January 2006 Archives

The SEP has just updated the entry on pantheism by Michael Levine of the University of Western Australia. It looks to be a minor revision.

Reader Colleen Keating asked the following in a comment to another post:

I'm applying for a PhD in Religious Studies (with a soon to be completed MA in Philosophy). There are faculty at some of these programs who list "philosophy of religion" as part of their interests, and who have published in phenomenology, existentialism, metaphysics, etc. However, my hunch is that philosophy PhD programs look askance at religion PhD programs-- perhaps how English PhDs have tended to view Comp Lit PhDs.

Does anyone have anything to add that justifies or disqualifies my hunch as to this divide in academia?

I'll offer a hunch based on some limited experience. Religious studies is a broad area that draws on history, sociology, and philosophy. I think that most philosophers would agree that there is some fine work being done in religious studies programs. For example I really like William Zellner's work on religious countercultures, John Kelsey's work in comparative ethics, and James Turner Johnson's work on just war. However, most philosophers would be concerned with the fact that religious studies programs are suffused with people taking postmodernist or continental approaches to their work, including work in philosophy of religion. The same goes for much of the philosophical work that is taking place in seminaries, which probably have a closer relation with religious studies than those of us in philosophy. For what it is worth I'd think that it is easier for those trained in philosophy programs to find work in religious studies departments than vice versa. Perhaps others will offer their own observation in the comments section.

I just returned home from the 1st Annual University of Missouri Philosophy of Religion Conference and thought I'd post a couple of remarks and a few pictures. First off Jon Kvanvig and Justin McBrayer did an excellent job in orchestrating the whole affair. All of the talks and discussion provided some serious food for thought. It was great to be able to match faces with names that I've seen in print, and to meet in person folks I've come to know through this site. I'm already looking forward to the second conference October 27-28. Hopefully I'll have some serious comments soon, but in the meantime there are some pictures below the fold.

In Ed Wierenga's _The Nature of God_ he mention three main attributes: wisdom, power, and goodness. Hoffman and Rosenkrantz' _The Divine Attributes_ also mention these three as the ''core'' attributes. Swinburne has suggested (in conversation at least) that perhaps moral goodness can be derived from wisdom and power (of course some, like Aquinas, have conceived of God's goodness as ontic rather than moral in the contemporary sense, but I'll focus on moral goodness). I want to investigate that a little bit. One motivation is just to satisfy curiosity about the logical structure of God's attributes. Historically, Aquinas derived most of God's attributes from His being pure actuality. Also—and this is Swinburne's main motivation—arguments to the existence of God as an explanation of observed phenomena benefit from theism being a simple hypothesis and one kind of simplicity is a broadly structural simplicity entailed by an entity having few properties. Finally, since the attributes in question are the traditional ''communicable'' attributes, we could learn something about the idealization of our own core attributes by thinking about how they are related in God. I'll put an attempted derivation of omnibenevolence from omnipotence and omniscience below the fold.

I just got Swinburne's 2nd Edition of _Faith and Reason_ yesterday. When he told me he was revising it I was really excited because it's always been one of my favorite books and titular topics. I've posted the Preface below the fold. He specifically mentions Plantinga.

I've sat on the following thinking it may raise a few hackles, but I throw caution to the wind.

Visitors to my home department are frequently startled at the number of people interested in philosophy of religion in our program. They are also taken aback by the number of theists. They are sometimes surprised that on the faculty we have a Rabbi, an Episcopal priest, and a Chair with an AOS in philosophy of religion. (I'm sure there is a joke latent here!) These visitors are quick to inform me that this is certainly not the norm, and that philosophy of religion, and theism in general, are something of odd anomaly in most places. This isn't simply something I've seen locally as I sometimes get the same kind of response when I travel, or talk to friends at other programs. Now I have no idea if it is true that philosophy of religion is viewed so dimly, though I speculate that it might be true in some programs. If you work in metaphysics or epistemology it can seem a hard claim to buy if one looks at the top people in those areas. However, I want to treat the claim as true for the purposes of discussion because I suspect that philosophy of religion suffers a handicap where other areas don't.

Philosophy of religion, unlike any other area I can think of, has a unique subculture that many are likely to cast a baleful eye on... Christian apologetics. Philosophy of religion and Christian apologetics can be hard to distinguish. You may even think that there isn't a distinction to be made. My initial thoughts on this are that apologetics is essentially defensive, whereas philosophy of religion is about following the arguments where they lead. (This is perhaps why there are so many universalists in the later camp.) It seems to be the case that people doing serious work in apologetics see no distinction between their endeavors and those of philosophy, whereas those who see themselves as philosophers are often at pains to distinguish their work from that of apologists. Part of the problem is that much of the philosophical community, including many doing philosophy of religion, are going to look on apologetics as very bad philosophy. (If they think it counts as philosophy at all.)

So I put this up for discussion with a few things in mind.

1. Is philosophy of religion really so ill thought of?
   
2. Should recent PhD's downplay their work in philosophy of relgion?
   
3. Is there really a distinction to be drawn here?
   
4. Do philosophers who engage in both do philosophy a disservice?
   
5. Should philosopher seek to distance themselves from apologists, or should they step in and make better argements?
   

Saint Anselm Journal Call for Papers
Saint Anselm Journal, published by the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies, is a refereed e-journal of articles, discussion papers, and book reviews that examine the life, thought, teachings, and spirituality of Saint Anselm of Canterbury as well as proceedings of programs sponsored by the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies.

The Saint Anselm Journal welcomes original articles, discussion papers, and book reviews that examine the life, thought, teachings, and influence of Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

The Journal accepts submissions written in English, French, or German.

Editor:
John R. Fortin, O.S.B.
Saint Anselm College
100 Saint Anselm Drive
Manchester, NH 03102-1310
Email: jfortin@anselm.edu

This past summer I posted a couple of observations relating to philosopher John Kekes remarks on his latest book The Roots of Evil (Cornell UP). Notre Dame philosopher Thomas Flint has a fresh review of Kekes book posted at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Flint is very generous considering the flaws he exposes towards the end of the review. Prosblogion readers should be warned that Kekes work is in no way connected to any of the contemporary literature on the "problem of evil." I'd be curious to know how the book stacks up against Amelie Rorty's The Many Faces of Evil, Richard Bernstein's Radical Evil, or Susan Neiman's Evil in Modern Thought.

Evidence once again that miracles never cease. Our own Trent Dougherty has laid hands on the once moribund Rochester philosophy grad student blog* and raised it from the dead. Trent promises to keep up the maintenance so it should be safe to add This is Not the Name of This Blog back to your list of functioning blogs.

*Unofficial of course

Christians and the Future of Metaphysics

National Faculty Leadership Conference: Philosophy Section

June 22-25, 2006
Hilton Mark Center Hotel, Alexandria, VA

Guest Presenters:
Dean Zimmerman, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University
John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Andrews
Alex Pruss, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown

The central theme of the philosophy section at this year's National Faculty Leadership Conference will be how Christians can best participate in the current renaissance of metaphysics (including ontology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of time, and causation) and what distinctive contribution we can make to the future of the discipline. However, we will also accept papers of high quality in other branches of philosophy, including ethics, epistemology and the history of philosophy.

Religion, Science and Public Concern: Discourses on Ethics, Ecology, and Genomics

Date: Thursday 26 and Friday 27, October 2006
Venue: The Netherlands, University of Leiden

The aim of the conference, organised by the Faculty of Theology at Leiden University, is to bring together researchers interested in interactions between religion, ethics, and science in public discourses. In reflecting upon the social and moral jobs that speakers expect religious, ethical, and scientific notions to do, we may acquire a better understanding of debates on controversial issues of public policy and on the understanding of the role of and the relation between religion, ethics, science, politics, and technology.

Messianism and the law

Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp) 11-12 May 2006

In cooperation with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Antwerp and the International Walter Benjamin Association

The following scholars have confirmed to speak at the conference:

• Giorgio Agamben
  
• Moshe Idel
  
• Astrid Deuber-Mankovsky
  
• Ashraf Noor
  
• Micha Brumlik

We might add a Graduate Conference on 11 May. Any PhD students researching messianism are invited to contact thomas.crombez@ua.ac.be.

I was thinking again recently about a question that arose at the Midwest Regional Meeting of the SCP last year.  One plenary speaker raised the issue--I forget the context--of whether Jesus was a Christian by currently common conceptions.  The talk was fairly fragmented, but I was led to reflect on a couple of things as a result and this was one of them.  I'd had some discussion on this once in High School, so it was fun to think about it again. 

Assume we want Jesus to satisfy the predicate "is a Christian" (I'm inclined to think we should, but I can see reasons for denying this).  What seems to follow quickly is the No Cognitive Definition Thesis:

NCD  No definition of what it is to be a Christian which appeals only to cognitive states of the subject will be adequate.

Cognitivist definitions run quickly into the Demon Problem stated by James: "You believe that God is one?  Good.  So do the demons!"  Even if you don't believe there are such things as literal demons a good definition of "Christian" should be such as to rule out (evil) demons in the worlds in which they exist.  But it seems that any creed (construed propositionally) could be endorsed by Lucifer himself (the caveat is intended to address both the potentially extra-propositional commitment inherent in creeds and the use of indexicals--like "was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate").  How then to define "Christian?"

I'm doing a series at my own blog based on the content of an intro to philosophy course that I teach from time to time called Theories of Knowledge and Reality. This is designed to reflect that course, so it's aimed to be at a fairly introductory level, though later posts in the series reflect what was covered earlier (as should be the case in a course). I'm now up to the cosmological argument. I didn't cross-post them here due to their aim at being introductory level, and I didn't foresee them being of interest to most readers of this blog, which tends to operate at a higher level of detail. The comments have clearly into that level, however, so I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog. The first post presents what I think is the strongest version of the cosmological argument, and the second responds to what I think are the two strongest objections.

George Johnson reviews Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon in Getting a Rational Grip on Religion. Dennett wants to defend the idea that religion is a fit subject for scientific scrutiny?

"I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here," he writes. "They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that--that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do."

Our own Kevin Timpe on Truth, Christmas, and the Eucharist.

Toni Vogey Carey on The Ontological Argument and the Sin of Hubris

News of the absurd... Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest.

An Italian judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed. The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist. ... Signor Cascioli's contention -- echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites -- is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

Faith, Freud and intellectual integrity a review of John Cottingham's The Spiritual Dimension: religion, philosophy and human value based on his 2003/4 Stanton Lectures.

V.V. Raman reviews William Wainwright's Religion and Morality

The questions are old and simple: Is morality always tied up with religion? Can there be religion without morality? Can there be morality without religion?

Rea, Plantinga, and Ruse on Theory's value for a science class debated.

"The view itself is not pushing any type of religion," Rea said. "You could be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Platonist or a Stoic and believe intelligent design. One of the main reasons people think it's pushing religion is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are the major religions that involve a creator."

The Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews brings us Steven Emmanuel's review Sylvia Walsh's Living Christianly: Kierkegaard's Dialectic of Christian Existence

Via the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy we get John Finnis on Aquinas' Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy, Aaron Hughes on Judah Abrabanel, and William Hasker on the Afterlife.