I'm interested in whether the *real* laws are free of such clauses. Some defenders of the possibility of miracles hold that all such laws have such clauses, so that God doesn't have to violate laws of nature in order to perform a miracle. Instead, he only needs to override them. I'm going to grant this point, since my question isn't intended to be about the possibility or nature of miracles. I'll say later where it really is, but it would be rhetorically untoward to give away the punchline so early. So what I want to know is whether laws are ceteris paribus-free from within the natural order itself (rather than from outside, as in the case of intervention by God). Fodor holds that all the laws of the special sciences are required to have c.p. clauses in them, because they can be overridden by more fundamental laws. That leaves open the possibility, however, that the fundamental laws of physics can be c.p.-clause-free. And if the c.p. clauses we're thinking of are from within the natural order itself, then perhaps we should expect them to be free of such clauses. My interest here concerns libertarians who talk in terms of the possibility of "losing one's soul," where what this is intended to mean is that an individual can come to a point where it is psychologically impossible for them to choose an option that used to be possible for them. Some talk as if this is an accurate description of what eternal consignment in hell involves. I'm interested in whether the suggestion makes any sense.
June 2006 Archives
On June 26th there was a "substantive content change" to the Hoffman and Rosenkranz's Omnipotence article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I haven't had time to see just in what the changes consist and didn't report it earlier because I was on my way back from a National Faculty Leadership conference put on by Christian Leadership Ministries in DC--I was racing the floods home! More about that later though.
A few months back, our fearless leader Matthew had a post referencing a discussion at Weatherson’s blog Thoughts, Arguments and Rants about the role that blogs are starting to play in philosophy. I want to revisit this issue in light of a recent event (and at Matthew’s encouragement—where would we be without him?).
Gary Rosenkrantz, UNC Greensboro, reviews J. L. Schellenberg's Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Rosenkrantz highlights a line of Schellenberg's thought that is relevant to some recent conversations here. "What are the most general aims of philosophy of religion?"
The aims of philosophy of religion should be to bring to bear methods and results from the rest of philosophy in (1) a comprehensive study of prolegomenous issues, including the questions of what religion, the various (actual and possible) religious propositions or claims, and the various responses to religious claims, as well as the proper evaluation of the latter and of those who embrace them, most fundamentally amount to; and in (2) an inquiry geared to determining whether any religious claims are justified, and also which responses to religious claims are justified, and to what extent persons who instantiate such responses -- in particular, religious responses -- are justified in doing so (these I have called the lower-level aims, whose realization is facilitated by work on prolegomena); and all of this not just for its own sake but in order to facilitate (3) an investigation of what bearing religious claims may have on theoretical problems in other areas of philosophy and (4) a rational evaluation of religious practice (these last are two higher-level aims). -- p. 191
Society of Christian Philosophers
APA Eastern Division Meeting
December 27-30, 2006
The SCP Program Committee for the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association is soliciting 2 short papers (no more than 2 pages single-spaced) for the purpose of generating an open discussion on philosophical issues in religious diversity.
We have a 2 hour group session which probably will be scheduled sometime on Thursday, December 28th. However, the APA does not guarantee a specific date and time at this point in the preparations for the meeting.
If you are interested in submitting a paper and willing to present it at the Society of Christian Philosophers meeting at the APA in December, e-mail your proposal to zeis@canisius.edu by August 15th.
SCP Eastern Division APA Program Committee
David Basinger
Gyula Klima
John Zeis, chair
Frequent reader and sometime commenter Dale Tuggy, SUNY Fredonia, is the latest philosopher to enter the blogosphere. His blog, Trinities, promises to be very narrow in focus and very interesting for those interested in a philosophical examination of the doctrine of the Trinity. The subject of the site is the doctrine(s) of the Trinity, and he adds only the Trinity. I suspect that it will in be about the Trinity except when it's not. In those other cases I suspect it'll be about unities, binities, triads, and possibly even quadrads. Perhaps in time we'll be able to drag him onto the Prosblogion team, but in the mean time give him a visit and welcome him to the blogosphere.
Thought this call for papers might be of some interest...
April 4-5, 2007
In conjunction with the APA Pacific Division Meeting
San Francisco, California
Deadline for submissions: September 15, 2006.
Notice of acceptance: October 2006.
Papers: 3,000 word limit. Must be accompanied by abstract of no more than 150 words.
Panel proposals: Topic and structure of panel, including panelists' contributions, 1,000 words or less. Include panelists' names, affiliations, and email addresses, and whether they have assented to participating as described.
Mark Goodacre has a very interesting post at New Testament Gateway on on overspecialization in the field of biblical studies. I thought it might be interesting to raise some of the same questions about philosophy with respect to philosophy of religion. Some of the things he's saying are clearly true of philosophy as a broader field. I don't think as many people are overspecializing in philosophy of religion as in other fields, however, and there are probably interesting reasons why. I'd be curious to see if anyone had any thoughts on this. Some of our recent discussions on how philosophy of religion is viewed outside the sub-field might be relevant.
One interesting thing he says does apply very clearly to philosophy of religion, however. How many people do you know who regularly teach intro to philosophy classes that include arguments for and against the existence of God but who have absolutely no understanding of the current state of play on those issues? They teach the problem of evil as if Mackie's famous paper from the 60s (I believe) was the final word, the same way people in religion departments teach classes on the Bible as if Julius Wellhausen was the final word on the subject.
Readers and contributors to Prosblogion, I am a new contributor to Prosblogion, even though I have been a regular reader of the blog for some time. I work primarily in epistemology (for now at least). I wanted to ask a question about materialism and the afterlife. Van Inwagen's materialist vision of the afterlife is notorious and seems to be the first thing people generally mention on the topic. But I was wondering if you knew of any other attempts to combine materialism about the mind with our continued personal existence in the afterlife. I thought readers of this blog could tell me where to look, if anyone could. Thanks in advance.
Last week I sent off a review of John Leslie's _Infinite Minds_ (OUP) to Religious Studies Review. I was under very strict space limitations so I didn't have room to muse. Readers might be familiar with Leslie due to his previous work--most notably in _Universes_--chronicling the evidence for the "fine-tuning" of our universe to allow for or possibly even to produce intelligent life.
In _Infinite Minds_ Leslie presents his own explanation of the data. It is not any kind of traditional theism, but rather a view called Axiarchism--no doubt from axios-"worth" and arche-"first principle". It is a Platonic creation story with a Spinozan spin. The essence of the theory is this:
(T1) The universe exists simply because it is good that it should exist.
Underlying (T1) is a thesis about the causal effectiveness of value.
(T2) That a state of affairs is valuable can sometimes be sufficient to bring it about that it exists.
I'm sure that strikes you as being as odd-ball as it did me, but stick with me because the objections might bounce of him and stick on you. For, Leslie suggests, the same problem arises for theism in spades and, what's more, theism still doesn't have the advantages axiarchism. In particular, Leslie claims, axiarchism can--and theism cannot--give a good answer to The Deepest Question: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Keith DeRose has three posts at Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank on universalism that might interest readers of this blog. "The Problem With Universalism"? deals with a worry some have raised about universalism, i.e. that it asks the wrong question. According to this objection, universalism relies on the assumption that salvation is about getting a lot of souls into heaven after they die. Keith responds that his universalism doesn't rely on that assumption at all. Hoping that Universalism Is/Will Be True examines various positions that might be described as "hoping that universalism is true". It gets into some interesting issues about holding to philosophical positions that you aren't comfortable saying you believe. He thinks we accept philosophical positions in a way that can involve the will, whereas belief is more involuntary. He follows this up with an extended discussion of how this might be affected on a view of future contingents according to which future contingents will be but are not now true. Underground Universalism? looks at the pressures on those whose livelihood depends on their theological convictions who might be pressured not to hold universalism and suggests that universalists recognize this and not push them too much, all the while seeking to alleviate those pressures by moving toward a removal of their causes.
It seems, by now, uncontroversial to assume that it is possible for a person to rationally hold religious beliefs. One might then ask, however: What distinguishes rational religious beliefs from irrational ones?
As an example - probably not the best, and also not originally my own - consider the difference between Alvin Plantinga and one of the 9/11 hijackers. I am of the opinion that Plantinga is rational in at least a large number of his religious beliefs, whereas the hijacker is not. My interlocutor, whose example this is, wants to know: What is the salient difference between Plantinga and the hijacker that makes the former rational and the latter not?
On March 28th William Lane Craig and Bart Ehrman engaged in a debate on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. I don't usually post about apologetically matters, but there is a bit of philosophically interesting material in the debate. I'm not sure that it was a fair face-off considering the two work in quite different disciplines, but parts of it proved entertaining. I want to highlight a bit of the debate that I found humorous. During the debate Craig talks a bit about using probability calculus in arguing for the likelihood of the resurrection. OK he really went on at length about probability.
I'd like to welcome our latest contributor David Slakter. David is currently a graduate student in Indian philosophy at the University of Liverpool and he holds an MA in Philosophy from the University of Oklahoma.
Joe Ulatowski is preparing to teach his first philosophy of religion course and he's seeking some input on how to proceed. Should he go topical or historical, lecture or discussion, what topics should he focus on? I know some of Prosblogion's readers could lend him a hand. So, please take a moment to share your wise council with Joe.
Today is Prosblogion's second anniversary. The blog started with Jeremy Pierce following up on Brian Weatherson's suggestion that the philosophy blogosphere needed more topical blogs. A month later Prosblogion went live with a mix of faculty and graduate student contributors. Since that time we have gained a few new contributors and lost a couple. Two contributors have moved from being students to faculty and three of us have moved on to other graduate programs. In that same time a few of our commenters and interlocutors have made the same types of transitions.
While the frequency of posting at Prosblogion has never been great, the quality of the posts has been generally good. Collectively we have generated 231 posts, garnered 1,598 comments, and warranted 50 TrackBacks. Over the last two years our readership has continued to grow. In the last year we have had 165,933 visitors and 296,133 individual page loads. Reading through the logs tells me that we have some of the brightest in our field as occasional lurkers. While we have plenty of lurkers, we've also attracted a fantastic group of regular commenters who make posting here a pleasant and rewarding experience.
The last year has seen a lot of growth in the philosophy blogosphere. It has also been fun to watch the number of individual blogs, especially those by graduate students, flourish. The numbers have grown to a level such that I can no longer follow them all. Sadly there are still too few topical group blogs; no metaphysics, history, philosophy of science. Happily the group blogs that do exist have been remarkably stable and productive. I think we've carved out a nice piece of the blogosphere for ourselves and shown that a philosophy of religion blog can persist/endure.
Looking forward there are a few things I'd like to see on this site in the future. Call it my wish list. I'd still like to attract more senior philosophers to contribute to the site, even if only as guests. I'd like to add contributors from other religious traditions and friendly atheists/agnostics. (Interested parties should contact me.) Finally, I'd like to squeeze at least one post out of Tom because everything he writes is fantastic. Readers with wishes or suggestions are welcome to leave them in the comments section.
Thanks to all of my fellow contributors, commenters, and readers, for making Prosblogion a place that is a pleasure to support and contribute to.
For those interested, I've just posted a new draft of my paper The Incarnation and the Knowability Paradox. As always, comments welcome and appreciated.
In March, I posted my interview with Brian Leftow serially. You can read the whole interview here.
Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has an admirable review of Daniel Dennett's latest book Breaking the Spell. Dyson opens Religion from the Outside with a couple of vignettes of those who've previously played the game of breaking religion's spell. I found the story of G.H. Hardy more disturbing than humorous. One of the nice things about this review is that it is one of the few that touches on Dennett's points about public policy towards the close of the book. In addition, Science & Theology News has published Alister McGrath's remarks in response to Daniel Dennett's book Breaking the Spell. This is adapted from the Royal Society of Arts debate I posted about back in March.
