Each semester I take a vote the last day of class on the most popular and least popular readings for the class. This semester I taught philosophy of religion, using primarily pieces from the Blackwell Guide. I won't report on the least popular reading for obvious reasons, but thought there might be some interest in the most popular ones.
The winners are: Hugh McCann's piece on Creation and Conservation, and Linda Zagzebski's piece on Freedom and Foreknowledge. Nice work, Hugh and Linda!
The seventh Philosophers' Carnival is next Monday, so get your submissions in soon enough to give the host time to organize everything.
Most of us are aware of the argument from evil and the various wranglings associated with it for example the debates about whether God could create free willed beings who would always chose to do the good. These debates are typically metaphysical debates about theodicies. Theodicies however are less commonly challenged on ethical grounds, to give one example it is rare for proponents of the argument from evil to respond to the free will theodicy (roughly the claim that the existence of evil is justified because it is a necessary consequence of having free will which is a great good) with the claim that free will doesnt really have great value.
I want to suggest that actually moral issues and particularly the moral presuppositions of theodicies need to be investigated further. For example I argue that many theodicies will only succeed if something like consequentialism/utilitarianism is true.
The climax of Charles Dickens wonderful classic A Christmas Carol comes when Scrooge, shaken by the scenes shown him by the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, pleads, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?" The ghost does not speak a word in answer to Scrooge.
And with good reason! For had the spirit responded, "These shadows are merely scenes of things that could be," Scrooge might well have breathed a sigh of relief and gone on with his life as before. "After all," he might quite rightly reflect, "almost anything could happen! No need to lose sleep about that!" On the other hand, if the spirit had told him candidly, "No, these shadows are not scenes to things that will be" (as we know to be true from the story's end), then Scrooge might have felt no cause for alarm at all, since none of what he had witnessed would in fact come to pass. In that case, he might not have been led to repent and change his life.
Scrooge's problem was that he was asking the wrong question; he had failed to exhaust the alternatives. For between what could be and what will be lies what would be. What the spirit was revealing to Scrooge was what would happen if Scrooge did not repent and change. The spirit was not exhibiting mere possibilities (it was possible that Scrooge would sell his business and open a flower stand and Covent Garden, but who cares about that? ), nor was he showing Scrooge what was in fact going to happen (Dickins assures us that Tiny Tim did not die). Rather the spirit was warning Scrooge that if he did not repent, all these terrible things would come to pass.
In philosophical terminology, the spirit was revealing to Scrooge a bit of counterfactual knowledge.
From The Middle-Knowledge View by William Lane Craig in Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views
Co-blogger, and local big gun, Jon Kvanvig has a review out of John Greco's Ernest Sosa and His Critics. Jon is as insightful as ever, which means you won't have to judge this book simply by its cover. Looks like a great holiday stocking stuffer for the epistemologist in your life.
From the review:
"Ernest Sosa is one of the most important epistemologists of the last half-century or so, developing and defending in various places his own version of virtue epistemology. This volume contains twenty-two critical discussions of Sosa’s views in metaphysics and epistemology, together with an introduction to Sosa’s epistemology by John Greco and replies by Sosa to his critics. In general terms, the philosophical quality of the essays is high, both that of the contributors and Sosa’s replies. What I find interesting in volumes such as this one is the degree to which the criticisms offered require emendation and expansion of the view under discussion. So here I will focus on what strike me as the high points of the volume, where Sosa either amends or expands on previous work to accommodate the critical points raised in the essays."
Read the rest of the review at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
The 6th Philosophers' Carnival is up at MelbournePhilosopher. There's some good stuff there. I expected it to be fairly scant due to the time of year, but that seems not to have affected many of the other blogs. Ektopos blogs, on the other hand...
The 6th Philosophers' Carnival will be Monday. If you have any posts you want to submit for consideration, please do so very soon to give the host time to put it together.
