflationist will defend. I would also say that it's possible for Sherlock Homes to exist (including Watson). This is also referred to as Meinongianism, look at the reference at the bottom of this page. I suppose you could make fun of me for defending this view, but that's half the fun of philosophy, making a crazy claim and then defending it. (I'll probably end up believing it, because I somewhat believe it now - maybe I really am a bit insane as the girl says.)

(2) Philosophy of Religion papers, (10pp.) the first one I think I'll either critically examine Alvin Plantinga's refutation of the Freud - Marx criticism of Christianity or defend Plantinga's argument against evolutionary naturalism. Freud-Marx claim that religious belief is wish fulfillment and an escapist mentality. Plantinga claims that evolutionary naturalism is self-refuting because if evolution is true, then we are not designed to hold true beliefs; we are designed to hold beliefs that help us to survive. Hence, if evolutionary naturalism were true, we could not believe it to be true, because we would not be designed to hold true beliefs.
My second paper for phil. of religion is (12pp.) going to critique David Hume's criticism of miracles. He claimed that miracles needed extraordinary evidence because they were improbable claims. Yet, he didn't believe induction was reliable because it relied upon circular reasoning. So my claim is that if induction is not reliable then Hume can't assign probability to miracles, and say that miracles are improbable.

(3) Paper for philosophy of mind (15-20pp.) Quine agrees with Franz Brentano that either no physicalistic account of intentionality (and for that matter, meaning and reference) is possible or intentionality (meaning, reference) is a property of an immaterial mind. Since Quine is a physicalist, he rejects Brentano’s second disjunct. Thus, he was committed to the first disjunct. But rather than admitting that the impossibility of a physicalistic theory of intentionality shows that physicalism is false, Quine took it to show instead that intentionality is a spurious property – nothing actually instantiates such a property Notice that if nothing really has intentionality, then there is no need for a physicalist to give an account of intentionality. Is Quine right, then, to go eliminativist about the mind (intentionality)? Is Brentano’s disjunction a false dilemma?

So if anyone has any input or criticisms concerning my paper topic(s)... just post your opinion in my comment section.