March 2009 Archives

Mark Murphy has closed the comments period on his letter to the APA (which follows a petition and a counterpetition), and he is collecting signatures by email. The final version of his text, together with a link to email him a signature, is here.

I would like to quote from the final paragraph of his letter:

The APA is a diverse association marked by deep pluralism. Its members can rightly expect that the APA will respect the deep differences among them in judgments about how it is reasonable for individuals to live and for communities to organize themselves, and it is far from clear that the suggested change in course does respect those differences. It has been correctly claimed by some who argue for the change in policy that any such respect has its limits: the APA of course would not respect colleges the common life of which was built on racist norms. In our view the appeal to this argument highlights what is involved in excluding or marking as beyond the pale the job advertisements from these Christian colleges. There is no serious reasoned disagreement on racist norms; the APA can rightly feel free to speak on behalf of its members to condemn any such. What would be involved in changing the APA's policy with respect to these Christian colleges is that the APA would be taking an official stand, speaking on behalf of all of its members, on what are still matters of deep and reasoned controversy among them: whether so-called traditional marriage has any privileged normative status and whether sexual activity outside such marriage is morally suspect. For the APA to take such a stand would be a grave error and an injustice.

I want to throw this little argument out for comment. (This type of argument was first suggested to me in correspondence with Mike Almeida. My colleague, Michael Tooley, thinks that an argument along these lines is sound.)

The argument implicitly assumes two things.

1. Time is infinitely divisible.

2. There is no least amount of time that it would take God to create a hotel room.

If these assumptions are granted, then it seems that God could not only create a Hilbert's Hotel, but could do so by successive addition. As I'll describe the scenario, God does it in two hours.

During the first hour, God creates the first room. During the next half hour, He creates the second room, during the next fifteen minutes, He creates the third room, during the next seven and a half minutes, He creates the fourth. He continues in this manner until two hours have elapsed. At that point, God has created infinitely many rooms.

We're (obviously) dealing with an actual infinite here, since the two hours have elapsed, and all the rooms have been created. So it looks as if an actually infinite number of "room creations" have taken place and an actually infinite number of rooms exist at the end of the two hours.

This sort of scenario has a familiar air of Zeno-like paradox. Add the following twist on it to bring out the weirdness. Suppose that there's a switch with just two positions: ON and OFF. At the start of the process, the switch is in the OFF position. Every time God creates a room, He changes the position of the switch. Will the switch be ON or OFF at the end of the process?

Tom Flint offered an interesting objection at the MPR Workshop to mereological models of the incarnation. Suppose that human beings are body-soul composites. The broad concretist position is that the Incarnation involved the Son of God assuming a concrete, body-soul composite. Let the body soul composite be Christ’s human nature (or CHN). The specific mereological model treats the Incarnation as a substance—that is, the divine substance—gaining a part. The Incarnated being then is the composite of the divine substance and the CHN (the body-soul composite or the human being). Flint notes that while this model helps resolve lots of interesting problems, it finds a serious objection in the well-known “growing problem”. Suppose it is just a contingent fact that the Incarnation occurred. Let w be a world in which the divine substance is not incarnated. Flint urges that we would want to say that (a) is true.

a. The Son in @ = the Son in w

But no doubt (b) is also true, since Christ is not incarnated in w.

b. The Son in w = the divine substance in w.

The Metaphysics and Philosophy of Religion Workshop will be held this Friday and Saturday at UTSA. It is open to the public and there’s no registration fee. Please, as always, if you’re nearby, stop in. The program and other information is linked below. For more information contact me here.

Metaphysics and Philosophy of Religion Workshop March 27-28, 2009

Consider the four theses: N: Naturalism, T: Theism, R: Our doxastic faculties are reliable (in that fairly weak sense that Plantinga uses in his anti evo+nat argument), S: We exist and have doxastic faculties that seem to be reliable.

Suppose, for the sake of the argument that:

1. P(R|T&S) is at least a half.
2. P(R|N&S) is extremely low.

I take it that we should avoid moral daredevilism. Let’s understand a moral daredevil as someone who takes unnecessary moral risks. And let’s say that S takes an unnecessary moral risk in doing A iff. A does not maximize expected morality (I don’t say ‘expected value’). But how is the expected morality of an action determined? The expected morality of A is determined as follows, where M is any moral moral theory recommending or permittng A and VA is the moral value/disvalue of A.

P. EM(A) = [Pr(M) . V(A/M)] + [Pr(~M) . V(A/~M)]

I don’t intend (P) to be understood in consequentialist terms. The value of an action might be a function of the virtue it displays or a function of the strength of the deontic requirement it fulfills. The expected morality of action A then is the value of A given the truth of the moral theory that recommends A multiplied by the probability that the theory is true + the value of A given that the theory is false multiplied by the probability that the theory is false. I say, anyone who does not act in accordance with (P) is a moral daredevil.

Pr(~M) is just the disjunction Pr(M1) v Pr(M2) v … v Pr(Mn) for all alternatives to M on which A is not permissible. These are moral theories that are mutually incompatible and such that each has some chance of being true. Similarly, Pr(M) is just the disjunction of moral theories Pr(Mi) v Pr(Mii), v . . v. Pr(Mk) on which A is permissible.

How does (P) work? Here’s a rough idea. I seem to be moved by the following sort of argument. There are moral theories M on which fetuses are not persons and abortion is permissible. I don’t know of any moral theory on which abortion is something we want to maximize. But there are other moral theories on which the fetus is a person and abortion is murder, or something very close to that. It is one of the worst things you can do. It’s not rational—not that I can see—to take that moral risk. The fact (if it is one) that M is more probable than M’ does not in general make the action less than moral daredevilism. It is worth noting that this is not an argument for prohibiting abortion legally or otherwise. The argument is at best directed to those considering how to exercise their freedom. As I say, I seem to be moved by arguments along these lines. It is difficult to know finally what is morally permissible. But we do know when we’re in situations that involve huge moral risks. I can’t see the rationality in taking that sort of moral risk. Maybe someone can talk me down.

It has just come to my attention that the Society of Christian Philosophers has a new web site. It's a serious upgrade over the old site with better layout, navigation, and seriously better resources.

For what it's worth, if you meet the membership requirements you ought to think about joining. You can now register on-line using PayPal.

I just got back a few hours ago from a debate between William Lane Craig and Wesley Morriston on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. It was held at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. I thought it was quite an enjoyable debate. There were two twenty minute opening statements, a forty minute discussion period, and a Q&A.

Here is one of the points of interest (which I am recalling from memory). Craig is known for bringing attention to the many paradoxes and 'absurdities' that arise when one posits that there can be an actual infinite number of things. He concludes that there cannot be an actual infinite number of past events, and so there must have been a beginning.

Following up from the previous post, I want to sketch a reply to the GPO that saves the central Plantingian model of theistic belief, the A/C model. The GPO illustrates that Plantinga's anti-independence strategy (the strategy of arguing that there's no rationality objection independent of an objection to theism's truth) is very weak. Many sets of beliefs can adopt this strategy. The mere possibility of a position being able to adopt the anti-independence strategy shouldn't imply that the position is rational (recall Duhem's stress on sens bon or good sense in theory choice; see Laudan's great article on the Quine-Duhem underdetermination thesis). DeRose puts the point this way (see the link he provides in comments on the previous post): The GPO illustrates that sets of beliefs that are irrational turn out to be rational in the many sense of 'rational' Plantinga recognizes.
Here's an attempt to solve this problem: First, drop stress on the anti-independence strategy. The strategy is very weak and seems to assume a principled distinction between rationality considerations and veritic considerations that seems questionable anyway. Second, in order to keep Plantinga's anti-evidentialist themes--and the Swinburne-Plantinga debate--stress that warranted theistic belief needn't have positive evidential merit in order to be rational. It suffices for warrant that theistic belief is produced in a way in accord with the A/C model. This yields Plantinga's famous (or infamous) claim that *if* theism is true then theistic belief is warranted. Third, to handle the GPO stress that theism is epistemically possible--not known to be false--whereas voodoo and flat earthism is not epistemically possible. Epistemic possibility is not independent from truth, so this is different from the anti-independence strategy. It also provides a good opening for evidentialist related considerations. Plantinga can claim--and hints at in the recent preface to God and other Minds--that there is good evidence for theism, but it's just good enough to make theism epistemically possible. One could combine this with some stress on Pascal's wager to make theistic ventures rational (but one's needn't to that). The resulting position is one in which there's no GPO, theism is epistemically possible, those in theistic practices are rational (b/c of wager related considerations), and theistic belief is warranted if produced in accord with the A/C model.

Registration is now open for this conference. Please visit the conference website.

The Concept of God and the Cognitive Science of Religion (University of Birmingham, UK; 14-16 June 2009)

Organised by Yujin Nagasawa (University of Birmingham) and sponsored by the Cognition, Religion and Theology Project at the University of Oxford, funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Keynote speakers: Graham Oppy (Monash), David Efird (York), Richard Swinburne (Oxford), Klaas J. Kraay (Ryerson), Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds), David Leech (Oxford), Graham Wood (Tasmania), T. J. Mawson (Oxford)

Allan Hillman, Kevin Meeker, and I were talking about Plantinga's reply to the great pumpkin objection yesterday and it seems to hang on this: there is a de jure objection to certain traditions that is independent of a de facto objection. Plantinga says that the de jure objection can't be sustained against many forms of monontheism, but it can be sustained against voodoo, flat earthism, philosophical naturalism, and humean skepticism. I see the de jure argument against naturalism and skepiticsm but the voodoo and flat earthism examples seem different. Isn't just that we have overwhelming evidence to think the central claims there are false? I wonder whether you all think of the reply to the great pumpkin objection (or the son of the great pumpkin objection) in these terms and also whether, if that's right, it's a sustainable reply (I've got my doubts about that).

Last week in my philosophy of religion class, I had my undergrads read and discuss Richard Dawkins' article "Is Science A Religion" in Pojman and Rea's Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. In that text Dawkins says:

"Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists."

Dawkins' fideistic reading of this episode intrigued me. So, I looked up the relevant passage (John 20: 24-29 NIV) to see whether it did indeed demand a fideistic reading and found the following:

Folks may be tiring of the whole Christian-colleges-APA-JFP-discrimination-against-gays brouhaha, but I've written another letter about it, specifically about how the APA should respond to the petition. I'll put it below the fold.

Among the many problems plaguing the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), perhaps Peter van Inwagen’s is best known (cf. An Essay on Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983) pp. 202-204. But there is also William Rowe’s earlier version in The Cosmological Argument (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975) ch. 2. J. Bennett has a version of the argument in A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), p. 155 ff. The earliest version I know of is in James F. Ross, Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969) 298 ff.).

Hud Hudson offers a clever solution (cf. ‘Brute Facts’, AJP (1997), 77-82). Let’s state van Inwagen’s objection briefly. We assume that (i) the items which require a sufficient reason are true propositions, (ii) true propositions are what provide sufficient reasons, (iii) the ‘sufficient reason for’ relation is the entailment relation and (iv) contingently true propositions do not contain their own sufficient reason. Here is the principle.

Principle of Sufficient Reason

For any true proposition, x, there exists a sufficient reason, y, such that,

(1) y is a true proposition

(2) Necessarily, if y, then x

(3) If x is a contingently true proposition, then y is neither identical to x, nor a contingent conjunct of x.

A Reductio Argument Against PSR

(1’) Let P be the conjunction of all contingently true propositions.

(2’) P is a contingently true proposition. From 1

(3’) There is a true proposition S which is the sufficient reason for P. Fr. 2, PSR

(4’) S is either contingently true or necessarily true.

(5’) S is not necessarily true. From 3

(6’) S is contingently true, From 4’, 5’

(5’) follows from (4’) and the fact that S is sufficient reason for P only if S is true and S entails P (by (iii) above). If S were necessarily true, then P would be necessarily true. But P is contingently true, so S is not necessary true. We are now very close to a contradiction.

First we had the petition, then the counterpetition. Now Mark Murphy, of Georgetown University, has drafted a sedate and carefully argued draft letter to the APA, also opposing the original petition. Murphy is asking for comments and criticisms by March 31 by email (see the link at the bottom of his post), at which point he will freeze his draft and collect signatures. (I am not enabling comments on this announcement--comments should be directed directly to Mark Murphy.)

I recently came across the following two quotations:

"The argument from design is the only one still in regular use today" (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 103).

"Today, it [the fine-tuning design argument] is widely regarded as offering by far the most persuasive current argument for the existence of God" (Robin Collins, "A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God," reprinted in Arguing about Religion, 147).

Each time I encounter a claim of this sort, I'm slightly perplexed.  Clearly Dawkins' quotation isn't true; but I wonder if the rest of you think that Collins is correct regarding the various arguments' persuasiveness?

I'm thrilled to announce that I've accepted a position at Baylor University for the Fall of 2009. It's a real privilege to be joining such a great faculty --including two Prosblogion contributors: Jon Kvanvig and Alex Pruss--in such a fun town (the bluffs above the Brazos provide ample mountain biking and climbing). The department does an excellent job supporting and placing their students which was important to me. All and all my family and I just feel really blessed.

The finalization of the dissertation and the long process of interviews has left me off the blogosphere for some time now, but I am eager to get back to blogging regularly again soon, I've missed it. I thank the members of Prosblogion for support on several occasions in several ways, for helping spawn some of my publications, and for putting up with my idiosyncratic style and ideas.

The anonymous reporter in Andrew Moon's very interesting post, "An Opionated Play-by-Play of the Plantinga-Dennett Exchange" (a few posts down) writes:

I prefer to remain anonymous for various reasons, in particular because I am inclined towards Plantinga's position over Dennett's and were this to become well-known it could damage or destroy my career in analytic philosophy.

I am worried, though, that on the basis of that remark, and other things they might be reading these days, readers might be developing in inaccurate picture of how Christians are generally treated in the world of professional philosophy. I'm especially concerned about the picture that might be forming in the minds of Christian students who are potential philosophers, but who might be scared away from going on in philosophy because they fear that world is more hostile to Christians than it really is. The job market for those starting out in philosophy is very tough, so everybody should think very carefully about whether they want to pursue a career in professional philosophy. What I'm concerned with here is the extent to which Christians should be especially concerned, due to extra hurdles they fear they might face. Of course, it might be me who has the inaccurate -- because it's too rosy -- picture. What I hope is that this post might contribute to a more balanced picture.

So, first, I'll report on my own experience. All my jobs have been at secular universities. I've always had items on my CV that would mark me out as at least a potential Christian (a Calvin College BA and an interest in philosophy of religion), and I've never made any attempts to hide the fact that I am. I believe I'm known in the profession as being a Christian philosopher. I take myself to have been treated very fairly by my atheist colleagues in philosophy. Perhaps most notable is my first job, since how one starts out one's career is very important, and because that was at a department -- the philosophy department at NYU circa 1990-1993 -- that was, I believe, quite thoroughly non-Christian. I can't really say with confidence that everyone there then was an atheist: I never really discussed such matters with many of my colleagues there. But several were clearly atheists, and none that I knew of were Christians or even theists. I was their second choice, but was thrilled to be so: I was a new PhD, and their first choice had been out a couple of years and was already extremely accomplished & more accomplished than me, and, because he decided to take another job, second place turned out to be good enough to land the job. And during my 3 years at NYU (it was only 3 years because, especially with two very young children, my wife really didn't want to live there any more: it really had nothing to do with my professional situation, which I was extremely happy with), and in my subsequent jobs and various dealings with the profession, I have always felt that I was treated extremely fairly by atheist philosophers. I haven't worked at a Christian college, but was up for a job (while ABD) at such a college, and based in small part on that experience, but in large part on my discussions with various people who do teach in such institutions, I am quite confident in saying that I would have experienced far more trouble for expressing my religious beliefs at Christian colleges (or at least at very many of them) than I actually have at my jobs at secular universities. (Perhaps most notable here is that I'm a Christian universalist -- I believe that Christ's act of righteousness will lead to acquittal and life for all people. As I've learned (thankfully not through personal experience), one can get into significant trouble at various Christian colleges if one is open about holding such a belief. I discuss this issue a bit here.)

Second, I'll refer readers to a blog discussion from several years ago, in which different views are expressed about whether and to what extent Christians are discriminated against in seeking philosophy jobs. The blog post is here, and the relevant comments (it's part of a larger discussion about other topics; I guess to some extent we "hijacked" the comment thread) are #s 4, 13, 17, 37, 40, 43-50, 52. I would like to stress now, though, that I've subsequently become more worried about Christians, and more generally, religious believers of various stripes, who have theological beliefs that are in certain ways unorthodox. If those who think there is considerable discrimination against religious believers are right (and they might well be, though I myself think things aren't that bad), these less orthodox religious believers might face an environment that is very hostile to them indeed, facing discrimination against them for being religious believers at secular departments, and having an even steeper uphill battle at many Christian colleges, at least to the extent that they're open about their views.

According to Plantinga, supralapsarianism is just the view that “… the decree to save some of the fallen precedes the decree to permit sin” (‘Supralapsarianism or ‘O Felix Culpa”, in P. van Inwagen (ed.) Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil (Cambridge: Eerdmans Publishing, 2004) p. 1). A supralapsarian believes that God primarily aims to actualize a world in which free beings are saved (or not) and takes as a means to actualizing such a world the creation of free beings that go wrong in various ways and suffer in various ways. Marilyn M. Adams has an interesting criticism of Plantinga’s suprapasarianism. It’s also a criticism I don’t understand entirely. Suppose the strong value assumption (SVA) is true.

SVA. There is a level L of excellence or goodness among possible worlds such that all worlds at level L or above contain Incarnation and atonement.

Plantinga urges that if SVA is true, or even if the weak value assumption WVA is true, then God’s primary aim might have been to actualize a world with Incarnation and atonement.

WVA. Some possible worlds of great value include Incarnation and atonement.

Now this is a form of supralapsarianism. God’s central aim is to actualize a world in which there is Incarnation and atonement. As a mean to doing that, God creates moral agents that go wrong and suffer in various ways. Adams then offers this criticism.

Isn’t Plantinga’s God just using created persons, treating them to their detriment, as means to Divine cosmic ends? However Plantinga may commend Divine excellence at world-making, doesn’t his theodicy undermine any claim that God is loving or merciful, good-to the persons involved? (Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 25, 2008)

I’m not sure I understand that objection. It’s supposed to be a Kantian objection to using persons merely as a means to a greater good. Since these beings never consented to being created in such a world, they are being used merely as a means. But how exactly are these persons being used? All of the beings in question are free, and can choose to act for good or ill. Let’s look at one case to see where this criticism goes wrong. Let S be among the created free beings. And suppose God creates S in T knowing that S would freely go wrong and suffer the consequences of doing so. And let’s suppose that this is a means to God’s Incarnation, atonement and redemption of S. How does S get used? (1)- (5) are true.

1. God actualizes T []—> S freely goes wrong and suffers.
2. God actualizes T.
3. S freely goes wrong and suffers.
4. (God actualizes T & S freely goes wrong and suffers) []—> God atones for S.
5. God atones for S.

But (6) is true as well and compatible with (1)-(5).

(6). <>(God actualizes T & S freely goes right and does not suffer).

Since (6) is true we know that S could just as well have gone right and not suffered, despite the fact that God actualizes T and (1) is true. So the fact that S went wrong and suffered was his own doing. Wasn’t it? Are we supposed to add the assumption that God manipulated S? There’s no evidence in Plantinga’s argument that God manipulates anyone into going wrong. But then it is hard to see how God uses S merely as a means to actualizing an Incarnation & atonement-world.