September 7, 2010
Would a Being With All Positive Properties Be God?
Sobel's final objection to ontological arguments is that, even if they are sound, their conclusion does not mean that God exists. That is, according to Sobel, a necessarily existing 'being than which none greater can be conceived' or 'being with all perfections' or 'being with all positive properties' would not be God. His argument for this is rather confusing and depends (1) on a controversial modal intuition, and (2) on an odd definition of 'worshipfulness'. As far as I can tell, the argument goes like this: it is clear (so Sobel claims) that such properties as consciousness, knowledge, power, love,...
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Topic(s):
'Worshipfulness'
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Existence of God
,
Historical Thinkers
,
J. N. Findlay
,
Jordan Howard Sobel
,
Kurt Gödel
,
Ontological Argument
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
Plato
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September 2, 2010
Modal Collapse: Sobel's Objection to Gödel's Ontological Argument
The last ontological argument Sobel discusses is the Leibniz-inspired argument put forward by the famous logician Kurt Gödel. Gödel sets up a formal system in third-order quantified modal logic with equality and abstraction (!) and proves within that system the theorem: □∃xG(x) Where the predicate G is defined as follows: Gx ↔ ∀φ[P(φ) → φ(x)] Where P is primitive. (Sobel includes the complete source texts for Gödel's proof on pp. 144-146.) Now, unsurprisingly, given that the proof was originated by Gödel, everyone agrees that the proof is valid in the formal system. The question is whether there are any interpretations...
Continue reading "Modal Collapse: Sobel's Objection to Gödel's Ontological Argument"
Topic(s):
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Dana Scott
,
Existence of God
,
G. W. Leibniz
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Jordan Howard Sobel
,
Kurt Gödel
,
Metaphysics
,
Modality
,
Ontological Argument
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
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August 30, 2010
A Genuine Dialectical Problem for Ontological Arguments
Sobel spends much of the third chapter
Logic and Theism evaluating the dialectical status of ontological arguments, and, in particular, whether ontological arguers are entitled to the premise that it is possible that there be a perfect being. I am simply going to take the occasion here to state my opinion on the matter.
There is a fundamental dialectical tension in the ontological arguments that start from this premise. If, on the one hand, necessary existence follows trivially from the stipulated definition of perfection, then the argument will beg the question as
Sobel suggests that Anselm's argument does. That is...
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August 25, 2010
Sobel's Argument Against Believing in the Possibility of a Perfect Being
My previous posts on
Sobel's Logic and Theism, have been pretty favorable and made only minor criticisms or qualifications. In this post, my criticism will be much more strenuous for, in his criticism of modern modal ontological arguments, Sobel has made a serious error.
Sobel wants to argue that there is no strong presumption in favor of the possibility of a perfect being, and that, because of contrary evidence (e.g. the problem of evil), if the ontological argument is to benefit the theist (by showing that, necessarily, there is a perfect being), rather than harm the theist (by showing that...
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Topic(s):
Abstract Objects
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Existence of God
,
Jordan Howard Sobel
,
Metaphysics
,
Modality
,
Ontological Argument
,
Ontology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
William Rowe
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August 24, 2010
The Dialectical Appropriateness of Ontological Arguments
After, for some reason or other, spending some 30 dense pages of
Logic and Theism on the laughable ontological arguments of Descartes and Spinoza, Sobel moves on to the more interesting argument advanced by Anselm. (The next chapter deals with versions of the argument set in modern modal logic, such as those of Hartshorne and Plantinga.) In my view, the Descartes and Spinoza arguments don't even look good; the Anselm version at least produces puzzlement, insofar as the reasoning looks valid, yet it seems, intuitively, that no such strong conclusion could ever be derived from such weak premises.
Sobel (fairly uncontroversially...
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Topic(s):
Alvin Plantinga
,
Anselm
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Dialectic
,
Existence of God
,
Gaunilon
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Jordan Howard Sobel
,
Logic
,
Ontological Argument
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
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August 20, 2010
Normative Skepticism and the Existence of God
As I discussed in my last post, Sobel argues that the main requirement anything has to fulfill in order to count as a god is that it must be deserving of worship. However, as Sobel argues on pp. 24-25 of Logic and Theism, this requires that it makes sense to talk about something being worthy or unworthy of worship. An error theory of the normative (a view that questioned whether statements about 'worthiness' and other such things were ever correct), such as the view espoused by J. L. Mackie, would have the result that no matter what might exist in...
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August 18, 2010
Divine Freedom and Worship
This is the first substantive post in my
discussion of Sobel's Logic and Theism. The first chapter of Sobel's book focuses on the question of what people disagree about when they disagree about whether God exists. There are a lot of interesting metaphysical and linguistic issues here, like the meaningfulness of negative singular existentials, but this is all really preliminary to the real purpose of evaluating beliefs in God and the reasons for them, so, although these issues are interesting, I'm going to keep discussion of them to a minimum, and focus on what I take to be the first
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August 17, 2010
Sobel's Logic and Theism: An Introduction to my Forthcoming Discussion
Some time ago, I
promised that I would take time on this blog to seriously engage with some recent work arguing in favor of atheism. The book chosen, mostly on
Brandon's recommendation, was
Jordan Howard Sobel's 2003 Logic and Theism: Arguments For and Against Beliefs in God. This summer I had a fairly long reading list of things more closely related to my main research directions in metaphysics and early modern philosophy so, unfortunately, I did not get started on this earlier. I have, however, now (one week before the start of classes) completed my other reading and begun working...
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August 13, 2010
Quote of the Day: Gutting on Dawkins
Religious believers often accuse argumentative atheists such as Dawkins of being excessively rationalistic, demanding standards of logical and evidential rigor that aren't appropriate in matters of faith. My criticism is just the opposite. Dawkins does not meet the standards of rationality that a topic as important as religion requires. The basic problem is that meeting such standards requires coming to terms with the best available analyses and arguments. This need not mean being capable of contributing to the cutting-edge discussions of contemporary philosophers, but it does require following these discussions and applying them to one's own intellectual problems. Dawkins simply...
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August 12, 2010
More on FWD and Brute Contingencies
Yesterday, I noted that Plantinga's Free Will Defense (FWD), as it appears in The Nature of Necessity (NN) involves some very odd brute contingencies. These brute contingencies are not determined by God, or by anything else at all. They are truly brute: there is no reason or explanation for them. Furthermore, they limit God's power. When Plantinga admits that according to his theory "the power of an omnipotent God [is] limited by the freedom he confers upon his creatures" (NN 190), he cites William Wainwright, "Freedom and Omnipotence", Nous 2 (1968): 293-301. As it turns out, Wainwright is responding to...
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August 11, 2010
Some Odd Brute Contingincies in Plantinga's Free Will Defense
Once upon a time, many philosophers believed that there was a logical problem of evil. That is, it was held that the (obviously true) proposition that there is some evil in the world logically entails that there is no God. (Where God is conceived as omnipotent and perfectly good.) I imagine that a lot of philosophers still believe this, but today few are arguing for it in print. Instead, atheist philosophers now typically put forth an evidentiary problem of evil. That is, they propound an argument something like this: The more evil there is, the less likely it is that...
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August 6, 2010
The Lockean Proviso and Federally Managed Lands
On my recent vacation, I visited a number of national parks (specifically: Crater Lake, Redwood, and Yosemite). This got me thinking about the moral and political aspects of federal land management, including the National Park System. Libertarians are often skeptical of government ownership of anything. However, in this post I want to argue that the Lockean Proviso actually demands such a system of government land management, and so such a system should be supported by libertarians of the Nozickian/Neo-Lockean sort, such as myself. Let's start at the beginning. Locke holds that initially all of earth's natural resources were held in...
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Topic(s):
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Environmental Policy
,
Historical Thinkers
,
John Locke
,
Libertarianism
,
Philosophy
,
Political Philosophy
,
Politics
,
Private Property
,
Robert Nozick
,
The State of Nature
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July 13, 2010
The Frustrations of Ecumenical Dialogue
I believe that ecumenical dialogue is important. For one thing, the current divisions of the Church are not just a shame but a sin. For another thing, I think that Timothy Ware is correct in claiming that God intended for differing perspectives between different linguistic and cultural groups, and also between differing tastes and focuses to balance each other out. Instead (and let me, as a Protestant, admit that the Reformation only made this worse), we tend to congregate with people who think like us and look like us and talk like us and want the same styles of preaching...
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July 9, 2010
Authority, Authoritativeness, and Objectivity
I've just finished reading John Foster's new book, A World For Us: The Case for Phenomenalistic Idealism. Foster had previously defended idealism in his 1982 The Case for Idealism, and many of the basic arguments are the same, though I think the structure is cleaner and easier to grasp. (I've also just finished reading the restored version of Stranger in a Strange Land, so every time I write 'Foster' I'm thinking of the archangel - but that's beside the point.) The main motivation behind Foster's idealism, all the way back to 1982, is the thought that if anything is to...
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Topic(s):
Authoritativeness
,
Authority
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Ecclesiology
,
Epistemology
,
Ethics
,
Idealism/Phenomenalism
,
John Foster
,
Metaphysics
,
Ontology
,
Philosophy
,
Realism
,
Roman Catholic Church
,
The Church
,
Theology
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June 21, 2010
Unrestricted Quantifiers and Fundamental Quantifiers
According to Ted Sider, ontology is concerned with determining what objects are in the scope of the 'unrestricted' universal quantifier. Sider argues that ontological questions thus have genuine objective answers, for there can be no vagueness in the meaning of the unrestricted quantifier. Suppose, says Sider, that there are two precisifications, ∀1 and ∀2 of the universal quantifier ∀. Then, he says, there must be some thing, x, that is in the extension of one, but not the other, of ∀1 and ∀2. But in that case, whichever of ∀1 and ∀2 lacks x in its extension will fail to...
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June 14, 2010
Locke on the Arbitrariness of Ideas of Mixed Modes and Substances
In Locke's discussion of names of mixed modes and names of substances in EHU 3.5-6, he seems to suggest that the ideas of mixed modes are in some way more arbitrary than the ideas of substances. Some commentators, such as Nicholas Jolley (Locke: His Philosophical Thought, 155-161), have found this claim problematic for, according to Locke, ideas of substances are 'the workmanship of the understanding'; they are not given to us by nature. I think, however, that considerations from book two are sufficient to answer this worry. Locke defines mixed modes as "such Combinations of simple Ideas, as are not...
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June 7, 2010
Why Listen to 'Continental' Philosophers?
In a recent edition of Faith and Philosophy (the October 2009 edition, to be exact), there is an exchange between James K. A. Smith and Bruce Ellis Benson about what can or should be done to improve 'Continental' philosophy of religion. The discussion focuses on the reduction of 'enclaves' - i.e. on getting 'Continental' philosophy of religion into mainstream venues, and having dialogue with mainstream (analytic) philosophy of religion. Now, something about this exchange struck me as rather odd: the exchange takes place in a mainstream venue, a philosophy of religion journal read mostly by analytic philosophers. Yet the exchange...
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May 29, 2010
Can Immediate Perception Save Realism? (Hint: No)
As I mentioned in my last post, now that the term is over I am catching up on some stuff I've been meaning to read. Another item on that list is Georges Dicker's "Anti-Berkeley" which appeared in British Journal for the History of Philosophy in 2008. Dicker's aim is to show that many of Berkeley's arguments are good, but immaterialism, nevertheless, does not follow. Dicker thinks that Berkeley's arguments are best seen as showing us how to formulate a better version of materialism than the one common in Berkeley's day. So, for instance, Dicker thinks that Berkeley successfully refutes the...
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Topic(s):
Contemporary Thinkers
,
George Berkeley
,
Georges Dicker
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Idealism/Phenomenalism
,
Metaphysics
,
Ontology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Mind
,
Realism
,
Sense Perception
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May 22, 2010
"In Defense of Ignorant Assertions"
I have posted a new draft to my
workbench, "In Defense of Ignorant Assertions." This very short (~7 pages) paper argues, against Timothy Williamson and Keith DeRose, that knowledge is not a norm on assertion, and provides an alternative explanation for the "modified Moore's Paradox" ('p, but I don't know that p').
Check it out, and come back here to let me know what you think in the comments.
Continue reading ""In Defense of Ignorant Assertions""
May 11, 2010
Leibniz + Adams = Calvinist Theodicy
As I have said before, it is my belief that revealed theology cannot resolve the Calvinist-Arminian debate. Both views (at least in their moderate forms) are both plausible and orthodox; any reason to prefer one to the other will be a philosophical reason, a conclusion of fallible human reason. With this understanding of revealed theology in mind, I reject Calvinism on philosophical grounds, one of which is that I think Calvinism has an extremely difficult time with the problem of evil. In a recent post, The Problem of Evil 101, at Reason From Scripture, Nathanael Taylor presents a 'Reformed' response...
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April 13, 2010
Morality as a System of Assertoric Imperatives
I recently read Philippa Foot's paper "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives" for an ethics class. The paper, as the name suggests, puts forward the view (which Foot has since rejected) that the imperatives of morality are merely hypothetical and not, as Kant had argued, categorical. What this means is that morality tells us how we should act if we want certain things, such as justice and the general happiness of humanity. As Foot recognizes, an untoward consequence of this view is that, if it is true, we can't sensibly tell people that they should want justice or the...
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March 9, 2010
Deontic Utilitarianism, Liberty Utilitarianism, and Deontologism
I just came across the following passage by J.J.C. Smart in Smart and Williams'
Utilitarianism: For and Against: What Bentham, Mill and Moore are all agreed on is that the rightness of an action is to be judged solely by consequences, states of affairs brought about by the action. Of course we shall have to be careful here not to construe 'state of affairs' so widely that any ethical doctrine becomes utilitarian. For if we did so we would not be saying anything at all in advocating utilitarianism. If, for example, we allowed 'the state of having kept a promise'...
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Topic(s):
Amartya Sen
,
Civil Rights
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Deontologism
,
Ethics
,
Free Speech
,
J.J.C. Smart
,
Libertarianism
,
Philosophy
,
Political Philosophy
,
Politics
,
Robert Nozick
,
Utilitarianism
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February 1, 2010
Philosophers' Carnival 103
The 103rd
Philosophers' Carnival is
now up at
Philosophy, etc. with a link to my post on
seeing the world through teleology-colored glasses.
Also of interest in the new philosophers' carnival is
Chris Hallquist's discussion of reformed epistemology and moral realism. In the course of his discussion, Chris gives a narrative of the history of early modern philosophy which is similar to my
Berkeley-centric narrative (despite not mentioning Berkeley): Descartes sets up an impossible program, Hume shows that either Cartesian or classical empiricist assumptions lead inevitably to skepticism, and this motivates a 'Reidian' program...
Continue reading "Philosophers' Carnival 103"
Topic(s):
Alvin Plantinga
,
Blog Carnivals
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
David Hume
,
G. E. Moore
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Historiography of Philosophy
,
Philosophy
,
Rene Descartes
,
The Web
,
Thomas Reid
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January 20, 2010
A Berkeley-Centric Narrative
Continuing the discussion of the historiography of modern philosophy, I want to consider an alternative narrative. The standard narrative is Kant-centric: the rationalists and empiricists spend a century squabbling, then Kant comes along and figures out what's right and what's wrong with each view, resulting in the Critical Philosophy. The key figures, apart from Kant, are Descartes, the great founder of the rationalists; Locke, the great founder of the empiricists; and Hume who called attention to the severe failings of both schools. (When I took intro to modern at Penn, this is exactly the way it went: these were the...
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Topic(s):
Alvin Plantinga
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
David Hume
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Historiography of Philosophy
,
Immanuel Kant
,
John Locke
,
Nicolas Malebranche
,
Philosophy
,
Rene Descartes
,
Thomas Reid
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January 12, 2010
Alternative Groupings of Early Modern Philosophers
Last month, there was some
blog discussion about historiography and teaching methods in early modern philosophy. The standard story is evidently due to Hegel, and continues to be
standard despite being unpopular among specialists in history of modern. It groups modern philosophers before Kant as follows:
Rationalists
Descartes
Spinoza
Leibniz | Empiricists
Locke
Berkeley
Hume |
Dana McCourt, blogging at
The Edge of the American West...
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Topic(s):
Baruch Spinoza
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
David Hume
,
G. W. Leibniz
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Historiography of Philosophy
,
John Locke
,
Nicolas Malebranche
,
Penelope Maddy
,
Philosophy
,
Rene Descartes
,
Thomas Hobbes
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December 2, 2009
Gupta and Idealism: My Project for the Next Two Weeks
It's been a while since I posted anything, and even longer since I posted anything other than Aristotle quotes - I have been busy trying to get my term papers underway. Since I don't expect to have any more time in the near future than I have had in the recent past, I thought I would keep things going around here by posting an outline of one of my projects. Below is a very rough draft of an introduction to one of my two papers (it doesn't have a working title yet) which describes what I hope to accomplish. Comments...
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November 12, 2009
Best Recent Books For and Against Religious Belief
Right now there are two very active comment threads on this blog: the first discussing whether or not I should read The God Delusion and the second listing philosophical science fiction stories. As such, I thought I would combine the religious discussion with the successful attempt at blog bibliography by asking readers to list the best recent books for an against religious belief. I will admit that I actually haven't read any of the books below all the way through; I list them because they are commonly excerpted in philosophy of religion readers (I have read excerpts of most of...
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November 9, 2009
What Caused God?
In comments to my post on
Dawkins and the Philosophers, atheist blogger
Jonathan West has been pushing back against Michael Ruse's
claim that Dawkins' prominent use of the "what caused God?" question is, as Jonathan puts it, 'fatuous.' Jonathan has also pushed this point in a recent
blog post which considers this question in light of Swinburne's 'necessary being' arguments in
The Existence of God. I will first make a few remarks about Swinburne's work in this area, and then proceed to show why the "what caused God?" question is indeed confused. To be fair, I admit...
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Topic(s):
Abstract Objects
,
Alvin Plantinga
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Cosmological Argument
,
David Lewis
,
Existence of God
,
Historical Thinkers
,
James F. Ross
,
Modality
,
Ontological Argument
,
Ontology
,
Peter Unger
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
Plato
,
Richard Dawkins
,
Richard Swinburne
,
Sydney Shoemaker
,
Theology
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November 7, 2009
Subjunctive Phenomenalism and Logical Construction Idealism
Within the last week, I have seen the same mistake in two different recent books on the philosophy of perception: According to phenomenalism, objects are (in John Stuart Mill's excellent phrase) "permanent possibilities of sensation"; they are, in a more recent idiom, "logical constructions" of sense data. (Alva Noë, Action in Perception, 79) Berkeley observed that the philosophical conception that the objects of direct awareness are sense-data (or, in Berkeley's terminology, "ideas") is perfectly compatible with the commonsense conception that the objects of direct awareness are ordinary things (e.g., tomatoes). We can accept both, Berkeley argued, if we recognize the...
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Topic(s):
Alva Noë
,
Anil Gupta
,
Bertrand Russell
,
C. I. Lewis
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Familiar Objects
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Idealism/Phenomenalism
,
Kenneth P. Winkler
,
Metaphysics
,
Ontology
,
Philosophy
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November 5, 2009
Dawkins and the Philosophers
I am periodically asked by my fellow Christians how Christians should respond to Richard Dawkins. I confess to being puzzled by the question of how I personally should respond to Dawkins. This is because a great many non-philosophical atheists take his word as Gospel, and a great many Christians are troubled by his arguments and assertions, but the fact of the matter is that, on the intellectual merits, Dawkins is simply not worth the effort of refuting. In philosophy, it is our practice, in arguing against positions, to target the best version of the view. This is why, for instance,...
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November 2, 2009
Does 'The Desk is Black' Express a Proposition?
According to standard versions of subjunctive phenomenalism, such as the version developed by C. I. Lewis, sentences purporting to be about physical objects can be analyzed into long conjunctions of subjunctive conditionals having to do only with sense data and voluntary actions. It's very difficult to actually state these conditionals, but they are supposed to say things like 'if I'm in such and such a condition, and I do X, I will experience Y'. Alva Noë is not a phenomenalist, but he expresses some similar ideas about the nature of perception. Specifically, Noë argues that perception does not involve the...
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Topic(s):
Alva Noë
,
C. I. Lewis
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Familiar Objects
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Idealism/Phenomenalism
,
Metaphysics
,
Ontology
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Language
,
Philosophy of Mind
,
Sense Perception
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October 25, 2009
Speaking Loosely
Philosophers often use such phrases as 'strictly speaking' or 'in metaphysical rigor' before saying things that might sound outrageous. For instance, many philosophers have denied the existence of entities which everyone 'knows' to exist, such as chairs, or minds, or numbers. The philosopher will almost always prefix such a denial with this sort of modifier. The opposite of speaking strictly is speaking loosely. In early modern philosophy, the 'strict and philosophical' mode of speech was often contrasted with the 'loose and popular' mode. Other philosophers might use the modifier 'strictly and literally.' What is the point of making these qualifications?...
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October 13, 2009
Leibniz's Theistic Case Against Humean Miracles
Most of the recent philosophical literature on miracles focuses on Hume's argument against belief in miracles in EHU 10. There, Hume asserts that all miracles are "violation[s] of the laws of nature" (10.12) and argues that we could never be justified in believing in such events. Call these Law-Breaking Events (LBEs). As Hume recognizes, being an LBE cannot be sufficient for being a miracle; miracles must have the right kind of theological/religious significance. Hume thus gives in a footnote a more precise definition: "A miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition...
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October 7, 2009
Quote of the Day: Robert Adams on Contextualist History of Philosophy as Philosophy
I believe that historical accuracy and careful attention to the historical context are important to the philosophical as well as the historical value of work in the history of philosophy and, conversely, that philosophical argument and critique are important for historical understanding of philosophy. One reason for the philosophical importance of patient and careful attention to the actual meaning of Leibniz's writings in their historical context is that he was indeed a great philosopher, great enough that an arbitrary interpretation of his work, more relevant to our historical context than to his, is unlikely to be as interesting philosophically in...
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October 6, 2009
Quote of the Day: Australians Against Bullshit
"Analytic philosophy is all about bullshit detection, and we [Australians] are very good at that." -
Fiona Cowie, as quoted in
The Australian.
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September 22, 2009
Philosophical Science-Fiction Stories: A Preliminary List
One of the main ways I was turned on to philosophy was via science-fiction, and I continue to be a big science-fiction enthusiast. I am most interested in the classic (c. 1935-1960) short stories, especially those of Theodore Sturgeon. I have been reading through the new Wiley-Blackwell Science Fiction and Philosophy volume, ed. Susan Schneider. This is a good collection of philosophical writing - both from the professional literature and from more popular writers - on topics that have a direct and obvious relation to popular works of science-fiction, with some great short fiction (including Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder"...
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September 17, 2009
Quote of the Day: Berkeley on Combining Ideas Into Objects
One of the big questions in Berkeley interpretation is how and by whom ideas or experiences get put together to form objects. (See, for instance, the end of Margaret Atherton's recent paper "'The Books Are in the Study as Before': Berkeley's Claims About Real Physical Objects".) I've just noticed an interesting passage in Berkeley that ought to be really important to this discussion, though I don't think I've seen it quoted in this connection: [I]t ought to be considered that number (however some may reckon it amongst the primary qualities) is nothing fixed and settled, really existing in things themselves....
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September 8, 2009
Quotes of the Day: Berkeley and 'Functional Role Semantics'
The second approach [to intentionality on the computational model of cognition] is known as functionalism (actually, "functional role semantics" in discussions of meaning) in philosophy, and as procedural semantics in cognitive psychology and computer science. Functionalism says that what gives internal symbols (and external symbols too) their meanings is how they function ... This picture can be bolstered by a consideration of what happens when one first learns Newtonian mechanics. In my own case, I heard a large number of unfamiliar terms more or less all at once: "mass", "force", "energy", and the like. I never was told definitions of...
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August 31, 2009
Quote of the Day: Nadler on Arnauld on the Church's Authoritativeness
I have recently been involved in an interesting discussion on the authority/authoritativeness of the Church over at Called to Communion. In light of this, I thought I would post a selection I came across today on the position of Antoine Arnauld, the French Jansenist theologian and Cartesian philosopher, on this question: Like all Jansenists, [Arnauld] was accused of Calvinism and political subversion. In 1656 he was excluded from the faculty of the Sorbonne for his refusal to submit to the Church on the issue of five propositions condemned as heretical in the encyclical Cum occasione (1653), and which the Pope...
Continue reading "Quote of the Day: Nadler on Arnauld on the Church's Authoritativeness"
August 24, 2009
External Coherence and the Reality of The Matrix
David Chalmers writes: I think that even if I am in a matrix [i.e. any computer simulation similar to the one depicted in The Matrix], my world is perfectly real. A brain in a vat is not massively deluded (at least if it has always been in a vat) ... Philosophers have held this sort of view before. The 18th-century Irish philosopher George Berkeley held, in effect, that appearance is reality ... If this is right, then the world perceived by envatted beings is perfectly real: they have all the right appearances and appearance is reality ("The Matrix as Metaphysics"...
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August 8, 2009
On Pop Philosophers
What exactly is a pop philosopher, and what distinguishes a pop philosopher from a philosopher simpliciter? This question has been on my mind due to trying to explain to people why certain very good pop philosophers, such as C.S. Lewis, are nevertheless not very good philosophers. I will try here to explain what I take the difference to be. It should first be noted that both 'philosopher' and 'pop philosopher' are agency nouns. As such, they are attributed accidentally (inessentially) to a person in virtue of her involvement in certain activities: one person is called a 'butcher' in virtue of...
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July 22, 2009
The Master Zombie Argument
Berkeley's so-called 'Master Argument' and Chalmers' 'Zombie Argument' are two famous arguments that turn on the relationship between conceivability and possibility. I have been thinking for some time about an amusing (and perhaps somewhat troubling) way of putting the two together. First, let me give simplified versions of the two arguments. The Master Argument (MA): (MA1) Whatever is conceived is conceived by some mind. (MA2) Whatever is conceived by a mind is in that mind. Therefore, (MA3) Nothing can be conceived that is not in a mind. (MA4) Whatever is inconceivable is impossible. Therefore, (MA5) It is impossible for anything...
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July 6, 2009
Quote of the Day: The Praying Agnostic
There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as in other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is surely no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift in the ocean, trapped in a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen. - Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers,...
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June 21, 2009
Intelligent Design and Scientific Instrumentalism
John Beaudoin's recent paper "Sober on Intelligent Design Theory and the Intelligent Designer" contains the following fascinating remark in a footnote: [William] Dembski has suggested that the designer referred to in ID theory need not be
real: it could in principle be treated by design theorists as a mere useful fiction, if that should better fit with a particular design theorist's philosophy of science.
Beaudoin cites Dembski's
No Free Lunch, p. 15, and
The Design Revolution, p. 65. I haven't bothered to read too much on the whole ID thing because it is not closely related to my main philosophical interests and from a theological/religious perspective seems like a mere distraction. Furthermore, most ID types seem to me to exaggerate the problems of 'orthodox' evolutionary biology...
Continue reading "Intelligent Design and Scientific Instrumentalism"
Topic(s):
Bas van Fraassen
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
George Berkeley
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Instrumentalism
,
Intelligent Design
,
John Beaudoin
,
Penelope Maddy
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Science
,
Science
,
William Dembski
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January 23, 2009
How Putnam Defeats Descartes' Demon
A little while back, I wrote a post describing Cartesian demon skepticism as a form of
'adversarial epistemology'. The idea is that Descartes' thought experiment can be conceived of as a game with two players: the meditator and the demon. The meditator selects a process for forming beliefs from perceptual experiences, and the demon knows what process the meditator has selected, and controls all of the perceptual experiences. If the meditator ends up with mostly true beliefs, she wins. Otherwise, the demon wins.
Now, I mentioned at the bottom of that post that this way of framing the problem is helpful...
Continue reading "How Putnam Defeats Descartes' Demon"
January 19, 2009
Alex Byrne on Contemporary Debate About the Existence of God
The latest edition of
the Boston Review is running an article by MIT philosopher Alex Byrne on the state of philosophical debate about
the existence of God. For a popular article, it is in many ways quite good. It focuses on the ontological argument and the teleological argument (although it doesn't consider versions of the latter like
the one I advocate), which are probably the two most interesting of the traditional arguments, and it has interesting things to say about each of them. I do, however, have a few complaints.
First, early in the article we find this colorful phrase...
Continue reading "Alex Byrne on Contemporary Debate About the Existence of God"
January 9, 2009
Quote of the Day: A Summary of Berkeley's Mature Doctrine of Signs
Although the details are sketchy, Berkeley's basic point is clear: A sign may be significant not because it marks an idea, or even because it can be traced to something with which we are immediately acquainted, but because it is a working part of a system of signs that makes a genuine difference to our lives - to our thoughts, actions, and emotions. (Kenneth P. Winkler, "Berkeley and the Doctrine of Signs" in Winkler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Berkeley, p. 151) This is Winkler's summary of Berkeley's mature "doctrine of signs" as developed in Alciphron 7. By the way,...
Continue reading "Quote of the Day: A Summary of Berkeley's Mature Doctrine of Signs"
January 5, 2009
The Problem of Analyticity
The new quarter has begun, and I have just finished reading Quine's
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism". One of Quine's chief purposes here is to argue that the difference between 'analytic' and 'synthetic' truths is one of degree, and not of kind, so that there is no neat division between the two. I want discuss this difficulty here, although I shall treat it slightly differently than Quine does.
Anyone who has been exposed to post-Kantian philosophy is familiar with the distinction between the analytic and the synthetic. For instance, 'no bachelor is married' is an analytic truth...
Continue reading "The Problem of Analyticity"
December 22, 2008
Cartesian Demon Skepticism as 'Adversarial Epistemology'
In one of my computer science classes in undergrad, we discussed a particular way of thinking about the efficiency of an algorithm, which the professor called 'adversarial upper bounds'. The idea was to suppose that someone knows the 'guts' of your algorithm - exactly how it works - and that person is trying to make your algorithm take as many steps to complete as possible. The upshot was that sometimes with this kind of system inserting some randomness will give you a better expectation value. For instance, suppose I am trying to find a route (just any route) from A...
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November 20, 2008
What Is Composition?
I am currently doing research for a term paper in which I will argue that composition requires a 'principle of unity'. That is (to a first approximation), that given some objects, the xs, there cannot be any y which has all and only the xs as parts unless there is some feature of the world which bestows some degree of unity or oneness on y. I hope to argue that this is a conceptual truth - that is, that it flows from what we mean by composition. I haven't finished reading up on the subject yet, so there may already...
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Topic(s):
Aristotle
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Familiar Objects
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Mereology
,
Metaphysics
,
Ontology
,
Peter van Inwagen
,
Philosophy
,
Trenton Merricks
,
W.V.O. Quine
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November 15, 2008
Quote of the Day: Beer and Philosophy
"The claim that atoms arranged baseballwise fail to compose a baseball might be hard to swallow. But it goes down like draught Guinness compared to the claim that baseballs are simples." - Trenton Merricks, Objects and Persons, p. 63. Some context: so-called 'folk ontology' (i.e. 'commonsense' beliefs about what sorts of things there are, modified by just a bit of modern science) claims that there are a bunch of atoms bonded together in a spherical region which compose an object called a baseball. Merricks is arguing that, while all of those atoms exist, there does not exist, in addition to...
Continue reading "Quote of the Day: Beer and Philosophy"
October 14, 2008
Minimalist Ontology and Familiar Object Talk
I have just finished reading Mark Johnston's 1992 paper, "Constitution is Not Identity," reprinted in Michael Rea's
Material Constitution: A Reader. After arguing against a variety of theories of material constitution, Johnston claims that, with regard to our talk about familiar objects, "the distinction it embodies is acceptable as it stands and what is bogus is the conception of justifying our practice which requires that, for the distinction to be justified, the difference between an
F and its constituting matter must be a deep metaphysical difference secured by an extra ingredient of the
F." (Rea, p. 58) Johnston calls the person who holds this view 'the Minimalist'...
Continue reading "Minimalist Ontology and Familiar Object Talk"
October 8, 2008
Baber on the Real Presence
Some of the papers to be presented at the
Society of Christian Philosophers, Pacific Division Conference have now been
posted. Mine isn't up yet, but I will provide a link when it is. For now, I want to point readers to a paper by
the University of San Diego's Harriet Baber which she has entitled simply
"The Real Presence". We have previously discussed here
the difference between transubstantiation and real presence. Baber describes this quite nicely in her introduction...
Continue reading "Baber on the Real Presence"
Topic(s):
Church Dogmatics
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Harriet Baber
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Huldrych Zwingli
,
John Calvin
,
Metaphysics
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
Protestantism
,
Roman Catholic Church
,
The Church
,
The Eucharist
,
Theology
,
Thomas Aquinas
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September 21, 2008
Quote of the Day: Plato on Opinion and Knowledge
Following up on the last post, I thought it would be helpful to go back to Plato to provide another view on the subject. Socrates and Meno are discussing the nature of virtue, whether it is a form of knowledge, and whether it can be taught: SOCRATES: So true opinion is in no way a worse guide to correct action than knowledge. It is this that we omitted in our investigation of the nature of virtue, when we said that only knowledge can lead to correct action, for true opinion can do so also. ... MENO: That appears to be...
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Is Deduction Justification-Preserving?
There is a popular class of theories of epistemology called "Justified True Belief" (JTB) theories. According to these theories (which have their ancestor in Plato) a belief counts as knowledge just in case the content of the belief is true and the belief itself is justified. ... The reason I call this a class of theories, rather than a single theory, is that no one can agree on what 'justification' is other than to say that it is that property which, when added to truth, makes a belief knowledge.
The Gettier cases are a famous pair of objections to JTB accounts. Many more cases have been added since the original publication in 1963. Now, both of the original Gettier cases and, as far as I know, all of the more recent ones, involve a type of deduction called a
vacuous introduction...
Continue reading "Is Deduction Justification-Preserving?"
August 30, 2008
Quote(s) of the Day: A Pair of Responses to van Inwagen's "Body Snatching" Account of the Resurrection
Peter van Inwagen famously argued in his 1978 paper "The Possibility of Resurrection" that the only way God can bring a dead person back to life is to raise the very same body. However, if the body has decayed or been cremated, then it doesn't exist to be raised. Therefore, van Inwagen reasons, if Christianity is true, God must, at the moment of death (or immediately prior) surreptitiously remove the dead/dying body and spirit it away somewhere, replacing it with a simulacrum. Otherwise, there could be no afterlife. Unsurprisingly, this has met with some "incredulous stares." Here are a couple...
Continue reading "Quote(s) of the Day: A Pair of Responses to van Inwagen's "Body Snatching" Account of the Resurrection"
June 5, 2008
Representative Realism, Phenomenalism, and "Physical-Talk"
When I wrote a while back about
the idealist strategy, I said that the second step was to "argue that our physical statements - both ordinary statements about physical objects and statements about the discipline of physics - are best construed as talking about
perception." What I want to do here is to unpack this statement. First, let's examine what the argument is supposed to do and then we'll look at the argument as it appears in a brief section of Berkeley's
Three Dialogues.
This piece of the argument is a
reductio against
representative realism...
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March 29, 2008
Berkeley: Phenomenalist or Platonist?
Commentators have long recognized the existence of two distinct strains of thought in Berkeley's discussions of how our perceptions give rise to something that is properly called a world. According to the phenomenalist strain, the world is quite simply composed of perception and it becomes a world, rather than simply an unrelated collection of perceptions, by means of the orderliness with which God causes perceptions. According to the Platonist strain, the world (and each object in it) has an archetype in the divine mind and our perceptions are perceptions
of the world because what we perceive is an "ectype" of that archetype...
Continue reading "Berkeley: Phenomenalist or Platonist?"
February 2, 2008
The Idealist Strategy
There is a particular strategy of argument generally employed by idealists in their arguments against materialism/physicalism/scientific realism and/or substance dualism. The strategy originates primarily with Berkeley. Some of the Parmenides fragments sound similar, but, absent context, it is not possible to determine exactly what he intended. Hume and Kant developed their metaphysical systems largely in response to it, and it is similar to the arguments of the so-called "modern Idealists" which
Moore set out to refute. Finally, the strategy is, in recent literature, explicitly adopted in John Foster's
The Case for Idealism, which I am currently reading. The strategy goes like this...
Continue reading "The Idealist Strategy"
November 30, 2007
What Does Bayesian Epistemology Have To Do With Probabilities?
The answer to the question in the title of this post may seem obvious (after all, isn't Bayesianism
all about probabilities?), but I think that the long discussion that followed
Lauren's post on van Fraassen's objection to Bayesianism from quantum mechanics shows that it isn't clear at all - or at least, that it wasn't clear to either of us as we were discussing the issue. I think that I now understand why. In this post, I'm going to give three answers to this question, which I will call The Primitivist Account (P), The Kripkean Possible Worlds Account (KPW), and the Lewisian Possible Worlds Account (LPW). This post will discuss...
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November 7, 2007
GUEST BLOG: Bayesian Probability and Quantum Mechanics
Hello. As a brief introductory reminder, I'm Lauren, Kenny's fiance, and a guest blogger here when I have time (which isn't very often.) However, I am going to take some time to discuss a paper by Bas C. van Fraassen, Conditionalizing on Violated Bell's Inequalities, in which he claims that quantum mechanics creates problems for Bayesian epistemology. I have two main points to make in response, the first is that he doesn't actually need quantum mechanics for his argument, and the second is where he has failed to account for the effect of choosing which events to talk about, which...
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October 29, 2007
Berkeley, Computers, and Time
I read a very interesting paper by James Van Cleve today, regarding a pair of arguments originally made by Jorge Luis Borges to the effect that either Berkeley's idealism or Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernables could be used to prove the unreality of time. The paper is "Time, Idealism, and the Identity of Indiscernables,"
Philosophical Perspectives 16 (2002): 379-393. Van Cleve identifies three "axioms of time order" which Borges' arguments are designed to undermine...
Continue reading "Berkeley, Computers, and Time"
September 25, 2007
"The Ontological Status of Dreams in Berkeleian Metaphysics"
The Dualist 13 (2006) is finally available online, including my paper
"The Ontological Status of Dreams in Berkeleian Metaphysics". Unfortunately, the main index site is still badly broken. Hopefully it will soon be fixed. In the meantime, the direct link to my paper works.
There are some typesetting errors in the PDF (most importantly: footnote numbering is messed up, and some logical symbols are boxed out), and I haven't seen the print version to know if it contains these errors as well. I was never shown any proofs and I also found some spelling errors, and at least one place where a sentence is missing a word. Such is life. But the content is, I hope more interesting than the form...
Continue reading ""The Ontological Status of Dreams in Berkeleian Metaphysics""
August 20, 2007
Armstrong on Berkeley
I was looking on half.com recently to see if I could find an affordable volume containing Berkeley's
Siris last week when I came upon
this 1965 collection,
Berkeley's Philosophical Writings (ISBN 0020641702 according to half.com; it's apparently too old to have an ISBN printed in it) edited and with introduction by none other than D. M. Armstrong. I was unable to find any further information on the book, but, at half.com prices, decided it was worth buying just to get Armstrong's introduction (and on the off-chance that it contained
Siris). Since there was no information on this book available online, and there are more copies still available, I thought I should provide some information myself...
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June 27, 2007
The Teleological Argument
While we are
talking a bit about intelligent design, I'd like to take the opportunity to post a little paper I wrote last semester on the teleological argument for the existence of God. The assignment was to give the strongest possible version of the teleological argument, discuss the most important objection, and whether the objection succeeds (and why). The catch: it all had to fit on one page. (This sort of thing is, by the way, a very useful exercise for budding philosophers; I recommend it.) So, without further ado: Teleological arguments for the existence of a divine being attempt to show...
Continue reading "The Teleological Argument"
The Teleological Argument
While we are
talking a bit about intelligent design, I'd like to take the opportunity to post a little paper I wrote last semester on the teleological argument for the existence of God. The assignment was to give the strongest possible version of the teleological argument, discuss the most important objection, and whether the objection succeeds (and why). The catch: it all had to fit on one page. (This sort of thing is, by the way, a very useful exercise for budding philosophers; I recommend it.) So, without further ado: Teleological arguments for the existence of a divine being attempt to show...
Continue reading "The Teleological Argument"
April 28, 2007
"Common Sense," "Pre-Theoretical Intuitions," and Philosophy
I am presently reading Peter van Inwagen's
Material Beings (I'm not sure if it's going to actually help with my very strange philosophy of religion term paper wherein I argue that idealism is compatible with a belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead, or if I'm just procrastinating). In section 10, after denying that there are, in metaphysical rigor, any artifacts (i.e. inanimate macrophysical objects, such as chairs), van Inwagen makes the following remark: Does my position not fly in the face of common sense? I do not think so. This is not because I think that my position is in accord with "common sense," but rather because I do not think that there is any such thing as the body of doctrine the philosophers call common sense...
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April 9, 2007
Libertarian Compatibilism?
In metaphysics, libertarianism is the view that human beings (and other free beings) are free because they can do otherwise. Determinism is the view that the conjunction of the laws of nature with all the facts about the configuration of the world at some time t entail all the facts about the configuration of the world at all times. Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism are logically compatible, and incompatibilism is the view that they are not. Libertarianism is generally taken to entail incompatibilism, and is contrasted with compatibilist theories of free will. However, in her recent...
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March 26, 2007
The Conjunction of the Armstrong-Laws is God
D. M. Armstrong is the best known proponent of a currently quite popular understanding of natural laws. Laws so understood are, as a result, called Armstrong-Laws, or A-Laws for short. These are distinguished from L-Laws, named for David Lewis. L-laws are identical to regularities in events (but not all regularities are laws). Unlike L-Laws, A-Laws are actual metaphysical entities, which exist independently of their instances. That is, according to this theory, the Law of Universal Gravitation is a thing out there in the universe (not in the mind) which actually makes massive objects move toward one another. The attraction (no...
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March 12, 2007
A Note on Middle Knowledge and Berkeleian Philosophy of Science
A thought occurred to me just now as I was reading the end of Sydney Shoemaker's "Causality and Properties" and thinking, as usual, of a Berkeleian response. What, we ask, are the truth-conditions or truth-makers for statements about natural laws and causality? Shoemaker has a story about properties being defined in terms of dispositions to act a certain way in the presence of certain other properties, and he thinks we can flesh out these statements in this way. For Berkeley, of course, the properties of physical objects can have no causal efficacy. Instead, Berkeley takes these statements to be simple...
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February 24, 2007
Foreknowledge, Free Will, and the Grandfather Paradox
Compatibilism is belief in actions that are both free and determined. Usually, one hears such phrases as "what I will to do, I must do" (I think Hume phrases it something like this) or "I am free to act according to my nature." The idea is that human beings have determinate natures and they act as their natures determine. They are free because nothing outside determines their actions. Theories that posit a more robust freedom of the will are called "libertarian" (no relation to the political theory referred to in my tagline). Usually one hears phrases like "I am free...
Continue reading "Foreknowledge, Free Will, and the Grandfather Paradox"
February 7, 2007
Quote of the Day: A Puzzle About Infinity
The following is from William Lane Craig's
"The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe". It is part of the defense of premise 2.11 of his version of the
kalam cosmological argument, which says that "an actual infinite cannot exist:" Perhaps the best way to bring home the truth of (2.11) is by means of an illustration. Let me use one of my favorites, Hilbert's Hotel, a product of the mind of the great German mathematician, David Hilbert. Let us imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms. Suppose, furthermore, that
all the rooms are full. When a new guest arrives asking for a room, the proprietor apologizes, "Sorry, all the rooms are full." But now let us imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and suppose once more that all the rooms are full...
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February 3, 2007
No Such Thing as an Ontological Free Lunch
In D.M. Armstrong's book
Universals: an Opinionated Introduction, he discusses the pros and cons of a number of theories of the metaphysics of properties. Chapter three deals with "resemblance nominalism." According to resemblance nominalism, properties can be accounted for in terms of degrees of resemblance between the various objects having the property. So, for instance, on object is red if and only if it resembles some paradigmatic red objects. This theory is plagued by the "Resemblance Regress." Armstrong quotes Bertrand Russells' version as the "classical exposition" of the difficulty (p. 53): If we wish to avoid the universals...
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July 24, 2006
William Lane Craig on the Historicity of the Resurrection
Over the course of this summer, I've been forming an
argument for belie in the Bible.
Part 2 of my argument was critically depndent on the claim that "if we accept ... [the] postulate ... that a very powerful being is trying to get our attention, then the most coherent ... [explanation] ... is that ... Jesus did in fact rise from the dead." This is, of course, a fairly modest claim, as it explicitly presupposes a pretty substantial chunk of theology (there is a God, he actually cares what we think/do, he wants us to know about him, etc.). However, some would still dispute it. Some time ago, after reading
this post on
The Prosblogion, I downloaded the transcript of the
debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman on the historicity of the resurrection, and I've just now got around to reading it...
Continue reading "William Lane Craig on the Historicity of the Resurrection"
July 19, 2006
Truth-Makers, Truth-Conditions, and Middle Knowledge
Middle knowledge is a problem that has been bothering me for quite some time now. It goes like this: middle knowledge is knowledge of the truth or falsity of counterfactuals of freedom, where a counterfactual of freedom (sometimes called a counterfactual of creaturely freedom) is a statement about what some agent having libertarian free will would do in a purely hypothetical situation, i.e. one that never has and never will occur. Libertarian free will means that one is free because one could do otherwise than one actually does. So, for instance, if human beings (including me) have libertarian free will...
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July 18, 2006
Why Believe the Bible?
Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible
Here, finally, is part 3 of my
series on divine revelation. The story so far:
part 2 argued that the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth constitute a self-revelation of God to mankind, and that the New Testament documents, and especially the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), constitute generally reliably historical sources as to the content of that revelation. These points will be assumed to have been established (but feel free to comment on the previous post if you want to contest them), and I will now argue that the entirety of the Hebrew Bible is included by reference in this revelation...
Continue reading "Why Believe the Bible?
Part 3: Jesus' Witness to the Hebrew Bible"
June 6, 2006
Why Believe The Bible?
Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth
Welcome to part 2 of my promised series on divine revelation! My apologies for the long delay (it's been over a month since I first posted my plan of attack), but I've been very busy moving here there and everywhere, and I still don't have all my books and stuff unpacked (nor do I have a desk). According to the plan of attack, this part of the argument "will argue in a manner based heavily on Swinburne that there is good reason to suppose that the life and teachings of the historical person Jesus of Nazareth represent a revelation of...
Continue reading "Why Believe The Bible?
Part 2: The Life and Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth"
May 13, 2006
What's a Fundamentalist?
Reported without comment: According to Alvin Plantinga, "on the most common contemporary academic use of the term," the word 'fundamentalist' means "stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine." (HT: Chrisendom)...
Continue reading "What's a Fundamentalist?"
May 4, 2006
Why Believe the Bible?
Part 1: Plan of Attack
There has been a lot floating around about the doctrine of inerrancy recently. I posted on this subject not long ago, responding to a post at World of Sven and a lengthy series at Chrisendom. Since then, there has been a second World of Sven post, and also a post from the No Kool-Aid Zone about just how important inerrancy is. This is a problem that I've been thinking seriously about for some time. Actually, I started by asking the question "just why do I believe in the Bible?" then realized that the answer to that question would have a...
Continue reading "Why Believe the Bible?
Part 1: Plan of Attack"
April 17, 2006
Biblical Inerrancy
Update (4/17/2006) There seem to have been some errors in my post on inerrancy. (How ironic!) I would like to take some steps to correct these. First: the Council of Nicaea did NOT proclaim that canon of Scripture. This is a widely circulated myth (google it, and see esp. this article). In fact, the canon of Scripture we have was never proclaimed by any ecumenical council, and several books continue to be disputed (see the Catholic Encyclopedia article on "Canon of the New Testament". I'm still working on what this means theologically. Second: as you can see from the comments,...
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March 15, 2006
"Tradition as the 'Platonic Form' of Christian Faith and Practice in Orthodoxy"
I have just posted on my writings page a new essay, "Tradition as the 'Platonic Form' of Christian Faith and Practice in Orthodoxy." This served as my mid-term essay in my class on the Greek Orthodox Church here at DIKEMES in Athens where I am studying this semester. I have attached a short preface explaining the relationship of the views presented in my essay (realizing that the essay is supposed to explain the teaching of the Orthodox Church) to my actual beliefs and my reasons for deciding to publish the essay. Please post here with any comments or objections. If...
Continue reading ""Tradition as the 'Platonic Form' of Christian Faith and Practice in Orthodoxy""
Topic(s):
Bible
,
Contemporary Thinkers
,
Eastern Orthodox Church
,
Historical Thinkers
,
Philosophy
,
Philosophy of Religion
,
Plato
,
Sergius Bulgakov
,
The Church
,
Theology
,
Timothy Ware
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March 2, 2006
Dennett v. Swinburne on the Origin of Religion and the Existence of God
Prospect Magazine has published a series of letters between Richard Swinburne and Daniel Dennett regarding the existence of God and the historical origin of religious belief, following the publication of Dennett's new book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Dennett's book argues that an evolutionary explanation for religious belief exists, and that religion can and should be examined empirically by science with the initial presumption of "methodological naturalism" (i.e. we must assume for the sake of argument that God does not exist in order to take on this investigation). Swinburne argues that no such investigation can be adequately...
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February 20, 2006
Libertarianism and Corporations
One of the key problems of strict (non-consequentialist) libertarianism is how the state is to successfully perform its function of protecting citizens from force or fraud without the funding acquired from confiscatory taxation schemes. The problem is that libertarian commitments in the region of political morality do not permit the government to violate the private property rights which individuals have in the hypothetical "state of nature," and in the state of nature individuals own all of their income, not just what's left after taxes. The government exists to enforce these property rights. Robert Nozick believes (see his book Anarchy, State,...
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January 27, 2006
Persons as Events
Over the semester break, I took some time to look at Peter van Inwagen's paper "Materialism and the Psychological-Continuity Account of Personal Identity" (Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997): 305-319) and, as I realized that I don't have a good candidate for submission to Monday's Philosopher's Carnival, I thought this would be a good time to write down some thoughts that I had in connection with this paper and (very) broadly Lockean "psychological continuity" accounts of personal identity in general. The aim of van Inwagen's paper is to show that these kind of psychological continuity accounts require the existence of immaterial substances,...
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