June 2007 Archives

First, a confession.  The title of this post is chosen partly just to get people to read. But I promise, it isn't entirely gratuitous. So bear with me.

Second, another confession. I have a fetish for numbers. I like prime number in particular. (So I'm pleased that this is the 401st entry on Prosblogion insofar as 401 is itself prime.) I recently became aware of a survey about a survey that Brian Weatherson ran about the rankings of philosophy journals.  The full results can be found here. In looking at the results, a few things stood out to me regarding the philosophy of religion journals.

First, related to comments made by Jeremy Pierce and Andrei Buckareff in the discussion on Leiter's blog about the recent ESF ranking of philosophy journals, neither Philo, Philosophia Christi, Religous Studies, nor Sophia are mentioned in the ESF rankings--only Faith and Philosophy and the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Of these, only F&P, IJPR and RS are in the results from Weatherson's survey.  Here is the data on these three from that survey (you'll have to go in to the permalink for this post to see the whole picture--click here):

There are a number of things that I find interesting about these scores.  First, I was quite surprised to see F&P ranked the lowest of these three in terms of quality.

Second, I was surprised by the rather sizable gap in terms of how people over 40 evaluated IJPR and RS compared with those under 40. 

Third, it didn't really surprise me to see students rank IJPR over F&P, and for faculty to rank F&P higher than did students.

But what really caught my eye was that both IJPR and RS scored a 0 with females (see, I made good on my promise!). I'm guessing that this is because no females evaluated those two journals, though I can't be sure on the basis of the available data.

I found this data interesting. But then again, I also know the difference between twin primes, cousin primes and sexy primes (oh yes, there are such things as sexy primes!).

The third annual conference will be February 6-10, 2008, and the best news of all is that it will be in San Antonio at the Riverwalk! We will be at the Sheraton Gunter Hotel, a historic hotel in downtown San Antonio.

Any help you can provide in spreading the word would be appreciated. As in the past, submissions are welcome for the conference. I'll know more about the invited parts of the program in the next few weeks, but at this point all I know is that I'll be there, and we have commitments at this point for presentations by Alex Pruss and John Fischer. More news to come!

The following claims seem to be true:

(1) God not be in any way caused to act by anything outside of himself.

(2) Providence requires that God in his actions respond to events in the world.

If one adds the plausible claim:

(3) If God responds to events in the world, then these events are partial causes of his action

one concludes that God cannot have both aseity and providence.  This conclusion, however, is theologically problematic: aseity seems to follow from transcendence, and providence is affirmed by all the major monotheistic religions. 

Strong Sovereignty (the doctrine that God determines the truth value of every contingent proposition) and Molinism can be seen as providing ways to deny (2).  One could also take them as ways to reinterpret (2) in a way that denies (3).  I don't think it matters which option one takes.  Anyway, the idea is that given Strong Sovereignty, God simply decides everything ahead of time in such wise that he has no need to "respond" to events, since all the events are always already part of his plan.  Strong Sovereignty has a difficulty, however, with free will and with the deductive problem of evil.  Molinism, on the other hand, holds that God knows prior (I always understand "prior" as "prior in the order of explanation" here) to any decision what to create how any stochastic processes (including free choices) would turn out in any possible circumstances, and using this knowledge, he can make a complete plan of creation without needing to "respond" to events.  Thus, God knows that

(*) were Adam and Eve placed in the garden, they would freely sin. 

Thus he does not need to "respond" to their sin with their expulsion.  He can simply strongly actualize Adam and Eve in the garden, and strongly actualize their expulsion, knowing that they would sin.  Molinism faces two major problems: (a) that the subjunctive conditionals like (*) arguably make no sense, and (b) the problem that Robert Adams raised that it appears to commit one to explanatory loops.

In this post I want to describe a model of creation developed in discussion with Grant Matthews and Sarah Coakley, based on some ideas of theirs, that offers a way to reconcile aseity with providence without making use of Strong Sovereignty or Molinism.  I think the model has theological problems, which may be insuperable, but it should be on the table.  Interestingly, the model does not even require foreknowledge (though, of course, I believe in foreknowledge).

"With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image of God can surely be put aside."

Wow! Something near and dear to Christianity -- the imago dei -- can be safely put aside (not argued down or shown inconsistent, but politely put away). Such truths are hard to take, but the deference the author has shown to my sensibilities helps . . .

 Why can it be put aside? Well, the editor tells us:

"But the suggestion that any entity capable of creating the Universe has a mind encumbered with the same emotional structures and perceptual framework as that of an upright ape adapted to living in small, intensely social peer-groups on the African savannah seems a priori unlikely."

That might very well be a priori unlikely, but who said that being made in the image of God meant that God had a mind encumbered with the same emotional structures and perceptual framework as an upright ape?

One last thing the erudite editor says is:

Moral philosophers often put great store by their rejection of the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, the belief that because something is a particular way, it ought to be that way. Now we learn that untutored beliefs about ‘what ought to be’ do, in fact, reflect an ‘is’: the state of the human mind as an evolved entity. Accepting this represents a challenge that few as yet have really grappled with.

This is one of those claims I hate to see in my intro papers, because there are so many things wrong with it I don't know where to begin. The presentation of the naturalistic argument is wrong (the naturalistic fallacy goes further than just rejecting the deontic conclusion of []p from p). But, even if the portrayal of the naturalist fallacy were spot on, what's with the "reflecting an 'is'" business? Suppose our moral judgments do reflect our evolved state. Then what? So what? Suppose we are superstitious, religious dualists. Wouldn't our moral judgments reflect our immaterial non-evolved state? There's a reason that few moral philosophers have really grappled with this challenge.

How can it be that such things get published?

A new weblog is born, Philosophy Bites which is going to be a site devoted to podcasts (IE MP3 recordings) of interviews with philosophers on a variety of topics. It is run by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton. One of their first interviews is with Stephen Law on the Argument from Evil and can be found here:

Stephen Law on the Argument from Evil

Disclaimer: I haven't had time to listen to the interview myself yet so I cannot say whether it is any good or not.

There's a new Oxford Studies series, in philosophy of religion.  Though the papers haven't been signed yet, I've received notice of board approval, so wanted to announce it.

I'm soliciting papers for volumes that will appear every 1-2 years.  There will be a Younger Philosopher of Religion prize each volume, which won't get you anything but a line item for a vita and noting in each volume. 

Please pass the word, and submissions can be sent to me at jonathan_kvanvigatbaylor.edu (replacing the 'at' with the appropriate email convention).   

Like many of you I try to keep an eye on the various journals on philosophy of religion in order to keep abreast of what's new. Philo, the publication of the Society of Humanist Philosophers, is one of those journals that I've tried to keep up with. The editorial board of the journal is simply topnotch, and the journal has published some really fine volumes. I knew there was a recent change in editorship, however, I'd started wondered if the journal was still in operation since I haven't seen a new volume in sometime.

Happily it looks like Paul Draper has gotten control of the reins and new issues are forthcoming. Out now is volume 9.1 (2006) guest edited by Jeffrey Grupp on "Theories of Simples". Paul tells me that volume 9.2 (2006) guest edited by John Shook is currently at the printer, 10.1 is ready for copy editing, and that by 10.2 we can start blaming holding him responsible for the contents of the journal. So, it's good to see that we wont be losing a fine journal in the area, and it's even better news if you've got an essay looking for a home.

Looks like a worthy project and useful resource for those of us interested in Philosophy of Religion

The project web site features mind maps covering a range of key topics within the Philosophy of Religion, such as the problem of evil, religious diversity and various design arguments. Each map provides access to a wide variety of research and study resources relevant to these topics.

Let's simplify, working only with the problem of evil as it arises in the earthly life of one particular person. 

Definition: The (actual) "career" of a temporal entity x is the maximal collection of all pairs <t,P> where t is a time, P is a property dealing only with what happens at t (Richard Gale will call such a property "temporally pure"), and where x has P at t.  A "possible career" of x is a set S such that there is a possible world w at which S is x's career.  The "earthly life" of an entity x is the set of all pairs <t,P> in x's career such that x has not yet died by the time t.

Consider the following claim that says that the career of a person could always be improved:

(I) Let x be an actual person who suffers the set E of finite evils in his earthly life.  Let C be any possible career of x.  Then there is a possible career C* such that: (a) C* includes x's suffering the evils from E, (b) for aught that we know, C* is x's actual career, (c) it is better to exist with career C* than not to exist at all, and (d) x would be better off by an infinite amount in having C* instead of C.  

I will argue that the truth of (I) significantly alleviates the problem of evil. 

Consider the following hypothesis:

(H1) Every adult who has at least average intelligence, is in at least normal epistemic circumstances (no brainwashing, for instance, and no living in a vat), and strives to figure out the Big Questions with intellectual honesty and openness to truth, practicing the intellectual virtues, putting in an amount of effort proportionate to the importance of the questions and having a firm resolve to strive to live by the truth should he find it, howsoever demanding that might be, will at some point conclude that God exists.

Question 1: Supposing (H1) were true, would the problem of divine hiddenness--the argument from divine hiddenness to divine nonexistence--be an issue?  I suspect not.  Of course there would still be a problem as to why some people do not grow up to adulthood, why some people are of below average intelligence, why some people neglect the intellectual virtues, why some people do not put sufficient effort into thinking about the Big Questions, and why some people are unwilling to live by the truth.  But these problems are simply part and parcel of the standard problem of evil. 

Question 2: Do we have good reason to believe (H1) false?  Well, if we had good reason to believe either that God does not exist or some Kantian thesis about the limitations of our intellect, this might give us good reason to deny (H1).  But the Kantian theses are dubious (I kind of like Karl Rahner's (I think) line that in setting boundaries to reason, reason has already transcended the boundaries), and the proponent of a divine hiddenness argument for the existence of God would beg the question by claiming God doesn't exist.

It may seem that evidence against (H1) is provided by the existence of morally upright atheist/agnostic people who sincerely strive to figure out the Big Questions.  But, frankly, do we really have very good reason to believe that they satisfy the conditions in (H1)?  Almost all of us, and maybe all of us, have vices, both moral and intellectual.  The moral vices keep us from a commitment to live by the truth should we find it, which both makes us undeserving of attaining the truth and makes it more likely that we will have intellectual vices.  The intellectual vices keep us from being open to truth. 

Moreover, our evidence that these people never conclude the existence of God is also weak.  Maybe they were searching for the truth for their whole lives, but their life was cut short, and miraculously God taught them the truth while they were on their death bed.  If God exists and can work miracles, we have no good reason to deny such a possibility.

If we have no good reason to deny (H1), then I think the argument from divine hiddenness is in trouble.

We can also play with variants of (H1):

(H2) Everyone who strives for the truth about the Big Questions receives sufficient evidence of the existence of God (perhaps miraculously on a deathbed).

(H3) Everyone receives sufficient evidence of the existence of God (perhaps at some point their intellect is miraculously raised to a level sufficient for grasping it, if they, say, have native intellectual powers insufficient for grasping the existence of God).

(H4) Everyone receives sufficient evidence of the existence of God as long as the counterfactual that they would accept the evidence were they to receive it is true.  (This need Molinism.)

"But he [Bill Craig] is also somewhat misleading and uncharitable at points, as when he dismisses the hiddenness argument for atheism as ignoring that what God wants is a love relationship, not just belief that he exists (71) -- in the process himself ignoring that the argument he rejects is grounded in points about love relationships, which certainly involve more than belief in the existence of the other, but just as certainly cannot get along without it."

It's time once again to celebrate this site's entry into the blogoshpere. I suspect that being three makes us old as blogs go. In the past three years we've logged 387 posts, which have garnered 3062 comments. Several of those posts have even led to published papers. Traffic to the site continues to climb. This year the site has averaged over 850 visits per day for a total of over 300,000 visits. 

Thanks to all of my fellow contributors and our fabulous commenters for making Prosblogion such an excellent site to visit and contribute to. I look forward to another year of thoughtful and engaging posts and discussions.