The Prosblogion

Let E (for 'election') be the proposition which says de re of each person who will in fact be saved that he or she will be saved. That is, E is the longest conjunction of the form 'John will be saved, and Mary will be saved, and Lois will be saved...' which is true. Let R (for 'reprobation') be the proposition which says de re of each person who will in fact be damned that he or she will be damned.

The doctrine of predestination is the doctrine that God, from eternity, has issued an efficacious decree of election - that is, God, from eternity, effectively chose that E should be true. The doctrine of double predestination states that in addition to the decree of election, God also issued a decree of reprobation - that is, in addition to effectively choosing that E should be true, God effectively chose that R should be true.

Double predestination is much more contentious among Christians than predestination (although predestination is not entirely uncontroversial - for instance, open theists will have to deny it). Many Christians would rather have single predestination, holding that all people are, on their own, bound for hell, and God intervenes to save those he wishes to save, and just leaves the rest alone.

In his Philosophical Theology (1969), James F. Ross proposes the following analysis of omnipotence:

S is omnipotent if and only if for every logically contingent state of affairs, p, whether p or ~p is the case is logically equivalent to the effective choice, by S, that p or that ~p (respectively). (p. 211)

*Please note this is a 2-page survey. Many people seem to have completed only the first page. We will post the results here.

Andrei Buckareff (Marist College) and I have recently been awarded funding by the John Templeton Foundation for our project "Exploring Alternative Concepts of God". The aim of the project is to shed light on, explore, and critically evaluate alternatives to the classical concept of God or the divine (including, but not limited to, the pantheistic and panentheistic concepts) which are often overlooked in contemporary philosophical debates on the nature and the existence of God. The project involves both proponents and critics of the alternative concepts.

As part of the project we are conducting a survey on people's views on the concept of God.

We would be very grateful if readers of this blog could complete it. It consists of only 10 simple questions so it shouldn't take more than three minutes to complete it. Thank you!

It's pretty well known that philosophy, as a discipline, suffers from a gender imbalance. (That's actually a significant understatement....) I think everyone, despite their views on how problematic the imbalance is, can agree with that. And for a few years it's struck me that many of the most male-dominated conferences I've been at have been in philosophy of religion. I don't presently have any data for this (though I hope to soon). 

Recently, other sub-disciplines (history of philosophy and epistemology--perhaps there are others?) have started to make lists of women working in that area. Andrew Bailey has set up a publicly editable document to help compose a similar list for women in philosophy of religion. Please help us make it more exhaustive here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvPmS7dMYgxGdEhZV2hYUnNKdmFIYTZobHdobXVCbFE#gid=0

Thanks.

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On a related issue, let me plug a session I'm chairing at the Pacific APA (which has what may be my favorite paper title in the history of the APA):

Addressing the Dearth of Women in Philosophy of Religion

Chair: Kevin L. Timpe

Speaker: Christina Van Dyke, "Don't Get Your Panties in a Bunch: The Dilemma of Drawing Attention to the Absence of Women"

Speaker: Victoria Harrison: "Is Philosophy of Religion Relevant to Women?"

Commentator: Kristen Irwin

If there's interest, I can start a separate thread here at the blog on why PoR seems to be worse than other sub-fields in this way, what can be done about it, how problematic it is, etc....

Standard sceptical theism focuses on our ignorance of the realm of values. I want to suggest a different kind of sceptical response to an evil E. This response identifies a good G such that it is clear that the occurrence of a good relevantly like G logically requires the permission of an evil relevantly like E, but instead the scepticism is in that we have on balance no significant evidence against the conjunction:

1. G obtains and
2. G outweighs E and
3. there is no alternative good G* dissimilar from G that doesn't require anything nearly as bad as E and that would be more or approximately equally worth having.

And it's fairly easy to generate examples of G that do the job for particular E. Take Rowe's case of the horrendous evil inflicted on Sue. Let G be Sue's having forgiven E's perpetrator. We have no significant evidence against the conjunction (1)-(3), then. Granted, we may have significant evidence that G did not obtain in this life, though even that is probably a stretch, but we have no balance no significant evidence that G didn't obtain in an afterlife. My intuitions strongly favor (2)--there is a way in which forgiveness seems to defeat evil--but in any case we have no significant evidence against (2). As for (3), granted there are many great moral goods that don't require anything nearly as bad as E, but I don't think we have on balance significant evidence that these goods are roughly as good as or better than G. Now, of course, it can be the case (whether due to a logical contradiction or dwindling probabilities) that we don't have significant evidence against any conjunct but we do have significant evidence against the conjunction. But I don't think this happens here.

Too often, discussion about skeptical theism focuses on whether there are likely to be unknown goods which could outweigh the evils we know of (Officially, I have problems with the notion of "knowing of" an evil, but I'll set that aside). That can create the impression that an affirmative answer is reached, skeptical theism wins. But that would be a misunderstanding.

Dustin Locke asks the following questions:

I was wondering if anyone could help me with another scholarship question. I'm looking for texts that concern theistic accounts of moral epistemology. Of course there are all the texts on divine command theory. But these discuss divine command theory primarily as an account of what moral facts are, rather than accounts of how we know about them--in other words, they're accounts of the metaphysics of morality, not the epistemology. The obvious theistic contenders for the latter would be things like scripture, personal revelation, God-given innate moral beliefs, etc. Does anyone know of a good text that explores the possibilities here and perhaps argues for one over the others (or at least argues that one is no good)?

Any help?

In a forthcoming paper, I defend the view that knowledge does not require believing on the basis of evidence. In other words, I argue against what I call the "Evidence Thesis", which states:

(Evidence Thesis) S knows that p at t only if S believes that p on the basis of evidence at t.

How does the evidence thesis relate to evidentialism, formulated and defended by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman? Well, their view is about epistemic justification, and it states that the doxastic attitude one is justified in having is the one that fits the evidence. Evidentialism is a popular view, and we can see that it is distinct from the evidence thesis. However, VERY MANY evidentialists endorse the evidence thesis. So do VERY MANY internalists. On the other hand, almost no externalist will endorse the evidence thesis. So long as one's true belief was produced in the right way (e.g., by a reliable process, with safety, with sensitivity, by properly functioning faculties, by an exercise of the right sort of ability, etc.), the belief counts as knowledge. Despite the fact that some people seem to presume the truth of the evidence thesis, we can see that a great many theories of knowledge (the externalist ones) entail that it is false. And I argue that it is false in my paper. So, my argument both provides support for the many externalist theories of knowledge and also gives many evidentialists and internalists a reason to revise their views.

In this post, I want to try out a counterexample against the evidence thesis.

Some responses to the Problem of Evil involve defending the proposition that it is on balance a good thing that the world was created. I want to propose a Problem of Mediocrity or Problem of the Just-Good-Enough or more broadly the Problem of the Not-Great world. As I envision it, it's disconfirmation of theism is compatible with the world being on balance good. It goes like this:

(1) Being the kind of Being God is, we expect greatness in everything He does.
(2) The world is not great.
(3) Hence, theism is disconfirmed.

I'll refine it a bit below and raise an objection below the fold

The latest (July 2011) Faith and Philosophy contains an excellent article by Jeff Speaks on some difficulties related to establishing the consistency of certain claims (he uses as examples the existence of human freedom and the existence of evil) with the existence of an Anselmian God. The basic idea is this: since an Anselmian God is, by definition, a necessary being, establishing the possibility of an Anselmian God is tantamount to establishing the necessary, and therefore actual, existence of an Anselmian God. But these compatibility arguments typically, in one way or another, assume the possibility, and so the actuality, of an Anselmian God. If we were allowed to assume this premise, our task would be extremely easy! We could argue as follows:

1. God (actually) exists


2. Evil (actually) exists

Therefore,

3. The existence of God is consistent with the existence of evil.

In his paper, Speaks argues that Warfield's argument for the compatibility of necessary omniscience with human freedom and Plantinga's free will defense are both a lot like this. That is, they both assume that, possibly, an Anselmian God exists. But if that assumption is admissible, then we could just use this simpler argument. But obviously we can't use this simpler argument, so the premise must be inadmissible. (This isn't exactly the way Speaks puts his points together; it's my interpretation of what his arguments actually show.)

Speaks states the "principal conclusion" of his paper as follows:

any argument for the compatibility of two propositions must also be an argument for the possibility of each of those propositions. Hence it is impossible to argue for the compatibility of two propositions, one of which is necessary if possible, without arguing for the truth of that proposition. (p. 291)

In this post, I'm going to push back.