I posted this at my own blog a little under a month ago, and one philosopher recommended that I post it here as well. He also thought it was interesting enough to try to turn into a paper. Do those who know more about these issues agree? If you want to see the comments on the original, go to the original post. I haven't changed anything in the original post for this posting, even though I think some of what the comments brought out might have made it worth changing some things.

I just realized a very interesting consequence of two theses that I'm sure many people hold. The first thesis is the Reformed version of infant baptism. I don't think the Catholic version has this result. Protestant paedobaptists believe that baptism does not save, nor remove original sin. It does indicate parents' trust that their child, being in the covenant community, will eventually develop personal faith and serve Christ as Lord. In other words, the content is pretty much what other parents express when they dedicate their children in hope of baptism when they express faith at an old enough age to be recognized as genuine. The biggest difference is that paedobaptists use the term 'baptism' and treat their children as part of the covenant itself rather than simply as benefiting from being part of the more general covenant community. As a credobaptist I disagree with this view, but it's quite common among the Reformed.

The second thesis is the main idea behind retroactive prayer. I've already argued for the possibility of legitimately retroactive prayer, so I won't do all that again. I'll simply say that if you accept that God has perfect knowledge of what's future to us (whether because he's outside time or some other reason), there's no reason for us not to pray about things that have already happened when we don't know the outcome. If God can foresee my prayer beforehand, then there's nothing to stop God from answering what I will later pray. The key idea here is foreknowledge, which all Reformed accept.

Now if you put these two things together, you get a very surprising result. The same things that justify these two views, when combined, will open up the possibility of baptism for the dead.

The 15th Philosophers' Carvnival is at The Buckingham Inquirer. Ted's post on fine-tuning represents our blog.

Call for Papers
Society of Christian Philosophers Pacific Regional Meeting
University of San Diego
February 16 - 18, 2006

Selves, Souls & Survival

Plenary Speakers:
Lynne Rudder Baker (U Mass)
Paul Churchland (UC San Diego)
Peter Van Inwagen (Notre Dame)

Papers on any topic of philosophical interest will be considered. The Society of Christian Philosophers welcomes participation from both Christians and non-Christians as presenters, commentators and session chairs. Submissions should have a reading time of 20 to 30 minutes and be prepared for blind review--electronic submissions preferred. Please indicate in your cover letter whether, should your paper not be accepted, you would be willing to serve as a commentator or session chair. For further information, visit the conference website at home.sandiego.edu/~baber/SCP2006.

Deadline for Submission: January 1, 2006

Send submissions and requests to comment or chair to: baber@sandiego.edu

H. E. Baber
Department of Philosophy
University of San Diego
5998 Alcalá Park
San Diego, CA 92110

I never thought I'd be writing about John Piper on this blog, but I've been thinking about the thesis he calls Christian hedonism with the aim of figuring out exactly what this thesis corresponds to in standard philosophical terms. The post I was writing was a little more philosophical detailed than I usually have on my blog, so I'm posting the full version here and editing it for my own blog to make the philosophy a little less detailed.

It seems to me that Piper's Christian hedonism simply isn't any of the positions philosophers have called hedonism. I'm aware of four distinct theses philosophers refer to as hedonism, each a kind of hedonism with respect to a different issue. I do think Piper holds one of them, but I don't think it's equivalent to what he calls Christian hedonism, which doesn't seem to me to be a kind of hedonism at all.

First, here is Piper's account of what Christian hedonism is (this is all directly quoted from Desiring God, p.23):

1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience; it is good, not sinful. 2. We should never try to resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction. 3. The deepest and most enduring satisfaction is found only in God. Not from God, but in God. 4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love. 5. To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. That is, the chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying him forever.

I don't think this view is hedonism according to any of the standard philosophical views I know of that are called hedonism. (It's clearly not hedonism in the popular sense, but I'm concerned about the philosophical views called hedonism, which are what Piper thought he had in mind in choosing the term.)

I just realized that the 15th Philosophers' Carnival is next week (if you want to submit a post, please do so very soon), and I forgot to link to the 14th. Here it is.

I've started to think about the abstract structure of the observation selection problem (OSP) with an eye towards the fine-tuning argument. The way the OSP works, at least in the simple cases, is that some claim is provided that undercuts one's inference from data to hypothesis. For instance, if one's data is that 75% of the polled group G report voting for the republican candidate then the inference to probably the republican candidate will win may be undercut by adding the claim that G is not a representative sample of the entire voting population (G is comprised of 80% republicans). The plausibility of this undercutting move seems to rely on some sort of sensitivity requirement: if the hypothesis were false then the data would indicate that. So far, so good. But when we come to the inference that the fine-tuning data is very surprising on a chance hypothesis, we are told that we should not find it surprising because of the OSP, and this because this is the only kind of universe we could observe. Let e = the fine-tuning data and N= the chance hypothesis, the claim that P(e/N) is very low should be undermined by some claim k that we add to N. What's that k? Suppose k = the only data we could possess is e. How is this supposed to undermine the claim that P(e/N) is very low? It seems like in this case we can still reason from the properties of the chance hypothesis to the improbability of e. It's true, of course, that something along the lines of k is true, but that doesn't affect the predictive power (or, in this case, the lack thereof) of the chance-hypothesis. Maybe, however, there's a better way to cast the OSP. Thoughts?

For those unfamiliar Ars Disputandi is an online journal for the philosophy of religion. Like any journal it publishes refereed articles, discussion notes, and book reviews. One advantage over traditional journals is that submissions that are accepted for publication are immediately published online. A serious upside is that the peer review process has a fast turnaround when compared to print journals. One downside is that most online journals do not have the established reputation of print journals. Perhaps this will change over time as more people choose to submit quality work to places like AD. What follows are the most recent additions to the journal.

Article:

Divine Foreknowledge, Harry Frankfurt, and 'Hyper-Incompatibilism' By David Werther

In cruising the philosophy blogosphere I ran across an interesting post by John DePoe on whether belief in God is properly basic. John thinks that some criticism by Norman Geisler is particularly devastating. I'll return to Geisler's critique in a later post. For now I want to address some of John's claims. It has been awhile since I read any Plantinga so what follows will be mostly from memory. Let me start with John's exposition of a properly basic belief:

The criterion that designates a belief as properly basic seems to be that the belief is widely accepted or a central axiom that buttresses the central aspects of one's life. Plantinga takes the belief that "God exists" to be properly basic.

Properly basic beliefs are not defined as those which are widely held though they may be. The notion of properly basic beliefs has existed in various forms as far back as the stoics. For Plantinga a properly basic belief is a belief that is not believed on the basis of other beliefs, but forms the basis for other beliefs. So it is likely a central axiom, but I don't know that it need be. We come to have basic beliefs by trusting our cognitive faculties when we come to have certain beliefs. Plantinga appeals to analogies to show that we do this sort of thing all the time when we believe in other minds, believe in the past, etc. We didn't need arguments to believe in the past or other minds we simply are inclined to have these beliefs. In similar fashion many of us are inclined to believe in God. Now it may turn out that the theist is wrong in believing in God. Properly basic beliefs are not infallible, but this doesn't make them irrational. Of course theists may be wrong about the existence of God, but we may be wrong about other minds and the past too. One thing to be clear about is that the claim that belief in God is a properly basic belief is not to serve as a proof for God's existence. As I recall Plantinga's goal is to counter the claim that belief in God is irrational. So Plantinga's approach seem a minimalist one in that he only has to show that belief in God is rational and not the harder task of proving that God exists.

This qualifies as a type of quasi-fideism since it permits one to believe that God exists without any reasons whatsoever.

This claim strikes me as simply false since it is not the case that the theist comes to have a belief in God for no reason. Plantinga thinks that there are good reasons why we come to have basic beliefs, but the reason isn't other beliefs. John may mean arguments when he says reasons in which case I think the later portion of his statement is correct, but I don't think it makes Plantinga a quasi-fidist. Plantinga doesn't reject appeals to reason or arguments for God's existence. He specifically says such actions can bring a person into the proper position to form a belief in God. Yet they are not the reason why someone comes to have such a belief. Curiously reading both Philosophers Who Believe and God and the Philosophers I don't recall a single case of a person coming to believe in God based on arguments.

Numerous philosophers (including Bill Hasker, Tom Flint, David Basinger and John Sanders) have argued that God's having simple foreknowledge (as opposed to middle knowledge) would not aid God in His providential control of the world. A similar argument is developed against the eternalist's position that God is outside of time. I have my students in my Philosophy of Religion course read Sanders' version of the argument, found in his "Why Simple Foreknowledge Offers No More Providential Control than the Openness of God," Faith and Philosophy (1997). I'm wondering if any of you know about a good, and readable, reply to this kind of argument. David Hunt's "Divine Providence and Simple Foreknowledge" is good, but a little too difficult for most undergraduates. Any suggestions, on either a suitable article or on a response to this kind of argument?

Thanks.

Over the last couple of days I have been updating the software backend for all of the Ektopos blogs. You might have noticed that the address for the site has changed to: http://prosblogion.ektopos.com. If you have linked to this site it would be a kindness if you updated your link. Hopefully I can get all of the kinks worked out in the next couple of days. If you have any problems or notice anything weird feel free to email me at matthew@ektopos.com.

I would also like to welcome new contributor Kevin Timpe. A graduate of Saint Louis University Kevin's areas of specialization include contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of religion. He is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of San Diego.