David Efrid’s post on Mysterianism has got me thinking of the problems that surround the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation. Until recently I had not given much philosophical thought to the doctrine of the Incarnation. However, when I did begin to consider the doctrine from a philosophical perspective I was stunned by the number of contradictions that present themselves. I am sure there are plenty of things I should have read regarding this topic and I am sure many of you will be happy to point them out to me. So I would like to layout the problem for the doctrine of the Incarnation, and why I think it is contradictory, and then perhaps I can get some feedback as to how orthodox Christians can extract themselves from this problem.

I've just posted some reflections at OrangePhilosophy about predictive prophecy and how to deal with counterfactuals in such a case. It isn't about God's foreknowledge of the future but takes its start from a fantasy role-playing case, but it raises some of the same issues and may be interesting from a philosophy of religion standpoint, so I figured it would be worth linking to it from here.

Suppose we agree with the following: in every case of moral responsibility, there is a flicker of freedom, construed as involving a counterpossibility of some sort (there's been discussion of this here already, so I won't repeat), but also that the flicker in question isn't sufficient to undergird attributions of responsibility. This, I think, is John Fischer's semi-compatibilist position.

Suppose also that only necessary universalism, as opposed to contingent universalism, has a chance of solving the problem of hell. On this view, it is metaphysically necessary that everyone end up in heaven.

The primary argument against necessary universalism appeals to the value of freedom and the impossibility of guaranteeing that a free individual chooses in whatever way choice is related to presence in heaven. This argument has to be replaced, I think, if the above account is correct. I think freedom has been valued to the extent it has because it is thought that freedom is necessary and sufficient for responsibility. With this assumption, the freedom argument makes it your own fault if you're not in heaven.

On the above account, freedom may be necessary for responsibility but it is not sufficient. So even if there is a flicker of freedom, that is no guarantee that it's your own fault if you're in hell.

That still leaves it possible for a person to be in hell and it to be their own fault. But the kind of possibility here is weaker than metaphysical possibility. It is the kind in which the truth of what is said before doesn't logically imply the opposite of the claim in question. That is, the kind of possibility here is logical possibility. There is no argument, however, from such a logical possibility to metaphysical possibility. Hence, it looks like the freedom argument against necessary universalism succumbs if the Fischer view is correct.

Sound right?

Following Thomas Nagel, Colin McGinn maintains that the mind-body problem is not solvable. His widely read paper, 'Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem', begins in the following way:

'We have been trying for a long time to solve the mind-body problem. It has stubbornly resisted our best efforts. The mystery persists. I think the time has come to admit candidly that we cannot resolve the mystery. But I also think that this very insolubility -- or the reason for it -- removes the philosophical problem.'

Owen Flanagan has labelled McGinn a 'mysterian' about the mind-body problem. Mysterianism, to use such a horrible word, is not confined to the mind-body problem: there are mysterians about the origin of the universe, mysterians about the nature of thinking, and so on.

Taking my cue from the proliferation of such mysterian positions and also from the spectacular failure of the natural theological and atheological arguments to convince the other side, I wonder if we should be mysterians about the problem of rationally resolving whether God exists. One who is a mysterian about this problem maintains that there could (epistemic sense of 'could') not be a rationally compelling argument, one that should convince everyone concerned, for theism or for atheism. And perhaps, as McGinn maintains about the mind-body problem, the very insolubility of the problem of whether God exists removes the problem, that is, removes it as a distinctively philosophical problem.

I'm in the middle of writing a piece on hell for an Oxford Handbook. The last material I've seen on the subject is the interchange between Talbott and Murray, as well as the interchange between Walls and Talbott (all on universalism). There's also Sider's piece on hell and vagueness, arguing that hell will have to be unjust because its not vague whether you go there but it has to be vague whether one has done anything that deserves being sent there.

Anyone know of other new stuff on hell?

David Efird's post on whether Divine Command Theory (DCT) can be shown to be false or circular contained the following argument:

(1) Necessarily, if God commands that subject S commit action A, then it is ethically right for S to commit A.
(2) Possibly, God commands subject S to commit an act of wanton cruelty.
So, (3) Possibly, it is ethically right for S to commit an act of wanton cruelty.

David wanted to deny (1) and had to deal with a charge of circularity. My inclination was to deny (2) and say that God couldn't command something contrary to his nature, but David's worry about that was that you then have denied DCT. DCT is supposed to explain morality in terms of God's will, but then if you deny (2) it seems to be not God's will but God's nature that grounds morality. I think this is a mistake, and William Alston's "Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists" gives a way to do this without that consequences. In the comments, I'd mentioned Alston's solution, but now that I've gone back and read his paper I think I did his suggestion some serious injustice, so I'd like to explain how Alston's response would handle the issue at hand.

I've been reading Plantinga's third volume and am puzzled by his account. As I understand it, Plantinga wants to block merely epistemic complaints about Christian belief--that is, he wants to block the kind of complaint where you bracket the truth of the claims in question and claim that whether or not the beliefs are true, there is something wrong, on purely intellectual grounds, with holding them.

The method used by Plantinga seems to be this: describe a model on which, together with his account of warrant, the beliefs would be warranted if the model is true. This is the perplexing part for me.

In his 'Eternity' (in Quinn and Taliaferro (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 257-63), Brian Leftow canvasses some of the more prominent arguments for God being in time. Some of these are (quoting Leftow and retaining his labeling):

(b) God is alive. Lives are events. Events must occur in time. So God is in time.

(g) God acts. Actions are events. Again, events must occur in time.

(h) God is a cause. Either causal relations link only events, or they also link agents to events ("agent causality"). If the first, then as events occur only in time, God is in time. If the second, the agent's action is dated at the time of the effect. So if God has any temporal effects as an agent cause, He is in time. (pp. 260-61)

Leftow notes that all of these arguments assume that:

(E) Events must occur in time.

He thinks that all of the arguments for this assumption are bad arguments. I think he is wrong about one of them.

Topic-oriented group philosophy blogs continue to multiply. I would like to welcome PEA Soup to the blogsphere. PEA Soup is a blog with a focus on ethics. The contributors include Dan Boisvert (California State University, Bakersfield), Josh Glasgow (Occidental College), Dave Shoemaker (Bowling Green State University), and Doug Portmore (California State University, Northridge).

One of the standard objections to divine command theory (DCT) can be framed in terms of the following argument.

(1) Necessarily, if God commands that subject S commit action A, then it is ethically right for S to commit A.
(2) Possibly, God commands subject S to commit an act of wanton cruelty.
So, (3) Possibly, it is ethically right for S to commit an act of wanton cruelty.

How should the DCTer respond to this argument?

Since Molinism seems to have such a strong place in the comments section, I want to try out an issue on the concept of prevolitionality. The issue is central to discussions of Molinism, because Molinists take the truth of counterfactuals of freedom (CFs) to be prevolitional for God: that is, they are true prior to, in the logical order of things, anything that is true as a result of God's will.

Some Molinists, such as Tom Flint, also claim the prevolitionality claim is the same as claiming that there is nothing God could do to make such CFs false. I have resisted this identification in print, insisting that the presence of snow in a certain spot in northern Indiana is prevolitional with respect to me but not beyond my control: I could have put a piece of cardboard over the spot and it would not have had snow on it.

Flint replied by claiming that the case of God is different. He thinks God's case is more like what would be the case had I thought about the spot in Indiana, and consciously refrained from interfering, claiming "Here, a full explanation of why the snow is there would have to take account of the various acts and processes going on in my mind. So the ground�s being snow covered would obviously be both post-volitional and non-resilient." (A claim is resilient for S iff S lacks counterfactual power over its truth-value.)

I think this response is inadequate. If we begin with the concept of prevolitionality, the natural understanding of it is in terms of causality. We might say that a truth is prevolitional for S iff it is not true in virtue of any act of S's will, but the notion of "in virtue of" seems obviously causal. If we take prevolitionality in causal terms, there is a straightforward understanding of causation on which, even if I decided not to go to Indiana and interfere, no act of my will caused the presence of snow on the spot in question.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James makes the following claims about mystical experiences:

(1) Mystical states, when developed, usually are and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.

(3) They break down the authority of non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth, in which, so far as anything in us vitally responds to them, we may freely continue to have faith. (460-61)

Claim (1) seems to say that mystical experiences give a sort of invulnerable authority, or, one might say, indefeasible warrant, for mystical beliefs (beliefs concerning mystical experiences). Claim (2) might be interepreted, when purged of some unfortunate features, as saying that the warrant spoken of in Claim (1) for mystical beliefs is not transmissible by testimony from the one who experienced the mystical state to one who has not.

Whether or not this is an accurate interpretation of James, I would like to ask: how should we understand James's use of 'authority' in Claim (1) and does this understanding fit with Claim (2)?