April 14, 2008
Philosophers' Carnival 67: Idealism
Welcome to the 67th Philosophers' Carnival, on the theme of idealism! A large number of submissions were received, so among those that were not idealism-themed, I have selected only a few of my favorites. My apologies to those that were not included. Also, for those of you who find the color scheme distasteful (or a cause of headaches), let me point you to the top right of the page, where a link reading "view with boring colors" will magically turn this page to black on white (please let me know if it doesn't work in your browser). And now, without further ado, Philosophers' Carnival 67:
What Is Idealism?
I thought it would be appropriate to begin the carnival with a brief note on just what "idealism" is. We are speaking here of metaphysical idealism, the view that minds and/or their ideas are the fundamental stuff of reality and everything else depends on them. The most famous historical proponent of idealism (and the one with perhaps the simplest system) was
George Berkeley (1685-1753). In Berkeley's system, the universe contains many finite minds (us) and one infinite mind (God). The physical world is made up of perceptions which are ideas inserted directly in our minds by God. A current controversy also exists as to whether
G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716) was an idealist. Robert Adams argues the Leibniz holds a consistently idealist picture of the world, whereas Daniel Garber argues that in at least some of his writings Leibniz accepts "corporeal substance" as a fundamental entity in his ontology. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) called his theory "transcendental idealism" but denied that this was actually a form of idealism. Later idealists include
G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831),
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), and
F. H. Bradley (1846-1924).
For Idealism
The first group of Carnival submissions are those arguing for idealism, or defending it from objections.
- Richard Brown at Philosophy Sucks! presents Has Idealism Been Refuted? which examines three famous "refutations" of idealism and finds them all to be deficient in various ways.
- Michael Sigrist presents Who's Afraid of Idealism? at The Ends of Thought. I had a bit of difficulty classifying this post, but I've put it here because it argues against conventional notions of realism. Sigrist argues that by adopting a view adapted from Kant and Husserl we can both satisfy our realist intuitions and get the theoretical benefits of idealism.
Against Idealism
The following submissions argue against idealism. As your "impartial" carnival host, I will resist the temptation to offer counter-refutations.
Consequences of Idealism
This group of submissions examines the interaction between idealist positions and arguments and other issues in philosophy.
- Enigman's submission, Atheism and Explanation, compares the negative existence claims of idealism (about matter), atheism (about God), and Humean supervenience (about laws of nature).
- In Language and the Metaphysics of the Material World, I discuss how Berkeley's theory of sense perception as language may provide a useful heuristic for solving some difficult problems in the metaphysics of the material world.
History of Idealism
One submission for this carnival discussed the topic of idealism from a purely historical perspective.
- A submission from Grundlegung is apparently the first part of a series on Hegel and Idealism and discusses the question of in what sense Kant's "transcendental idealism" is idealistic. This provides the foundation for the interpretation of Hegel.
The Best of the Rest
That's all for this time! The next Carnival will be held on April 28 at MQPhil. Submit your posts by Saturday, April 26.
April 02, 2008
Philosophers' Carnival 66
I'm a couple days late with this (my apologies), but Philosophers' Carnival 66 is now up at The Uncredible Hallq with a link to my post, Berkeley: Phenomenalist or Platonist?
The 67th Carnival will be held right here, so stay tuned!
March 27, 2008
The Philosophers' Carnival Returns to blog.kennypearce.net
The 66th Philosophers' Carnival is coming up this Monday at The Uncredible Hallq. The Philosophers' Carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of blog posts on subjects related to academic philosophy including, but not limited to, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, "continental" philosophy and the history of philosophy. Submissions are due online every other Saturday for inclusion in the carnival the following Monday.
Following the Uncredible Carnival 66 this Monday, Philosophers' Carnival 67 will take place here at blog.kennypearce.net on Monday, April 14 (submissions due by Saturday April 12). Some of you may recall that I had previously hosted Philosophers' Carnival 31. The 67th carnival will be focused on the theme of "idealism" - the view that minds and/or their ideas are the fundamental stuff of reality. Posts are invited which argue for or against idealism, which track down the consequences of idealism, or which examine the views of historical idealist philosophers, such as Berkeley, Hegel, Schopenhauer, or Bradley (to name a few). Space permitting, I will include all posts with substantive content related to academic philosophy, but posts related to the theme outlined above are especially welcome and will have pride of place at the top of the page.
If you need some help thinking of something to say about idealism, let me recommend that you read some of my previous posts. For arguments for idealism, see Why Idealism? and The Ontological Economy of Idealism. Also, my more recent post The Idealist Strategy outlines a direction of argument common to most historical idealists (and to the contemporary idealist John Foster). I don't argue against idealism myself (since it's true) but I have dealt with Moorean arguments against it, if only to refute them. Finally, if you have more historical interests you can check my archives on Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and, of course, Berkeley.
Enjoy!
March 18, 2008
January 22, 2008
January 14, 2008
Christian Carnival CCVI
This link is a little late in coming (my apologies), but Jeremy has included my post on hyper-Reformation theology in Christian Carnival CCVI (that's 206 to you barbarians) at Parableman.
December 03, 2007
November 04, 2007
Patristic Carnival V
Patristic Carnival V is up at The God Fearin' Forum, with a link to my post on "Dionysius". It is a truly ecumenical venture, and I recommend that you all check it out.
Notable posts include:
- A collection of quotes on the Eucharist at The Byzantine Anglo-Catholic which is of interest in connection with my last post. I also commend to you the quote from Chrysostom at the bottom which, like most quotes from Chrysostom, is both spiritually deep and practically challenging.
- A summary of St. John of Damascus' "On the Divine Images," a book I have been intending to read for some time now, at For God, For Country, and For Yale. This summary confirms my general suspicion that the early iconodules may not have believed anything that Protestants ought to find objectionable - there is nothing in the summary that I would call idolatrous or otherwise heretical. Furthermore, many of the considerations put forth in favor of icons are similar to some of the considerations I gave against throwing out the baby with the bathwater in our Protestant rejection of the Catholic/Orthodox parctices with regard to saints and icons in my posts, On Icons, and on Worship and Veneration. This makes me all the more interested in reading this book.
October 09, 2007
April 24, 2007
March 12, 2007
Philosophers' Carnival 44 is Up
Philosophers' Carnival 44 is now up at Movement of Existence with a link to my recent post on the Grandfather Paradox.
February 21, 2007
New Philosophers' Carnival Up!
The latest Philosophers' Carnival is now up at This is the Name of This Blog (don't you just love analytic philosophy humor?) with a link to my two posts on the nature of love.
February 15, 2007
January 08, 2007
November 07, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival 38
I'm extremely swamped right now (in the second round of midterms, and in tech week for Othello) and don't have time to post anything substantive, or keep up on what's going on on the other blogs I ordinarily read, for which I apologize. I do however, want to point all of your attention to Philosophers' Carnival 38 which is up at The Splintered Mind with a link to my post on Moore's "two hands" argument for the existence of the physical world.
September 06, 2006
Biblical Studies Carnival IX
I've just discovered that my post on dealing with OT quotations in NT translation was spontaneously assimilated (at least I don't remember submitting it) into Biblical Studies Carnival IX at Hypotyposeis! Thanks for the link, Stephen.
By the way, everyone - apologies for the light blogging. I'm awefully busy with starting a new semester and all here, but I do expect to pick up again eventually. Thanks for your patience, and thanks even more to those of you (if any) who care enough to be impatient!
August 23, 2006
July 24, 2006
July 19, 2006
July 04, 2006
June 12, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival XXXI!
Greetings one and all, and welcome to blog.kennypearce.net and the 31st Philosophers' Carnival!
The Philosophers' Carnival is an every-few-weekly compilation of philosophy posts from blogs all over the web. The next Philosophers' Carnival is scheduled for July 3rd, and is still in need of a host! If you would like to host Philosophers' Carnival XXXII, visit the hosting guidelines then contact Richard Chappell of Philosophy, etc. to volunteer.
Today's Philosophers' Carnival contains a truly fantastic collection of deep and insightful posts which will be divided into the three traditional sub-divisions of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology (including logic/dialectic), and ethics (including political philosophy). Within each category the posts appear in approximate order of submission. As philosophy is a very hard thing to define and categorize, a couple of posts have had to be squeezed into categories they don't fit very well in. In these cases I've attached an explanation of why I put them where I did. I have also included my responses to each of the entries, in the hope of facilitating continuing philosophical discussion.
- Metaphysics
- Dr. Justin Good of Design Observer discusses an interesting blend of metaphysics, aesthetics, ecology, modernism and wind farms (!) in his post "What is Beauty? Or, On the Aesthetics of Wind Farms." Discussing the opposing views on the aesthetic value (or lack thereof) of wind farms, Dr. Good concludes that "what at first looks like two subjective impressions of the same visual image turns out to be two different understandings of order in the world." The core of the argument is that our aesthetic sensibilities are deeply dependent on our understanding of nature around us. This does indeed seem to me to be an astute and substantially correct observation: in some sense, the natural world - the world around us 'as it should be' - is a paradigm of beauty by which other things are measured. Differing ideas about nature lead to differing ideas about beauty, but, as Dr. Good points out, this doesn't necessarily make beauty a purely subjective idea, because the ecological facts are quite objective.
- Joe Kissel has posted a discussion of Zeno's Paradoxes on Interesting Thing of the Day. There is a long and interesting discussion of just what Zeno intended to prove and how this was supposed to support the Eleatic (Parmenidean) system of metaphysics as a whole. A very good read.
- A post at On Philosophy develops a detailed and rigorous account of causation, complete with diagrams and formal logic. The theory is given briefly as "if we are looking for causes for event X at time T then Y is a cause of X if and only if removing Y from the universe at time T would result in the failure of X to occur." In other words, it is a temporally-sensitive account of necessary (as opposed to sufficient) causation.
- Steve Esser of Guide to Reality discusses, the definition of physicalism/materialism, and relations between entities at different ontological levels. The key question seems to be whether someone who allows that worlds in which non-physical entities or relations "strongly supervene" on (i.e. arise with metaphysical necessity from) physical entities are physically possible should be considered a physicalist. As Steve observes, it is very interesting - and a far cry from the popular/naive version of the modern scientific worldview - that physicalist/materialist philosophers are recognizing the need to allow for the existence (on a lesser ontological level) of "relations (or entities) which go beyond current or contemplated physics."
- Kevin Winters of Heideggerian Denken discusses the way of phenomenology, a very interesting discussion of the process of Heideggerian phenomenological investigation (a subject with which I am not terribly familiar). While I am generally sympathetic to the idea of arguing first and foremost from phenomena/experience (see my own contribution below), I must say that I can't see how Kevin can claim that "logic is not ontologically fundamental" and then talk about "presenting a coherent case." I would like to hear why he wants to, and how he can, present a coherent case (by which I assume he means a logical argument) if experience is more fundamental than logic. Of course, such is the nature of continental philosophy, and those of us more in the analytic tradition have always had difficulty comprehending it (when we have bothered to take the effort, which hasn't been often enough).
- PathEffect blogs on, well, everything. I'm an appreciater of the Parmenidean overtones. (If I had studied more contemporary philosophy, I would probably also have intelligent and insightful remarks to make contrasting PathEffect's version of modal realism with that of David Lewis but, alas, I am underqualified for this task.)
- I present "The Foundational Argument of Berkeleian Metaphysics." This truly spectacular post needs no introduction, should be read by everyone everywhere, and has no flaws whatsoever. I'm lying. (And also starting to sound like Isaac Asimov.) Actually, this post briefly discusses the argument George Berkeley uses to establish the foundations of his metaphysical theory. It could use some situating within the broader scheme of Berkeley's works and general view of the world, which is something I may tackle in future posts.
- Dr. Alan Rhoda of Analyzer discusses the relationship between indeterminacy and libertarian free will. The post argues (correctly, I think) that as far as libertarian free will is concerned, determinism and indeterminism are on roughly equal footing.
- Epistemology
- Chris Hallquist of The Uncredible Hallq discusses whether theories and propositions can be simultaneously unfalisifiable and falisfied. Chris argues that, counter-intuitively, they can. This happens in the case when there are observations which ought to falsify the claim, and those observations are made, but the supporters of the claim keeps supporting it anyway. While Chris is correct that those who charge others with making unfalsifiable claims that have been falsified are not necessarily caught in internal contradiction, these people are nonetheless speaking sloppily. The creationists in Chris's example ought to say to the evolutionists (and some of them do, in fact, say things like this): "the weight of the evidence is against your theory, yet no evidence will suffice to persuade you to reject it." To say that the theory is unfalisifiable yet falsified is sloppy and misleading because the unfalsifiable claim and the (allegedly) falsified one are not really the same: the (allegedly) falsified claim is a matter of science dependent on evidence, but the unfalsifiable claim is a matter of blind faith.
- A post at A Brood Comb argues for philosophy as comprehension. Although this is, of course, meta-philosophy (for which I have not created a category), I've categorized it as epistemology since it talks a lot about the practice of thinking critically about human understanding.
- Sam Douglas of Philosophy Hurts Your Head discusses the connection between mind and meaning. In particular, Kripke's account of meaning as having to do with passing certain speech-act tests is juxtaposed with Chalmer's 'zombie' [aka 'functional isomorph'] argument in a fascinating discussion of the question of whether an entity with no subjective experience of the world can actually 'mean' something by its words.
- Clayton Littlejon of Think Tonk discusses the circumstances under which we ought to believe propositions, in light of Moore's Paradox. Since I'm not familiar with Moore's Paradox, and neither Wikipedia nor The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on it, I don't have much to say here. Perhaps someone would like to further enlighten us on the various paradoxes and thought experiments Clayton refers to.
- DuckRabbit has a post discussing our reasons for valuing truth, in conversation with some pragmatist thinkers. He argues that there is some confusion between truth and belief in this discussion, so that it's not clear what we actually value. As a commenter pointed out (sparking a long discussion), this already quite insightful post could benefit from more discussion about degrees of uncertainty in our beliefs: that is, most of the post seems to assume that belief is an "all or nothing" sort of thing.
- David Corfield of Philosophy of Real Mathematics discusses Robert Brandom's recent John Locke Lectures in Oxford on his "objective pragmatism" and Wittgensteinian language-games and so forth. The post makes interesting application of the author's philosophy of mathematics focus to the subject at hand.
- Doctor Logic discusses causation, on a verificationist epistemology, arguing that the Principle of Sufficient Reason is meaningless. The discussion is definitely worth reading, but if you're not a verificationist, don't expect to be convinced.
- Ethics
- Alex Gregory of atopian.org argues against the idea of 'human rights' as a fundamental ethical principle. Alex's argument is that due to the uncertainty of the actual world, rules like "thou shalt not kill," interpreted to mean that one must not cause the death of another human being, on a human rights interpretation will make it wrong for us to interact with other people, since the interaction will introduce a possibility that we might cause the death of the other person, and we are not permitted to gamble with the rights of others, no matter how good the odds. In order to defend non-consequentialism in general, one might introduce intention and knowledge as relevant factors in the ethical status of an action, and this can also be used in a human rights theory to serve for the foundation of a libertarian political philosophy. However, the way in which this weakens human rights (it is not possible for someone to violate your rights unintentionally, at least in the type of violation that makes the violator morally culpable) is troubling.
- Francois Trembloy of Goosing the Antithesis presents part one of his series The Morality Disconnect, a reflection on the reasons why most atheists insist on fact in virtually every field, but operate on a relativistic "true for you" model in morality. This post is part of The War on Relativism, with which I was not previously familiar; allow me to insert here that the idea of a movement in opposition to moral relativism among atheists/secularists seems to me to be an extremely good thing for the future of intelligent discourse on ethical issues.
- Eteraz of Unwilling Self-Negation discusses the varying responses to Wahhabism available to traditionalist and 'pragmatic post-modernist' Muslims, and argues in favor of the post-modernist response. Eteraz states that, while traditionalist Muslims must give complicated arguments and often use questionable reasoning in order to condemn Wahhabi terrorism, the pragmatic post-modernist has an easier time because "The fundamental belief of a pragmatic postmodernist is that a belief can still regulate action, can still be thought of worth dying for, by people who are quite aware that this belief is caused by nothing more than the fact that we have belief in it." Of course, it is not clear how this view is supposed to persuade anyone, it just states (as a fundamental assumption) that it is ok for us to continue believing that terrorism is wrong and deserves to be punished, even though we (allegedly) have no justification for that belief. I can't say I find this very satisfying.
- Professor Laurence Thomas argues at moralhealth.com that "good will" between citizens is a prerequisite for successful democracy, but notices with puzzlement that, although there is more equality today than at any other time in US history (world history?), good will seems to be decreasing. He concludes that "there is no logical connection between good will and equality." Of course, a libertarian (e.g., me) might argue that good will is actually inversely related to the prevalence of egalitarian politics, since the latter leads the poor to believe that others' hard-earned (and not-so-hard-earned) wealth is rightfully theirs and was somehow stolen from them, and puts the rich in the position of having their money confiscated by the poor, thus creating more rather than less opposition between socio-economic classes, and decreasing good will in society as a whole. When we had a lot of good will between people in America, we had a culture in which people were ashamed to accept government handouts and sincerely wanted to work hard and contribute to earn their own living. The welfare system has gone a long way toward destroying this.
- Professor Steve Gimbel, in his post "Help, Help, I'm Being Oppressed!" at The Philosophers' Playground, discusses the criteria for oppression. Does it require intention? If a policy is implemented for good reasons, but happens to negatively effect an identifiable ethnic or socio-economic group, or one gender, disproportionately to others, is that oppression? Or what if a certain group just happens to be below-average in society according to some metric? I remember in the last US presidential election the Green Party candidate David Cobb arguing in a debate with Libertarian Michael Badnarik that the death penalty must be abolished permanently because it was racist and classist and therefore oppressive. Of course, Cobb's insistence that the death penalty was "inherently" racist and classist (and not just racist and classist right now due to biased implementation) is probably racist and classist itself, since it assumes that it will always be the case that most capital offenses are committed by lower-class members of ethnic minorities (a rather offensive notion - but maybe Cobb didn't mean it and simply doesn't understand the meaning of the word 'inherent'), but it is true that today many more poor black people are executed than rich white people. Does that in itself make the death penalty racist/classist? I tend to think that in this case it is pretty obvious that there is only oppression in the application of the death penalty if a greater proportion of poor black people convicted of capital crimes receive the death penalty, compared to convicted rich white people (and I remember reading somewhere that this IS the case in the US right now), but Professor Gimbel's post demonstrates that these issues are much more complicated than many people on both sides tend to think.
- Speaking of discrimination/oppression and capital punishment (no, I didn't leave the submission order to put these two posts next to each other), David at Sago Boulevard discusses an argument by Earnest van den Haag that "If the death penalty is morally just, however discriminatorily applied to only some of the guilty, it remains just in each case in which it is applied." In other words, if it is morally legitimate to execute those convicted of murder by a jury of their peers, then this legitimacy is not undermined if only some convicted murderers are executed and the decision of which convicted murderers to execute is made in a discriminatory fashion. David seems skeptical. Personally, I tend to think that, granting the antecedent, it is not unjust to execute those who are executed, but it is unjust not to execute the others. At any rate, we seem to have a pretty strong moral inuition that selective or capricious application of penalties is unjust.
- Richard Chappell in Philosophy, etc. wonders if there is objective, rational ground for our culture's almost universal moral condemnation of public sexual displays. He discusses several possible justifications and finds them all more or less inadequate. I would propose this line of reasoning: my mind is mine, and there are some things that I choose not to take into it. I act intentionally to avoid these things. If I have a personal objection to seeing something or other (say, for simplicity's sake, nudity in general), and I am somewhere where I have a reasonable expectation not to see nudity, and you walk by me naked, it seems that a case can be made that I am somehow violated or invaded by this. Of course, the 'reasonable expectation' part makes this culturally relative again, and so doesn't really answer Richard's question. It is more to the point to ask why I object to seeing these things in the first place, and this will take us deep into philosophical psychology. To make a brief suggestion: if we think about the very general type of philosophical psychology found in Plato, Paul, and Augustine, we might say that seeing this particular type of sight strengthens the 'bad part' of the soul (the 'money-loving soul' in Plato; the 'flesh' in Paul and Augustine) and causes it to rebel against the good part (the 'wisdom-loving soul' in Plato; the 'spirit' in Paul and Augustine). Of course, we will want to be careful not to become completely prude and make sexual desire evil (as, I understand, Augustine does), but rather to say that the types of sights we object to are those which direct our sexual desires onto improper objects (and we all agree that at least some persons are improper objects of sexual desire - children are the most obvious example). Since this means that viewing certain types of sexual behaviors - or even simple nudity - can perceivably be damaging to the proper order of the psyche, we can go back again to the first argument and say that to engage in public sexual acts violates the personal autonomy of those who view it unwillingly by denying them the opportunity to determine for themselves which things are and are not destructive for them personally, and to avoid the destructive things.
- Hell's Handmaiden critiques a statement recently released by the Witherspoon Institute on the social effects of marriage. The criticism is essentially that the statement isn't what it pretends to be - an objective and cross-cultural look at the effects of the redefinition of marriage currently going on in the US - but rather presupposes certain goals for marriage which amount to question-begging in the broader argument.
June 07, 2006
Christian Carnival CXXV at Random Acts of Verbiage
Christian Carnival CXXV is now up at Random Acts of Verbiage with a link to my post on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
June 05, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival #31 Reminder
Just a reminder: Philosophers' Carnival #31 will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on Monday, June 12, one week from today! Any philosophy-related blog post is eligible for inclusion, so get those submissions in! The submission deadline is midnight, US Eastern time, next Sunday night.
May 26, 2006
Christian Carnival For May 24 (Finally) Up!
After prolonged technical difficulties, Christian Carnival 24 is up at Musings on Music with a link to my post on icons. Because the technical difficulties are continuing, there is a second version of the carnival at Wittenberg Gate. Enjoy!
May 22, 2006
Philosphers' Carnival 30 at anniemiz!
Philosophers' Carnival 30 is now up at anniemiz with a link to my post on why the NSA data mining peration is bad. The next Philosophers' Carnival will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on June 12, so stay tuned! To submit an entry, go to the Philosophers' Carnival home page.
May 11, 2006
Christian Carnival CXXI
Christian Carnival CXXI is now up at Something Epic with a link to my post, Opheilema in Matthew 6:12.
May 04, 2006
Christian Carnival CXX
Christian Carnival CXX is up at Daddypundit with a link to my recent post on the Trinity. Check it out.
April 06, 2006
Christian Carnival
The latest Christian Carnival is now up at In The Outer with a link to my post on Biblical inerrancy. As always, there is a lot of interesting content. Highly reccomended.
March 23, 2006
March 20, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival 31 Coming to blog.kennypearce.net!
It's official! Philosophers' Carnival 31 will be hosted right here at blog.kennypearce.net on June 5, 2006. The philosophers' carnival occurs about every three weeks and showcases philosophy posts from many different blogs, in order to help small blogs gain exposure and help facilitate blog discussions about philosophy. The next carnival will be on April 3 at The University of Nowhere. You can submit your entries here.
March 14, 2006
February 21, 2006
February 17, 2006
Christian Carnival CIX
Christian Carnival CIX is up at Pursuing Holiness with a link to my post on reevaluating Genesis.
January 31, 2006
Uncredible Double Carnival
Both the Philosopher's Carnival and the GOD or NOT Carnival are up at The Uncredible Hallq. I didn't get a submission in for this month's GOD or NOT, on the theme of "Definition of God," but the philosopher's carnival contains a link to my recent post on persons as events.
January 19, 2006
Christian Carnival CV
Christian Carnival CV is up at Dunmoose the Ageless with a link to my post on musterion.
January 11, 2006
Christian Carnival 104
Christian Carnival 104 is up at Random Responses with a link to my post on the Holman Christian Standard Bible.
January 10, 2006
Philosophers' Carnival XXIV
Philosophers' Carnival XXIV is up at Rad Geek People's Dailywith a link to my post Let's Make Creation Science Not Suck. Rad Geek does a wonderful job summarizing all of the very interesting entries in the carnival. Check it out.
January 04, 2006
Christian Carnival CIII
Christian Carnival CIII is up at Misere Mei with a link to my post, "Are Linguistic Facts Theologically Significant". As always, the Christian Carnival has many interesting entries.
December 28, 2005
December 05, 2005
GOD or NOT 3: Miracles
The third installment of the GOD or NOT carnival, on the topic of "miracles," is now up at The Evangelical Atheist with a link to my post, "Can The New Testament Be Both Influenced By Plato and Inspired by God?". There seems to be a general concensus on two points:
- People talking about miracles should reference David Hume
- People who want to justify belief in miracles shouldn't claim that they are exceptions to "laws" of nature
I, of course, agree on both points. Now, a couple of posts react to this by suggesting that natural laws are not really "laws," per se, but merely regularities in God's governance of the world. "Christians," Tim Challies goes so far as to claim, "would do better to understand the laws of nature in terms of regularities rather than laws." (emphasis original.) Well, what are laws but inviolate regularities in the behavior of the natural world? But the "inviolate" part is what Tim is attacking. This, he thinks, is the root of the argument that the idea of "miracles" is nonsense (as, of course, a violation of an inviolate regularity is a contradiction). I, or course, disagree. These sorts of exceptions, I think, are contrary to the portrayal of God in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.
But I'm beating a dead horse: I've discussed miracles all to death on this blog over the last few months and I'm almost done (although I'm about to start writing a term paper on Leibniz's view of miracles and natural law, so there may be a few more comments on the subject in the next few weeks). For those of you who are just now tuing in, my overall view of miracles is explained in moderate rigor here.
November 30, 2005
Christian Carnival XCVIII
Christian Carnival XCVIII is up with a link to my recent post, "Can The New Testament Be Both Influenced By Plato and Inspired by God?" There were an unprecedented number of entries this time (44, I'm told) on a variety of subjects. Check it out.
November 28, 2005
Can The New Testament Be Both Influenced By Plato and Inspired by God?
The God Or Not Blog Carnival is a cool idea. It happens once or twice a month. For each carnival, there is a theme and the carnival host selects an approximately equal number of posts on that theme by atheists and theists for inclusion. The theme of the December 12 carnival is miracles. I have dealt substantially with miracles on this blog in a general way already, and so I've decided to post on applying my views to one very specific miracle which is central to the claims of Christianity and especially Evangelicalism: the inspiration of Scripture.
The story so far: nearly a year ago, I posted on what I referred to as "Christian naturalism". In this post I argued for a view that I continue to hold quite strongly: the view that traditional monotheists should not believe in exceptions to the laws of nature, as this would undermine the constancy of God. This, of course, creates a problem for miracles. I addressed that problem briefly in that post, but dealt with it more precisely in a recent post on Leibniz's discussion of efficient and final causes. In that post, I showed how the efficient/final cause distinction could be used to differentiate the miraculous from the mundane. I argued that the distinction was purely subjective, so that every event could be viewed as either miraculous or mundane depending on the disposition of the observer.
In the latter of these two posts, I briefly mentioned that fellow Christians, especially Evangelicals, with whom I have discussed this tend to be especially uneasy with my application of this theory to the inspiration of Scripture. This is the issue I intend to discuss here.
In Donald Bloesch's book, The Essentials of Evangelical Theology, he says, "the Bible is not partly the Word of God and partly the word of man: it is in its entirety the very Word of God and the very word of man" (vol. 1, p. 52). He goes on to say that, "inspiration is both conceptual and verbal, since it signifies that the Spirit was active both in shaping the thoughts and imagination of the biblical writers and also in guiding them in their actual writing ... The divine activity does not supersed the human but works confluently with the human so that the Scriptures are the joint product of both God and man. The writers are not to be thought of as simply the pens of the Holy Spirit ... but as partners with the Spirit so that the end product can be attributed to coauthorship" (p. 55).
Like Bloesch, I believe that, from one perspective, it is the case that the writings which came to be included in the Christian Bible came about in precisely the same fashion as any other books: that is, human authors sat down and wrote, and when they wrote they had particular views, thoughts, current issues, and so forth in mind which they wished to address. Their thoughts were influenced by those that came before them. I think, for instance, that it is clear that the theory of the self contained in the Pauline epistles must have been influenced by Plato's Republic (compare Paul's division into pneuma [spirit], psuche [soul], and sarx [flesh] with Plato's division into the philosophos [wisdom-loving], philotimos [honor-loving], and philochrematos [money-loving] psuchai [souls]), and the Johannine literature must have been influenced by Heraclitus (compare the use of logos [word]), although this influence may have been indirect (it has been suggested that it may have come through Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived from about 20 BC to about 40 AD). However, this does not undermine inspiration. The Holy Spirit was active in shaping their life experiences so that their beliefs, ideas, thoughts, intentions, etc. would be such as to write down the Word of God, and also in imparting ideas to them at the time of writing.
Christians often seem to assume that if they Bible is inspired by God it must have come from nowhere - that is, it must have fall